This is the spirit of the Dominion. But all conflicts must have an end, and when the end of this struggle {132} comes there is a marvellous future awaiting the Dominion. The future of a nation as well as that of an individual is not merely, nor even mostly, to be mechanically surveyed. It is not a definite geographical region with boundaries that can be located and crossed with a clear knowledge of the line of demarcation. The future is something that is created by men's thoughts. It is made, not found; it is constructed, not discovered. And thus, even while all internal industries are somewhat in the grasp of an enforced pause, yet new plans and projects for the future are in order. The mineral resources of Canada are incalculable. But that they will form one of the most remarkable factors in her future prosperity and importance is a practicable certainty. It was somewhere as early as 1846 that the veins of silver were discovered in the region adjacent to Port Arthur on Lake Superior; and twenty years later that ore was actively producing silver which it continued to do until 1903. On a small island, near Thunder Cape (known as the Silver Islet), was the most famous and the richest of these mines, and the ore, interlined with veins of quartz and carbonates, was found in a wide area. It traversed a large belt of diabase, and only where the vein transversed the diabase was it richly infused with silver. Otherwise, it bore galena alone. As early as 1884 the mine had carried to a level of nearly two thousand feet, and it was estimated that not less than three million two {133} hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of silver had been extracted from it. When the Cobalt silver mines began to be worked, Canada took her place as the third silver-producing country in the world; and this distinction must be largely attributed to the richness and copious output of these particular veins. Cobalt is about 330 miles north of Toronto, on the Ontario Government Railway, and four hours south of Cochrane. At Cobalt the mines are clustered all around and beneath the town, a lake in the centre having been drained to facilitate the search for ore. To the south-east these mines are distributed over a distance of four miles. While the Cobalt silver district proper is comprised within this area, other mines, and productive ones too, have been found in the farther outlying country. London is the chief silver market of the world. Much of the bullion shipped from Cobalt is sent directly there, and London is also the basing point of prices. The vast mills of Cobalt, transforming the crude ore into bullion, and the hydraulic plant on the top of a hill, where one man manipulates power sufficient to wash down huge rocks and to uproot and send down large trees and stumps, open out to the uninitiate a new idea of the way in which man contrives to control Nature and force her to do his bidding.