| Transcript |
- 52 VICTORIA ILLUSTRATED.
has been before said, be able to turn out 150,000 feet daily when it resumes operations.
The following table will give an idea of the export of lumber from the Province of British Columbia for the last ten years :
1881 $172,647
1882 362,875
1883 407,624
1884 458,365
1885 262,071
1886 $194,488
1887 235,913
1888 441,957
1889 449,026
STRENGTH OF BRITISH COLUMBIA TIMBER,.
Shewing the weights, specific gravities, deflections, breaking and crushing loads of some of the British Columbia Woods. The pieces
tested for transverse strength were one inch square, with a span of one foot, supported at both ends and loaded at the centre. The pieces
tested for crushing were rectangular, and twice as long as they were thick. All the pieces were fair average specimens of timber, partly
seasoned, but free from knots and flaws. The results obtained from exceptionally good or bad specimens are not included in this table.
[table data excluded; image only available]
THE MINES.
Although the Hudson Bay Company established their chief trading post for the North Pacific coast at Victoria in 1842, it is not due to
this fact that British Columbia was brought prominently before the world. The Company of Adventurers confined their attention to trading
with the Indians for furs, although they made an unsuccessful attempt to develop the coal mines at Fort Rupert. It will be impossible here
to exhaustively discuss the mining history and prospects of British Columbia, but a few general remarks will suffice to outline the past,
and show that the future of mining is bright, and that it must become our chief industry.
The discovery of gold on the Fraser river bars in 1858 caused a rush of miners from California to the new field, the route chiefly being
to Victoria, and thence by means of steamer, sailing vessel, row boat or canoe, to the Fraser. Some of these adventurous spirits penetrated
the interior, and in 186o gold was found in Cariboo. The rush to Williams, Lightning, and adjacent creeks, for several years, at times
caused Victoria's population to swell to twenty or thirty thousand people, housed in any kind of dwelling available. Victoria has always
been the headquarters for supplies, and the source of supply for the province, then established, has never changed. After the discovery of
the Cariboo gold fields, other rich finds were made, but none so important, and the claim that the province owes its existence to the gold
wealth of Cariboo is, in the main, correct. Cariboo, Lillooet, Kootenay, Yale, Cassiar, Omineca, and the Peace River, have all been worked
for their alluvial gold, and while the outputhas decreased year by year, there are many among the best informed who claim that persistent
and intelligent prospecting would bring to light as rich districts as those which have furnished the fifty millions or so of dollars now
given as the official return of the gold product during the prosecution of gold-mining in British Columbia. The precious metal deposits are
not confined to any particular belt, but are found in the islands of the coast, and in the several ranges of mountains to the eastern slope
of the Rockies, the sands of the Peace and Saskatchewan rivers carrying fine gold far east of the mountains. The deposits, however, follow
the same lines as those to the south of the boundary line, being closer together as the ranges of mountains running north and south on the
American continent approach Alaska.
Although a quartz excitement visited Cariboo as the placer claims gave out, there was no real progress in this branch of mining until
within recent years. The Cariboo road is probably one of the finest highways in the world, but the distance between source of supply and
the mine was so great, and the cost of transportation so severe, that it was impossible to successfully or profitably work quartz deposits.
During the past ten years, however, prospecting for gold and silver quartz has been diligently prosecuted in the various districts of the
province, and many valuable deposits have been located. It was not until after the advent of the Canadian Pacific Railway to the north, and
the Northern Railway to the south, that anything really important was accomplished in quartz mining. These two railways made access into
the districts of Kootenay and Yale comparatively easy and cheap,
|
|---|
