MORE WANDERINGS AND WORK 225 



tal on Calumet the last ten years, instead of all the other 

 moonshine enterprises in Mexico, etc., I should now be 

 a very rich man, and be able to do all I have ever 

 dreamed of in my wildest days. However, it is not too 

 late, and if I can carry out my plans, which seem per- 

 fectly feasible to the men here, I shall in less than five 

 years treble our dividends. 



I am up early, run round all day and talk all evening 

 to the various bosses and hear what they have to say 

 and suggest, and think that by the time I get off the 

 whole plan for five years will be laid out like a time- 

 table, to which we can work and lose no time if we take 

 matters in hand now. 



The weather continues magnificent. Went to Lake 

 Superior yesterday. The woods are superb now, and I 

 enjoyed tramping along the shores and trying to find a 

 suitable site for the location of waterworks which we 

 shall shortly have to put up to supply this place with 

 water, as all the wells are being dried up by the mine 

 as it gets deeper and deeper." 



But such rosy prospects were unexpectedly postponed 

 by a series of disastrous fires in the timbering of the 

 mine, which, had it not been for Agassiz's ingenuity in 

 devising new methods for extinguishing them, would 

 probably have resulted in an overwhelming calamity. 

 The burning portions of the mine were sealed, and 

 steam forced into them through pipes that led well down 

 the shafts ; later carbonic acid gas was manufactured on 

 a huge scale, and many million feet were forced into 

 the mine in the same way. Such devices proved success- 

 ful in eventually extinguishing the fires, but the mine 

 was crippled for a number of years. 



