Year: 1869




\ story of its existence and of its greatness?' The
| main cause must have been the subsequent rise
of the Sierra Nevada. Suppose that range Of
/ mountains, seven thousand feet high, were up
heaved thirty miles east of the Mississippi that
the bed of that stream were on the mountain
side three thousand feet above the sea, and that
thirty miles west the country retained its pres
ent level the result would be that the present
Mississippi would be dead river, it would be
cut across by streams running down the noun
tain side and pouring into new Mississippi,
thirty miles or more west OF the present one.
We know that the Sierra Nevada has been up
heayed that large stream ran on what is now
/ tha Mountain side and that it has been sue
fEc9Ge4~ 4~ByAa new river further west; and we
must infer that the death of the old and the birth
of the new river were caused by the upheava.


Many of the hills crossed Dy the Big Blue are
capped with lava or basalt which covered much
of the country from near the summit of the range
to about three thousand feet above the sea. 1t
seems then that the river filled its bed with
gravel; the mountains began to rise, and volca-
noes broke out along the divide the lava ran
down and covered the land to the line of the
dead river and beyond it; the mountain rose
still higher, and the waters running down their
sides cut through the lava and made deep canons,
and washed away two-thrds three-fourths of
the dead river, and scattered its gold among
the living waters.


The descent of thirty-three feet per mile OBJ
served between Little Grizzly and Forest Hill
would make terrific current in stream half
mile wide. The Sacramento is a lively river,
yet its grade is only FIVE feet in a mile. But no
ordinary current could have carried the large
quartz powders of the Big Blue Lead from dis
tant regions and distributed them evenly over
the river bed. 1t is possible, however, that in
the lifting up of the mountains and relative ele-
| Al
grade differs from that of the Big Blue while it
was alive.


question suggests itself whether the great
dead river the predecessor of any live
stream but to this satisfactory answer can
now be given, and it is doubtful whether time
and research will ever furnish one. The Big Blue
was parallel to the Sacramento, and has to a
certain extent been succeeded ~by it but it
drained much larger district than the Sacra-
mento does, or the rain fall of the country was
much greater in the era of its existence. The
Sacramento does not carry one-fourth of the
water which ran in the Big Blue-probably not
one-tenth. If we could ascertain that the guam
tity of rain had not altered, then we would be
justified in persuming that the Columbia river,
which would about fill the bed of the Big Blue,
instead of turning westward at Walla Walla,
originally continued southwark, until the lifting
up of Shasta and Lassen, and the adjacent ridges ~
stopped its course, and compelled it to break
through the Cascade range at the Dales. With
our present limited knowledge, We are not justi-
fed in calling the Big Blue river either the Dead
Sacramento or the Dead Columbia.


| Some persons have argued that the Big Blue
Lead never was river, but only lucustrine or
alluvial deposit. This theory, however, is un-
tenable. The Big Blue Lead has all the marks
which dead river should have. 1t has long
! course, width nearly uniform, a course nearly
straight, some bends of which eddes on the
inner side, peculiar quartz, unlike any found
in the neighboring ridges, in the streams to
the eastward, and abundance of quartz which
no place now known to us could have supplied,
and which probably from distant north
ern region now covered with lava water-worn
gravel, which must have been carried far fat
stones pointing down stream, a current would
place them strata of coarse and fine gravel,
which mustshave been deposited in stream; a
uniform descending grade; the coarse particles
of gold which could not havs been distributed
so evenly over wide channel except in a strong
current ; an immense quantity of gold, which
required ages to scatter through deposit three
hundred feet deep; drift-wood unmistakably
water-worn trunks of trees with the butts up
stream tributary brooks, and number of other
evidences which would require more space for
| their description and explanation than | conld
spare. To say that the Big Blue is not dead
river is equivalent to saying that the bones of
/ the mastodon never belonged to a living animal,
but formed under geological influences
exclusively.


If this were the only dead river in the State
the proof would be less conclusive, but there
are dozen others. One which runs southwest
wardly, and may be called the Dead Brandy
river, appears at La Porte, Brandy City, Camp
tonvile and North San Juan, and is marked by
the same general characteristics, save that the
gravel is finer, the pebbles in the upper strata
being generally not larger than pigeons egg.


In Tuoumne and Calaveras counties we have
the Dead Stanislaus or Tuolumne Table Noun
tain, which runs from near Silver Mountain, in
/ Alpine, to Knights Ferry, and there disappears.
Itjs covered by bed of basalt, which flowed
as lava from volcano and filled up the ancient
bed; and this basalt has resisted the wear Of
the elements, and now stands as a mountain
forty miles long, quarter of mile wide, and
eight hundred feet high, the softer adjacent slate
rock having been wasted and washed away.
Under this mountain lies dead river rich in
gold.


A similar table mountain Of basalt, covering
an aurferous dead river, which call the Dead
Cherokee, after its chief mining camp, extends
seventy miles from Lassen's Peak to Oroville.
At Bangor, iu Butte county, is small, dead
river, seventy feet below the general surface OF
the ground, and covered with ordinary SOIL ana
gravel. There are also dead rivers at Smarts-
vile, Mokelumne Hill and San Andreas The
} Big Blue and Dead Brandy are distinguished by
the depth of their gravel aud by the absence of
pebbles of eruptive origin in it the others have
either short courses or shallow deposits of
gravel and the quartz forms much smaller
percentage of the gravel. In the dead rivers at
Cherokee, Rangor and Smartsville large pro-
portion of the powders and pebbles is of lava
and basalt as if the streams had been formed
after the commencement of the volcanic era,
But different is the material of the gravel the
luvial origin of the deposits is similar and in
dubitable in all of them, when they are studied
together.


THE WAY THEY DO IT AT WHITE PINE-We find
the following item in the Virginia (Nevada) En-
tsrpriss of iate date:


gentleman just in from Treasure City, White
Pine, away up where water sells at ten cents per
gallon, describes the following as an expedient
very commonly resorted to by the residents of
that elevated town for taking a bath Early in