Year: 1869

A~'AnSc SuuoSniy uiSoPPSoAOut ou~ soS ~o~y
the hill was composed of gravel, which had a
peculiar blue color, and part of it, horizontal
stratum about half mile wide from east to
west, and five feet tbick, was very rich m gold
They looked after the metal, and paid little at
tention to anything else. As the stratum ran
across the ridges from north to south, the miners
followed it in with adits or tunnels, and in more
than one place the tunnels met; and a few years
ago it was customary for footmen passing be-
tween Monticello and Excelsior to go under
ground a distance of mile rather than to climb
over the hill six hundred feet high, by path
nearly two miles long. In the same manner
Forest City and Allegheny were connected by q
continuous tunnel; but the timbefs have rotted, I
the roof has fallen in, and the passage is now
closed.


The auriferous deposit is gravel, mixed with
bowlders, clay and sand, varying from hundred
to three hundred feet in depth in strata, distin-
guished from one another by differences in color,
in the size of the bowlders and gravel, and in
the number and size of the particles of gold.
The predominant color is blueish gray, dark at
the bottom and lighter above, with reddish
finge in those places that have long been ex-
posed to the air, showing the presence of iron.
The material of the bowlders, gravel and sand is
almost exclusively quartz. In the whole length
of the river traced for distance of sixty-fve
miles, assuming that the deposits of gravel aver
lage half mile wide and two hundred feet deep,
there were, counting in the portions which have
&beer washed away by the live rivers, six billion
pix hundred and sixty million cubic yards of
quartz and clay, and and the quartz alone must
ave measured five billion cubic yards. In the
ave rivers quartz forms only small portion of
he gravel.


Whence came all the quartz of the Big Blue
low did it happen that no granite, slate por-
lehyry, basat or sandstone was buried in its bed


all the quartz veins now known in California
fere cleaned out to depth of one hundred feet
pey would not supply so much as is found in
yxty live miles OF a river that must have run for


lany hundreds of miles. The gravel is all wa
er-worn, and rounded by long attrtion. 1t
Iame from far north A piece of rough quartz,
| fhile being carried five hundred miles in the
tercest of our mountain streams, would not be
torn so smooth as is every pebble in the Blue


ead. And the immense size of the bowlders
! Implies mighty current. Those in the lowest


tratum average in some places ton, and many
Are found of twenty tons. These worn as
smooth as the pebbles They are not found
scattered here and there as though they tum-
bled down from the banks of the river near the
epot where they found but they are evenly


istributed in stratum of equal thickness across


he whole bed, and for miles in length. Above
that may be a stratum of powders of half the
size, and then another stratum of larger ones
The great river handled these masses of rock
with as much apparent ease, and spread them
out as evenly, as if they had oeen no larger than
pigeons eggs.


The particles of gold are larger in size, and
contain more silver at the bottom than at the
top. The smaller pieces are in the upper strata,
and as they have larger surface proportionately,
the silver is eaten out by. the sulphurous acid
which is developed in the gravel by the oxida-
tion of pyrites. If a double eagle and twenty
one-dollar pieces are thrown into a solution of
vitriol, and left there for several weeks, the
small pieces WILL at the end of that time con-
tain a larger proportion of gold than the large
one; and for a similar reason the surface placer
gold is finer chemically than that obtained from
the deeper strata. AS general rule, the deep
gold is nine hundred fine, or is worth eighteen
dollars and sixty cents per ounce, and the sur
| face gold is nine hundred and twenty fine, and
is worth nineteen dollars per ounce in the Big
Blue Lead. The gold and gravel are deposited
as in live rivers. There banks, bars eddies,
rppes, rapids and falls. There is little gold in
the rapids, and much in the eddes. The richest
places have contained much as fifty dollars
to the cubic yard of the lower stratum, Or if the
| larger powders were lett out of the estimate, to
two or three cubic feet. The space between the
bowlders is filled with sand, clay, and gravel
which contains the gold. In the upper strata
there are from fifty cents to two dollars to the
cubic yard. The bed is of slate rock and the
banks are from fifty to three hundred feet high ;
but there are a few places where they have been
examined, for nowhere has all the gravel been
washed away across the channel.


But how was it possible that the bed of large
river could be filed three hundred feet deep with
gravel! When the miners in 1850, 1851 and
1852, fumed the live rivers of California, and
took the gold from their bed, they found de-
posit of gravel that did not average more than
hve feet deep on the bed rock, in streams that
ran In canons one thousand feet deep and it is
strange that the Big Blue should have filled its
| vol Naf 80 10 v,t thOf
an analogue in our day. Under the influence of
hydraulic washings, Bear river and Yuba river
have, within the last fifteen years, begun to fill
up with gravel, and their beds have for miles,
risen seventy feet or more above the levels of
1853. This gravel is auriferous, and it is depos-
tied in the strata and the arrangement and gen.
eral appearance resemble those of the Big Blue
Lead. The filling up began down in the valley,
and as 1t ascended the current became less rapid
and lost the power to carry away the gravel. In
Bear river, below Dutch Plat, the bed rises two
feet per month during the chief washing season
from February to September, and in the remain
ing four months it falls on account of the STOP
page of washing and of the winter floods which
carry away perhaps half the accumulation of the
summer.


Some persons claim that various camps on
parts of dead rivers in Plumas county are on the
Big Blue Lead, and others think that portions OF
dead river, near Placervlle, belong 10 the
same stream. l do not accept these theories
but ie they are true, the Big Blue river has been
traced about one hundred and ten miles. In the
northern part of Plumas county the river is
buried under deep beds of lava and basalt, and
south of Placerville it is probably below the
level of the live streams, and thus cannot be
found by any system of mining or mode of pros
pecting now in use. Even in places where it is
above the level of the live streams it may be
covered on the sides of the canons by slides OF
rocks or of barren dirt gravel, and the miner
might spend thousands Of dollars in vain search
for treasures not ten feet from his drift, many
have done, and some accident, luck, or perse-
yerance afterward proved the proximity of the
rich deposit. In several cases the lead was
found by calculation. The miner took his posi-
ton on hill side, line and on a level with
other mining camps, and in few days he found


a fortune and others have spent years working


on similar plan without success The river


must have taken bends on the north side of Rocl


creek and Oregon ravine, and twelve years O


searching have not revealed the position of thu


bends.


But why did the Big Blue river die, and leav'
nothing but its gravel and its gold to tell tn