Chapter X: 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."

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.