COBALT, Canada. Situated on Lake Co balt, in northern Ontario, 330 miles north of Toronto. It was unknown up till 1903 as either town or mining camp. It was during the building of the Timiskaming and Northern On tario Railway, a work of the provincial gov ernment, that the first valuable silver ores were discovered which have since proved this district to contain the richest silver camp in the world. The discoveries of 1903 were followed by others in the succeeding years, but it was not till 1906 that the *boom)) reached its height. In 1904 the value of silver extracted from four producing mines was $111,887 and this went up by leaps until in 1911 the limit was reached, the 34 mines producing 31,507, 791 ounces, of the value of $15,953,847. Since then a steady decrease has taken place, the output of silver in 1914 being 25,217,994 ounces of the value of $12,765,461, a falling off as com pared with 1913 of 4,506,937 ounces, or 15 per cent. Unless new rich deposits are discovered, this decline is likely to be accelerated. The ores of the Cobalt district, which were first shipped to the United States, are now mainly treated in Canada. The discoveries at Cobalt
brought Canada at a bound into a front rank as a silver producer, being excelled only by the United States and Mexico. This district is not only famous for its silver production, but it leads in cobalt and arsenic, and is ex celled in output of nickel only by Sudbury and New Caledonia. One remarkable result of development at Cobalt is shown in the relation the dividends paid bear to the total value of production, these reaching up till the end of 1914 the enormous total of $55,228,964, or 50 per cent of the gross value of all the silver yet produced from the mines of Cobalt. Pop. 5,638.
or THENARD'S BLUE, a compound of alumina and the oxides of cobalt, forming a beautiful pigment often used in the arts. Sometimes it contains also the phosphate or arsenate of cobalt, according to the mode of manufacture employed. It is non-poisonous and unacted on by acids and alkalis.