It is possible that one stream has cut through the drainage of another. Sometimes this has impoverished the first and enriched the second, while in other cases the reverse has obtained. Upheavals have formed faults[1] and fractured the strata, and the gold may have been deposited by solution in these fractures. Often the soil will have been washed away from near the top of the mountain, so that layers of stratified rock are seen to be duplicated on each side while they are covered at the summit. The prospector keeps his eye open as he goes along and notes carefully the character of the fragments of rock he finds in the streams. Quartz, diorite, diabase, and porphyry pebbles are grounds for expecting a profitable result, but of course there is no certainty of such a happy issue. As soon as the district begins to be fairly well known certain discoveries are made that invariably render prospecting easier. Local peculiarities are noted; certain characters are found to be common to the ore-bearing bodies or deposits; the lines of deposits become known, and a good deal of light is then shed upon a very difficult problem. As a rule, when the fragments of quartz, pyrite, chalcopyrite, or galena are rough, they have not traveled far, and the lode from which they have been derived should be close at hand. Water and attrition soon round these minerals on their sharp edges, and thus show that they have come from some little distance. [1] Dislocation of the strata. In some countries, especially where vegetation is scanty, the outcrop of a body of mineral may be traced by a difference in the vegetation. In South Africa a chain of pools usually follows the course of a line fault, which in its turn marks where an intrusive lode carrying mineral separates two different formations. As a rule, any heavy mineral is worth investigating. Even in remote regions silver, mercury, tin, nickel, platinum, copper, and several other metals are worth paying attention to. If they are too far away from the railroad or the steamboat to-day they may not be so next year, for civilization advances with giant stride in these days and never faster than when transportation companies are reaching forth to some newly discovered mineral field. One of the greatest drawbacks to prospecting in the North is the dense growths of moss and forest that cover the ground. In most of the Western states, in South Africa, and in Australia this drawback does not exist and prospecting was by that much the easier. However, as a compensation, there is abundant water in Alaska and the Northwest, while it was and is almost entirely absent in several other regions that possess immense bodies of ore which are not available for this very reason.