The Unexploited West / A Compilation of all of the authentic information available at the present time as to the Natural Resources of the Unexploited Regions of Northern Canada

by Ernest J. Chambers

Crude Forms of Lignite.

“The lignites are not fit for forging work. Sometimes even the trunks of the trees which form the beds of it have been transformed into clay; however, all this debris has evidently undergone the action of fire.

“Great Bear lake river, or Franklin river, presents alternations of granite, limestone, and coal-bearing sandstone.

“Traces of fire are visible in the mountain range at the mouth of the discharge of Great Bear lake. A little lower down, below the rock, the beaches of the Emir present unequivocal traces of other schistose holes which have been extinct for a long time, but which the writer of the letter found in combustion in 1869.

“The left bank of the Mackenzie, opposite Rocher Rouge, exudes ferruginous water, which stains all the water-borne shingle of the beach with oxide of iron. Three or four leagues below Fort Good Hope, iron pyrites is found on the beach, and the Peaux de Lièvre Indians formerly used it in striking fire.

“On the right bank opposite the site of the old Fort Good Hope, there are natural ramparts of limestone or schistose sandstone at the mouth of Thunder river. One finds there hematite, or oxide of iron; sulphate of iron and sulphate of magnesia; alum, which exudes from the fissures in the stone; and red ochre. It was here that the Peaux de Lièvre Indians discovered in ancient times the hematite, which on account of its colour, resembling the dung of the black bear, they called Sa-ts-anne, that is to say, bears’ excrement.

Exude Alum and Saltpetre.

“The second ramparts of the Mackenzie, called the Detroit or Narrows, are composed of lias and limestone, which exude alum and saltpetre. Lower down are schistose sandstones of which the Esquimaux make the heads of their arrows.

“On the sea coast and the right bank the Esquimaux have told me that there are caves containing fossilized bones of large antediluvian animals, particularly of the mastodon, of which they have shown me pieces of tusks of the finest ivory which they call killagvark, and which they know how to distinguish from the ivory of the walrus, or turark. They have also told me that there are, upon the sea shore to the eastward, Tertiary deposits in combustion, similar to those at Fort Norman.”

Writing in his report of the information he had obtained as to the deposits of economic minerals in Mackenzie valley, William Ogilvie, D.L.S., wrote as follows:—“On the Mackenzie, the first coal I heard of was a seam of which Mr. McDougall at Chipewyan told me, and which is situated in the base of the mountain just above Rapid Sans Sault, on the east side of the river. He could not give me any details concerning its extent, more than that he believed it to be about four or five feet thick, and that it was in the limestone rock of the mountain. If this is true, it indicates that this coal is older than the lignite coal of the country, and probably much harder and better. I did not know of its existence until I got to Chipewyan, or I would have tried to have had a specimen sent out after me.