An immense deposit of halite (rock salt) lies beneath the Lower Peninsula, although little has been extracted.
The southern section has immense coal deposits.
But the immense ore deposits so far discovered and soaring commodity prices on the back of rip-roaring Chinese demand have convinced the world's miners that the continent is the next big frontier.
Three years ago, a drill bit struck immense oil deposits deep off the coast of Brazil.
Locals called the immense silica deposits the Eighth Wonder of the World.
In 1993, prospectors working for his company, Diamond Fields Resources, found an immense nickel deposit at Voisey's Bay, Labrador.
Economic activity is centred along the Quebec-Newfoundland border, an area with immense iron-ore deposits, where the region's largest towns of Schefferville in Quebec and Labrador City and Wabush in Newfoundland have sprung up since exploitation of the deposits began in the 1950s.
Bigger companies benefit from economies of scale: BHP reckons that buying Rio Tinto and merging the two firms' operations, in particular those at Pilbara, an immense iron-ore deposit in Australia, could result in annual savings of $3.7 billion within seven years.
Acknowledging the failure of his policies, Talleyrand resigned, but after two years as foreign minister he had amassed an "immense fortune" that he deposited abroad.
Mr. Friedland, one of Canada's wealthiest businessmen, is investing $5 million a month to develop an immense copper and gold deposit in the Gobi Desert, about 50 miles north of the border with China.
