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By Karl J. C. Harries

"8.1. INTRODUCTIONThe purpose of this chapter is not to provide precedents or examples of provisions, but rather to offer some comments that may be worth considering in the negotiation or review of an agreement. These comments are not intended to be exhaustive. It must also be noted that, although the chapter is written in the context of a common law joint venture, the concepts and concerns for the most part apply equally to a corporation that is owned by only a few shareholders for the purpose of participating in the project held by the corporation.The corporation has the advantage of having much of its organization established by local corporate law, but the particular wishes of the shareholders will appear in a shareholders’ agreement. The principal differences will be surprisingly small, save for the acquisition provisions that appear in a farm-in agreement1 and the substantial portion of the joint venture agreement devoted to creating and organizing the joint venture entity. Where the joint venture agreement refers to venturers and committees, the shareholders’ agreement will refer to shareholders and the board of directors, but both will have to deal with such basic matters as decision-making, default, dispute resolution, first refusals, funding, and carrying out work on the project. For convenience, this chapter usually refers to “venturers”, which may be taken to include shareholders.Negotiations give rise to many varying circumstances and concerns, and the main asset of the negotiator is an open and flexible mind. A desired result can often be accomplished indirectly in circumstances where the other side has adopted an inflexible position on a suggested approach. As precedents and standard forms tend to focus a negotiator’s thinking, they can be counterproductive. It is after the deal has been agreed to that a precedent can be of great assistance to the draftsman.The concepts are arranged in alphabetical order for convenience, not to suggest their sequence or position in an agreement or their relative importance. An agreement should adopt a progression of subjects in what the parties consider a logical sequence to read and work with. However, experience has indicated that it is best to set out in a single article the substance of the deal (i.e. the terms relating to the farm-in and what the acquiring party has to do to acquire his interest), preferably near the beginning of an agreement. The acquisition of the interest is, after all, the first order of business. The joint venture provisions will then follow in a reasonable sequence. It is also worthwhile to devote a single article to any special provisions that may apply during the earn-in period. For example, it may be provided that, although all work is to be done by the acquiring party as operator (with the duty of care, liability, and reporting requirements as set out in the joint venture sections of the agreement), but during the acquisition period, the acquiring party, acting as operator, may be at liberty to do such work as he wishes, without the need for any committee or other approvals, and committee meetings may be suspended.2An agreement is divided into paragraphs and articles to make it easier for the parties to read and understand, and to assist a party in finding “that provision” when the need arises. A comprehensive table of contents will also assist the parties who must work under an agreement. An added benefit of a table of contents is that in preparing it, the draftsman sees the overall structure of the agreement and will often catch and correct flaws."

Jan 1, 2003

By Lionel C. Piuze

Introduction and Early History The British Canadian Mine is one of four operating properties of Asbestos Corporation, Limited, and is located in the town of Black Lake, Que., five miles southwest of Thetford Mines. In the early days of as1bestos mining, this .property was owned by a few small companies who later became part of the Asbestos Corporation. First .to commence mining operations on the property was the Coleraine Mining Company who, in 1885, began selling part of their large holdings in the area to various asbestos mining interests. Of these, the earliest active companies were Manhattan United Asbestos, the Glasgow and Montreal Asbestos Company, and the Anglo-Canadian, the last named later becoming the Standard and Dominion Asbestos Companies. Extraction of fibre was limited to what is now known as crude asbestos and the methods were primitive. Drilling was done .by hand and the ore was lifted by derricks operated by band winches. These were later replaced by horse power, but it was not until 1887 that the first steam-operated boom derricks were introduced, at the Anglo-Canadian mine. The ore was hand cobbled and the asbestos roughly classified and bagged. The waste rock, which by today's standards contained a considerable percentage of marketable fibre, was dumped near the pit. The first attempt to separate the asbestos from the host rock by mechanical means was made in 1888 by the G1asgow and Montreal Asbestos Company, then known as the Scottish-Canadian Asbestos Company, whose mill, erected in that year, was the world's first asbestos mill. Though the equipment was crude, the principles employed were the same as those used today with much larger units. The next steps were the use of rock drills, the adoption of steam rail transportation for moving mill rock, and conversion to the more flexible cable-derrick hoisting.

Jan 1, 1950

By R. H. Sheaphim

THE RECENT and continuing activity in the Boundary district, British Columbia, makes the publication of this paper timely. The following description and discussions are based on two years' experience in the district as Field Manager and Geologist for Attwood Copper Mines, Limited. The Attwood project was organized by Dr. D. F. Kidd to re-examine the Boundary mining camp. Thanks are due to Dr. Kidd, both for his intelligent guidance during the project and for his permission to publish this paper. Much of the data and many of the interpretations presented are credited to the work of, and to discussion with, Dr. W. H. White, Consultant Geologist, who worked for two field seasons on the project. However, the author assumes the responsibility for this presentation. Dr. C. D. A. Dahlstrom worked with the author during the latter stages of the project. His assistance and advice are gratefully acknowledged.

Jan 1, 1956

By Bradley Stoughton

It is very easy to reduce iron ore at a temperature well below its melting point and produce a more-or-less-pure metal which can be used directly for implements, tools, or machines. This simplicity has been the cause of much money loss by persons who were so satisfied with the successful operation of a process that they paid all too little attention to the commercial aspects of it. How easy a direct process is may be gleaned from the fact that it was practised with some -success by primitive man, and has been in almost continuous operation in one form or another for a period of probably 4,000 years. The production of steel in ton lots, beginning about 1860, brought a new phase into the economic situation, which, however, had been already greatly modified in 1784 by Henry Cort's invention of purifying pig iron. Direct processes survived both of these revolutions, under special geographical conditions, even up to the last few years of the nineteenth century, but ceased to have any general use as the basis of supply for structural, machine, or tool industries even in countries which could have manufactured iron by a direct process, but, instead, imported the product of established iron and steel processes. And this is still the situation today, notwithstanding the invention of an incredible number of 'new' processes since 1900, most of which are abandoned, and only survived as along as their financial backers were willing and able to Jose money. Probably none of these processes failed to work pretty well, and all seemed to show a handsome profit on paper.

Jan 1, 1930

By H. B. Lumsden

This paper is intended to deal merely with the commercial development of some of the principal non-metallic mineral resources in the three prairie provinces- Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. Coal is not included in this summary. Building Stone First and foremost, mention may be made of the building stone now being produced at Tyndall, Manitoba. This is a mottled limestone and is declared by experts to be one of the finest building stones in America, both as regards durability and appearance. It has been used very extensively both for exterior and interior work, not only in western Canada, but also in the principal cities as far east as Montreal. The stone is the "'Upper Mottled Limestone", which forms the summit of the Trenton (Ordovician) strata in the Lake Winnipeg basin. Quarries are at present being operated at Garson and Tyndall . The area where this stone is known to be available extends in a north and south direction for a distance of three miles, and the main productive ridge is probably about one half mile wide. The outlook for the future of the industry is extremely promising, as the stone is becoming increasingly popular in Eastern Canada, more particularly for interior work.

Jan 1, 1928

By K. Ohto, B. B. Acihikari, H. Kawakita, M. Gurung, S. Alam

Two kinds of adsorbents were prepared from persimmon tannin extract to investigate their adsorption behavior of metal ions from hydrochloric acid solution; one was prepared by treating with concentrated sulfuric acid while another was prepared by immobilizing functional groups of quaternary amine. The former adsorbed only gold(III) and its maximum adsorption capacities was evaluated as high as 1510 g/kg while the latter adsorbed not only gold(III) but also palladium(II) and platinum(IV), the maximum adsorption capacities of which were evaluated as 820, 89 and 101 g/kg, respectively. For both adsorbents, practical adsorption of base metals was not observed.

Jan 1, 2011

By E. G. Langille

"The Premier mine; owned by Silbak Premier Mines; Limited; is 14 miles from Stewart at the head of Portland canal. Development of the property began in 1918; and since chat time a very large amount of gold and silver as well as some lead and copper have been produced from the mine.The area in the vicinity of the mine is underlain by greenstones tuffs, and sediments of Mesozoic age, belonging to the Bear River formation of the Hazelton group. These rocks are intruded by a stock 2 miles in diameter, composed of orthoclase porphyry and called the Premier porphyry. It sends numerous sill-like and dyke-like tongues into the Bear River formation, and is intruded in turn by a granodiorite outlier of the Coast Range batholith. The orebodies occupy fractures and fracture or shear zones. Primary ore consists chiefly of pyrite, galena, and sphalerite, with some chalcopyrite. The upper 300 feet, or locally 600 feet, contained presumably secondary silver minerals."

Jan 1, 1954

By Helmut Lerchs

An open-pit mining operation can be viewed as a process by which the open surface of a mine is continuously deformed. The planning of a mining program involves the design of the final shape of this open surface. The approach developed in this paper is based on the following assumptions: 1. the type of material its mine value and its extraction cost is given for each point; 2. restrictions on the geometry of the pit are specified (surface boundaries and maximum allowable wall slopes); 3. The objective is to maximize total profit-total mine value of material extracted minus total extraction cost. Two numeric methods are proposed: A simple dynamic programming algorithm for the two-dimensional pit (or a single vertical section of a mine), and. a more elaborate graph algorithm for the general three-dimensional pit. ASURFACE mining program is a complex operation that may extend over many years, and Involve huge capital expenditures and risk. Before undertaking such an operation, it must be known what ore there is to be mined

Jan 1, 1965

By J. D. Allan

"IntroductionThe purpose of this paper is to present a general picture of the Lynn Lake nickel area of northern Manitoba. The geology of the area will not be discussed in great detail, nor will the mining op; rations presently being conducted. Both subjects will be treated briefly and, in addition, mention will be made of some of the problems encountered in mapping in the area. some of the questions which still remain unanswered, methods of prospecting that have been applied and the future possibilities of the area.For present purposes, the Lynn Lake area will be considered as extending from west of Lynn lake to east of Barrington lake. Thus, more correctly, it should be termed the Lynn Lake-Barrington Lake area. It comprises five 15-minute map-areas, or a total of 800 square miles, in a block 47 miles east-west and 17 miles north-south.Lynn lake itself is about 120 miles north of Sherridon, Manitoba, the closes t rail terminal. The area is part of the Granville Lake sheet which was mapped by the Geological Survey of Canada in 1932, 1933, and 1935, the results being published in Summary Report 1933. Part C, and as Maps 343A and 344A on a scale of four miles to o.ne inch. In 1940, the McVeigh Lake area was mapped by the Geological Survey of Canada on a scale of 1,500 feet to 1 inch and a map was issued in 1945."

Jan 1, 1950

By Jie Deng, Wenliang Xiong, Binyan Chen

"With falling rare earth metal prices, low cost beneficiation of rare earth minerals is essential. The “Flotation-Agglomeration-Magnetic” (FAM) separation process is a newly developed technology by IMUMR to economically recover rare earth elements from different types of deposits. The theory of FAM process is to selectively agglomerate rare earth particles and separate from gangue minerals by bubble flotation process. The flotation product is further upgraded by magnetic separation. The FAM process has been successfully applied in industrial production on the Dalucao rare earth ore, Sichuan, China. The average REO grade of rare earth concentrate is 65% in the latest 12 month production run, with an average recovery of 55%.INTRODUCTIONRare earth elements (REEs) include fifteen lanthanide elements coupled with two chemically similar elements (yttrium and scandium). These elements are split into two sub-groups, La to Sm are classified as light rare earth elements (LREEs) and the remaining elements including yttrium are heavy rare earth elements (HREEs) (Kumari & Panda, 2015). The demand of rare earth elements surged in recent years due to their increasing usage in diverse industrial aspects including high strength magnets, phosphors, clean energy, polishing compounds and catalysts (Goley &Scott, 2014).More than 250 REE-bearing minerals have been discovered, but many minerals are with very low concentrations of REEs, varying from 10-300 ppm (Adam &Ping, 2013). The most common rare earth minerals mined are bastnaesite, monazite, xenotime and ion-adoption REE (Chelgani & Rudolph, 2015; Kanazawa & Kamitani, 2006). Before the 1960s, most rare earth resources were extracted from monazite in the beach placer, with the exploiting of Mountain Pass in the United States and Bayan Obo mine in China, bastnaesite became the chief mineral source of rare earth resources (Klinger, 2015). These minerals are commonly separated with gangue minerals by froth flotation, gravity concentration, magnetic separation, or any combination thereof based on their specific physical characteristics (Zhou & Wang, 2014; Adam & Richard, 2014; Yang & Satur, 2015; Xia & Brian, 2015a,b)."

Jan 1, 2016

By A. C. Hnatyshyn

INTRODUCTION THOSE concerned with coal mining operations in Alberta have been asked repeatedly the same question, "Why is mechanization in Alberta proceeding so slowly as to lag far behind the mines in the United States?" This question is often asked in such a manner as to indicate that a severe reprimand is overdue to the mining engineers of this Province for their apparent indifference to the problem of improving their mining operations by increased mechanization. To the average person, unacquainted with mining conditions and problems, mechanization appears to be simply a matter of introducing equipment to load coal underground and, once this is done, substantial economies in operating costs will automatically follow. Invariably, those who have followed this simple reasoning have found, to their regret, that such is not the case and that effective mechanization involves something more than the mere process of introducing loading equipment into a mine. To be effective, any programme of mechanization must take into consideration all operations incidental to the mining, transportation, and handling of the coal from the working face to the tipple, and must utilize equipment which can be best adapted to any peculiar condition or circumstance prevailing in the mine concerned. In the use of such equipment, the net and final result should be an improvement in operating costs of sufficient magnitude to at least return to the operator, over a specific period of years or during the expected life of that equipment, all his investment plus a fair return on that investment.

Jan 1, 1951

By N. Melnyk

"FOREWORDThis paper provides a unique description of a method devised for mining a very thick steeply dipping seam of soft gassy coal which was prone to spontaneous combustion. The editors con¬sider that the information in this paper should be important to those who may have to consider mining such seams again at some time in the future and therefore believe that the paper warrants reprinting in the present volume. The author was ask¬ed to review the paper and to add any additional relevant in¬formation. He provided the accompanying footnote, only a month before his death on April 22, 1982.IntroductionIn the past, the Cadomin Coal Company has opened four mines, all in the same coal seam or its folds. Three of these were opened from river level by horizontal entries or rock tunnels. and the fourth, the present working mine, by vertical shafts. This paper deals largely with some operating phases of this fourth mine, with which the writer has been associated.The seam worked here is a thick, steep, bituminous seam, and the writer feels there is a paucity of published data on the mining of such seams. Possible reasons for this are that such seams do not lend themselves to intensive development or mining, there is little chance to mechanize because of the extreme pitch, and operations are fraught with many problems. In addition the present operations in this particular' seam are being carried on at a level below the former workings, introducing new problems, not encountered on the upper level.Coal will, without question, long continue to be an impor¬tant factor in the national economy, and some of the best coal is to be found in thick, steep seams. But with the exhaustion of the easily-mined coal near the outcrops, future coal will have to come more and more from lower levels. At Cadomin there is still considerable coal on the second level, below the old river-workings, and there is a possibility that, in the future, still lower levels will be worked. It is the purpose of this paper to indicate some phases of such lower-level operations and to invite discussion."

Jan 1, 1985

By Roger T. Laine

"The Carswell structure, located in the western part of the Athabasca Basin, northern Saskatchewan, has been extensively explored since 1967. This exploration has been successful and lead to the discovery, in 1970, of the D sandstone-hosted unconformity related deposit. By the end of 1984, five additional basement-hosted unconformity related deposits had been delineated: the OP and N discovered in 1970, the Claude in 1971, the Dominique-Peter in 1981, and the Dominique-Janine in 1984. The D deposit has been mined out; the Claude open-pit has already produced more than 500 tonnes of uranium, the development of the Dominique-Peter underground mine (first phase) has been completed, and production from the latter started in 1985.All six deposits are located in the southern part of the Aphebian metamorphic core, 18 km in diameter, which has intruded at least 1250 metres of Helikian Athabasca Group sediments during a cryptoexplosion event at 480 Ma, unrelated to the emplacement of uranium mineralization. The metamorphic rocks, affected by the Hudsonian Orogeny, are divided in two lithostratrigraphic units: the Peter River gneiss, aluminous gneiss series, and the Earl River complex, mixed quartzofeldspathic and mafic gneiss series. A well developed regolith profile is recognizable in the south along the contact with the sandstone and inside the metamorphic core sometimes associated with conformable sandstone beds.Basement and sandstone-hosted uranium deposits show many similarities:-linkage to unconformity;-mineralogy and geochronology with a first phase mineralization characterized by a polymetallic sulphide-uraninite-brannerite assemblage dated at 1150 to 1050 Ma, a second phase characterized by a simple sulphide-uraninite assemblage dated at 890 to 820 Ma, and a third phase characterized by a pitchblende-hematite dated at 380 Ma; and,-linkage to early Hudsonian structures with remobilization of these structures during intense hydrothermal alteration resulting in Mg chlorite-illite halos."

Jan 1, 1986

By J. D. Bateman

Introduction The lifting of restrictions on the development of radioactive mineral deposits by private individuals has re-opened the search for uranium in Canada to a large body of professionally trained prospectors. The entry of private capital and experienced prospecting techniques into the search for radioactive minerals has been enormously stimulated by the atomic developments of the past several years; and we can now look forward to the discovery of new productive sources of uranium. The rate of new discoveries will, how ?ever, depend on the effectiveness of the methods used. The large number of new pitchblende occurrences reported within the past several months is largely a measure of the energy with which the portable Geiger-Müller counter has been applied in the field. The counter is simply a 'radio' receiver tuned to one of the products of spontaneous atomic disintegration that is characteristic of all radioactive materials. Its effective use depends largely on how it is applied under the various geological and topographical conditions that ma y be encountered, and also on an understanding of its limitations. Extensive geological information relating to the occurrence of radioactive minerals in Canada has been accumulated during the past several years, and it is now possible to define in a general way many of the geological formations in which pitchblende and related minerals are likely to occur. Furthermore, prospecting can be localized in those parts of the favourable formations that offer the greater promise of containing commercial deposits. In this selection, the Geiger counter is the most useful tool available to the prospector for the actual detection of radioactive materials. As an example, an area of two square miles in the Northwest Territories, within which about a dozen pitchblende occurrences had been found over a several year period by conventional prospecting methods, yielded more than forty-five additional discoveries by application of the Geiger counter. Yet earlier attempts at prospecting this area with the counter had failed, due largely to faulty instruments and lack of experience in field application. The limitations of the counter are very considerable; but, when they are recognized, there is no more useful tool for the discovery of radioactive ores. It was not until 1944 that a practicable portable counter was developed, and then only by co-operation in the field by geologists and physicists. Officers of the Geological Survey of Canada working with physicists of the National Research Council brought about the development of the modern counter.

Jan 1, 1949

By R. L. Bruening, N. E. Izatt, S. R. Izatt

The need for selective metal separations has increased as the mining industry encounters more complex ore bodies and demand for higher performance end products expands. The Molecular Recognition Technology (MRT) process uses highly selective SuperLig® resins to remove desired metals from a variety of solutions in the mining and metals processing and recovery industries. MRT separation processes efficiently produce high purity metal products. In this paper, applications of MRT to metal recovery at mg/L to multiple g/L concentration levels are presented and discussed. Specific examples in the precious metal, nickel, cobalt, zinc, copper, and rare earth industries are given.

Jan 1, 2014

By Edward I. Renouard

"THE mineral industry is constantly undergoing changes and facing challenges, and today we are in the midst of another serious one -namely, manpower requirement at every level in the mines, shops and plants. In the not too distant past we had a situation where labour was plentiful, although the equipment, by present-day standards, was quite inadequate, and that's easily understandable when you look back at the primitive methods by which our Western mines were first developed and operated, and then improved by the inventiveness and ingenuity of man.I'd like to show you a few slides from drawings made by Buck O'-Donnell which illustrate some of yesterday's methods of mining. Some of you probably had first-hand experience with some of these so you know they were tedious, time-consuming and involved a lot of heavy labour.Taking the Anaconda Company operations at Butte as an example, we can see what has happened in just the past ten years. In August of 1956, the Butte mines had 5,516 day's-pay employees and 976 salaried employees, for a total payroll of 6,492. In August of this year, there were 3,645 day's-pay employees and 605 on the salaried roll, for a total of 4,250. The number of contract miners had gone from 1,347 in 1956 to 606 in 1966 and that of other underground miners from 2,893 ten years ago to 1,149 this year. Along with these changes, however, another change of special significance has taken place, and that is in the number of skilled craftsmen, surface engineers and so on required for our operations. In 1966, we had 1,890 of these people, 600 more than in 1956 and nearly three times as many as just twenty years ago."

Jan 1, 1967

By G. Bourque

One of the design criteria for the Mount Wright facilities was to incorporate the latest proven automation techniques and devices for the new crushing, grinding and concentrating plant. The heart of the centralized control system is a Fox 1 process computer, located in the central control room in the administration building. The entire operation, i.e. crushing, conveying, storing, grinding and concentrating, is monitored and controlled, through the process computer , by one operator via a CRT console. In case of computer failure, the control is automatically, and without process interruption, transferred to manual back-up panels. One of the newest management tools, the process computer is programmed to collect and automatically print out shift. daily and monthly reports on tonnage, metallurgy and equipment operating time, for better planning of operations and preventative maintenance.

Jan 1, 1977

By G M. Thorpe

This paper discusses mine research at Inco, giving specific examples of research projects which illustrate the approach to mining problems. The first example covers the development of a new mining method, "undercut and fill," which was originated for mining badly broken-up pillars, but which is now rapidly replacing the square set method of pillar recovery. In the new method, ore is extracted in a series of successive horizontal cuts, progressing downward, a cut being completely mined and filled before the cut below is started. In the second example, improvements to the "cut and fill" method of mining are discussed. These improvements are the result of improved techniques and improved equipment, etc., with, in many cases, the former being made possible by the latter. The advances made have permitted the use of the "cut and fill" method at much greater depths than before. The third example is presented to illustrate research undertaken to obtain the earliest maximum advantage of the introduction of a new piece of equipment or material. For this purpose, the development of the "Under-ground use of AN /FO Blasting Agent " has been selected. Work on this project started in May, 1960, at a time when there was very little in-formation regarding the potentialities of AN /FO for underground blasting, either primary or secondary. By the end of 1961, AN /FO made up 64 per cent of the explosives used under-ground at Inco mines.

Jan 1, 1963

By N. O. Lotter

The connection between mineralogy and metallurgical performance in a plant was recognised long ago (Gaudin, 1939; Petruk, 1976; Petruk and Hughson, 1977; Cabri, 1981; Petruk and Schnaar, 1981; Kinloch, 1982; Peyerl, 1983, Baum et al 1989 for example). The modern toolbox that we now routinely use for flowsheet development took decades to develop (Lotter et al., 2002; Baum and Lotter, 2004; Lotter, 2011 for example). Many workers contributed considerable time and effort to this overall mission of connecting sampling, mineralogy and mineral processing to integrate the flowsheet development activities. Certain key milestones marked this journey, such as Gy’s treatise on the sampling of particulate materials in 1979, which was later added to by François-Bongarçon, Pitard, Minnitt, and Holmes for example. The development of QEM*SEM by Gottlieb et al. of the MLA by Gu et al. constituted a huge leap forward in accuracy and mineral measurement capacity, as well as a reduction in standard errors of mineral characterisation. The advancement of the microprobe to an automated platform made a significant difference to detailed compositional mineralogy. This led to a strong position from which to draw meaningful processing implications from the mineralogical data. Reproducible flotation testing and reliable plant survey material for characterisation was dealt with by, amongst others, High Confidence Flotation Testing ( Lotter, 1995: Runge, 2010, and Bradshaw, 1997); and Statistical Benchmark Surveying (Lotter, 2005), with earlier prototypes which were steadily improved (Lotter, 1994; Restarick, 1976). The sterling work of Napier-Munn in engaging sound statistical methods with mineral processing led to the successful design and use of methods that could identify and quantify small recovery gains in plant scale trials. This history and present capability are reviewed, including leverage into asset management.

Jan 1, 2018

By Charles Camsell

THE Northwest Territories covers a very large area-more than one-third of all Canada-and its most northern point, Cape Columbia in Ellesmere island, is distant only 500 miles from the Pole. Our first knowledge of the Arctic Archipelago, of which Ellesmere island forms a part, resulted from a gold-mining venture in Queen Elizabeth's reign. The English navigators of that time were eager to find a north-westerly and shorter and Jess hazardous route to the riches of China and Japan than that which Magellan had discovered, but they were unaware that the continent then known to bar a direct route extended in great width far to the north. Frobisher was one of these navigators. He reached in 1576 the bay in Baffin island now named after him, convinced that he had found a passage connecting the Atlantic with Asiatic seas. Forced to re-turn after ordeals in which ice, wind, and Eskimos flayed formidable parts, he brought back, among other novelties, a piece o black stone which had been picked up casually by one of his officers, and gave a little of it to the wife of one of the venturers, or financial backers of the enterprise. To quote now from Hakluyt: ? 'She by chance threw and burned it in the fire so long that , at length being taken forth and quenched in a little vinegar, it glistered with a bright marquesset of gold. Whereupon the matter being called in sorne question, it was brought to certain goldminers in London to make assay thereof, who indeed found it to hold gold and that very richly for the quantity." On the strength of this, the venturers, anticipating much profit, launched a second expedition to secure more of this stone, and 143 persons, including 14 miners and finers, set forth in 1577 and returned the same year, with, however, 200 tons of another mineral. Influenced by glowing accounts of veritable mountains of this mineral and by assays made after "additaments"-that is how "salting" in those days was described-the venturers, including Elizabeth, supplied funds for erecting a smelter and refinery at Dartford and outfitting a stilllarger expedition. And so, in 1578, fifteen ships departed with the Queen's blessing, for the same remote shores. After many mishaps, they returned with over 1,000 tons of the mineral, but when it yielded very little of value at the works in Dartford, the? Company of Venturers was forced into liquidation. Though our first prospector and miner was rather inconsiderate of the investors, he proved the existence of an archipelago, hitherto unknown, and secured much information about the new land and its dwellers.

Jan 1, 1938