25

The veins are lenticular and may join to make a wide, solid body locally.
The vein appears to be a bed vein parallel to the strata and not in a fault
fracture. If it is truly a bed vein it may pinch or swell considerably within
short distances. Several, large, rounded, pyritie quartz boulders 10 feet
in diameter on Lowhee creek near the upper camp have presumably
travelled only a short distance from their source. They may have come
from the B.C. vein, exposed a mile away, from its unexplored northwesterly
extension, or from a similar large vein nearby.

The replacement deposits are bodies of massive, fine-grained sulphides
consisting of pyrite and some arsenopyrite and small quantities of galena
and sphalerite. Free gold occurs in narrow fractures traversing the sul-
phides and also as small grains enclosed in sulphide. The gold is very
fine grained and most of it would pass through a 400-mesh screen. The larg-
es deposit so far discovered is 18 inches or less wide and less than 100 feet
ong.

The grade of the replacement ore is roughly twice as high as that of the
better veins. The grade of the ore mined in 1933, consisting entirely of vein
ore, approximated 0-4 ounce a ton. In this first year of mining, however,
there was some lowering of grade due to a greater amount of dilution than
will ordinarily occur, and the veins will probably average a little higher.

UPPER LOWHEE CREEK

The upper part of Lowhee creek south of the holdings of the Cariboo
Gold Quartz Mining Company is covered by the Champion and Black Bull
claims. Hydraulic washings have laid bare much of the bedrock in the
valley bottom and exposed a number of quartz veins both of the transverse
and of the diagonal types. One of the diagonal veins about 1,200 feet below
Watson gulch is 4 feet wide. The other veins seen were narrower.

CARIBOO CENTRAL GOLD MINES, LIMITED

Part of the holdings of the Cariboo Central Gold Mines, Limited, lie
in the lower part of the gold belt southwest of the head of Lowhee creek,
but no mineral deposit was examined.

B.C. VEIN

The B.C. vein is on the Cariboo claim a few hundred feet northeast
of the Lowhee Creek-Stouts Gulch divide. The vein has been known for
many years and attempts to mine were made as early as 1876. The
vein strikes southeast along the southwestern slope of Barkerville moun-
tain, dips 70 degrees northeast, and is 20 feet wide. It has been traced by
very scattered outcrops in heavy drift for a length of 400 feet. An adit
driven northeast cuts the vein 55 feet below the surface. A shaft is reported
to follow the vein down to a depth of 170 feet and short drifts have been
driven on the adit level and on a sub-level 110 feet below the outcrop.
In general where exposed the vein contains very little sulphide, but the
dump shows that much sulphide existed in the vein matter that was taken
out. In the small part of the workings that are accessible, transverse or
branch veins occur containing much sulphide and a normal transverse vein