59

It is, therefore, not necessarily an ancient high channel of Antler creek nor
the source of the gold found in the rich part of Upper Antler creek. Shaft
sinking and ground testing—to the extent of cleaning up about 100 square
yards of the bedrock in the valley near the summit—was done about 1900,
but apparently little gold was found. It was also reported that a tunnel
driven into the right bank of the upper part of the China Creek hydraulic
pit and a blind shaft at the end of the tunnel showed a channel in the
bedrock extending upstream towards the reservoir. The valley has been
again staked recently, partly on the strength of this report, but no further
work has been done.

The source of the placer gold in Upper Antler creek and its erratic
distribution have been questions in dispute ever since the early discoveries.
Although the first actual discovery on Antler in the autumn of 1860 was
made in a post-glacial rock canyon between the mouth of Victoria. creek
and Sawmill flat, it was soon realized, especially after the discoveries of
rich pay gravels in the wider, older parts of the creek bottoms, that the
youthful rock canyons were likely to contain little gold. They in many cases
indicated to the prospectors, however, that—as above Sawmill flat—a
buried channel might occur alongside which could reasonably be presumed
to contain pay gravels in the bottom. The new rock channels in many
cases were caused by accumulations of glacial debris filling the old stream
valleys in places and forcing the stream to cut a new channel around the
obstruction. As the bedrock is usually close to the surface on the sides of
the valley and is easily eroded, rock canyons were cut to considerable
depths in post-Glacial time. Some were probably formed in much the
same way during times of melting and comparative warmth during the
Pleistocene or Ice Age. The post-glacial canyons are usually distinguished
by their nearly vertical sides and the steep gradients of their bottoms; the
older ones are more nearly V-shaped and have lower gradients. Thus the
upper canyon above Sawmill flat is clearly post-Glacial and the lower prob-
ably Pleistocene in age. The reason why the recent rock canyons contain
little gold is that, unless they happen to have cut across part of an older
gold-bearing channel, they contain only the coarse gold derived from the
wearing away of a limited thickness of rock, whereas in the old channels
the gold represents the concentration from the wearing away of a great
thickness of rock. Any gold sufficiently fine to be transported by a stream
is likely to be carried through the canyons because of their steep gradients.
A popular theory with the early miners was that slides from the mountain
sides had blocked the old channels in places and had thus caused diversion
of the streams. There is very little evidence of recent slides in the region,
but they may have occurred more frequently before the mountain slopes
became forested. But in any case the material forming the obstructions
to the old channels is nearly always glacial drift and diversion has occurred
because of its irregular deposition. Rock or talus slides, however, occur in a
few places where the valley slopes are especially steep.

Some recent rock canyons such as that just below the rich ground on
Antler creek, are different in character and origin from those just referred
to. They occur in the bottoms of the main valleys, are formed by the
headward erosion of the stream—as by the eating back by a falls—and are