Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 04.djvu/137

* CANADA. 109 CANADA. more delicate insects are scarce, except in the most southerly part. The gatherinfr of furs, which played so striking a part iu the colonization and earlier prosperity of the country, has been greatly diminished of late, owing to the extinction of the principal fur-bearing animals over a large part of their former range. The beaver, in particular, has disappeared from all but the remotest and wildest regions. In 1900 the exports of furs amounted to $1,800,000, besides which there was a valuable quota of skins other than furs. The game animals are hunted by large numbers of sportsmen, and. in spite of protective laws, the supply of game is diminishing. Geology. While the geological structure of Canada exhibits a variety of detail that is com- mensurate with the vast area and diversified surface of the country, in a broad aspect it is simple and can be easily explained. The most ancient rocks found in Canada, and in North .America as well, are the granites, gneisses, and schists which underlie a great V-shaped area, hav- ing Hudson Bay in the centre, and extending from the Great Lakes northeast to the Labrador coast, and northwest to the shores of the Arctic Sea, This area was once diversiiied by mountains, which are represented at the present time, after an immeasurably long period of erosion, by the Laurentian plateau. The age of the granites and banded rocks is Archtean. On the borders of this primitive land area stratified beds have been deposited during all the succeeding geological periods. The Cambrian and Silurian systems are represented by great thicknesses of strata that outcrop in Xova Scotia, Xew Brunswick, New- foundland, along the Saint Lawrence Valley, and on the shores of Lake Ontario. They also appear farther west in Manitoba, extending thence in a northwesterly direction toward the Arctic re- gions, and into British Columbia. The Devonian System is less extensively deeloped in the east- ern provinces, but it constitutes a wide belt in the prairie regions which border the Cambrian and Silurian strata. Between this Devonian belt and the Eastern Rocky Jlountains the surface is formed by Cretaceous and Tertiary beds that are a part of the great series reaching northward from Texas across the L^nited States. The Rocky Jlountains of Canada are similar in struc- ture to the mountains of Colorado, Wyoming, and ilontana, and have been built up by upheaval and folding of sediments, and, to a lesser extent, by volcanic action. The strata of which they are composed range in age from Paleozoic to Ter- tiary, while in the Selkirks even the Archsean may be present. The Carboniferous System is not especially important in respect to area, but it contains the valuable coal deposits of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and is known to occur also in the central prairie region, in British Co- lumbia, and along the Arctic coast. The coal beds of Vancouver Island and those foimd in the Rocky ^Mountains are of Cretaceous and Ter- tiary age. In recent geological times nearly the entire area of Canada was covered by an ice sheet, the Laurentian glacier, that terminated in the northern United States. The surface features were profoundly modified by the erosive action of this vast mass of moving ice, as is evidenced by the numerous great lakes, and by the ex- tensive deposits of sands, gravels, and clays that rest upon the older geological formations. See also ecology, under British Columbia; On- tario; etc, Mi.xERAL Resources and Mixing. Canada was long supposed to possess great mineral wealth, but only in recent years has the great vari- ety, extent, and richness of its mineral resources been ascertained. The geological provinces which have been so productive of mineral wealth in the United States, viz. the Appalachians in the east, the Cordilleras in the west, and the Lake Superior region between the two. extend northward into Canada. A combination of ad- verse circumstances, however, has prevented the extensive development of the mining industry; among these are the sparse population, its d'is- l)ersion over a very wide area, the isolation of the mining lands, and the lack of means of transportation. In addition to this is the sever- ity of the climate, iloreover, the coal-supplv, so necessary in the smelting of metallic ores, while present in enormous deposits, is located at the two extremes of the coiuitry (Xova Scotia and British Columbia), leaving the middle region at a great disadvantage. That these disadvantages will not permanently check the developnient'^of the industry, however, has been clearlv demon- strated by its recent growth. During' the last decade of the last century the value (if the total mineral product increased from .$18,700,000 to $63,775,000, most markedly in the ease of gold. Gold has long been mined in moderate quanti- ties in Nova Scotia, where it is found in the quartzites and slates of the Cambrian rocks, but larger quantities were secured from the placer mines of British Columbia, in which work began about 1837, and whose output by 18.3 hail reached an animal value of over .$4",000,000. but subsequently declined until in 1800 it was less than .$1,000,000. The great revival of the in- dustry came in 1897, when the placer niines of the Klondike and other Yukon re- gions were opened, the output of the Yukon district alone reaching the phenomenal figure of $22,000,000 (estimated) in 1900. (See Yu- kon Goi,T)-FiELD.) Quartz and hydraulic mining has lately been undertaken in soutliern British Columbia (the Koutenay region) with a couse- quent decided increase in the output of that sec- tion. Gold exists at other points, notably on the north shore of Lake Superior, but mining operations there are still on a small scale. Another decided increase is that of conl, which ranks next to gold in value of output, which latter about doubled during the last decade, being $12,068,000 in 1900. Of this. Nova Sco- tia produced about three-fifths and British Co- lumbia the greater part of the remainder, the main production in the latter province being on Vancouver Island. Most of the coal of British Columbia and Nova Scotia is bituminous, of good quality, while the vast fields of the interior plain, extending from southwestern ilanitoba westward to the mountains contain rich depos- its of serviceable lignite, and anthracite is found on Queen Charlotte's Island and near Calgary, Alberta. Altogether the coal-fields cover 97.000 square miles, not including certain undeveloped areas in the far north. The copper product increased in value during the decade from less than one to more than three million dollars, most of it being mined in British Columbia and Ontario, and smaller quantities in