The creeks and large rivers receive their gold from the mouths of ravines and hills contiguous to the creeks and rivers.

Gold is found in dry ravines, creeks, and in basins of rivers, weighing several ounces.

In some places along the creeks, the miner finds angular gold deposited in the banks of the streams at the foot of a hill, where it had not slidden down sufficiently far to reach the power of the waters of the stream.

Lost, or erratic gold is sometimes found in the creeks among the creek-washd sand and gravel of the stream, being subject to occasional removals, by subsequent freshets. Such gold seems to be on its way to its final deposit or resting place in situations where subsequent freshets can take no effect upon it for further removal.

Some of this gold is in pieces of several dollars value, but most of it is in fine grains, with a mixture of floating gold.

The fine gold is found in situations above the rock, in deposits of loose sand, where every violent freshet gives it another removal, till it is ultimately carrid downward and deposited in the bars of the large rivers.

THIRD VARIETY.

The third variety of gold is that which may be denominated bar, scale, or floating gold. This gold is found in the tertiary deposits, commonly calld bars of the large streams flowing down from the Neveda range of mountains. Hence the name of bar gold.

Its form is that of very thin scales, which causes it to float in waters that are highly agitated. Hence also, the names of scale, and floating gold.

This gold is seldom found in pieces worth more than a dollar, and is rounded off by attrition, the same as the creek-washd gold.

The several varieties here describd, were the same, only differing in form, in the original rock—but the several agents of deposit, have separated them into separate classes, according to the several capacities of gold to receive the power of the several depositing agents. Hence, the finest floating gold is found lowest down the principal rivers, where it is deposited. Creek-washd gold, being heavy, is never movd very far down the stream, from where it was first deposited into it—and dry ravine gold, having still a little different agent from the others, has never been movd but a very short distance.

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If no more could be said of water, than of other matter of the earth, that it seeks rest by gravitation, in common with the harder portions of matter, but little of its influences could ever be known, to what is now apparent, when viewd in all its bearings. But the fluidity of water, gives it advantages over other matter, in possessing movements, which the latter can never receive—such as lateral motion, capillary attraction, great expansion by heat, aerial passages from rare to dense mediums, thereby giving a new preparation to descend in the form of rain or snow, to restore again its former equilibrium.

Running water, in the light here intended to be explaind, is that which flows down rivers and creeks, from higher to lower levels. Water, like all other substances, will fall perpendicularly from higher to lower levels, if there be no interposing obstacle. But as the beds of streams descend like an inclind plane, from their sources to their mouths, water is forcd over them by the power of gravitation, till it arrives at a level with other surrounding water, and is thereby prevented from descending further. Now in the movement of water, along its downward passage, many considerations arise.

First, if water were made to pass downward thro’ a straight duct or channel, whose lateral and vertical sides were perfectly smooth, so that no friction could exist between the water and the trough or duct that containd it, there would be no eddy formd along its sides, for the water would all of it have a straight forward, and downward movement.

But as the bottom and edges of streams are rough and uneven, very frequent obstructions to water occur. Places so obstructed, are the eddies or partial eddies, so commonly observable in streams of running water.

If an observer stands on the bank of a creek, during a time of high water, where there is much irregularity and unevenness of its bottom, he will see in some places, that the water is nearly motionless—in others, a whirling round of the water,—in others, a retrograde or up stream motion. Under all the circumstances of these several appearances of the water, those places that are the most quiet, approach nearest to the most perfect eddies.

Wherever a bend in a creek occurs, the water, by an opposing bank, is forcd to take a new direction, passing downward, along on its inclind, though uneven bottom. The opposing bank stops a portion of the flowing waters, and causes them to turn back, along the shore of the creek, producing, thereby,—a section of inactive waters, between those of the downward and those of the upward course.

Again, if a lateral stream of water flows into a creek, similar or nearly so in magnitude, the two partially opposing currents form an eddy in the upper angle of the two, and an eddy of less magnitude, is also formd in the angle of the two, on the lower side of the lateral stream.

When water passes over a reef of rock, that traverses entirely across the stream, like a mill dam, the central waters or current cannot well form an eddy immediately below the reef, on account of its impetuous movement—though laterally, towards the banks, partial quietness of the water may exist.

If an obstacle, as a rock or other body, protrude in the current of a creek, so high that water is forcd around it, instead of running over it, an eddy is formd immediately below it, in magnitude according to the size of the obstacle.