A CURIOUS CANADIAN IRON MINE. 385 



A CURIOUS CANADIAN IRON MINE. 



By J. T. DONALD, M. A. 



THE province of Quebec in the Dominion of Canada is some- 

 times known as Frencli Canada, because of the rights and 

 privileges granted the inhabitants of French origin when Canada 

 passed into the possession of the English crown, and because the 

 majority of the inhabitants are of French ancestry and speak the 

 French language. Time has flown, but in many parts of Quebec 

 language and customs have remained stationary. To-day the stu- 

 dent of language or of folklore or of ballads finds large portions 

 of French Canada what old France was a century or more ago ; 

 and just as the student of the French language can hear spoken 

 to-day the French tongue as it was spoken a century ago in old 

 France, so the traveler who visits the historic district of Three 

 Rivers may turn back the hand of time, as it were, and see to-day 

 the mining of iron ore, and until recently the smelting also, car- 

 ried on exactly as in the Old World decades ago. 



At Three Rivers, not far from midway between the cities of 

 Montreal and Quebec, the St. Maurice flows from the north into the 

 St. Lawrence. The lower portion of the valley of the St. Maurice is 

 historic ground in the annals of iron-smelting on this continent. 

 The immense deposits of bog ore of this district were objects of 

 attention during the French regime, and as far back as 1668 official 

 examinations of these deposits were made by order of the Gov- 

 ernment of France. The erection of a furnace was begun by a 

 private company under very favorable arrangements with Louis 

 XV of France in 1737, but it seems that the French Government 

 obtained control of the work, and in 1752 the St. Maurice furnace 

 was blown in, and the old stone stack with Walloon hearth bear- 

 ing the date 1752 and the insignia of France, the fleur-de-lis, 

 still stands to dispute with that of Principio, in Maryland, the 

 right to be considered the oldest in America. This quaint old 

 furnace was in use until as late as the summer of 1883. It is 

 worthy of note, too, that in 1775, during the American invasion 

 of Canada, one of the lessees of this old furnace aided the Ameri- 

 cans and actually cast shot and shell to be used by them against 

 the city of Quebec. 



The manufacture of iron is still carried on in this district. A 

 few miles from the old St. Maurice furnace one finds at Radnor 

 the well-equipped modern water-jacket forty- to fifty-ton furnace, 

 the property of the Canada Iron Furnace Company, producing a 

 very superior grade of charcoal iron. This touch of the modern 

 world seems almost out of place in a region in which old France 

 lives again, but, as we proceed still farther up the St. Maurice Val- 



TOL. L. 30 



