98 



GEOLOGICAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1852-3. 



[1854. 



yond the measure given to it in a previous Report, no fact has 

 come to my knowledge of sufficient importance to authorize 

 any change in the opinion that has ah'eady teen expressed, 

 that the deposit %oill not in general remunerate •unskilled labor, 

 and that agricidturaUMs, artizans, and others engaged in the 

 ordinarij occupations of the country, would only lose their 

 labor by turning gold hunters." 



Mr. Murray's investigations were carried along the line 

 between the neighbourhood of Kingston and Lake Simcoe. 

 The general plan of operations embraced a set of north and 

 south traverses between the shore of Lake Ontario and the rear 

 of the surveyed lands, together with east and west offsets from 

 the general course. The topographical information embodied 

 in Mr. Murray's Report is highly interesting and valuable. 

 The heights of the different Lakes, which appear to form. a con- 

 tinuous chain along the line of operations, is given in detail. 

 The following table contains the elevations of each Lake above 

 the surface of Ontario : — 



Name. 

 liOughboro' Lake 



Townships. 

 Storrington and Lou 

 Loughboro' 



Bedford 



Oso and Olden 

 Olden 

 Kenebec 

 Sheffield 

 Sheffield 



Bexley k Fenelon 

 Fenelon 



Fenelon & Verulam 

 Harvey 



Ennismore, Smith, & 

 Ennismore & Smith 

 Smith 



Dummer & Burleigh 



Monaghan, Alnwick, 



ton. Otonabee 



Height in ft. Falls into 

 ^hboro' 166-12 Kideau Kiver. 









Mud Lake 





217-53 Desert Lake. 







217-53 Birch Lake 







217'53 Devil Lake. 



Devil Lake 













Batting's Mill Poud 



Green Bay & Bob's L. ... 





287-00 Wolf L. & Kideau E. 

 384-SO Tay & Rideau Rivers. 

 39S-S8 Mud Lake. 











■\TTiite Lake 





555-29 Sharbord Lake. 



Cross Lake 



Lotig Lake 





412-84 Long Lake. 

 365-69 Beaver Lake. 



















583 ' Sturgeon Lake. 

 561 Pigeon Lake. 

 556 Deer Bay. 







Pigeon Lake 



Harvey 



Chemong or Mud Lake. . 









Stony or Salmon Trout Ls 

 Rice Lake 



Hamil- 



526 Otonabee R.& Rice L. 

 364 Trent R. Ontario L. 



BISTUIBUTEON OF THE FORMATIONS. 



" The rocks of the area whose principal geographical features 

 are given in the sketch, belong to two distinctly different 

 periods ; one set being fossiliferous and nearly undisturbed, 

 and the other unfossiliferous and greatly disturbed, contorted 

 and altered. The fossils of the former are all of the Lower 

 Silurian age, and the strata to which they belong, as may be 

 inferred, rest unconformably on the tilted edges of the latter. 

 By drawing a straight line from about the middle part of Lough- 

 borough Lake, across the heads of Knowlton and Beaver Lakes, 

 to Round Lake in Belmont, a small sheet of water a little be- 

 yond Belmont Lake, and then another from Round Lake to 

 the northern extremity of Balsam Lake, a tolerably fair repre- 

 sentation of the junction of the two series of rocks will be 

 indicated ; the metamorphic, to which you have given the name 

 of the Laurentian series, keeping on the north, and the fossil- 

 iferous on the south side of the lines. There will, however, 

 be several deviations from the regularity of the straight lines, 

 occasioned by undulations in the more ancient rocks, bringing 

 them occasionally to the surface on the south, while a number 

 of outlying patches of the more recent formations are spread 

 over portions of the country to the north." 



The Laurentian .series are described in the Report for 1845-6 

 on the Ottawa region, and the description there given applies 

 equally to the rocks of the same series which came under Mr. 

 Murray's notice in the Survey of 1852-3. 



The kind and quality of economic materials met with in this 

 survey are of considerable importance. 



" The deposits of iron ore in Madoc, Marmora, and Belmont 

 some of which have long been known and have been worked, 

 will probably hereafter become of great commercial importance. 

 The ore which was formerly smelted at the village of Madoc, 

 by Messrs. Seymour & Co., and produced an excellent quality 

 of iron, was mined on the eleventh lot of the fifth concession 

 of the township. The bed appears to run through a black 

 soft micaceous rock, and holds a course which as far as it was 

 traced, was about W. by N., and E. by S., while the slope of 

 the bed which is towards the south, was between seventy-five 

 and eighty degrees. The greatest observed breadth of the bed 

 appeared to be about thirty feet, and its average would pro- 

 bably not fall short of about twenty feet. A material similar 

 to the soft black micaceous rock which accompanies the bed 

 of ore on each side, appears every now and then to cut it diago- 

 nally in thin belts. In one place the bed is said to have been 

 thus cut at distances of from every three to ten feet, and in 

 another there was an unbroken part with a length of fifty feet. 

 The ore is very black and very fine grained, and while the 

 whole body of it is magnetic, some portions of it have polarity, 

 one end of a fragment repelling and the other attracting the 

 north end of the magnet. When the ore is braised with a 

 hammer on these portions of the bed, or on fragments taken 

 from them, the particles adhere to one another and stand up on 

 the mass as they would on a magnet, the ore being in short a 

 natural magnet or loadstone. The portions which have polarity 

 appear to run across the ore bed at right angles. Nodules of 

 actynolite or green fibrous pyi-oxene, made up of radiating 

 crystals, are disseminated in the ore, and yellow uranite is 

 found investing small cracks." 



Mr. Murray relates some curious instances of the popular 

 furor in the search for precious metals which appears to have 

 unsettled the minds of the inhabitants of our back woods. 



" In almost all parts visited this year, but more especially in 

 the back settlements, a great number of the inhabitants are 

 possessed with the delusive belief, that the precious metals 

 abound among the rocky ridges of the Laurentian country, and 

 that they by their own individual exertions, are capable of 

 realizing vast wealth. Iron pyrites, mica, plumbago, specular 

 iron, galena, and other bright or metallic substances are indis- 

 criminately collected, barelled and buried in the woods, with 

 the full impression by those engaged in such business, that 

 they have stored away so much gold and silver ; and although 

 every second person met with, had a specimen of some sort to 

 present, with anxious enquiries as to its nature, hardly a single 

 individual could be found who was willing to give the smallest 

 information as to its locality. It was in vain to argue with 

 such persons that the consequences of a proper examination, 

 might possibly be more advantageous to the common interest 

 than anything they were likely to accomplish in secret and 

 unassisted ; such an argument was only regarded as the result 

 of a governmental scheme to deprive them of their imagined 

 wealth ; and an appearance of anxiety to procure any informa- 

 tion only rendered their secrecy the more profound." 



Mr. Hunt's Report embraces a valuable classification of the 



