and reached Toronto on August 14. As on former occasions, my acknowledgments are due to many mining men and others interested in the development of the region for valuable assistance and for ready hospitality. The maps and reports of the Geological Survey of Canada were of course of the utmost value to us in carrying on our work. The old map of the Huronian region, prepared to accompany Logan's geology of Canada in 1863, is still the only geological map available for the study of the region just east and just north of the St. Mary's river; and was found to be very accurate as far as we covered the ground, though on too small a scale to permit of very minute mapping.

Feature of Simcoe County.

The Blue Mountains.

Desiring to examine the Blue Mountains and the old beaches on their flanks, Prof. Willmott and I left Toronto for A Topographical Collingwood a day earlier than was necessary to catch our steamer, and drove out to the nearest part of the long escarpment which stretches across the southwestern peninsula of Ontario and is known everywhere from Hamilton to Georgian bay as "the Mountain." It is really of course the edge of a tableland capped by the resistant Niagara limestones, the softer shales to the east having been more rapidly denuded by the action of frost and water, leaving the limestone-covered portion to rise as more or less prominent cliffs. Between Collingwood and the foot of the Blue mountains the land is almost a plain, sometimes boulder covered, with a series of gentle steps, probably representing old shore lines, up to 207 feet (aneroid); above which there is a steep ascent over grassy or wooded slopes, mainly of reddish and greenish Medina shale. There appear to be beach lines also at 288 and at 468 feet above the bay as shown by aneroid, and probably also at 940 feet.

The top of the escarpment is of thickly bedded limestone of a creamy color, forming perpendicular and often unscaleable walls, with a talus of rough, frost-quarried blocks at the base. This cliff is divided into pillars and bastion-like projections by profound fissures, many of which still retained the

winter's snow on the hot day of early June when we visited the spot.

The rock is burned for lime, and, if in demand, would make a handsome building stone, which could be furnished in blocks of almost any dimensions required.

A few hours stay in Owen Sound was utilized in examining the drift terraces in the rear of the town. Clays making red brick and white pottery occur here.

St. Mary's River and the North Channel.

Huronian

Country and

On June 10th we reached Sault Ste. Marie, our starting point for a study of the original The original Huronian as described by Sir William Logan, and his assistant, its Minerals. Alexander Murray, whose work still gives the most complete account of these interesting rocks and is referred to in every text book of geology. A good summary of their results is given in the 1863 report,1 while Murray's more extended earlier reports are now hard to get. 2

On June 11th we set out by canoe down the St. Mary's river, halting for the night at Garden River, where interesting exposures of the original Huronian rocks are to be seen. The channel we followed is now almost deserted by steamboat traffic since the opening of the shorter and straighter cut on the American side. Only a few local craft now ply here, and the villages and landings often have rather a deserted look.

Garden River Marble Quarry.

The

The village of Garden River was once an important lumber centre, but has fallen away since the mills were burned some time age There is a reserve at the mouth of the river with an Indian village and a mission under the charge of the English Church. village is on a very pretty sandy point, but two or three miles inland rocky hills, almost high enough to be called mountains, rise with steep flanks and more or less rounded, woody summits. Some years ago a marble quarry was opened on a band of Huronian limestone not far from the village, a switch being carried north from the railway to give access to 1 Geology of Canada, 1863, pp. 55-63.

2 Geol. Sur. Can., 1857, p. 18, etc., and 1858.

it. The stone displays variously banded surfaces of pale gray, and would probably be handsome when polished. The quarry had been opened up to a considerable extent, and a chanelling machine put at work, but apparently without being satisfactory, as it has been abandoned and the rails removed from the spur of track. Further mention will be made of this limestone in the portion of the report dealing with the Huronian question.

The railway has opened a gravel pit in some old beach deposits east of the quarry, showing a face of about 20 feet. The materials obtained are used in filling a long trestle at the mouth of Echo river a few miles to the east. Much higher terraces of drift materials are found up the valley of Garden river, but these will be discussed under the head of pleistocene geology.

Victoria and Cascade Mines.

An excursion was made under the guidance of George Kabaoosa to the Victoria mine north of the Indian reserve, passing wide forest-covered terraces between rocky walls as we ascended the river valley. We were struck by the rich forest with its splendid maples along the way, the only unpleasant feature being the number of tent-caterpillars which attacked the leaves and dropped upon the passers beneath. The road was fairly good up to lake Ann, being used to this point by lumbermen. The damming and raising of the lake here cuts it off, and the last two or three of the nine miles to the mine are in very bad repair. Beyond lake Ann we found a few outcrops of Laurentianlooking gniess with dikes of granite rising through the drift, but at the Victoria lake near the mine rock looking like Huronian shows itself again as greenstone and chloritic and other schists broken by some small granite dikes and apparently inclosed in granite or gneiss. The two lakes are small, really only ponds, and the stream connecting them and flowing to Garden river is unimportant.

At Victoria mine there are numerous buildings, a boarding house, shaft house, mill, assay office, dwellings, stable, etc., with a tramway to the dump. The mill is of respectable size, but no machinery is to

Victoria Mine.

be seen except tanks, jigs, etc., for concentrating the ore, apparently little used. The large dump consists chiefly of chlorite schist with some quartz. There are at the mill a number of barrels of galena in small lumps and some powdered ore of the same kind. Associated with the galena one finds some dark zincblende and copper and iron pyrites as well as quartz. This mine was visited in 1876 by Dr. Bell, who describes two veins as being worked at the time, one of solid galena only three inches across at the surface but widening to nineteen at the bottom of a shaft fifteen feet deep. A sample of galena taken from the ore pile yielded 168 oz. of silver per ton of 2,000 lb. when assayed by Dr. Harrington. Two other samples however taken by Dr. Bell himself from the veins assayed only 12 and 2 oz. per ton. 3 An assay in the laboratory of the School of Science, Toronto, gave 3 oz, 16 dwt. per ton.

Cascade

Three-fourths of a mile farther up stream, along a good road paved with tailings, is the Cascade mine, with similar ore Mine. with the addition of calcite. The rock dump is large, and consists mostly of soft green chloritic schist with dike material of red granite and some greenstone breccia. The ore in both mines seems to occur in irregular veins in large dikes or masses of sheared and weathered diabase. The Cascade mine is provided with a mill, shafthouse, engine house for a compressor and dwelling houses. A dam provides water which falls at the "cascade" about 50 feet, though the stream is of small volume. An assay of the galena yielded 9 oz. 16 dwt. of silver per ton.

Though there are no settlers in the valley, perhaps because the lower end of it is included in the Indian reserve, there is a considerable area of very fair land to be seen on the road to these mines.

its greater power of resistance to erosion. Along this part of the shores the poplars and to a less extent other trees were stripped of leaves by a plague of tent caterpillars. Even ferns and alders were somewhat attacked, and one could hardly step on the rocks without crushing the creatures. Some of the woods looked as bear as if swept by fire.

Echo River and Echo Lake.

Echo river opens into wide shallow flats with marshy borders and Great Lake George is very shallow itself, the steamboat channel requiring to be dredged almost the whole length of the lake. Entering the river one sees white hills of Huronian quartzite on the east shore, with cultivated farms in the valleys. The river winds towards the northeast for three or four miles through alluvial plains until beautiful Echo lake with its mountainous shores opens out. Just where the lake enters the river there is considerable clearing at the foot of a mountain, and a farm house with a garden full of bloom, an unexpected sight in this somewhat wild region. The shores of Echo lake present excellent exposures of the Huronian, as noted by Murray in 1857. The limestone band seen at Garden River shows as two promontories on the lake, and has the same character as at the former point.

A good road leads a mile northwest to the buildings of the Austin copper mine,

erate. This outcrop of red jasper conglomerate is not noted on Murray's geological map of the Huronian region, but was found by Prof. Willmott ten years ago. Iron lake

lies two or three miles northwest of Trout lake, is about a third of a mile long and 575 feet (aneroid) above lake Huron. At its outlet a creek flows swiftly down through a rock wall ravine to join Trout creek. Fine trout are said to inhabit all these waters. We saw no trace of iron on the lake, but found another outcrop of jasper conglomerate, the most striking of the Huronian rocks. This region was visited in 1876 by Messrs. Lount and Frank Adams, then Dr. Bell's assistants, but they took a course different from ours and saw no jasper conglomerate, only slaty rocks, quartz, etc.4

Bruce

Mines to Rock Lake.

Bruce Mines Region.

Leaving Echo lake we made a hard day's pull against headwinds down Great Lake George and the North Channel to Bruce Mines. Along the lake there are very few outcrops of rocks, but many along the shores of the channel-various rocks of the Huronian on the north side and of Cambrian and Lower Silurian on the south. On June 18 we drove out to the Rock Lake copper mine and the Ophir gold mine, passing Ottertail and Rock lakes, by a road showing great variety of geological interest. As far as Ottertail it runs over stiff gray clay, evidently a lake silt, with exposures of jasper conglomerate and other Huronian rocks along the way. The farm land seems strong, if rather heavy, to this point. Beyond the country grows more mountainous and the valleys and plains more sandy as the road works upward on a series of lofty beach terraces, the highest 470 feet (aneroid) above lake Huron or more than 1,040 feet above the sea.