itions in the desert were a little worse than awful, but
by his technical and organizing ability he brought to life the two or
three abandoned mines which constituted the Broken Hills properties,
and, adding to them some adjoining lower grade mines, converted the
whole group from a state of great but unrealized possibilities into one
of highly profitable actualities. An important factor in this
achievement was his origination and successful development of a process
for extracting the zinc from ores that had already been treated for the
other metals and then cast aside as worthless residues. There were
fourteen million tons of these residues on the Broken Hills dumps and
from them he derived large returns for the company that he had organized
to purchase the property.

He also introduced new metallurgical processes for the profitable
handling of the low-grade sulphide ores that constituted most of the
mineral body of the mines. Indeed, this work in South Australia did much
to help prove to him what has long been one of his cardinal beliefs,
namely, that the safe backbone of mining lies in the handling of large
bodies of low-grade ores. When such great ore-bodies are given the
benefit of proper metallurgical processes and large organizing and
intelligent building up of exterior plants, mining leaves the realms of
speculation and becomes a certain and stable business operation.

All this successful work in South Australia occupied but seven months.
Back in London again he gathered about him a remarkable staff of skilled
young mining engineers, mostly Americans. There were thirty-five or
forty of them, indeed, not on salary or fixed appointment, but men eager
to attach themselves to him for the sake of working with him or for him
in connection with the ever-increasing number of his large enterprises
in the way of reorganization and rehabilitation of mines scattered all
over the world. He became the managing director or chief consulting
engineer of a score of mining companies, and the simple association of
his name with a mining enterprise gave investors and other engineers a
perfect confidence in its success and its honest handling.

Two of his largest undertakings were in Russia, one at Kyshtim, in the
Urals, the other at Irtish on the Siberian plains near Manchuria. The
Kyshtim property was a great but run-down historic establishment, on an
estate of an area almost equal to that of all Belgium. One hundred and
seventy t