2i6 Transactions of the Canadian Institute. [vol. ix 



the Copper Indians were accustomed to make to these mountains, when 

 most of their weapons and utensils were made of copper, have been dis- 

 continued since they have been enabled to obtain a supply of ice-chisels 

 and other instruments of iron by the establishment of trading posts 

 near their hunting grounds. That none of those who accompanied us 

 had visited them for many years was evident, from their ignorance of 

 the spots most abundant in metal. 



"The impracticability of navigating the river upwards from the 

 sea, and the want of wood for forming an establishment, would prove 

 insuperable objections to rendering the collection of copper at this part 

 worthy of mercantile speculation."* 



Among the members of Franklin's party was Sir John Richardson, 

 the great Naturalist, and the account which he gives of it is much more 

 detailed than that given by his Chief, and therefore you may be inter- 

 ested in hearing it. 



"The Copper Mountains appear to form a range running S.E. and 

 N.W. The great mass of rock in the mountains seems to consist of fel- 

 spar in various conditions; sometimes in the form of felspar rock or clay- 

 stone, sometimes coloured by hornblende, and approaching to green- 

 stone, but most generally in the form of dark reddish-brown amygdaloid. 

 The amygdaloidal masses, contained in the amygdaloid, are either en- 

 tirely pistacite (epidote), or pistacite enclosing calc-spar. Scales of 

 native copper are very generally disseminated through this rock, through 

 a species of trap tuff which nearly resembled it, and also through a red- 

 dish sand-stone on which it appears to rest. When the felspar assumed 

 the appearance of a slaty claystone, which it did towards the base of the 

 mountains on the banks of the river, we observed no copper in it. The 

 rough and in general rounded and more elevated parts of the 

 mountain, are composed of the amygdaloid; but between the eminences 

 there occur many narrow and deep valleys, which are bounded by per- 

 pendicular mural precipices of greenstone. It is in these valleys, amongst 

 the loose soil, that the Indians search for copper. Amongst the speci- 

 mens we picked up in these valleys, were plates of native copper; masses 

 of pistacite containing native copper ; of trap rock with associated native 

 copper, green malachite, copper glance or variegated copper ore and iron- 

 shot copper green ; and of greenish grey prehnite in trap (the trap is fels- 

 par, deeply coloured with hornblende), with disseminated native copper; 

 the copper, in some specimens, was crystallized in rhomboidal dodecahe- 

 drons. We also found some large tabular fragments, evidently portions 

 of a vein consisting of prehnite, associated with calcareous spar, and 



* Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea in the Years 1819, 20, 21, 

 and 22. By John FrankHn. London, 1823. 4to, pp. 340-1. 



