IRON AND STEEL. 69 



ago. Bessemer's first idea was to produce wrought iron by forcing a 

 strong blast of atmospheric air through the melted iron by which the 

 carbon would be burned away and the iron reduced to nature. His 

 earlier experiments were disastrous failures. The iron produced was 

 so brittle as to be almost worthless, and no steel worthy of the name 

 could be made. At length Mr. Robert Mushet suggested that if 

 manganese were added to the iron good steel could be made. This 

 was done and proved highly successful. Some improvements were 

 also made in the lining of the converters by which the amount of 

 silicon in the iron was reduced. The Bessemer process requires a 

 good quality of pig iron, reasonably free from phosphorus, sulphur 

 and arsenic, and not containing a superabundance of silicon or tita- 

 nium. This is melted in an ordinary furnace and conveyed to the 

 converter, which somewhat resembles an immense soda water bottle 

 with the neck wrenched to one side. The ordinary converter con- 

 tains from five to ten tons of molten iron, but is then not more than 

 one fourth filled. A powerful blast of air is now conveyed to the 

 bottom of the converter whence it rises through the iron, uniting with 

 the carbon, producing combustion and intense heat. The blow is 

 usually continued from 15 to 20 minutes, and manganese is added 

 during the process, generally in the shape of spiegeleisen, but some- 

 times as ferro-manganese. When the operation has continued a 

 sufficient time, which is determined by means of the spectroscope, 

 the blast is stopped, the converter is tipped to one side, the metal 

 flows into moulds, and the ignots so formed are known as Bassemer 

 blooms. Sir Henry Bessemer's royalty amounts to only a shilling a 

 ton, but in 1879 Mr. J. S. Jeans, secretary of the British Iron Asso- 

 ciation, wrote that he had then received from his patent upward of 

 ^1,050,000 sterling. 



A description of the first iron works established in Canada will 

 not, I hope, prove uninteresting. 



Colbert, the great French financier and Prime Minister to 

 Louis XIV., was strongly impressed with the importance of the Cana- 

 dian dominions of France, and he carried on a long correspondence 

 with M. Talon, the royal intendant, with a view to the discovery and 

 working of mineral treasures in New France. Many of the- 

 letters are now in the Parliamentary Library at Ottawa. 



In 1650 Father Drouillettes, a member of that noble band of 



