CLAY IRON-STONE ON THE SOUEIS. 



331 



moulded into forms by the hand. One bank on the 

 Little Souris is four inches thick. Others above and 

 below it vary from half an inch, and of irregular thick- 

 ness, to three inches. The soap-stone bands were noticed 

 on a. small tributary of the Little Saskatchewan, itself an 

 affluent of the Assinniboine, where Formation No. 4 crops 

 out half way between the great bend of the Souris and 

 the Biding Mountain. 



It is not improbable that the clay iron-stone bands 

 extend without interruption from the Little Souris to the 

 Eiding Mountain. They would be deeply covered with 

 drift or the superior formations between the summit of 

 the Eiding Mountain and the Assinniboine, hence, as 

 sources of iron-ore, not available under the present cir- 

 cumstances of the country. 



On the Little Souris the drift is very shallow, sometimes 

 composed almost altogether of the ruins of the formation 

 itself, hence, over wide areas in its valley the ore is easily 

 accessible, and many thousand tons of nodules could be 

 picked from the exposed rock or from the bed of the 

 river, to be annually renewed by the wearing away of 

 the surface of the cliffs. A very rapid survey showed 

 that this annual renewal might be expected to take place, 

 to a Certain extent, for a distance of thirty-six miles on 

 each side of the river, over an exposed surface of seventy- 

 two miles in all, without reckoning the vast accumulations 

 which must occupy the bends of the river where spits or 

 beaches are formed. 



It has been stated at the beginning of this chapter that 

 the Cretaceous rocks extend from the North Branch of 

 the Saskatchewan to the frontier of Mexico, in part 

 flanking the Eocky Mountains. In Nebraska and Kansas 

 their physical and geological characteristics have been 

 more or less studied, and it would be interesting to know 



