H. R. Schoolcraft on a Coal Basin near Lake of the Woods. 233 
ascend the river above Sandy Lake inlet. (Owen’s Geol. Rep. . 
of 1852, p. 293.) 
hese preliminaries will enable the reader, better to compre- 
hend the following remarks. In mere point of altitude, the 
Itasca summit is not above the coal measures on the Alleghanies, 
which, by the best atlases, do not exceed sixteen hundred feet. 
(Black’s Atlas, Edin.) he basin of the Lake of the Woods, is, 
however, at a lower point, occupying one of the northern plataux 
of this continental water-shed. Reports of the existence of coal in 
this remote basin, while I resided in the West,—taken in connec- 
tion with the specimens of its mineralogy, brought to me from time 
to time, by the aborigines, did not sustain the conclusion. Noth- 
ing of the kind had been observed by the Commissioners and 
Surveyors, acting under the treaty of Ghent, who visited the lake 
to establish the national boundary, in 1823. Among these officials, 
Were Maj. Joseph Delafield of New York, and Dr. John Bigsby 
of Nottingham, tngland—both zealous students of natural his- 
tory. ‘The only rock-specimen brought to me by the aborigines, 
proved to be a species of black steatite, a material which is much 
valued, by them, in their pipe sculpture and this afforded no evi- 
dence of the propinquity of coal-bearing strata. Neither were such 
strata observed by the late Mr. Keating, who accompanied Maj. 
ng in his expedition through the lake in 1823. 
The first evidence of the silurian rocks in that quater, comes 
from Dr. Richardson, who passed through that lake in 1848, in 
the search after Sir John Franklin. He observes that in crossing 
the pyrogenous summit* between Lake Superior and Lake Win- 
nipek, in the direction of the Rainy Lakes, silurian strata occur 
on both flanks of it. He further observes, that Dr. John Bigsby 
presented a species of Pentamerus to the British Museum, which 
he had procured at the Lake of the Woods. He informs us that 
the eastern margin and island of that lake, are granitic, and hence 
infers, with good judgment, that Dr. Bigsby’s fossil was proba- 
ly found on an arm of its western coasts. (Aretic Searching 
Exp., p. 47) 
It is on the western coast of this lake, that recent information 
of a reliable character assures me, that large deposits of coal exist. 
he formation lies south of the national boundary line of 49° 
Which crosses the Portage du Rat. 
t is not the result of experience, to pronounce a country 
absolutely barren of resources, which has an uninviting aspect, but 
Which is at the same time, unexplored, or imperfectly explored. 
© importance of coal in that quarter of the continent can hardly 
be over estimated. Immense tracts of fertile plains, without for- 
est or fuel, exist along the valley of Red River, at Pembina, and 
* He infers the summit to be a development of the beds of granite of the Thou- 
- Lawrence. 
‘Skconp Seems, Vol. XIX, No. 56—March, 1855. 30 
