heat in the dense atmosphere of the lower levels. My companion invited me to weigh myself on the ore scales and to my astonishment I only weighed one hundred and twenty pounds, and I exclaimed that something was wrong with the scales, but my companion offered to take the scales up with us to the surface and test them. We did so and on weighing myself again the beam tipped at one hundred and sixty pounds my regular weight.

Then he informed me that there was a progressive fall in weights on every level as they went down and that if no unforeseen obstacle interfered they would reach the limit of attraction from the surface downward and in his opinion it would be at fifty miles. I asked him what they would find there and he replied that in his opinion it would be the same subtle and elastic essence that fills stellar space, but he added: "God alone knows the secret of the universe in his keeping." We visited the great smelting, refining and assaying works in the vicinity and he introduced me to the general superintendent of all the mines on the continental divide, who invited me to accompany him on a mine inspection tour and he would show me the improved method they used in prospecting for ore and extracting and milling it to the best advantage. "When our mining experts discover a mineral belt containing precious metals or copper, iron, lead, nickel, platinum, cobalt, quicksilver, manganese or any other ore used in manufactures and the arts, the first thing we do is to sink a shaft on the most likely ore chimney and at every one hundred feet in depth we run levels to develop it and if we continue to find ore as we go down and the ground requires drainage, we survey for a drainage tunnel that will drain the mine at the greatest depth, even if we have to run a tunnel ten miles. We sink the shaft to within twenty feet of the tunnel level and then quit sinking until the tunnel is completed. We use a tunneling machine, boring a tunnel six feet in diameter at the rate of one hundred feet per day. We run the tunnel directly under the shaft and then withdraw all the men and machinery from the tunnel, put a six-inch drill into the shaft that makes a hole into the tunnel, and quickly drains the mine. Then we begin to stope out at the lowest level, filling in the waste upward, and taking out only ore to be conveyed to the mill or smelter. While the shaft is being sunk the ore taken out is sent to the reduction works and carefully tested to find out the best way of reducing it so that when the mine is in good condition to work we know how to handle ore to the best advantage.

"We have only a few reduction works for refractory ore, but they are on a grand scale, some of them handling one hundred thousand tons daily, and as the government owns and operates all the railways the cost of transporting ore is under two mills a ton per mile. We employ a corps of metallurgists experimenting to discover better methods in reducing and they have made great progress so that ores that were left in the mine or on the dump are now worked with handsome profit to the government Our workmen all carry life and health insurance, one-half paid by the men monthly and the other half by the government, and where a mine is shut down by the government the miners are furnished employment in another place, so that they are never idle.

"We also bore thousands of artesian wells throughout the country, some of them to the depth of five thousand feet, for artesian water, gas, and petroleum, and occasionally we locate fine bodies of coal by those means and those that we don't need to supply the market we cap and stop the flow and use them in the future, always using the best flowing wells for the present time. When we have to use drainage tunnels for our mines we carry the water off from the mouth of the tunnel in a flume, placing quicksilver in the riffles, and if it is a copper mine we place scrap iron in the water and we also use the water for power to assist us in mining, so that at the present time we extract and reduce ore at a lower rate than in other parts of the world, for there is no wastefill management and no overproduction, for in all our mining operations we work those that cost the least, and we operate our coal mines in the same way."

I thanked him for the courtesy shown me and took the train for the capital, and my next visit was to the Department of Education.

CHAPTER VII.

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION.

I was ushered into the office of the Minister of Education and was introduced to a charming lady who filled that position with signal ability. "I am told that you are from the United States of America." she said with a winning smile, "and I hope that you will have a pleasant time while you remain with us." She spoke perfect English and informed me that it was the language of Eurasia, but that it differed from English used in other countries in one way. "We write the words the way they sound and eliminate all useless letters, saving a great deal of time and paper." She informed me that in no school throughout the country, save one, were the dead, or foreign, languages taught, and in that one only for the purpose of correct translation in the interest of science, for practical education is what people need. "We have one great university for orphan children and those without a name, and from it all the departments of the government are supplied with secretaries, clerks, typewriters and messengers, and as they are physically, mentally and morally trained for the duties of life, they are highly prized in the matrimonial market. All our common schools have a gymnasium and swimming tank annexed to the study room; the gymnasium being divided into two compartments, one for boys and one for girls, with a door from each communicating with the study room and also with the swimming tank." The tank was only four feet deep so as to remove as much as possible the chance for a child being drowned, and no little children were allowed in the tank without two or more boys and girls of fourteen years of age being present.

The doors leading into the tank room were kept under lock and key and were only opened once a day and that at the noon hour. The youngest children, up to the age of twelve years, when they had learned their lessons both in the forenoon and afternoon went into the gymnasium to play, and by those means the children are physically well developed and knowing how to swim are not liable to become frightened if thrown into the water and know what to do to save others from drowning. They are taught reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, typewriting, typesetting and practical geometry, so as to draw lines, angles and circles and find their volumes and areas, but algebra, astronomy, grammar, geology, physiology, biology and metaphysics are reserved for the high schools, where every boy and girl is sent when they are fifteen years of age and kept there for three years at the expense of the government. The high school is located in the district reserve as near the center of the district as conditions will permit in the vicinity of the court house and the Governor's residence and has adjoining it not less than one thousand acres, according to the population of the district, so as to make it as self-sustaining as possible and to teach the students agriculture, horticulture and the care and management of stock and poultry.

"We have a foundry, machine shop, woolen mill, cotton mill and chemical works at every high school, and while both sexes are taught farming and gardening the boys are taught mechanical trades and the girls knitting, spinning, weaving, cooking, housekeeping and nursing, so as to know how to take care of the sick and injured, and at the age of eighteen years the boys are drafted into the army and serve three years, building railways, levees, canals, irrigation ditches, docks, warehouses and other public buildings, and the girls are sent to the chemical factories, woolen mills, cotton mills, paper mills, flax