METALS.
Ores of 15 metals have been mined in Can ada—antimony, chromium, cobalt copper, gold, iron, manganese, mercury, molybdenum, nickel, palladium, platinum, silver, tungsten and zinc, and minerals containing a number of other metals have been found, though they have not yet been mined. Only eight of these metals are prominent economically, gold, silver, nickel, copper, lead, cobalt, zinc and iron, and attention will be directed mainly to them.
Gold.— The gold areas of Canada are wide spread but the production has been very fluctu ating the value in recent years varying from $907,601 (in 1892) to $27,908,153 (in 1900) and standing at $15,983,007 in 1915. In 1900 Canada was third in rank as a producer of gold, being surpassed by the United States and Australia only; but has dropped to the fifth place since then, yielding to South Africa and Russia. Three provinces and one territory are gold pro ducers at present. Nova Scotia has carried on quartz mining, on reefs* like those of the famous Bendigo region in Australia, for more than 50 years, but has seldom exceeded $500,000 per annum, the value falling to $137, 178 in 1915. Ontario also produces gold from quartz mines, but until recently only in small amounts. Since the opening up of the important Porcupine gold region in 1912 the output has rapidly increased, reaching $8,386,956 in 1915. The Porcupine district is now the most productive in the Dominion. Before the sudden rise of the Klondike, British Columbia was the greatest gold region of Canada, its history be ginning with the times of wild excitement in the sixties, when thousands of miners from California swarmed into the rich placers of the Fraser and Columbia rivers and washed out millions of dollars worth, reaching the climax of $3,913,563 in 1863. The easily available placers were gradually exhausted, the value falling in 1893 to $379,535, a little less than the output of Nova Scotia in the same year; but the production of lode gold, especially from the smelting ores of Rossland on the southern edge of the province, once more placed British Co lumbia in the first rank. In 1908 the yield was $9,529,880, of which $3,600,000 came from placer mines, mostly in the Cariboo and Atlin districts in the north, the rest from smelting ores and a few quartz mines in the south; but this has fallen off to $5,628,982.
The prairies furnished a small amount of placer gold from bars on the Saskatchewan and other rivers for a number of years, but it was not until the working of the Klondike placers in 1897 that gold mining assumed importance in the north. This region, in lat. 64°, 500 miles
below the headwaters of the great Yukon River, was unique as a placer mining country, reminding one of the famous placers of Cali fornia and Australia, but surpassing them in difficulty of access and of working conditions, as well as in richness. For its length Eldorado Creek, a tributary of Bonanza Creek, was the most productive ever mined, but its gravels are nearly worked out, and the yield of gold, though still great for so small a region as the Klondike, which is about 40 miles square, has fallen since 1900, when it was estimated at $22,275,000, to $4,755,721 in 1915. The gold bearing gravels were perpetually frozen and usually buried under several feet of frozen muck, so that the ground had to be thawed before it could be worked. At first this was done by building fires, but later steam delivered from steel pipes driven into the ground was employed, and it was found, also, that when stripped of moss the warm summer's sun thaws layer after layer, which may then be sluiced off in the ordinary way. All the rich placers have now been worked, but dredges and hy draulic plants are covering the ground again with good results. In 1915 these methods pro duced the amount mentioned above, but a gradual falling off may be expected in the future.
Silver.— For many years Ontario was the chief province for silver, the mine at Silver Islet near Thunder Bay on the north shore of Lake Superior being credited with a total out put of $3,250,000, while several other mines to the west of Thunder Bay were also worked. For a while British Columbia took the lead in the production of silver, beginning in 1892, and culminating in 1897 with an output of over $3,000,000. In 1897, Ontario produced only 5,000 ounces, worth about $3,000, but from that date onward there was a yearly increase in her out put, until in 1911 it was 30,540,754 ounces, valued at $16,279,443. British Columbia's production was only 1,887,147 ounces in the same year. Cobalt has been declining in its silver produc tion since 1911, the amount in 1915 being 23, 568,147 ounces, while British Columbia's pro-. duction rose to 3,628,727 ounces.