Mr. von Hamerstein added: “As far as petroleum is concerned, I have all my money put into it, and there is other people’s money in it, and I have to be loyal. As to whether you can get petroleum in merchantable quantities, that is a matter about which I would not care to speak. I have been taking in machinery for about three years. Last year I placed about fifty thousand dollars worth of machinery in there. I have not brought it in for ornamental purposes, although it does look nice and home-like.” In the winter of 1910, Corporal A. H. Schurer, of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, made a patrol from Athabaska to McMurray. In his report he states:—“I visited the oil wells sunk by Baron A. von Hamerstein at Poplar island, six miles below McMurray. I could see very little with the exception of the machinery, as the snow had covered everything up. A Mr. Falkner, supposed to be representing a party of eastern capitalists, has been staking out claims between McMurray and McKay for oil, during the past two months, and I understand that he is also to prospect Clearwater river east of McMurray for petroleum and other minerals. In December last Mr. Julius Alteschul, a German, claiming to be a representative of a London, England, financial house, visited McMurray, and after having been there for a few days, stated that he had found a mineral more valuable than radium, and that as soon as Athabaska river was navigable, he would place one hundred workmen and their families at McMurray, where he intended to start an industry; what this industry was to be Mr. Alteschul did not make clear. It is the general impression that Alteschul was merely paying a visit to a much talked of place in order to find out what minerals actually existed, but did not want his mission to be known.” NATURAL GAS. Corporal Mellor states (Royal Northwest Mounted Police report of 1909) that when patrolling the buffalo country near Peace point he came across “a large natural gas spout burning in a muskeg and was informed it never goes out.” During his examination before the select committee of the Senate in 1907 Mr. von Hamerstein drew the attention of the committee to the waste of natural oil gas at the government bore hole at Pelican portage or Pelican rapids. It was still burning. When Mr. von Hamerstein went up in the month of June, 1906, it blew about eighteen or twenty feet. About four years previously he found it was about forty feet, a vertical stream. It exploded with such force that not a hundredth part of the gas had a chance to be inflamed. The ground all around it had fallen in. Mr. von Hamerstein expressed the opinion that this is the biggest gas well on the face of the earth. He had a gas expert, a Mr. Chamberlain, from Petrolia, who told him that it was the biggest well in the world. Mr. Chamberlain operated in Indiana, Kansas, and all over the United States, and was the largest operator in the natural gas business.