66 ALEXANDER AGASSIZ 



these two brothers-in-law as they struggled to keep this 

 desperate venture afloat. While Agassiz on his part was 

 endeavoring, with insufficient means, to start everything 

 afresh, surrounded by incompetent and dishonest super- 

 intendents who had been running the affairs of the 

 mine to their own advantage, Mr. Shaw in Boston was 

 confronted with equal, if not more trying, difficulties. 

 The mines had already consumed more money than had 

 been expected ; Mr. Shaw's affairs were involved, he was 

 at the end of his financial resources, pressed by his 

 creditors, and loaded with law-suits. In the face of all 

 this, he was straining every nerve to get money to de- 

 velop the properties from a community that had lost 

 confidence in them. As Agassiz wrote long afterward, 

 "If Quin had ever known when he was beaten we 

 should never have pulled the thing off." 



One of the most difficult of the undertakings which 

 confronted Agassiz was the necessity of changing the 

 openings on both mines, so that in future the rock could 

 be extracted by legitimate mining methods. Work was 

 at once started to build a dam for the Calumet Mill. 

 But as the stream was barely sufficient for this, he pre- 

 pared to construct a small railroad to Torch Lake, which 

 would not only open a mill-site for Hecla, but also fur- 

 nish a convenient communication with the mines. 



From the first, Agassiz mistrusted the advisability of 

 setting up the rolls which Hulbert had bought for the 

 Calumet Mill, as those at Huron were not working sat- 

 isfactorily. Finding that he could buy on the Peninsula 

 two heavy heads of Ball stamps, capable of turning out 

 seventy-five to ninety tons of rock a day, he planned 

 to set these up in the Calumet Mill. If later the rolls 

 were proving satisfactory at Huron, he then proposed 



