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nickel and copper that possesses great strength, does not corrode easily, and is impervious to electrical currents. It is used in hotel kitchen equipment, in dyeing and pickling vats, and in many kinds of electrical apparatus.

The mineral deposits of Sudbury were discovered by the Canadian Pacific Railway, which was responsible also for the finding of silver at Cobalt. However, no attention was paid to the nickel in the ore, which for years was considered valuable only for the copper it contained. Part of the ore was sent to New Jersey for smelting and refining, and part to Wales. The reduction works at New Jersey looked upon the nickel as of no account and let it run off with the slag, while the Wales smelters paid only for the copper and kept the nickel as a private rake-off. Later the mine owners discovered that the nickel was far more valuable than the copper, and since then nickel has been the principal source of profit.

Although the largest, the Creighton is by no means the only nickel mine here. The British American Nickel Company owns and operates the Murray mine, where nickel was first found in Canada. It formerly belonged to the Vivians of Wales. This company has a large smelting plant at Nickelton, not far from Sudbury, and a refinery at Deschennes, near Ottawa. A half dozen mines are owned by the Mond Nickel Company, which ships practically all its matte to Clydach, Wales, for refining. The copper in this matte is recovered as copper sulphate, which is exported largely to Italy and other grape-growing countries for spraying the vines. The matte exported by the Mond Company is shipped in oaken casks, which are refilled in Wales with the copper sulphate and sent to Italy. The Italian peasants insist

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on the chemical being received in such containers, not only to keep the sulphate crystals unbroken, but also because after emptying, they saw the casks in two and use them as washtubs.

The production of nickel reached its height in 1918, when five thousand tons of ore a day were mined. This was due to the many uses of the metal in the World War. After the Armistice, the nickel market was so over-stocked that a severe slump in prices occurred, and the nickel production fell from forty-six thousand tons in 1918 to eight thousand tons in 1922. There were large quantities of the metal in all the belligerent countries, and these had to be absorbed before the Canadian industry could return to normal. The end of 1922 found a more active demand, and this was followed by an increase in production and sales.

During my stay at Copper Cliff I have had a talk about nickel and its uses with one of the metallurgists of the International Nickel Company. This man has been working successfully in nickel for thirty years or more, and he knows as much about the metal, perhaps, as any one in the country. Among the first discoverers of nickel, says he, were the German miners of old, who found this metal in their copper ore. Its hardness and the difficulty they experienced in smelting it led them to associate it with "Old Nick"-hence its name. This hardness is one of the most valuable characteristics in its present-day uses. "Most of the nickel goes into nickel-steel," said the metallurgist, "although it enters also into many other manufactures. The value of nickel-steel is due to the fact that it combines exceeding toughness with great strength. Copper wire has great toughness. A steel needle or pen

knife has great strength. But it is only nickel-steel that has both toughness and strength. This makes it the best metal we know for armour plate. A battleship with a hull covered with steel or iron would be shattered to pieces if it were hit by one of the modern shells. If the armour plate is made of nickel-steel, the largest projectile makes only a dimple, such as you would in a pat of butter by sticking your finger into it. This property of toughness is added to the steel by putting in three and one half per cent. of nickel during the process of manufacturing. All the big warships of to-day have a belt of nickel-steel armour plate about eighteen inches thick. Nickel is also alloyed with copper for making army field kitchens and bullet casings."

Nickel-steel rails are used largely where there are curves at the bottom of steep grades. When a heavily loaded freight train strikes such a curve, the only things that hold it on the track are the flanges of the wheels and the heads of the rails. In winter the rails are apt to become brittle, and when a heavy train, rushing down hill, strikes them they sometimes break and there is a wreck. The Horseshoe Curve of the Pennsylvania Railroad, for instance, is made of nickel-steel rails.

The metal is employed also in bridge building. It is going into many of our large apartment houses and other tall buildings. It is fifty per cent. stronger than ordinary steel and the result is that less metal can be used, or with an equal weight the building can have double the strength. Nickel-steel does not expand or contract as much as common steel, and for this reason it is made into clock pendulums, which must be of the same length the year round in order to keep the right time. As nickel does not rust in air or water, and resists the action of many acids, it is

much used in plating other metals. It is in demand for cooking utensils, household articles, and plumbing equipment, as well as for automobile parts. Practically all the nickel contained in our five-cent pieces is from the Canadian mines. They are only one quarter nickel, however, the remainder being copper. Indeed, there is but a fraction of a cent's worth of nickel in a five-cent piece. A few countries, however, use pure nickel for their coinage.

Do you know that nickel-steel and meteorites have practically the same composition? Indeed, the process for making nickel-steel was suggested by a meteor found in Greenland. This meteor was an immense mass that had fallen from the skies ages ago and was venerated by the Greenlanders as a god. The natives were wont to hammer splinters from it and make them into spear heads and hammer heads, accompanying their work by prayers to the god. Explorers found that such spear heads were harder and finer than any others. An Englishman named Riley heard of these discoveries, and they gave him the idea that ended in the new metal.

CHAPTER XVIII

SAULT STE. MARIE AND THE CLAY BELT

AM at the "Soo," where Lake Superior, the world's largest body of fresh water, has been harnessed and is being made to work with a force of sixty thousand horses all pulling at once. The St. Mary's River, through which Lake Superior empties into Lake Huron, has a fall of about twenty-two feet in one mile, and power plants have been installed which are generating electricity for industries on both the American and Canadian sides of the river.

A large number of the industrial plants here belong to Americans. The main buildings of these works look like mediæval castles rather than modern factories. They are equal in beauty to any of the ruins of the Rhine or the Danube. Indeed, they remind me of the mighty forts of Delhi, the capital of India. They are made of a rich red and white sandstone, with crenellated walls, and, notwithstanding their beauty, are said to have been built at a remarkably low cost. The blocks of sandstone were taken out of the canal dug for the power plant.

It is interesting to go through these factories and see the work of Lake Superior in harness. In the pulp mills, where more than a hundred huge truck loads of news-print are turned out every day, I saw the logs ground to dust, mixed with water, and made into miles of paper to feed printing presses. The output is so great that every three

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