The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-10-19
DIAMONDS FOUND IN CANADA.
A Most Pleasing Tale from the Wilds
 of Ontario.

of Ontario.
 Old mining men and prospectors in this region did 1fot need to be told by Dr. Ami, of the Geological Survey, that great diamond wealth lay hidden in that part of Canada between the Great Lakes and Hudson Bay. In he Rainy River district and in the auriferous valley of the. Seine many diamonds have been obtained frfom Indians and French Canadian voy- agers, who have picked them. up in their wanderings without any idea of their character and value.
 At the hamlet Mine Centre, in the seine River country George R. Douglass is the resident agent and assayer for the Rothschild interests. MT. Douglas was long a resident of South Africa. He says, the geoglogi- cal conformation of the Rainy Lake and Seine territories is almost identi- cal with that of the Kimberley district, which has given to the world the famous diamond mines.
 Forty miles from the mouth of the Big Fork River, which ernpties into the Rainy from Northern Minnesota, are many ancient mounds, whose ori- gin extends beyond the traditions of the Ojibways. Until recently these mounds were inviolate, for they are in a wild region, but little. visited by white men and accessible only by canoe.
 One summer however, a party of f,,n,,o +La If Tor onto came out to explore them. From one of the mounds on which a sturdy oak was growing large human skele- ton, perfectly preserved, was exhumed.
 It was not that of an Indian, and In the cavity from which it was taken were evidences of prehistoric civiliza- tion in the form of articles of pottery, some stamped with unique and beauti- |ful designs. Around the skeletons neck was massive band of pure cop per- and on it's bosom rested a curious ly wrought necklace of the same me tai, into which were interwoven shells and colored stones.
 What arrested the attention of the exploring party, however, was stone which g1eamed from the centre of a pendant to the necklace. At first it was judged to be nothing more than clear piece of quartz, but closer examination and testing proved that it was a diamond.
 Although half a dozen mounds were opened up before the party left the re- zion, and copper ornamen ts and pat tery were found, with skeletons in, all of them, no more diamonds were un- earthed.
 On their return the party met a band of ObjibWays, to whom the articles found in the mounds were shown, in the hope of obtaining traditions con- corning their origin. As to the copper the Indians were ignorant, but they grunted disdainfully when the pottery and the diamond were shown. ~
 pecimens of the former, they said, could be obtained in almost any quan- tity from the remains of an ancient potter works that once existed on the banks of the Big Fork, near the Big Falls, a few miles up the stream, while in the same region glittering stones of the sort the palefaces seen- ed to regard so highly had frequently been found,
 Startled by the information, the Tor onto party pushed on to the Big Falls, which marked in old days the disputed boundary between the Hudson Bay Company and John Jocob Astor's Am .erican squatter. Dan Campbell.
 s He took them. to the ancient pottery field opposite his cabin, and, what was more, brought from pouch he car ried three stones which in purity and brilliancy greatly exceeded the one found by his visitors. These stones he had found in the course of his thirty years living by the Big Fork while scratching the surface of the pottery field with his hunting knife.-- Port Francis (Ont.) correspondence of the Philadelphia North American. '