The copper era. (Clifton, Graham County, Ariz.) 1899-1911, 1906-08-23

grows better IN deptn, ana at the
100-foot level there is drift running
300 feet or more into the coun-
try rock-all the way in rich pay ore.
The history of the La Rose seems
entirely to disprove the contention
of early sceptics at Cobalt, who as
serted that values there were wholly
on the surface, and that they would
grow rapidly less in depth. Con-
sentative experts, who have care
| fully reviewed the camp, are today
strongly of the belief that values
will hold fully 500 feet, if not 1000
feet or more.
DR.. Robert Bell, chief of the Can
adam Geological Survey, Professor
w. G. Miller. head of the Ontario
Bureau of Mines, and Professor Will
liam Earl Hidden, fellow of the Geo
logical Society of London, all of
whom have spent much time here in
careful research, are emphatically
of the belief that Cobalt is the most
wonderful camp in point of ore
values that has ever been discovered
on this continent, and its potentiah-
ties for the future are almost passing
belief.
Recently asked Professor Hidden
the outlook in the region. SIS is so
wonderful l hesitate to predict" he
said. ''If values continue in depth,
as there is increasing evidence on
every hand that they will. Cobalt is
truly the Mecca of the mining world.
In my experience have never seen
its equal as a camp. The surface
has hardly been scratched, and the
leading mines really do not know
what they have. If not another vein
should be opened there for the next
three years there would be fortunes
taken from the ore now in sight. 1t
was difficult for me to believe the
stories told of the Silver City, but
1 have seen it for myself. The
wealth is there, as it has been for
centuries, almost on the surface, and
unless science is itself at fault, it is
there in depth also for many years
to come.''
A temperature of twenty degrees
to fifty degrees below zero and six
feet of snow on the level, if there
is any land in Coleman township
level enough to measure it, is not
particularly conducive to prospect
ing. Hundreds tried it last winter,
and lived in tents while they were
hunting for pay veins through the
bush. But summer is best.
At the leading camps the laborers
are housed and fed on the property.
Nearly all of them are lumberjacks.
The engineers who opened up this
new Ell Dorado were forced to take
the native labor product, and north
ern Ontario has always been lum-
Der country. To give the lumber
jack full credict, he is good plod-
der, hard worker, and does as he
is told. The rule of the lumber boss
in camp is absolute. 1t is a very
good training for the embryo miner
lumber-jack of Cobalt works well.
He is better fed, more comfortably
housed, and makes double the wages
that he did in the lumber camp, and
the leading camps are working night
and day shifts since the snow melted.
To-day the going mines are adding
daily to their operating forces. The
city is alive with carpenters, and
every house is spoken for before the
roof is on. Even hunks are at a
premium. 1 have said the principal
crop in Cobalt is rocks. There is an
other-stumps. They decorate front
yards, adorn the middle of the road,
and serve as clothes-poles for the
weekly wash. a vacant lot not far
from the Imperial Bank is particular
ly rich in stumps. 1t is 60 by 00feet,
and the price-with or without the
stumps-is only $1,000 Eighteen
months ago the man who offered $500
for this same lot would have been
deemed a fit subject for the asylum.
AS yet the surface only has been
scratched, and some of the mines
have three or four years work block
ed out. The men who know most
about the camp, from practical know
ledge and close personal observation,
are the heartiest believers in its
future Indeed, so strong is the be-
lief of the Ontario government in
the wonderful future of Coleman
township, from a mining standpoint,
that it has reserved a section, sew
eral square miles in extent, less than
half a mile south of Cobalt, which
it may develop on the public owner
ship plan. This strip is known as the
JOHNSON 6 BROWN