128

steeply dipping rim-rock on the east side at 10 feet. A pit at the end of
the tunnel was also sunk 6 feet to a bed of boulders similar to those beneath
which the pay-streak occurred in the pit. Two ounces of gold to the set
was obtained on the rim-rock, but sinking could not be continued because
of the ground-water. In recent years mining at the property has been
carried on by Messrs. Ross and McComish, the present owners. Hydrau-
licking has been carried on in the lower west side of the pit, two small
monitors being used, one for sluicing and the other, placed at the lower
end of short lengths of sluice boxes, for boosting the tailings.

The materials overlying the bedrock at the hydraulic pit consist of
boulder clay at the bottom overlain by poorly stratified glacial gravels and
silt which are again overlain in places by boulder clay. The upper surface
of the lower boulder clay, as exposed in the pit, is partly cemented to a
depth of a few inches and resting on the surface was a bed of large boulders,
now scattered and partly removed by mining operations, beneath and
around which the pay was found. The pay-streak was nearly 50 feet wide
in places and divided upstream into two branches. One branch extended
practically to the surface about 500 feet westerly from the head of the pit;
the other branch lies beneath the high bank at the head of the pit. The
materials overlying the pay-gravels in the lower part of the pit were mostly
glacial gravels, averaging only 10 to 20 feet in thickness; the material at
the head of the pit is mostly boulder clay and has a maximum thickness of
nearly 50 feet. The true bedrock outcrops in a few places along the east
side of the pit, but not on the west side. An old shaft near the centre of
the pit, the upper 15 feet of which has been hydraulicked away, is said to
have been 29 or 39 feet to bedrock and only a little gold was found on bed-
rock. There are two shafts on the west side of the pit; the upper is said to
have been 22 feet to bedrock and the lower, sunk by Pat McKenna, Joseph
Wendle, and others, is said to have been nearly 80 feet deep and not to bed-
rock, but there was broken bedrock on the west side most of the way down.
No gold was found except in a thin pay-streak about 60 feet from the surface.
It is evident, therefore, that, although there appears to be a deep bedrock
channel beneath the hydraulic pit, the placer gold does not occur in
the bedrock channel, but in gravels resting on a false bedrock of boulder
clay deposited by a glacier, and the pay-gravels may have no connexion
with the buried rock channel. After the deposition of the lower boulder
clay there was a period of erosion during which the pay-gravels may have
been deposited by a stream flowing northeast towards the basin of Eight-
mile lake. But, since the numerous large boulders forming part of the pay-
gravels could hardly have been transported by the stream, it is more
probable the pay-gravels were formed by stream erosion of the underlying
boulder clay and that the concentration of the gold was due to this erosion.
The gold was derived from the glacial drift. Before it was included in the
glacial drift it probably occurred in a pay-streak in one of the deep bed-
rock channels, and not necessarily in the channel above which it now occurs.
The bedrock where exposed in the hydraulic pit is crystalline limestone.
The boulders in the lower boulder clay and those partly forming the pay-
streak consist of rocks that were derived in part from the mountain range
to the east and southeast. Many were derived locally. There are numerous
boulders of a reddish weathering, igneous rock, numerous dykes of which