65

fractured and deeply covered with local rubble, so that it is generally
impossible to measure the widths of the coal seams without considerable
stripping or trenching. It is, consequently, possible that careful prospecting
would disclose appreciably greater widths than those seen by the writer.

Outcrops of carbonaceous shale and coal are particularly numerous
within an area about 3 miles in diameter lying about 3 miles south-south-
west of the source of Red Creek. At least four, and probably more, car-
bonaceous layers are interlayered in places with greywacke and pebble
conglomerate, and elsewhere with coarse friable agglomerate containing
fragments of silicified and carbonized wood. The interlayered strata are
included on lithological evidence with the upper part of the upper division
of the Takla group. Accordingly, the coal is probably of Upper Jurassic
age. The coal-bearing assemblage strikes northwesterly, and generally
dips between 30 and 55 degrees southwesterly. At one place, three car-
bonaceous layers are separated by two agglomerate layers each about 40
feet thick. Elsewhere the intervening layers of agglomerate or other rocks
are probably considerably thicker. The coal-bearing layers range from 10
to perhaps more than 200 feet thick, and comprise thin-bedded black shale,
with scattered coal seams up to 5 inches thick. Much of the shale is highly
carbonaceous, has a greasy brown streak, and burns with difficulty. The
coal has a high lustre, breaks with a conchoidal fracture, and when scratched
gives a steely grey streak. One sample, collected from a natural outcrop,
proved to be a medium-volatile bituminous coal, which after drying
contained!: ash, 20-6 per cent; volatile matter, 19-4 per cent; fixed carbon
(by difference), 60-0 per cent.

Coal also outcrops on the west bank of Red Creek, about 3 miles from
its mouth and 4 mile upstream from its main southwest fork. The exposed
coal-bearing strata comprise about 65 feet of thin-bedded, yellow, grey,
and black, carbonaceous shales of the Takla group. They strike south
65 degrees east, dip from 35 to 75 degrees northeast, and are separated
from other strata at the south end of the outcrop by a steep fault zone a
few feet wide. Most of the coal occurs as crushed seams within the 25 feet
of sheared shale outcropping immediately north of the fault. An estimated
20 per cent of this section comprises glistening black coal, in seams as
much as 2 inches thick, and dull shaly coal.

Other coal exposures lie above timber-line at the base of abrupt cliffs
33 miles east of the mouth of Saiya Creek. The lowest strata are greenish
grey, yellowish, and black, crumbly argillites enclosing a few specimens of
Belemnites. They strike northwesterly, dip steeply northeast, and are over-
lain by about 50 feet of similar rocks enclosing several coal seams, and,
above these, by about 20 feet of yellow, shattered, presumably argillaceous
rock. This sedimentary assemblage is overlain, apparently conformably,
by about 20 feet of coarse, friable, andesite agglomerate, with fragments
of carbonized wood, succeeded by compact andesitic breccia. The coal
seams are not well exposed, but one of them was estimated at one place
to be 10 feet thick but contains an unknown proportion of shaly coal ana
a few, thin, yellowish, clayey partings. A sample of this coal, after drying,
contained?: ash, 18-6 per cent; volatile matter, 27:2 per cent; fixed carbon

1 Analysis by Division of Fuels, Bureau of Mines, Ottawa.