This is the spirit of the Dominion. But all conflicts must have an end, and when the end of this struggle comes there is a marvellous future awaiting the Dominion. The future of a nation as well as that of an individual is not merely, nor even mostly, to be mechanically surveyed. It is not a definite geographical region with boundaries that can be located and crossed with a clear knowledge of the line of demarcation. The future is something that is created by men's thoughts. It is made, not found; it is constructed, not discovered. And thus, even while all internal industries are somewhat in the grasp of an enforced pause, yet new plans and projects for the future are in order. The mineral resources of Canada are incalculable. But that they will form one of the most remarkable factors in her future prosperity and importance is a practicable certainty.
It was somewhere as early as 1846 that the veins of silver were discovered in the region adjacent to Port Arthur on Lake Superior; and twenty years later that ore was actively producing silver which it continued to do until 1903. On a small island, near Thunder Cape (known as the Silver Islet), was the most famous and the richest of these mines, and the ore, interlined with veins of quartz and carbonates, was found in a wide area. It traversed a large belt of diabase, and only where the vein transversed the diabase was it richly infused with silver. Otherwise, it bore galena alone. As early as 1884 the mine had carried to a level of nearly two thousand feet, and it was estimated that not less than three million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of silver had been extracted from it.
When the Cobalt silver mines began to be worked, Canada took her place as the third silver-producing country in the world; and this distinction must be largely attributed to the richness and copious output of these particular veins.
Cobalt is about 330 miles north of Toronto, on the Ontario Government Railway, and four hours south of Cochrane. At Cobalt the mines are clustered all around and beneath the town, a lake in the centre having been drained to facilitate the search for ore. To the south-east these mines are distributed over a distance of four miles. While the Cobalt silver district proper is comprised within this area, other mines, and productive ones too, have been found in the farther outlying country. London is the chief silver market of the world. Much of the bullion shipped from Cobalt is sent directly there, and London is also the basing point of prices.
The vast mills of Cobalt, transforming the crude ore into bullion, and the hydraulic plant on the top of a hill, where one man manipulates power sufficient to wash down huge rocks and to uproot and send down large trees and stumps, open out to the uninitiate a new idea of the way in which man contrives to control Nature and force her to do his bidding.
At Cobalt the "silver sidewalk" is not only an actual and visible spectacle, a solid surface on the level ground of shining silver from one to three feet in extent, but it is an indication of untold possibilities. Still, up to this time, the richness of the veins has been found to be rather in their number than their depth. These deposits are found in association with the pre-Cambrian rocks which, according to the geologists, belong to the Huronian and the Keewatin formations, through which a later diabase has been intruded in the form of a sill. This is not held to be necessarily the source of the ore deposits, but rather the means of opening the way for their introduction from other sources. A large majority of the productive veins, some eighty per cent., in fact, occur solely in the Huronian formation. The remaining twenty per cent. is divided between the Keewatin and the later diabase. As has been said above, these deposits are not especially deep, most of them being found below the sill within a depth of two hundred feet. The ores from all the Cobalt region include white arsenic, cobalt oxide, and nickel oxide, as well as the fine silver, and not infrequently a semi-refined mixture of the cobalt and nickel oxides.
If silver were the magnet that first drew the attention of the miner, the prospector, or the capitalist to Cobalt, it is not the only encouragement to the settlement of all this beautiful region. A few miles out from Cobalt is the pretty suburb of New Liskeard on a sheet of the bluest water, sparkling in the sunshine and the transparent air; where numbers of artistically designed cottages have sprung up; where the business street reveals a thriving trade; where one or two newspapers are published; and where the seeker after the occult may find his palmist and his mental healer as well as his dentist and his physician. Electric cars connect this idyllic little village with Cobalt, and motor cars dart about in a way which suggests that this region is by no means outside of the cosmopolitan luxuries of life. The country is one of great scientific interest. The geologist may find new data; the botanist and ornithologist new fields for observation.
Cobalt is recognised as a permanent silver camp, and as one of the richest on the entire American continent. At first the stories told of silver paths, brilliant and shining in the sunshine, were regarded as part and parcel of the usual myths that spring up in mining camps. But the "silver sidewalks" were there. They were the most palpable of facts. A hundred miles to the north of the town of Cobalt, on Porcupine Creek, the prospectors found gold. Specimens of the alluring yellow ore may be seen in glass cases in the corridor of the King Edward Hotel, Toronto. In that city many of the miners may be met, for mining is now a scientific pursuit rather than merely an industry, and whether the miner takes his ease in cosmopolitan centres and gives his mines "absent treatment," after the convenient fashion of Christian Scientists, or whether he is less remote from his interests, does not seem to affect the results in a vital manner.
During the year 1915 thirteen mines in Northern Ontario produced gold, and many of these are now making alterations and additions to their plants which will enable them to largely increase their output.
The following table shows the steady advance of the Porcupine gold camp since its discovery in 1910:—