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198 Value of the Deposit

This deposit has little or no value as an immediate source of iron ore. Considerable underground development as well as diamond drilling would require to be accomplished to determine its extent and value, but such an expenditure would not be warranted until such time as other larger deposits might have furnished the necessary supply of magnetite for the inception of an iron industry. In spite of its small positive value as an iron ore producer, the Sarita River deposit has one or two interesting points of potential value. (a) It is possible that the ten or twelve small surface exposures are outcrops of bodies of magnetite, which, although they may not extend to any great depth, may spread laterally in nearly flat tabular or lenticular shapes. (b) There are other exposures of magnetite, in places mixed with pyrite and pyrrho- tite, several hundred feet to the east, extending to where this east-west ridge meets Sarita river. Brewer (21) reports somewhere to the east, “an occurrence of magnetite on the east bank of a swampy creek that crosscuts the same ridge. . . . An open-cut 10 feet deep by 120 feet long has been made across a part of the ridge, exposing diorite on the south side, next magnetite 62 feet wide, then crystalline limestone 12 feet wide, then magnetite 45 feet wide, to limestone wall. In this deposit the magnetite is good grade.” This locality could not be found during the investigation in 1924. (c) The Sarita River, Copper Island, and Sechart Peninsula deposits lie at intervals of 4 and 9 miles along a straight line having the Cordilleran trend. It is interesting to speculate as to whether other deposits might occur along this same line, but it is more than probable that no single zone of mineralization extends for that distance of 13 miles across Barkley sound.

Bibliography See page 158 for further details

5. Kimball, J. P,, pp. 25-26. 6. Carmichael, H., pp. 215-217. 16. Lindeman, E., pp. 12-13. 17. Clapp, C. H., p. 190. 20. Lindeman, E., and Bolton, L. L., pp. 10-11. 21. Brewer, W. M., pp. 16-18. 22, Whittier, W. H. 29. Ann. Rept., 1900, p. 920. Ann. Rept., 1901, p. 1096. Ann. Rept., 1902, pp. 224-225.

| (47 b) Copper Island Deposit (See Figures 32, 33, and 34) LOCATION Copper island, also called Tzartoos or Tzartus island, is the largest of a chain of islands separating the middle and eastern channels of Barkley sound. It is about 5 miles long in a northeasterly direction, and 2 miles wide, and rises quite steeply along its southeast side to an elevation of nearly 1,000 feet in less than half a mile from the shore. The magnetite deposit is located along this southeastern slope, extending to the top of

the ridge, and seems to have its principal exposures on the Mountain claim. The remaining claims of the group, all of which are Crown-granted,