Abundance of Coal, Gypsum and Gas 13

and South Pine rivers, the Smoky, the Whitemud, and the Notikewin (Battle)
are well wooded; while farther east and north the Wabiskaw contains millions
of feet of untouched timber. At Fort Vermilion there are three sawmills, with
planing and shingle machines, and all building material required there is cut
and manufactured locally. Peace River is well supplied with mills, and others
are being installed throughout the district as required.

With the continued settlement and opening up of the district, the lumbering
industry will assume greater proportions. While the hard woods and more
valuable specimens of soft woods are not generally found, the wealth of the
forests is still very great. Spruce is extensively used for lumber. Other woods
yield logs for building, fencing materials, ties, mine timbers, and fuel. Much
pulpwood is available. Extensive forests of beautiful white poplar also exist.
Except on the open prairies, a sufficient supply of timber is found to meet all
the requirements of the settler for many years.

Mineral Deposits*

Prospecting for mineral deposits in the basin of Peace river has nowhere
been of an extensive character, and by far the greater portion of the basin has
hever been visited by the prospector. Both metallic and non-metallic deposits
are, however, known to occur in considerable quantities, the former in the
region west of the Rocky mountains, namely, in the basins of Finlay and Omineca
rivers, and the latter in the eastern slope of the Rockies and the region to the
east of them.

The great rush of placer miners into the Cariboo gold fields in 1860 led
to the discovery of gold on the Parsnip river in 1861, and in the following year
on the Finlay. Soon after this the famous Omineca fields were discovered,
which, in their history, have yielded about one million dollars’ worth of gold.
The easy rich diggings of this field were, however, exhausted in a few years
and the miners gradually pushed their way down stream, working bars on the
Peace and its tributaries wherever they found pay rich enough to stand the
high cost of mining. Bars were worked as far down as Hudson Hope and
even to the mouth of Battle river, but the gold was found to become finer as
distance from the mountains increased. Very fine gold has been carried as far
down stream as Fort Vermilion, but the difficulty of recovering this is too great
to make it worth while mining. Placer mining is still being carried on in the
upper waters of the Peace river, but the total production is comparatively
small, and until transportation is provided that will allow the large-scale opera-
tions of dredging or hydraulicking to be carried on, a larger yield is not to be
expected.

Gold quartz veins occur at mount Selwyn and on Omineca river, and large
veins of silver-bearing galena have been known for many years near Manson.
No actual lode mining has, however, yet been undertaken.

Seams of coal of excellent quality are exposed in Rocky Mountain canyon
above Hudson Hope. Most of them are thin but one 5-foot seam was found

*By CHARLES CAMSELL, B.Sc., Geological Survey of Canada.