CHAPTER 19
GREAT LEAN OUTCROPPING OF IRON ORE UNSEEN UNDER THE VERY EYES OF THE WORLD
THERE IS not in the whole world a shore line more interesting than that of the north coast of Lake Superior. Black and brown and green and gray and red cliffs guard there with as much importance as though they were true continental shelves. At intervals crowning peaks, like Cape Choyye and Noble Promontory, stand up like titanic watch towers. Choyye and Gargantua, as they are called commonly by the few fishermen and Indians alongshore, supply a clew to the classical types of men who gave them name. Choyye was Capuchin, and the other was Rabelais’ monster. Behind Gargantua is Pantagruel, never mentioned by the inhabitants. Just above they are better acquainted with Menebozho and his wife and two dogs. Never passes an Indian, whether Majinutin, Wauboosch or Nishishinawog or Bill Waiskai’s grandfather, who does not place tobacco on the stone lap of the Indian god, next in power to Kitchee Manido. I have seen them do it; sometimes hungrily and regretfully, because tobacco is tobacco among them. But if perchance coincidence would note some evidence of the pleasure of the Chippewa Sphinx, such as the lessening of a gale, or the arrival of a breeze after days of doldrums, the stoical visage of the devotee becomes almost a smiling mask.
The waters of Lake Superior are the coldest and the purest in the world, not even excepting Lake Baikal, in Siberia, and in their clearness, that must be seen to be realized, they offer the greatest possible contrast to the murky, sickening, hot infusorial waters of Victoria Nyanza, the only body of fresh water that rivals it in size and that only in surface area.
Rivers and creeks hurtle down from the height of land, which is from seventy-five to one hundred and fifty miles northward, as though glad to escape from the salt demons of Hudson Bay and Arctic Ocean. These rivers supply natural hatcheries for brook trout. This has given Superior, from Nepigon to Batchewaung, a bepurpled reputation among sportsmen everywhere. In the streams and along the rocks the trout fishing is unsurpassed. Perhaps the rock fishing offers the best sport. Little jagged bays filled with talus make shadowy places where the shy fishes may hide. Benches of rock drop off into many crystal fathoms, and in their blackened cracks lurk old speckled kings that rise to flies eagerly, and would rather fight than eat. Olivines and epidotes make floors of verde antique, and pegmatite shows red as blood above and also beneath the waters. Columnar basalts, some lying like corded wood and others erect as the Giant’s Causeway, occupy what were once crevasses in the granite gneiss and syenite before the molten lava filled the world-making mold. Beach line upon beach line, terraced, mark the recession of the contents of the earth’s greatest basin of sweet water. Underneath the boulders of these beaches icy cold streamlets, from some spring or nearby rocky pool, flow into the lake with much gurgling glee. Sometimes these unseen laughing waters are boisterous, and one is called Noisy River. The last ice belt disturbed many of the ancient beaches and pushed the boulders into heaps, at right angles to the lake, like so many lateral moraines, which they are not.
There is not a house along hundreds of miles of shore. It is a wild bright land in the summer; death on all sides in the winter. Rock-embraced harbors are at intervals of twelve to twenty miles. Moose and caribou and red deer, bear and wolves and wolverines, beaver, otter and sable are in the hinterland, and birds and hares and little red squirrels and a few singing gophers. Summer companions are black flies and mosquitoes and midgets. Banksian pine on the slopes, spruce and balsam in the valleys, high bush cranberries, sand cherries, blue berries and Indian plums (shad bush berry), white birch, mountain ash, pinus strobus, tamarack, black currants, red raspberries, pin cherries, skunk berries, juniper, yew, seven bark wood and a lot more vegetation grows, and berries ripen in the fleeting period between snow and snow.
It is a wild race between summer life and winter death. Ice does not thaw in the woodland lakes until June. Tripe de roche decorates the barren rocky tumuli and is sought by caribou, and when famine shows its bony clutches man also uses this rock tripe lichen for food.
Some day no traveled person will be content until he has seen the north shore of Lake Superior. Now only a few fish boats ply there, and to visit the region, one must either take these or fit out an Indian Mackinac boat and crew, or have his own yacht. Inaccessible as it is, the north shore is visited by a good many each season, and sometimes thousands go to the often-crowded Nepigon. The best stretch is the long one between Nepigon Bay and Bachewaung Bay. An ideal way is to coast along the shore in a Mackinac boat, camping and fishing at the mouths of the many rivers, or where attractive coves lure one.
Rock fishing is the most luxurious and artistic way to take trout. The rod must have plenty of backbone. A two and a half to a four ounce rod will give satisfaction on a stream, but off the rocks of Lake Superior a rod weighing from five to six ounces is better. Seated in an Indian boat of good size and plenty of free board, because summer squalls are fierce and sudden, with one Indian to row, and a parmacheenee belle leader and Montreal dropper, the gods of joy are awake. The Indian, a Chippewa and probably from the tribe at Bachewaung, rows slowly and you cast towards the rocks. The water is as clear as plate glass and you can see the fish; see them dart into dark places under the rocks when they are frightened, and also see them plainly enough when they tower toward the surface, not unlike a swallow sweeping in midair, as they rise to the fly, swooping off if unhooked, or making such a gamy fight if caught. Artfulness is necessary, and one must be prepared to make a cast of forty to sixty feet and drop his flies as lightly as falling moth wings that do not splash.
I have traversed every foot of the Lake Superior shore clear around. Rock study on the north shore is more interesting than fishing. I am going to tell you of two interesting shore exposures. If you are young and ambitious perhaps you will look them up and trace out their meaning. I know of only three other persons, one of them Justice Joseph Hall Steere, of the Supreme Court of Michigan, who know them by name, and they have their information from me. This, notwithstanding the fact that these rocks have been seen by thousands. Dozens of times I have rowed past them with the late Alfred Noble, who was an engineer of the Pennsylvania tunnels and subways at New York, and who was largely responsible for the decision to make the Panama Canal a lock canal and not a sea level canal. Mr. Noble was one of the most able of Americans. He was a charming camp mate and most observant. Time after time we visited one of these rocks together because it is on a famous fishing stretch, and he often went to it alone and with others, but he never recognized it. Each season I was determined to tell him, and then I would be tempted to wait and permit him to have the satisfaction of discovery. I went off to Africa and Madagascar for a couple of years, and while I was away Mr. Noble took the long rest.
Those who fish the north shore know Brulé Harbor and Indian Harbor as well as they know their own back yard, if they possess a back yard. Just below Brulé Harbor debouches Old Woman’s River in a bay, the bottom of which is covered with small boulders toward Brulé, and sand carried out by the river on the other side. The boulder patch offers fine trout up to four pounds, and on the other side of the sand where the cliff rocks begin, and where for years lay the wreck of the Golspie, a well-known tragedy of the shore, trout of five and six pounds may be killed. Noble Promontory, with a simian’s face when caught in right alignment, exults the landscape. About halfway to Indian Harbor is majestic Cape Choyye, and the fishing all the way is unsurpassed. There is not a harbor, even for small boats, between Brulé and Indian Harbor. Just after leaving Choyye, bound down, quite a deep bay sets in. On the lower side a well defined sand spit, covered with stunted birch and conifers, makes a contrast to the miles of frowning headlands on either side. At the bottom of this bay, just above a shelving beach where Justice Steere and I were once wrecked by a tidal wave, a little river flows in. It is the outlet of a chain of pretty lakelets. Exactly opposite the mouth of this stream, and concealing it from the view of a person rowing by, is a big, picturesque red rock. It is simply called the “redrock” and is a landmark. Standing more than a hundred feet high and some hundreds long and wide, it is as interesting as a Magna Mater when you recognize it as hematite iron ore. That it is very lean, so far as percentage of metallic iron content is concerned, is true, which does not detract from its interest and even value too, when considered as evidence.
As one faces down stream on the right wall of the creek, a short distance from this hematite exposure, one can see a big showing of carbonate of iron—siderite. The district near these has not been carefully examined. For years I have hoped to find time to do so, and only tell of it now as my contribution in part payment for what I have learned from unselfish geologists and surveyors. Somewhere not far distant should be found valuable deposits of iron ore, so convenient for transportation as to be unusually desirable.
Proceed with me down shore to Indian Harbor, on around the point and among the islands, whose water-worn caverns contain agates, chlorastrolites, thompsonites, calcites and amethysts to be had for the gathering, to Gargantua. One passes within a foot of Menebozho and his wife and dogs if he cares to. Sail on past the hidden harbor that marks Gargantua, the entrance to which is closed by an island like a cork in the neck of a bottle. There is a lighthouse on the island. A couple of miles below the lighthouse one comes to a red shore line. It is prominent for a mile or more perhaps. I have never measured the distance. All these reddish “rocks” are lean hematite ore. If they were to be found on the American side it would cause a sensation, and long ago they would have been owned by trusts.
I cannot easily account for the reason why these really wonderful outcrops are not known. I took Kirk Alexander and Tom May, of Detroit, to see the big red rock first described and told them about it, and showed them the siderite in the creek. Only Justice Steere has been with me when I visited the meaningful iron ore shore line below Gargantua. Once he sailed past it with Michel Cadotte, a north shore guide and now in the Happy Hunting Grounds.
Michel said, “See rocks, not rocks, different from rocks.”
He tried to tell the Justice something but did not succeed, and it was my pleasure to impart the secret to him. It is not unreasonable to expect that there are richer concentrations near in a region of such extensive lean ore exposures.
An iron formation skirts the Lake Superior north shore for hundreds of miles. Not much work has been done along it because it is in Canada, where the mining laws act as both guardian and deterrent. Also interest in this field has been small because upon the American side there has been enough ore to supply the demand; ore of fine quality and attractive economic location.
Two shipping mines on the north shore, the Helen and Magpie, near Michipicoten, have proved valuable. Quite a little is known about the Antikokan range in the Port Arthur district, and enough exploratory work has been done at different places to warrant the belief that the north shore will be highly productive.
Another iron ore region of the north shore that is little known comparatively, lies adjacent to the Pukoso River, a half day’s row above the Michipicoten. A little work has been done along the Pukoso by Indians, trappers, and lumberjacks, which is as good as saying that not much has been accomplished. There is an extensive formation here of banded magnetite. Some of the bands are quite wide and rich. One day these ores will be won by electric concentration as at Moose Mountain, Dunderland and Lulea. Here the land may be staked. Most of the few claims that were taken along the Pukoso have been forfeited because of failure to fulfill the requirements of the Canadian Mining laws.
Even more attractive than the Pukoso country is the hinterland at Otter Head and above and below. I have seen good-looking surface showings over quite a wide stretch of country in this region, and believe confidently that the future will reveal iron ore and other mineral values.
And so on I could tell such a long story of the attractions and prospects of the Canadian north shore. It is a way that every age has, wherein young men contemporaries sigh and state that there are not as many opportunities now as when their fathers were boys. Forever will this be true. The young man alert with industry and ambition will have more chances than he can take advantage of; the other kind would not know it or avail himself if he were thrown among a million opportunities. I would not urge the young man to money grub who is not compelled to; rather let him give of himself to society in some useful way as Theodore Roosevelt has done. All of us cannot be Roosevelts, but all of us can do our best, which will be something anyhow.
To the young man who has not and must have, in order to steam himself up, the north is calling; the west is beckoning; the soil is coaxing. Everywhere masters are in search of trustworthy, energetic, loyal youth. Never was there such an era of plenty to be plucked by all who will bestir themselves out of the common ruts of sloth and indolence. What a measure of boys I have gotten when I have had half a hundred of them in the wilderness with me, and have offered a reward to all who would beat me to the bathing place in the morning. Out of fifty not more than one or two would race with me to the creek or lake near camp. When we had to break the ice in the late autumn in order to bathe frequently not one boy in a hundred would do it. For near forty years now I have lived in the robust north and in winter I have taken a run naked and rolled in the snow every morning before breakfast, when in the woods, say at four o’clock. In all that time I have known of only one young man who would follow my example, without being ridiculed into it or compelled in some way.
There are only two driving forces: one is necessity and the other is love, and the latter is best. One may have love of work without necessity, and the effort is noble that is thus made. Necessity and love together beget twice-born offspring.
