Boys are employed in the cobbing-sheds to chip, or cob, the rock cleanly from the ore, an operation which is much more troublesome with thin veins than with those of the better sort to which, as I have already said, the waste rock is less firmly adherent. This cobbing is a very troublesome and expensive process, costing about 5 dollars a ton. After cobbing, great care is required in sorting the ore into the respective grades of Nos. 1, 2, and 3. It is then put up in bags of about 160 lbs. each, marked, and stacked away in the bins ready for shipment. All this is done in a very rough and ready style, and the waste is simply enormous: there is no doubt, however, that as the ore increases in value more scientific appliances will be adopted with good results. At present thousands of tons of rock containing only thin veins of asbestos are dumped on the refuse heaps as waste which would all be crushed if a proper machine were at hand, and the valuable material saved. In the cobbed state ready for market the ore is worth at the mines at the present time from 50 dollars to 55 dollars for No. 2, and from 80 dollars to 100 dollars for No. 1. It is evident, therefore, on a comparison of the cost of extraction with the price realised for the raw material, that there is ample margin for good profit. Wages run from 1 dollar to 1 dollar 75 cents a day, according to the nature of the work performed, for men, and from 50 cents to 1 dollar for lads and cobbers. The comparison of the cost of production, therefore, with the value of the raw material, shows a very large margin of profit. There is no scarcity of labour, a sufficient number of hands, mostly French-Canadians, being always forthcoming; but at those mines where there is an insufficiency of houses for married men, accommodation has to be found in the barrack-like building for single men; the married men, who cannot be accommodated, residing frequently at a long distance from their work, which causes them to be of a migratory disposition, and gives considerable additional trouble to the management. A disadvantage in the employment of French-Canadian labour lies in the great number of festivals incident to their religion, with consequent loss of work at the mines, but apparently there is no remedy for this at present. The greatest curse of the place, however, is gin. Although the district is under the Scott Act, and the sale of liquor consequently prohibited, like every other place where the sale is interdicted there is no difficulty, if you know how to go about it, sometimes even if you don't, in getting as much as you please. At any rate I never yet was in any such place where I did not find it to be so.