ANCIENT CHANNEL OF SALT RIVER.
There are good evidences that at a former period of the later ages of the earth's
history, but possibly before the creation of man, the Goldfield region east of
Mesa was the channel through which a greater part of the ancient floods now
represented by the Salt River flowed westward. The chief fact in evidence is the
presence upon the higher me.sas and hills of drifted river gravel, so much rounded
and water worn as to prove its transportation by water currents from remote
sources, and at the same time showing by the composition of this rounded gravel
its source in hills and mountains far to the eastward, and at the sources of the
Salt River and the Gila. Among this transported gravel we find boulders of the
same peculiar kind of slate or sericite-selrist as forms the bulk of the high mountains
known as the Four Peaks, which rise majestically in the west and north. It
is probable that before the Salt River had cut its way to its present low channel
a part at least of the drainage was through this open gateway to the west. It
should also be noted that the volcanic tufa which now surmounts the hills also
contain considerable quantities of similar slate, lending strength to the belief
that these sediments also were laid down by great currents of water sweeping
westward from the Four Peak region.
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