328 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Vol. vii. 



situated 13 miles from Portage Lake, in a north east direction, 

 on a bed of conglomerate, which, however, it is not easy to iden- 

 tify with any of the beds that abut on the lake, as the range 

 widens as it approaches the Point and the beds flatten. While 

 the mineral range at the lake is 7 miles across, at the Calumet 

 and Hecla it is 13 miles wide, and the dip declines from an aver- 

 age angle of 54^ to 38*^. Copper had been extracted from con- 

 glomerate beds before the opening of this mine, but never with 

 good financial results. From the Albany and Boston Mine, 

 where both a conglomerate and an amygdaloidal bed are worked, 

 specimens very similar to the rock since yielded by Calumet were 

 obtained; but the failure of this and other mines led to a dis- ^ 

 trust in, and a too hasty condemnation of, conglomerate mines, v^ 

 It is to be feared the opposite error may now be run into. ^ 



The Calumet Mine was discovered about 13 years ago. An v 

 inn, the half-way house between Hancock and Eagle River, stood 

 in the forest near where the mine is now, and was kept by a v 

 Cornish man. His pig — so tradition tells — fell into a pit, which 

 proved to be an old Indian working. It was dragged out so be_ ^ 

 smeared with green that the owner at once suspected the existence ( 

 of copper. Since then, two little towns, — Calumet and Red \ 

 Jacket, — have sprung up, and as great a change has taken place \ 

 beneath the surface of the soil. Two mines on adjacent locations, / 

 though in the same bed, viz., the Calumet and Hecla, are r>wned ) 

 and worked by one company. This mine has now reached a 

 depth of 1060 feet on the incline of the bed, or 600 feet vertical, 

 and one of the upper levels is 3000 feet long. Most of the copper 

 comes from a bed of conglomerate, in which a hard red porphy- 

 ritic pebble is embedded in a cement of the same rock, and of 

 native copper. The pebbles in the rich rock are smaller and 

 more rounded than beyond the rich chimnies. The pebbles com- 

 posing the conglomerate are seldom themselves cupriferous, 

 though some of them are, I have a large pebble from the con- 

 glomerate bed which is identical in appearance with the compact 

 chocolate-coloured rock of the Quincy Mine, and is throughout 

 permeated with a little copper in the same manner as the rock, 

 but for a depth of about two lines from the surface it is enshea- 

 thed in fine-grained copper, which, as well as the copper permea- 

 ting it, may have penetrated the pebble or been deposited around 

 it, — it is difficult to say which. In the conglomerate also occur 

 boulders of solid copper. Some are said to exhibit a concentric 



