Page 42 - A Geology Walk up the Clyburn Valley

ISSUE : Issue 67

Published by Ronald Caplan on 1994/8/1

of the gold mine. Where the gold mine was, has been totally lost. Franey Brook is where all of the gold shafts were supposed to be, according to the old maps. But careful hunting up there has not ever found one of them. There is the old road up to it, still within sight of the shack, of the cabin. And the pile of rocks at the end of it is just that, a pile of rock that's been placed there by man over the last 70 or 80 years or so, when they were presumably excavating either the shaft or some of the adits into the shaft. I have never seen any adits or any shafts (for the gold mine) up there at all. I've been up the side of the brook. I think the spring runoff moulds the shape of that brook quite a lot every year. There seems to be a different set of boulders that are lying around there, and the bedrock is very clean and worn off. I think it's long since that these adits and shafts were filled in by boulders coming off the top of the mountain. ? Quality Cameras Building, comer George & Dorchester Streets. PEOPLE YOU CAN TALK TO. (Franey Brook) comes out of the mountain? side, off the edge of the steep slope. It immediately fans out into a whole series of distribu? taries- -the opposite of tributaries--where the streams all fan out from each other rather than all converging on each other. And that's what makes the alluvial fan itself. And some of these distributaries are active. The bridge, of course, goes over the main one, today. But the main position of Franey Brook is not always where Franey Brook was. And as we go around the fan here, you see a whole series of them. And I think these piles of boulders are just old banks or ancient distributary channels. (This is a good example of a dry bed that's not really dry?) There is no water in Fra? ney Brook today. But there is water flowing down. I would think that if you went a hun? dred metres upstream, there would be a sub? stantial flow of water in the stream. Be? cause that's where the bedrock starts, just a little ways upstream there. But today the water is flowing underneath, underground, through the boulders. You'll notice as well that there's hardly a boulder of red granite in this creek at all. Almost all the rocks are black-and- white rocks instead of red rocks. This black-and-white diorite--we refer to it as the Ingonish River diorite--Ingonish River tonalite is its technical name. But it's found all the way down the east Highlands, almost as far as Bartachois River, in patches here and there down through the interior of the eastern Highlands. And the minerals that make this one up are amphi- bole and plagioclase feldspar--one of the same feldspars we see in the granite. The interesting thing about the Ingonish River tonalite is that we know its age. It was intruded into the crust of the earth 555 million years ago. And we know that it was brought up to the surface, or close to the surface, by 553 million years ago. It took 2 million years to come from some 25 kilometres down in the crust to less than 5 kilometres down in the crust. Obviously ' LIIWIITEia ELECTRICAL CONTRACTORS "Serving Cape Breton Over 35 Years" SPECIALIZING IN: • INDUSTRIAL - COMMERCIAL • INSTITUTIONAL • RESIDENTIAL r* WIRING CONTRACTORS • MAINTENANCE SERVIC • ELECTRIC HEATING SYSTEMS • FREE ESTIMATES 562-1132 FAX 526-1699 IfOilixcAtd. ??Computerized Wheel Balancing • Complete Road Service 539-5670 265 PRINCE ST. • SYDNEY g'Goodrieh Brunswick-

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