[Illustration: GOING TO THE POTLATCH--BIG CANOE, NORTH-WEST COAST] Other ores are found in the province. The iron which has been located or worked is principally on the islands--Queen Charlotte, Vancouver, Texada, and the Walker group. Most of the ores are magnetites, and that which alone has been worked--on Texada Island--is of excellent quality. The output of copper from the province is likely soon to become considerable. Masses of it have been found from time to time in various parts of the province--in the Vancouver series of islands, on the main-land coast, and in the interior. Its constant and rich association with silver shows lead to be abundant in the country, but it needs the development of transport facilities to give it value. Platinum is more likely to attain importance as a product in this than in any other part of North America. On the coast the granites are of such quality and occur in such abundance as to lead to the belief that their quarrying will one day be an important source of income, and there are marbles, sandstones, and ornamental stones of which the same may be said. One of the most valuable products of the province is coal, the essential in which our Pacific coast States are the poorest. The white man's attention was first attracted to this coal in 1835 by some Indians who brought lumps of it from Vancouver Island to the Hudson Bay post on the main-land, at Milbank Sound. The _Beaver_, the first steamship that stirred the waters of the Pacific, reached the province in 1836, and used coal that was found in outcroppings on the island beach. Thirteen years later the great trading company brought out a Scotch coal-miner to look into the character and extent of the coal find, and he was followed by other miners and the necessary apparatus for prosecuting the inquiry. In the mean time the present chief source of supply at Nanaimo, seventy miles from Victoria and about opposite Vancouver, was discovered, and in 1852 mining was begun in earnest. From the very outset the chief market for the coal was found to be San Francisco.