"We were now traversing perhaps the most interesting region in all
the North. In the neighbourhood of McMurray there are several tar-wells,
so called, and there, if a hole is scraped in the bank, it slowly fills in
with tar mingled with sand. This is separated by boiling, and is used, in
its native state, for gumming canoes and boats. Farther up are immense
towering banks, the tar oozing at every pore, and underlaid by great
overlapping dykes of disintegrated limestone, alternating with lofty clay
exposures, crowned with poplar, spruce and pine. On the 15th we were
still following the right bank, and anon, past giant clay escarpments
along it, everywhere streaked with oozing tar, and smelling like an old
ship.
These tar cliffs are here hundreds of feet high, of a bold and
impressive grandeur, and crowned with firs which seem dwarfed to the
passer-by. The impregnated clay appears to be constantly falling off the
almost sheer face of the slate-brown cliffs, in great sheets, which plunge
into the river's edge in broken masses. The opposite river bank is much
more depressed, and is clothed with dense forest.
The tar, whatever it may be otherwise, is a fuel, and burned in our
camp-fires like coal. That this region is stored with a substance of great
economic value is beyond all doubt, and, when the hour of development
comes, it will, I believe, prove to be one of the wonders of Northern
Canada. We were all deeply impressed by this scene of Nature's
chemistry, and realized what a vast storehouse of not only hidden but
exposed resources we possess in this enormous country." [continue]
Reprinted from Through the Mackenzie Basin: An Account of
the Signing of Treaty No. 8 and the Scrip Commission, 1899, by Charles
Mair. |