CHAPTER 38
I DISCOVER ANOTHER GREAT IRON ORE RANGE THAT WILL SOME DAY HELP TO SUPPLY THE WORLD
WHILE FOLLOWING a Sakalava native trail in Madagascar, just like a Kaffir path in Africa, I came to a stretch where the dust of the path was red. Searching on either side I found bowlders of hematite iron ore. These I traced to a ridge of which they were the talus. I traced this hogback for forty miles and came to neither end. In many places along it I found rich iron ore.
Specimens I procured showed a metallic iron content of sixty-four per cent. and nine thousandths of one per cent. of phosphorus. The analyses were made by a chemist in the laboratory of one of the great iron mines of Lake Superior.
It is a new range of iron ore that has never been seen to be recognized by any other than myself. There it lies to supply mankind when busier and nearer deposits are exhausted. It is located almost as conveniently to the markets of the world as the Chilian deposits, back of Coquimbo, that Mr. Schwab is developing, and perhaps more so than the Minas Geraes district of Brazil, where American capital is interested.
This new range is in a country where the government is stable and just, and taxation is low. There is an unlimited supply of native, low-cost labor. At present the lands are wild; that is they are owned by the government and may be bought for a few cents an acre.
I feel that I am quite within the limits of reason when I state that this new iron range is likely to produce as much high grade Bessemer ore as some of the world’s greatest iron regions. I am making further investigations. After completing this work I shall inform the world of the location of this discovery.
It goes to prove further the statement of Professor C. K. Leith, of the University of Wisconsin, made in his paper on the “Conservation of Iron Ore,” at the New York meeting, February, 1916, of the American Institute of Mining Engineers, to the effect that there is no danger of immediate exhaustion of the iron ore reserves of the world.
When the late James J. Hill was trading on his Minnesota iron lands, he was quoted as making a statement that the iron ore of the world would be exhausted in twenty years. It caused much comment. Mr. Hill denied making the statement. It bulled the iron ore land market for a time, and increased the standard of measurement of values of iron ore in the ground which had been entirely too low. It was during the period of low values and restricted demand that Mr. Carnegie and Mr. Rockefeller secured their great Lake Superior holdings.
