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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.