River Drivers on the Montreal River, Temiskaming, Northern Ontario.
Marketing the jubilant flag pole and Christmas tree is a comparatively unhackneyed commercial twist not overdone and if discontented dwellers in old Ontario, seigneurial Quebec or the world at large, like that prospect or court a change from brick and asphalt to the silent places, opportunity beckons to them from amidst the serried ranks of raw material swarming over the hilly, rock-ribbed areas of Temagami, the dales of Temiskaming and Porcupine’s budding principality of golden promise.
As the newcomer’s eyes view the sea of tapering masts—shorn of drapery in winter—and the springtimes’ green undergrowth crowning summits and slopes, which in that corner of the Canadian hinterland undoubtedly conceal unconjectured lodes of mineral wealth, his brain tabulates new and fascinating impressions respecting this vast heritage and pregnant land of the future.
With the theodolite adjusted for action beside the site of a gateway to the proposed Georgian Bay Ship Canal, and shaping a course North-starward from historic environs once traversed by intrepid Frenchmen, the Ontario Government’s Railway Commission began in 1902 the construction of a colonization line from the City of North Bay, (lying 226 miles above Toronto), to the region known as the “Clay Belt” of Northern Ontario. With the discovery of silver on the “LaRose” property in 1903, the output of which during the subsequent thirteen years amounted to $135,809,222 in silver value from the camp, together with $4,000,000 from arsenic, cobalt and nickel, the building of the Temiskaming & Northern Ontario Railway was promptly extended until it reached 253 miles into the interior, making easily accessible a restful, inspiring panorama of diversified lake and landscape. Here it is that Uncle Sam’s sweltering Southerners and their Northern cousins migrate with the birds in ever increasing numbers to fish the virgin streams, to sense exhaling aromatic fragrance and be soothed by the solitude and majesty of the wilderness which appeals more and more to each contemplative one who would elude the madding crowd as he jogs adown the irregular pathway of life.
If the waters of silent Lake Nipissing could speak as they flow along, what whisperings from wigwam, of tribal feuds and exploring missionary priests would they not bequeath to posterity. But now, into this region of log cabin, birch bark and bittern those great civilizers, the twin ribbons of steel, have intruded; sleeping cars mosaic tiled and ornate, traveling via the Grand Trunk Railway from Toronto, Canadian Pacific Railway from Montreal and “U.S.A.” at Buffalo, are delivered daily to the Temiskaming & Northern Ontario Railway and circumventing space, lay bare to their prying, adventurous occupants, many of the secrets of nature in the north.
Andrew C. Kellogg,
A “Great Western” Graduate. Dean of G.T.R. Dining Car Conductors. Favorably known to patrons of the “Cobalt Special.”
As you bowl along past thicket, lake and narrow ledge to the regular accompaniment of that peculiar circus wagon “cluck, cluck”, emitted in winter by the twelve wheelers, you unconsciously wonder if it were mink, otter, lynx or fox whose softly falling pads made the trail which bisects the otherwise unruffled white mantle covering the frozen surface yonder. Meanwhile, the telltale tracks of the early morning prowlers vanish abruptly where the waters frozen boundary gives way to battalions of balsam, spruce and jack pine silently guarding the ascent to rising ground. The view begets reflection: when casually discussing the autumn hunt with a deer slayer who annually roams that region, nimrod complacently informed me that he had left the train at mileage “22” from North Bay, and before the locomotive whistled on a nearby hill his first buck was bagged. At this juncture an Indian guide from out the forest setting surrounding Lady Evelyn Lake came aboard at Temagami’s commodious, artistically conceived depot of split hardheads, and grinning broadly, substantiated the boaster’s declaration with such terseness and force that a group of globe trotting mine prospectors and sportsmen grew interested. Rifles, fish, fur and game laws started every mother’s son of them talking, and the jolly wiseacres continued their conversazione crossing Net Lake, past Rib Lake and its woodie approaches, and on to where Jack Frost had transferred Bay Lake, Wind Lake, Moose Lake and Red Pine Lakes, into cubes of crystal transparence. They did not desist until permitted a glimpse through car window of the Montreal River’s splashing, rapids tossed waters at Latchford and the developing timber possibilities at this ford, which are often duplicated along the 360 miles of this stream’s course.
These gentlemen were a cosmopolitan assemblage recruited from several and diverse regions, but all were heading towards Lake Temagami, Cobalt, Lorrain and Porcupine City’s newer, veiled enticements. Gnarled and seasoned, a veteran campaigner on “many a foreign strand” sat silently observant beside a sturdy novice, self-possessed and hopeful, encased in flannel shirt, regulation shooting boots laced high and a cow boy hat, who had yet to know hunger and the thrill of a “strike”. That composite character from the cities, merchant-miner-speculator evolved from the silver excitement, was there with his pigeon blood cravat pin and nonchalant demeanor, exchanging deductions with a facing stranger. Some one drew cork and with a mild libation all round the smoker, tongue cords loosed and a Kentuckian garbed in Mackinaw cloth knee breeches, heavy black stockings and Jaeger cap, narrated pleasantly tales of the diggings in Australia, California, Cripple Creek. A man who had been in Johannesburg talked knowingly of John Hays Hammond and the conductor tarried a moment on his rounds. Now and then, from out the babel you pieced together, “It sold this morning for—”, “Commercial arsenic”, “Rock drills”, “For stealing whiskey I smashed him on the—”, “Three and one half a share, five dollars par”, and much more in the vernacular. They were encumbered with the latest, likewise the most ancient caper in portmanteaux: they carried fire arms, hatchets, and snow shoes, coats of fewer colors than Joseph’s, but of patterns innumerable, and pack sacks stuffed like the bundles Tony shoulders when hurrying to the base of grim Vesuvius. Withal, they were a merry and optimistic company off to re-discover Champlain’s own territory, to learn that cobalt is a pinkish chemical by-product found beside silver, that single carload shipments of silver concentrates mined here have netted $142,231.00, that the camp’s dividends from silver and gold for 14 years realized $81,320,625, that rolling stock of railways all over America help to brighten “T. & N.O.” rails, that the town of Cobalt is outlandishly picturesque and unique with cartwheel, Bostonlike thoroughfares where Madame promenades in the velvet so recently au fait on Pall Mall and Broadway, while an Indian girl in moccasins stares across the divide through the window of the Golden Moon in the hope of discerning her lethargic beau. Vein sampling engineers, grubstakers, rock-worms, mine captains, prospectors and agents in coats of “astrachan goose”, fur lined or skin covered shooting jackets and everything else but tarpaulins, strut about and add to their kit, each man jack of them probably thinking he has “a nose for ore” and inside information. The oriental ear pendant also abounds, gracing the lobes of sundry vivacious French lassies at the cinematograph: dog trains await, Jacques the habitant, in capot, sash and pipe in mouth “Bon jeurs” along the even tenor of his way, while Poles, Finns and Cockney ’arry do not deliberately jostle you off the lumpy little board walk to the nearby excavation. Stalwart, brass buttoned Ontario and Dominion police are everywhere. Cobalt’s roots spread far below the surface. Underground detonations indicate that compressed air drills day and night slowly blast a mammoth sewerway for this hustling town. Not every one knows that beneath the “T. & N.O.R.” highway and handsome modern station building the Right of Way Mining Company tunnels for ore. A few hundred yards beyond and under the bottom of frozen Cobalt Lake, over which the dutiful citizen crosses on Sabbath and holyday to Father Forget’s cleanly, white painted church, the Cobalt Lake Mining Company is extending drives, crosscuts and leads seeking material that produces mineral which pleases magnates and sets the stock market operators by the ears. $1,085,000 was paid to the Government for this right. Thus does the south lag behind the north.