Hoover was now twenty-four, and a man of large reputation in mining circles in Australia and London, with a salary to correspond. He had spent about twenty-four months in West Australia, although they ran over all of one and parts of two other years, so that he is generally credited with having remained there three years. And he could have gone on among the Australian mines for as many years as he liked, for the big men in London now fully realized that they had in this young American engineer the unusual man, and that his only limit in Australia would be the limit of the possible. But the new opportunity and the new experience were calling. Just about this time a young Chinaman of royal family in Peking had made a successful _coup d'etat_ and had formed a cabinet for the first time in the history of China, and this cabinet decided, naturally also for the first time in the history of China, to effect a cooerdinated control of all the mines of the Empire. There was, therefore, established a Department of Mines, with a wily old Chinaman, named Chang Yen Mow, at its head. He understood that Chinamen knew little about mining, and hence decided to find a foreigner to help him manage the mines of the Empire. He also thought that a foreigner, thus attached as an official to his department, could be of particular help to him in dealing with other foreigners inclined to exploit Chinese mines more for their own benefit than China's. This official was to be in a position much like that of an undersecretary in a cabinet department, and was to be given the title, in the Chinese equivalent, of "Director-General of Mines." He was to have a salary appropriate to such a large title. With all this decided, it only remained to find the proper foreigner, who should be a man who knew much about mines and was honest. There was, as we know, just such a man in Western Australia. CHAPTER V IN CHINA