WEALTH IN ROCK AND SAND
The history of gold and silver has always been romantic and exciting,
and Canada has furnished her full share of adventure and fortune,
riches won in a day and lost in a night. All known minerals are found
scattered here and there over the thousands of miles of north land.
Besides the precious metals, the most important are coal, iron, nickel,
and asbestos, and the deposits of the last two are much the most
important in the world. Gold was first found by the Indians, who made
ornaments of it; they found it in the sands of the rivers, and from
there prospectors followed it to where it was hidden in ore in the
mountains. The most famous deposits are in the Yukon, and no mining
camp had a more exciting history than this, where working men staked
claims that brought them a fortune and lost it in cards and dice
overnight. But the Government saw that rights were respected, and soon
banks were opened to keep the "dust," and the miner everywhere admits
that he gets a "square deal" in Canada. At Cobalt it is said that the
silver deposits were first found when a horse, pawing the rock with his
iron shoe, uncovered the "cobalt bloom," the colour that there is the
sign of silver. Another story is that a man picked up a stone to throw
at a squirrel and found it so heavy that he examined it, to find it
solid silver. If you went there you would be shown the famous "silver
sidewalk" (pavement), 18 inches wide, and running for several hundred
yards, of solid silver. It sounds like a tale from the "Arabian
Nights."
[Illustration: MAIN STREET, WINNIPEG. PAGE 50.]
Every night in the year for the last seventeen years, halfway up the
side of a lofty mountain overhanging a beautiful lake in Western
Canada, and opposite to one of the most progressive towns of the
interior of the Dominion, a solitary light might be seen burning. The
stranger naturally wonders what the light can mean in such a spot. The
mountain-side consists entirely of bare rock, with a few trees growing
out of the crevices. There is not a blade of grass, not a sign of any
single thing that could be of the slightest use to any human being.
What does that light mean, then, up on the steep and lonely
mountain-side? It does not move. It is always stationary, always
visible, in exactly the same place, and always burning in exactly the
same way. What does it mean?
If you address your inquiry to one of the older residents in the town
opposite, he will tell you: "Oh, that's Coal-Oil Johnnie's light."
"But who is Coal-Oil Johnnie?" you at once ask again.
"Coal-Oil Johnnie's a half-crazy miner, who lives up there and works a
mine."
"What sort of a mine?"
"A gold-mine."
"But is it really a gold-mine? And is he working up there all by
himself?"
"Sure," replies your informant, in the word that is sterling Canadian
for "Yes, certainly."
"And does he never come down? Does he always live by himself?"
Then you will be told all that is known about Coal-Oil Johnnie--namely,
that he is slightly affected in his mind, that for seventeen years he
has with unwavering perseverance worked away at a gold-bearing vein,
worked in solitude, doggedly, perseveringly, drilling, cutting, and
blasting a tunnel to wealth and fortune, which he implicitly believes
is locked fast in the granite heart of the mountain.
Then will come your next question: "But why do you call him _Coal-Oil_
Johnnie?"
"Oh, that's because, when he wants money to buy himself bread or more
dynamite for blasting, he comes down into the town, and peddles round
coal-oil to people's houses."
"Coal-oil! That's what they call petroleum in England, isn't it?"
"Sure."
Now, Coal-Oil Johnnie has not yet found his fortune, but who knows how
soon he may do so? Scores of other men have worked away with the same
faith and the same hope, and have reaped the rewards they have toiled
for in a much shorter time than Coal-Oil Johnnie has devoted to the one
great object of _his_ life. And yet others have laboured longer, and
are still living on the faith, hope, and perseverance that is in them.
An ordinary Italian labourer, who came out to Canada and found
employment in a gold-mine, worked on there until the mine was given up
as being exhausted. But Pietro Lavoro was of a different opinion.
After a while he went to the owners and asked them to grant him a lease
of the mine. They agreed. Shouldering his pick, therefore, and
lashing his tent and axe, his rock-drills, his miner's hammer, and some
sticks of dynamite, as well as a bag of flour and a case or two of
tinned meat, upon a small hand-sleigh--the whole of his fortune, in
fact--Pietro set off to trudge up the mountain-side, and for several
hours toiled along the steep trail leading to the Auro Rosso mine. At
the end of two years Pietro Lavoro was a wealthy man. He had a big
mining camp up at the Auro Rosso, and over forty men were employed in
getting out the ore. At the bank down in the town below there was a
sum of $50,000 standing to his credit, and packed in bags, close to the
entrance to the gallery that pierced the mountain, was sufficient ore
to yield him another $50,000. Pietro is only waiting for the snow to
come to "raw-hide" the ore down to the lake, that he may get it
transported to the smelter, where the gold will be separated for him
from the stone.
The ore from which the gold is extracted is packed into bags each about
a foot long, and weighing two or three hundredweight. The way these
heavy bags are taken down the steep mountain-side, where it is utterly
impossible for a vehicle on wheels to move, is to pack them into a
bullock's raw hide spread out on the ground. The corners are then
gathered up and tied together. After that the hide, harnessed to
horses, is dragged down over the frozen snow. In that way a horse is
able to take down a much larger quantity of ore than it could possibly
carry on its back, and with much greater safety to itself. This is
called "raw-hiding."
An even greater degree of faith and hope and perseverance was shown by
the man who laboured for nine years at the opening up and development
of another mine, working, not with his own hands, but in directing the
systematic construction of galleries, the erection of stamp-mills, and
the building of all the other appurtenances of a
scientifically-equipped and up-to-date mine. This man risked very much
more than the other--than Pietro Lavoro--namely, a large amount of
capital. But at the end of nine years he, too, reaped his reward, for
he sold his mine as a going concern to a party of American capitalists
for a goodly sum.
All the three mines thus far spoken of are mines cut into the solid
rock, and the hard stone has to be crushed in powerful stamping-mills
and roasted in smelters before the precious metal can be extracted.
There are mines of this description in both the east and the west of
Canada. But gold is also obtained from a different source--namely,
from the sands of rivers, out of which it is got by a process of
washing the sand, or "dirt" as the miners call it. In the course of
the washing, the gold, which is heavier than the sand, sinks to the
bottom of the wooden trough, or rocker, or other receptacle, in which
the gold-bearing sands are sluiced.
Two rivers of Western Canada have been especially famous for yielding
gold in this way. One is the Fraser and the other is the Yukon. The
discovery of gold in the sands of the former led to a wild miners' rush
in 1858, and that was followed, three years later, by an equally mad
rush into the neighbouring district of Caribou, in British Columbia;
but in both cases the fever abated in the course of a year or two,
after the gold-bearing sands had all been worked over. The rush to the
Yukon was, perhaps, even greater than either of these, notwithstanding
that the hardships which had to be encountered were immeasurably
greater. The gold-fields of the Yukon, known as Klondyke, are situated
near the Arctic Circle, many hundreds of miles from the settled abodes
of civilization, and in a part of the world where the winter cold is of
appalling severity. Except for a limited amount of garden produce,
food, and indeed every kind of supplies, have to be transported many
hundreds of miles.
Gold is not, however, the only mineral of value that is obtained from
the bowels of the earth in Canada. Very many of the other metals which
are prized by man are also extracted, such as silver, lead, zinc,
copper, coal, and iron. The Cobalt silver-mines in Northern Ontario
and those of the Slocan district of British Columbia are equally
famous. Coal is yielded at Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island, at Fernie,
Michel, and other places in the Crow's Nest Pass of the Rocky
Mountains, and in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
At the fairs and annual festivals, which are a prominent institution of
both American and Canadian towns and cities of the West, a good deal of
interest centres round the competition known as rock-drilling. This is
carried on by sets of two men, both expert miners. The task the two
men set themselves is to drive their rock-drills as far as ever they
can into a solid piece of rock in the course of fifteen minutes. One
man holds the rock-drill, whilst the other smites it with a big miner's
hammer. At the end of each minute the two men change places, so that
the man who held the drill the first minute wields the hammer in the
second, and his mate, who wielded the hammer during the first minute,
gets a rest during the second, whilst he is in his turn holding the
drill. And terribly hard work it is, for the hammerman smites with all
his might, and his blows fall like lightning. At the end of the
contest both men are generally dripping with perspiration. And no
wonder! when in the space of fifteen minutes two men such as these will
drive their drills, as they really do, no less than 1 yard deep into a
solid block of granite, or at the rate of over 2 inches in each minute.
A marvellous exhibition, not merely of muscular strength, but also of
skill and quickness! And truly it is a wonderful sight to see with
what rapidity the men change places again and again, without appearing
to miss a single stroke of the ponderous hammer.