gold and silver are abundant. Platinum and iridium are also common,
and are exported from here to all parts of the world; they are in
great demand by chemists and electricians. A rough population from
all quarters has been attracted to the district, of which Bearville
is the centre, and it would astonish people who seldom come to
the North to see how the ingenuity of man has made life not only
tolerable, but enjoyable, in the neighborhood of the Arctic Circle.
Coal seams crop up above the ground in many places, and wherever
this is the case, large frame conservatories are built which are
lighted, not from the roof, but by wide double windows reaching
from the eaves to the ground, and heated by numerous stoves into
which the coal just taken from the ground is thrown. Electric
lights, magnesium lights and lime lights help to make the long
nights of winter as cheerful as day elsewhere.

In this region wonderful blasting operations are performed by
charges of solidified oxygen and hydrogen. The charges are placed
at the bottom of a 40 foot bore and exploded by a powerful electric
spark. The effect is very different from that of other explosives
which usually rend the rock into large fragments that have to
be blasted again in detail before a clearance is made, for the
oxyhydrogen charge has such terrible force that it completely
pulverizes the rock, scooping out, even in granite, a deep wide
pit of parabolic section of which the spot where the charge was
is the focus. The dust is blown out in a cloud high in the air.

Our finest and largest cities are Halifax, St. John's, Rimouski,
Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Hamilton, Saulte Ste Marie, Port
Arthur, Winnipeg, Brandon, Edmonton, New Westminster and Victoria.
Toronto, Montreal and Winnipeg each contain more than 2,000,000