He reports the cliffs on the lower part of Burntwood river as being “occasionally overlain by a small thickness of peat.” He reports other deposits of peat in the district north of Lake Winnipeg.
Before the Senate committee of 1907, Mr. Tyrrell explained that the primary object in all his explorations was the mineral development of the country, and any other information that he collected was incidental. He stated that there is a district from Cumberland House northeastward towards Nelson river which is underlain by what are known as
the same kind as those in which minerals are found in northern Ontario at the present time. The very existence of those rocks was barely known. There had been practically no exploration of them, no prospecting, so that no one could say as to whether they were to be a barren portion of those rocks which are rich elsewhere, or whether they were to be like the Huronian and Keewatin rocks elsewhere, rich in mineral of some of the kinds so much desired. Comparing them with the rocks in other places, they have large possibilities. From that point there is an area of sandstone in the vicinity of Cree lake which may contain copper, but nothing much was known of it. It is about the age and character of the rocks that are rich in copper around Lake Superior, but no mineral wealth has yet been found in it.
Mr. D. B. Dowling, in his report on the survey of Burntwood-Nelson-Lake Winnipeg district in 1899, predicts that the several large areas of Huronian rocks which he outlines will at some future time be thoroughly prospected, and, as has been the case in nearly all such areas, ores of the useful and precious metals are likely to be found. “As it is at present, a very hasty visit has shown that many quartz veins and intrusive dykes cut these rocks, and indications of the precious metals are not wanting. In the Pipestone area on Nelson river, mispickel and copper pyrites are recorded by Mr. Tyrrell, as well as a promising showing of mica on the south side of Indian Reserve island, on Cross lake.”
In Severn district, in the southern part of the old district of Keewatin (now part of Ontario), there is a large region lying to the southwest of Cape Henrietta Maria, that had never been geographically explored before 1901. In the year named, Mr. Dowling was entrusted to do this work, and was instructed to make an instrumental survey of Ekwan river, the largest stream in this region. A micrometer survey of the river was made to the mouth of the Washagami branch, a distance of one hundred and fifty miles. The general valley was found to be a narrow cut through clay, with cut banks on either side for most of the distance to the first branch. As directed by his instructions, Mr. Dowling