CHAPTER XVII
NICKEL FOR ALL THE WORLD
Canada has a nickel mine out of which has been taken so much ore that if it were put all together the pile would be larger than the National Capital at Washington. About ten million tons have already been dug from it and there are still millions left. Indeed, it is apparently inexhaustible. It is known as the Creighton, and is situated about eight miles from Sudbury in the province of Ontario not far north of Georgian Bay. The International Nickel Company of Canada, Ltd., which owns it, is the largest nickel producer in the world, and supplies most of that metal used in the United States.
There are only two places so far discovered where nickel exists in large quantities. One is in the little island of New Caledonia off the eastern shore of Australia on the opposite side of the globe. About ten per cent. of the total world production comes from there. The other is here in Canada, in a region that yields eight times as much as New Caledonia. A small amount of nickel is obtained also by the electrolytic method in the refining of copper and other ores.
The ore near Sudbury is a combination of nickel, copper, sulphur, and iron. It is found in mighty beds or pockets going down no one knows how deep. On one side of the deposit is granite and on the other a black formation known as diorite.
At first the ore was quarried rather than mined, and a huge pit was formed that looks like a volcanic crater. It reminds me of the Bromo volcano, which I visited in the mountains of eastern Java. Later a shaft was sunk, and the vast body of nickel I have mentioned has been taken out by running tunnels into the ore at different levels. The lowest level of the shaft is now fourteen hundred feet below the earth’s surface. There hundreds of workmen are drilling and blasting. They load the ore on cars, which carry it to an underground storage chamber, where the large pieces are crushed. It is then hoisted to the top of the shaft house, a structure as high as a fourteen-story building. After descending through rock crushers and screens, it is ready for smelting.
Through the kindness of one of the officials of the International Nickel Company, I have been able to go through its smelters at Copper Cliff, which cover many acres. The country about is as arid as the desert of Sahara. Before the mines were discovered, it was a green forest and one may still see here and there charred stumps standing out upon the barren landscape. In the town itself there is not a green leaf, a blade of grass, a bush, or a flower to be seen at any time of the year. It makes me think of the nitrate fields about Iquique in northern Chile, where all is sand and rock and there is no fresh water for hundreds of miles. All this is due to the sulphur that comes from the ore. It so fills the air about Copper Cliff that no vegetation will grow.
After being crushed and screened the ore is roasted. Hundreds of tons of it are piled upon beds of cord wood and the fine ore dust is spread over the top. A fire is started and burns day after day for a period of two months or more. This drives out fifteen or twenty per cent. of the sulphur, which rises in a smoke of a light yellow colour. The smoke is almost pure sulphur. It smells like burnt matches and it fills the air about the furnace to such an extent that the men use rubber nose caps to protect their lungs from the fumes. These caps are for all the world like the nipples on babies’ nursing bottles, save that they are as big as your fist, and each has a sponge inside it soaked with carbonate of ammonia. This counteracts the effect of the sulphur and makes it possible for the men to work. I had one of these nipples over my nose when I went through the works, but nevertheless my lungs became filled with sulphur. I coughed until the tears rolled down my cheeks, and as I did so I thought if some of our preachers could get such a taste of brimstone their word pictures of the lower regions would be more realistic.
One might suppose that the miners would be injured by these sulphur fumes. They are, on the contrary, as healthy as any people in the world. The children have rosy cheeks and the men are more rugged in appearance than those about Pittsburgh, or Anaconda, Montana.
Even after the roasting there is still about seven per cent. of sulphur left. Most of this is removed in the smelting, which reduces the ore to a crude metal known as matte. Matte is the form in which the nickel is sent to the refineries.
Formerly most of the refining was done in the United States or Europe, but during the World War the International Nickel Company built a refinery at Port Colborne, Ontario, and most of the Sudbury ore is now refined there. A large quantity goes also to Huntington, West Virginia, for making what is known as monel metal, an alloy of nickel and copper that possesses great strength, does not corrode easily, and is impervious to electrical currents. It is used in hotel kitchen equipment, in dyeing and pickling vats, and in many kinds of electrical apparatus.