138

benches are marked features, although they are largely concealed by glacial
drift which has also filled and concealed the old rock channels. The depth
to bedrock in the China hydraulic pit, and the depth of the valley cut in
drift and heading near the dam above the head of the China pit, shows that
rock channels are cut down through the rock benches. None of the chan-
nels appears to be graded to the deep valley of Slough creek.

Mining on Burns creek was started in the early sixties and was carried
on for many years. The channel in the upper part and down through the
canyon to the lower end of the benches was mined partly by drifting, but
mostly by open-cuts extending down to bedrock. Drifting of the channel
at the China hydraulic pit, or Lake gulch as it was formerly known, was
done in the seventies by Hugh Brown, Harry Gillis, J. C. Beatty, and other
local miners. A tunnel was run in from below the road and the workings
extended to beyond the head of the present pit. There is an old air shaft,
probably connected with the workings, on the right side above the head of
the pit. The driftings along the channel, which is generally regarded as
the old outlet channel of Burns creek, are said to have paid 25 ounces to the
set in the lower part from 50 to about 200 feet above the road. In the
upper part the pay was much less. Later, hydraulicking along the course
of the channel was carried on for many years by Chinese. The work is
said to have about paid expenses. Only a small water supply from Burns
ereek was available and the bank was high and composed mostly of boulder
clay overlain by a small thickness of gravels. A tunnel just above the road
about 700 feet east of the pit was run, about 1900, by Robert Anderson.
The tunnel reached bedrock at about 100 feet, but no gold was found. The
bedrock at the end of the tunnel is considerably higher than in the channel
at the mouth of the China pit. This shows that there is probably a ridge
or bench of bedrock beneath the drift on the east side of the pit and the
valley cut in drift between the pit and Burns creek shows that a depression
in the bedrock occurs beneath it. Hydraulicking of the bench deposits
along the east side of Burns creek, in its lower part, was carried on during
parts of the hydraulic seasons from 1900 to 1903 by the Cariboo Exploration
Company, Limited, of which 8. Medlicott was manager for a time and
later John Hopp. Water was brought from Jack of Clubs creek by a ditch
4 miles long. The ditch was 4 feet wide at the bottom and 7 feet at the top
and had a capacity of 1,600 miner’s inches. The water under a head of
about 280 feet was brought to the pit by 2,400 feet of pipe-line. Two
monitors, a No. 2 and a No. 6, were used. Hopp reported! in 1902 that
36,000 yards of material had been handled during the season, and in 1903
that a run of only seventeen days was obtained because of the shortage of
water, but that the gravels contained satisfactory values in gold. The
total amount of material removed from the pit was about 60,000 yards. It
was intended in 1903 to enlarge the plant, for apparently it was decided
that the operations could not pay unless a better water supply were avail-
able, but no further work was done. The grade of the bedrock in the pit
is 10 to 20 per cent and there are fair facilities for disposal of the tailings.
The deposits are 10 to 30 feet thick, or possibly more in places, and consist
of surface gravels up to 10 or 15 feet thick underlain by boulder clay.

1Ann. Repts., Minister of Mines, B.C., 1902, p. 123; 1903, p. 63.