iSgg] Mineral Resources of the Ottawa District. 31 



Germany ; and there is no reason why methods which are so 

 successful in those countries should not be equally so here, pro- 

 vided the greater cost of labor be not an insuperable obstacle. 

 Figures given by the American expert, Birkenbinc, for the 

 Ottawa district, some years ago, placed the cost of manufacture, 

 even under the then unfavorable conditions, at such a price as 

 to fairly warrant investment at some central point such as 

 Ottawa city, and to make the erection of a blast furnace profit- 

 able, but the initial cost of such an enterprise is heavy and 

 investors prefer often to take their chances in some more gilded 

 scheme, even though, as is often the case, the results are not 

 always very flattering. However this country is as yet com- 

 paratively young in mining matters and the attention of foreign 

 capitalists is now only being directed to this portion of the 

 empire as a field for profitable investment, so that it is not worth 

 while to become greatly discouraged over a present depression 

 along certain lines. 



Graphite. 



Among the other mineral industries that at some not 

 far distant day promise to be a very important factor in the 

 country's development is the mining of graphite. We have in 

 the Ottawa district some of the largest and most valuable 

 deposits of this mineral anywhere known, and easy of access, 

 and though efforts have been made in a half-hearted way for 

 some years to turn these to profitable account, such attempts 

 have been so carried on as not to yield satisfactory returns. In 

 such a case we should not attribute the lack of success to any 

 fault on the part of the ore deposit, since this has been thoroughly 

 investigated in the laboratory of the Geological Survey, and the 

 mineral found to equal in quality, for all practical purposes, that 

 from the celebrated mines of Ceylon, which so largely enter the 

 markets of the world to-day. The failure rather seems to be on 

 the part of those who have the mines in charge, and to their lack 

 of enterprise in seeking a market, since the Canadian market 

 alone consumes annually a sufficient amount of this material to 

 warrant the workings of these deposits on a large scale. Thus 



