ILLINOIS STATE BEE-KBEPERS' ASSOCIATION. 119 



either, so there you are. The fact that the marked hive was not there 

 might argue badly for the man who kept them.. 



Now, this country down there is really a country which the Amer- 

 ican people ought to be interested in. It is probably the richest 

 country — Macedonia, the Balkans — ^probably the richest country in 

 the world. Now I say that intentionally, knowing what I am speaking 

 about. That country has never been opened and never been developed, 

 and why Germany and Austria were so terribly after the Balkans, to 

 get hold of them and why Italy now is so crazy to get over and get 

 hold of them, is for this reason: In their natural wealth there is no 

 country that can compare with them. In our camp, in those 171,000 

 hectares of land, we were digging wells, to get down to drinking water. 

 The first thing we struck below the ground was one yard of coal. Then 

 we struck another yard of coal a little lower, and about ten feet from 

 that we struck a vein of coal which went fifteen feet when I left and 

 never reached the bottom of the vein. Now, th4t whole plain is under- 

 laid with coal all the way through. There are out-croppings of oil in 

 different places. Then up in the mountains that I have been describing, 

 beside the flowers and the thyme that grows there, is the wealth inside 

 of those mountains, because those mountains are a solid mass of iron. 

 I saw the Mesaba range in Minnesota, and the wealth of iron in those 

 mountains surpasses Minnesota. We brought with us pure crystals 

 of magnetite, which you can pick up anywhere in those mountains. 

 Imagine a field of coal like Pennsylvania, surrounded by iron mountains, 

 like the Mesaba range, coal and iron brought together, and there never 

 has been a chimney smoking on those plains from the beginning of 

 the world. Where the shells struck the hills back of the Bulgarian 

 lines, a place perhaps ten miles square or more, there were veins of 

 quartz going everywhere, and when a shell broke it up we could see 

 beautiful yellow outcroppings of gold. In fact, in the quartz, where 

 they were crushing their stone, you could pick up those stones and 

 you could see free gold anywhere. I brought samples with me, because^ 

 they were telling me it was pyrite or something. I brought it with 

 me to the University of Minnesota and had it analyzed, and they 

 told me there was twenty-two ounces of gold in that sample I gave 

 them. 



They have their copper mines, which surpass probably our copper 

 mines in Minnesota alad Michigan. One copper mine is so rich that 

 it is difficult to mine, because the pockets of pure copper are so extensive- 

 that they cannot blast it. They have lead, and sulphur, and mineral 

 springs, and timber, and water power, the whole country is one wealth 

 of mineral and power from one end t^the other. 



Now, when you remember that Italy has known, France has known, 

 Germany has known and Austria ha^Jsnown of all this, and when the 

 Ural mountains and the northeastern part of France are the only other 

 places where ore may be found to some extent, and nature has piled 

 it down in the Balkans in inestimable amounts, so tha(t it cannot be 

 figured out how much there is down there, now you understand why 

 everybody wants to have posession of the Balkans, and why there 

 are so many wars down there. It is just a war to see who is going to 

 have it, and the Jugo-Slav nation, which lives there and which is now 



