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.
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