private company owned it, it would make the stockholders wealthy, for it
has become to the globe-trotters what Mecca is to the Mohammedans for no
tourist would dare to return home without registering at the observatory
and we encourage them by publishing their names in the National Gazette.

"If you would like to accompany me I think I can show you another work
we are engaged in that is adding to the accumulated knowledge of the
ages." I gladly assented and after ten days of railway travel we arrived
at the great platinum mine of Eurasia. It was on the continental divide
between Europe and Asia and had been worked on a small scale at the
surface for a great many years, but had not produced much platinum and
owing to an increasing demand for it in the arts the value of it greatly
exceeded that of gold, while at the present time it is on a par with
silver, owing to the government selling it in the market of the world
for what it will bring and smashing any gambling ring that would attempt
to corner the market. We entered a cage and were lowered to the one
thousand-foot level; then we got out of the cage and, walking about
twenty yards, we entered a chamber where there was another shaft and
hoisting works and were lowered to the two-thousand foot level, which
opened out in every direction, connecting with a drainage tunnel eight
miles long, which carried off all the water for sixteen square miles of
surface. After explaining to me the old methods of mining he said with a
smile: "Come with me now and I will show you our new method," and
entering a large chamber that looked like an immense warehouse, we
stepped into a cage and went down, changing from one cage to another
every thousand feet, until we stopped at the sixty-four-thousand-foot
level. We visited several crosscuts and drifts on this level and found
several hundred men at work taking out platinum ore of a high grade, and
my companion told me that they were doing the same work on several other
thousand-foot levels, the ore improving in quality as they went down.