Journal of Travels From St. Josephs to Oregon / With Observations of That Country, Together With Some Description of California, Its Agricultural Interests, and a Full Description of Its Gold Mines.

by Riley Root

FIRST VARIETY.

The first variety of Gold may be considerd as that which is in dry ravines, or between hills, where there is no running water, except in the time of showers, or the melting of snows.—This variety is calld dry ravine or angular gold, from the fact that whatever be its form, whether in plates or heavy solid masses, or in thin scales,—the edges are all sharp and angular, as nature formd it, having never been rounded off by attrition among moving pebbles or sand, in violent streams of water. The agent of deposit seems to have been mostly that of gravitation during the decomposition of the rocks of the hills containing gold, aided probably by the moistening influences of rains upon the alluvium of the hills, and the general movement of alluvium from higher to lower levels. When once deposited in these situations, it never after receives a secondary removal, except by the hand of the miner.

Dry ravine deposits vary in their advantages for obtaining gold, according to the slope of the hills, through which the ravine passes. At the heads of ravines, where the country is but an undulating one, of moderate hills, and wide-spread valleys, the deposits are generally so disseminated, that but little advantages are gaind, by searching for gold in such situations.

Downward, towards the mouths of ravines, where the hills are in close contiguity, gold is deposited in a line along the center of ravines, varying somewhat in richness, according to the richness of the adjoining hills that deposited it, or the inclination, or basin-shapd appearance of the ravine along its course to its mouth. If ravines are of rapid descent from their sources to their outlets, they mostly contribute their gold to the streams into which they empty themselves.