SILVER ORE FOR ROADMENDING

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVI, Issue 8182, 25 July 1912, Page 23

SILVER ORE FOR ROADMENDING

WEALTHY TOWN IN RUINS. Cobalt has mot tho faie which men were discussing when I visited the famous silver camp last year (.writes a "Daily Chronicle” representative). Only a few weeks before tne Porcupine district, to the north, had been swept by flame, and miners and storekeepers wondered whether and when tneir own straggling cluster of wooden shacks would lie a heap of blackened ruins. Cobalt is all romance if you seek it. Just seven years ago, when the railway was being pushed through this region of rocks to the rich agricultural belt that lies to the north, a man named La Rose was employed on tho road as blacksmith. Ono day he chanced to chip the lump of stono with which ho had propped open the door of his wooden hut, and say the gleam of metal. Ho spoke to an engineer about it, specimens were assayed, and it, was fount! that the lino ran on a bed that is as near pure silver as the world has ever yet known. La Rose pegged out the i 0 acres allowed to the discoverer of a new metal area, sold the land for 25,000 dollars, and when' I descended the La Rose Mine six years later, it had already produced about nine miß'on ounces of silver, and had earned well over a million sterling. The La Rose Mine is only one of nearly thirty that now produce over an eighth (roughly )3 per o-nt.) of the world’s total output of silver. Nearly thirty-three million ounces was the yield in 1010. It is typical of tho whole of Canada, that Cobalt is so rich that only tho richest ore is dealt with. ‘ Low grade ore, that would- mako another town wealthy, is contemptuously thrown aside, or used, for road-mending. In a few years this wooden town of nearly 0000 people had sprung up with several churches, a hospital, a theatre, cinematograph ; shows, a daily newspaper appropriately named “Tho Cobalt Nugget,” and electric light from power developed at $ neighbouring waterfalls.