"We could ship ore now,” said Mr. J. F. Black, General Manager and Director of the Nancy-Helen Mines, Ltd. “We have sacked three carloads of good ore taken from our shaft, but we do not purpose beginning to ship until we can keep right on, and to get ready as we are getting ready takes time,” and when I saw what was meant by “ getting ready,” I did not wonder that it should take time.

So many of the mines, in their rush to get to shipping, in order to make a “Good Impression” on their stockholders and the public, start before they are ready, and then the management wonder that their mines should lose their good name when ‘ shipping is stopped to do what should have been done before they started to send out the few cars sacked.

Like The City of Cobalt, the Nancy-Helen is “right in town,” their shaft and numerous well-equipped buildings adjoin the first-named mines on the west, and lie between “The City of Cobalt” and the Buffalo.

Here is what Manager Black calls “getting ready.” They have an 89-foot shaft, a large shaft-house, rock, power, and hoist houses; large cook and dining, and bunk houses, stable and other buildings. They have just installed and started running a 100 h.p. Weber Producer Suction Gas plant, together with a Rand 6-drill compressor, steam hoist, air drills, etc.

There are few mines in the camp that have made the thorough preparation that has been made by the Nancy-Helen. This is because the Black Brothers, in their long experience in the Sudbury mining district, learned that the only way to mine profitably was to first have installed the most approved equipment. No, I am wrong in that “first.” I should have said that the first thing necessary to mine profitably is a good mineralized property. That the Nancy-Helen surely has, in its 43 acres, in the very heart of this fabulously rich mining district. Looking from the office there may be seen these great mining properties— most of them immediately adjoining. The Buffalo, Trethewey, Coniagas, City of Cobalt, Larose, Nipissing, McKinley-Darragh, Cobalt Lake, Right-of-Way, etc. More than a dozen well-defined veins have already been located, and while sinking the shaft three rich veins were struck, from which the three cars of ore now ready sacked were taken. This ore runs from $600 to $900 per ton, and is getting richer as the shaft is being sunk.

He Lacked the Twenty

Mr. J. F. Black has had some interesting experience in Cobalt. He came shortly after McKinley and Darragh located their now famous mine, which at the time they valued at a trifle of $20,000. “Why didn’t you take it? ” I asked of J. F. “Why? Well, I was like the barefoot Irishman who said he could buy a pair of boots for a quarter, but he didn’t have the quarter. Same here, I didn’t have the twenty. Later I got a ninety-day option on it at $150,000, and beginning work, soon had out five carloads of ore. I got a Chicago firm enough interested to send a! mining expert (spare the term) to look at the property. He came, looked wise, examined the five cars of ore—which I really don’t believe he knew from common rock—saw the hole from which we had taken the ore, and then after looking wise again, he went back to Chicago and reported that he had seen a “fair showing,” but that he could not advise the purchase, as he was afraid the “thing” would not hold out. The “thing” went into a company inside of three months at $2,500,000, and the stock has since sold at a price to indicate a value of $10,000,000, and only recently they have struck another immense vein of rich ore. Yes, I have regretted several times since, that I hadn’t the $20,000, but then as the Nancy-Helen continues to grow richer and richer, I guess I will, in the end, have little teas to worry over the fortune I might have made over there,” i he pointed at the derricks of the McKinley-Darragh that w lifting out the rock at the new vein.

Later.—The Nancy-Helen has been added to the list shippers, and has put in many improvements. The shaft down over zoo feet and much drifting done.