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Canyon Creek valley joins the new provincial highway and crosses the
grade of the proposed railway, from where it is about 10 miles by road to
White and 8 miles to Woodpecker steamboat landings on Fraser river.
Three old shafts were seen that had evidently penetrated to bedrock.
Three tunnels are said to have been driven, but only two are now open.
The shafts were filled with water nearly to the surface and the observations
recorded here were the result of an examination of the dumps and of the
two tunnels.

Rock outcrops occur in the creek bottom in a few places and for a
short distance up the side of the valley, behind the main cabins, The
remainder of the north side of the valley is covered with unconsolidated
matetial, mostly gravel, and at elevations of about 130, 200, and 275 feet
above the creek bottom are well-defined gravel terraces (Figure 18).
Pyrite which is presumably the auriferous mineral was found in the old
workings lying in a gangue of quartz accompanied in places by calcite.
Quartz from the dump of the shaft in the old mill building south of

the creek carries some chalcopyrite and minute veins of a grey mineral
that may be galena. Galloway! reports free gold, native silver, and
hematite from the quartz samples on this dump. The country rocks are
grey quartzites, phyllites, quartz sericite schists, and greenstones, the
ereenstones apparently interbedded with the sediments. A specimen of
greenstone proved to be a fine-grained and very -much altered igneous
rock originally perhaps an andesite or basalt. These rocks are in nearly
all cases much altered to red clay. The planes of foliation of the schists
_gtrike from south 31 degrees east to south 49 degrees east with aa average
of about south 40 degrees east, and with steep dips, in places northeast,
in others vertical or slightly southwest. :

Two miles west, near the junction with Government creek, is an out-
crop of augite syenite, a medium-grained, unfoliated and unaltered and,
therefore, much later rock than the schists. The rock near the workings
has been faulted and quartz veins traverse the schists in an icregular way.
Bowman? shows a number of parallel quartz veins striking north 46 degrees
west at the easterly shafts and dipping 70 degrees northeast, crossed by
others striking north 34 degrees east and dipping vertically. Most of
the veins are small stringers from a few inches to one foot thick. Wider
veins are reported, but the writer did not see any. Pyrite 1s found in the
quartz veins and disseminated through the country rock. From the
meagre evideace at hand it seems probable that, if the pyrite carries the
gold values, the ore-bodies are of the nature of irregular stockworks fading
into the country rock without well-defined boundaries. Bowman states
that the cross veins striking northeast carry pyrite, tetrahedrite, and free
gold assaying from $28 to $274 per ton, averaging $70 to the ton. These
cross stringers are said to have been of small extent. Three shafts and
several tunnels have been driven on this property and there are the ruins
of a five-stamp mill, an old arrastra, bunkhouses, etc. (Figure 18).
“In 1918 an attempt was made to unwater and examine the property but
without success. Surface values are low and the higher grade ore which
is said to have occurred in the deeper workings was not reached. A small
shipment of gold is said to have been made from this property in 1880.
Part of this property is now owned by the Quesnelle Quartz Mining Com-
pany, of which H. E. C. Carry, Vancouver, is president.

1Galloway, John D., ‘‘Hixon creek,” Rept. of Minister of Mines, B.C., 1918, p. K128.

2Bowman, Amos, ‘‘Report on the geology of the mining district of Cariboo, B.C.,’’.Geol. Surv., Can., Ann.
Rept., vol. III, pt. 1, 1887-1888, p. 48C, with map.

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