SHORTAGE OF COAL ON THE COAST

(Extract from Victorial Daily Colonist, Feby. 2nd, 1910.)
BUNKER FUEL NOW COSTS MORE

Prices Advanced at the Coaling Ports and Contracts are
not Being Renewed

Steam coal in these waters is striking a higher price and bunker
coal at the Vancouver Island collieries now costs $5.50, with the
coal companies not anxious to fill the supply at this figure, as a
vessel ‘taking on bunker coal has to stop and trim ship and time
at the chutes is lost. This advance is $1 over the price a year
ago, and is stated to be a record price.

The strike of the Australian miners and the scarcity of fuel there
has been quickly reflected by conditions on this side of the Pacific.
San Francisco practically relies on Australia and Vancouver Island
for its fuel, and John L. Howard, president of the Western Fuel
Company, which controls the sale of the Dunsmuir coal as well as
its own mines at Nanaimo on the San Francisco market, has just
returned to San Francisco after a complete survey of: the British
Columbia mines. Following his visit to the mines, prices have gone
up, and now the contracts for the supply of steamers have been
refused, for the present at least.

The Ladysmith mines, on Vancouver Island, are producing prac-
tically nothing, owing to washouts and other causes. Nanaimo and
Comox are each putting out about 2,000 tons a day and the new
mines at Boat Harbor have an output of about 300 tons a day. Of
this amount 50 per cent. is steam coal.

To supply San Francisco the Western Fuel Company has char-
tered already four steamers to load Japanese coal to replace the
cargoes which have ceased coming from Australia. Puget Sound
coal is practically out of the San Francisco market, about the only
amount shipped there being sent down by the Pacific Coast Com-
pany for the use of its steamers sailing south from that port.

On Puget Sound deliveries are light, although the mines are
working hard to fill the demand, and delays to steamers are con-
tinually reported owing to the lack of fuel deliveries. Sound steam
coal also took a rise a short time ago, the price now being $4.

PORTLAND, OREGON, Oct. 5th, 1909.

Report on Graham Island, Massett Inlet
Coal Property

By S. ANDREW HARTMAN
GENTLEMEN: ;

In compliance with your request to give a brief statement and
report on my visit to Graham Island in the month of August of
this year, I beg to submit the following:

In company with Mr. J. C. Merrill of Chicago, and his son, OF 7:
Merrill, I left Portland, Oregon, on the 6th of August for 4Prince
Rupert. Our object was to visit Graham Island and to examine
certain ten sections of coal land there, situated on Massett Inlet,
about 12 miles south from the Indian village known as Massett, and
about 16 miles inland from the mouth of the inlet at Dixon’s
Entrance. We took a passage from Prince Rupert on a small gaso-
line launch, owned by Mr. Henry Edenshaw, chief of the Indian
tribe at Massett. We landed safely and engaged his launch the next
day and went down to the property above referred to. We found
Massett Inlet to be a beautiful body of water with no obstructions
to transportation facilities by water. The Inlet is narrow, rangng
from one to one mile and a half in width, but the water is deep
in most places up to the shore line, and well protected. Your ten
sections, equal to 10 square miles of land, lays right on the Inlet

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