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Show RECONNAISSANCE IN THE UTE COUNTRY. 61 taining large crystals of calc spar. Locality the same as the preceding, except the mountain- slope. No. 3. Tweuty feet dark- bluish gray shaly limestone, alternating with dark- blue marly clays. Organic remains: Inoceramus problematic cus, Pinna, and a few small species not determined. Localities: In the valley of Muddy Creek, below the road, and near the junction of Greenhorn and Muddy Creeks. No. 4. Two feet blue slaty limestone. No. 5. Seventy- five feet slate, clay, and marl. No. 6. Two feet like No 4.. Locality: Nos. 4, #, and 6 are found in the valley of Muddy Creek, below the road. No. 7. One hundred and fifty feet or more slope with outcrops of slate and marl. Locality: This formation is probably several hundred feet thick, and may be the upper portion of the outcroppings noticed between Camps 3 and 4. It gives the peculiar uniform slopes of the valley of Muddy Creek below the Trinidad and Fort Garland road. Two miles above Camp 4 the Huerfano leaves the mountains through a canon of brown sandstone. These formations were much distorted, and may be traced high up in the valley of the Huerfano, where a series of these or similar formations are in great force, and in a less disturbed condition. This valley must have been closed against the Cretaceous sea in which the strata of that age were deposited along the eastern slope of the mountains, as remains of that system could not be found. Fragments of limestone, however, are strewed on the slopes of the mountains at intervals up to near the summit of the Sangre de Cristo Pass, but contain no organic remains, and have the characteristics of fresh- water rocks. The high peaks flanking the eastern approaches to Sangre de Cristo Pass are of a species of porphyry. Visited the Gray- back gold- mines, situated about 750 feet below the summit of the pass, three miles from the mouth of a stream that flows from the right into Sangre de Cristo Creek, about six miles below the summit. Fifteen men were engaged in washing. The gold is obtained in flakes, and the yield is from three to five dollars per day per man. In this vicinity is found a broken ledge of limestone of the Carboniferous period laying against granite, from which were obtained the following organic remains: Gyathophyllum, Products, egicostatus, P. semiretieulatusy and Sppifer cameratus. The lower slopes of the valley are mostly composed of red disintegrating feldspathic granite, with some gneiss and mica slate. On the high elevations on the right side of the valley my assistant collected some specimens of Dolorite Trap and several different varieties of Porphyry. On the right slope of the valley, two miles below Camp 5, is a slide of 150 feet of metamorphic light- gray shale, with hard, compact, dark- blue concretions, containing Productus cora, Spirifer Kentuckensis^ Spirigera subtilita. Three furlongs lower down the valley is a ridge of limestone, sandstone, and shale; much changed by heat, and tilted on their edges. Found no organic remains. For seven miles below the right slope of the mountain is strewed with debris of like rocks observed in the ridge, and extending up to a much higher elevation. The lower slopes of the valley, for five miles, are mostly composed of granite, gneiss, and mica slate. These are traversed by veins of quartz; thence to Fort Garland, the outcrops and contour of the surface indicates a sandy- clay formation several hundred feet thick, underlaid and supported latterly by granite rocks in many instances. |
