chain. We were misled, however, in our investment in the Tyrone
region, and lost considerable sums as the result of our attempts to
mine and use the ores of that section. They promised well at the edges
of the mines, where the action of the weather for ages had washed away
impurities and enriched the ore, but when we penetrated a small
distance they proved too "lean" to work.

Our chemist, Mr. Prousser, was then sent to a Pennsylvania furnace
among the hills which we had leased, with instructions to analyze all
the materials brought to him from the district, and to encourage
people to bring him specimens of minerals. A striking example of the
awe inspired by the chemist in those days was that only with great
difficulty could he obtain a man or a boy to assist him in the
laboratory. He was suspected of illicit intercourse with the Powers of
Evil when he undertook to tell by his suspicious-looking apparatus
what a stone contained. I believe that at last we had to send him a
man from our office at Pittsburgh.

One day he sent us a report of analyses of ore remarkable for the
absence of phosphorus. It was really an ore suitable for making
Bessemer steel. Such a discovery attracted our attention at once. The
owner of the property was Moses Thompson, a rich farmer, proprietor of
seven thousand acres of the most beautiful agricultural land in Center
County, Pennsylvania. An appointment was made to meet him upon the
ground from which the ore had been obtained. We found the mine had
been worked for a charcoal blast furnace fifty or sixty years before,
but it had not borne a good reputation then, the reason no doubt being
that its product was so much purer than other ores that the same
amount of flux used caused trouble in smelting. It was so good it was
good for nothing in those days of old.

We finally obtained the right to take the mine over at any time within
six months, and we therefore began the work of examination, which
every purchaser of mineral property should make most carefully. We ran
lines across the hillside fifty feet apart, with cross-lines at
distances of a hundred feet apart, and at each point of intersection
we put a shaft down through the ore. I believe there were eighty such
shafts in all and the ore was analyzed at every few feet of depth, so
that before we paid over the hundred thousand dollars asked we knew
exactly what there was of ore. The result hoped for was more than
realized. Through the ability