The beauty of Banff and Lake Louise is already known to the tourist, but it is, rather especially, the {128} wonderful region opened to travel by the extensions of the Grand Trunk System that is so unusually spellbinding. The grandeur of these majestic mountain-peaks; the valleys and plateaus amid the gleam of lake and river; the brilliant foliage; the rich scheme of colour of purple and vermilion cliffs; the glint of blue waters through overarching trees--Ah! Land of the Maple Leaf, how fair is thy heritage! {129} CHAPTER VI COBALT AND THE SILVER MINES The famous Cobalt Silver Mines naturally focus the interest of the capitalist and the financier in any tour across the great Dominion. While British Columbia and the Yukon have been called the "Wonderland" of Canada, not alone for their mineral possibilities, but for a great wealth of other natural resources besides, and because many millions of dollars have been extracted by placer miners from rivers and streams, yet Ontario is found to exceed all other provinces, so far as yet developed, in the volume of mineral production. The Klondyke gold discoveries in the Canadian Yukon became a romance which has fairly rivalled the Tale of the Golden Fleece. Yet when in the year 1903 the copious and apparently unmeasurable deposits of silver-cobalt ores containing an extraordinarily high percentage of silver were discovered in the district of Cobalt (not far to the west from Lake Temiskaming), this event sent a thrill of sensation through the world of mining and mineral interests that left little to exceed, in romantic ardour, in the poetic legends of the Yukon: "Steeped in eternal beauty, crystalline waters and woods." [Illustration: Cobalt, Ontario] Since the discovery of silver in 1903, Cobalt has {130} produced $130,000,000 worth of the white metal. Dividends totalling over $60,000,000 have been paid to shareholders of twenty-four mines. One company alone has distributed among its shareholders in dividends nearly $15,000,000. In some of the Cobalt mines the ores that contained such phenomenal quantities of silver have been depleted, and ores of lower grade are now being worked, so that a much larger mass of ore, more machinery, and a larger force of working-men are now required to produce the same amount of silver.