Although the largest, the Creighton is by no means the only nickel mine here. The British American Nickel Company owns and operates the Murray mine, where nickel was first found in Canada. It formerly belonged to the Vivians of Wales. This company has a large smelting plant at Nickelton, not far from Sudbury, and a refinery at Deschennes, near Ottawa. A half dozen mines are owned by the Mond Nickel Company, which ships practically all its matte to Clydach, Wales, for refining. The copper in this matte is recovered as copper sulphate, which is exported largely to Italy and other grape-growing countries for spraying the vines. The matte exported by the Mond Company is shipped in oaken casks, which are refilled in Wales with the copper sulphate and sent to Italy. The Italian peasants insist on the chemical being received in such containers, not only to keep the sulphate crystals unbroken, but also because after emptying, they saw the casks in two and use them as washtubs. The production of nickel reached its height in 1918, when five thousand tons of ore a day were mined. This was due to the many uses of the metal in the World War. After the Armistice, the nickel market was so over-stocked that a severe slump in prices occurred, and the nickel production fell from forty-six thousand tons in 1918 to eight thousand tons in 1922. There were large quantities of the metal in all the belligerent countries, and these had to be absorbed before the Canadian industry could return to normal. The end of 1922 found a more active demand, and this was followed by an increase in production and sales. During my stay at Copper Cliff I have had a talk about nickel and its uses with one of the metallurgists of the International Nickel Company. This man has been working successfully in nickel for thirty years or more, and he knows as much about the metal, perhaps, as any one in the country. Among the first discoverers of nickel, says he, were the German miners of old, who found this metal in their copper ore. Its hardness and the difficulty they experienced in smelting it led them to associate it with “Old Nick”--hence its name. This hardness is one of the most valuable characteristics in its present-day uses.