Some enquiries having been made at the Winter meeting of the Fruit
Growers’ Association, in February last, regarding phosphates, the
following facts may not be without interest.
Deposits of the richest description of this ore are found on the River
du Lievre, which flows into the Ottawa river, 18 miles below Ottawa
city. Scientific analysis has proved beyond doubt that these beds of
phosphates are decidedly the richest ever mined in any quarter of the
globe, ranging, as they do, from 85 to 95 per cent. The rocks bearing
this mineral are traced through five townships, and though the area is
scarcely yet known to a certainty, owing to the country not having yet
been cleared up, and the localities being covered with moss, leaves,
trees, shrubs, and soil; it is not improbable that it extends over many
miles of territory, besides penetrating to a considerable depth into the
earth’s crust. In many places the deposits are high up in the hills, the
country about the section in which the phosphates are found being of a
very uneven and broken nature. Already a number of enterprising
individuals are engaged in getting out large quantities for shipment
this Spring, and though this industry has been greatly retarded by
reason of the small quantity of snow that has fallen during the Winter,
yet it is expected that some four thousand tons will be delivered on the
banks of the Ottawa or on the navigable waters of the Lievre, ready for
shipment in barges, either to New York city or to Montreal, where it
will be reshipped to Britain, France, Germany, and Spain. The price
realized per ton is about $15, which varies according to the assay, when
deposited on the wharf. In Liverpool or New York it is worth, in its
crude state, from $28 to $32 per ton; and when manufactured into
superphosphate, by treatment with sulphuric acid, it brings $50 per ton
on this continent. This manure is principally used, on this side of the
Atlantic, in the southern States, where the climate is of a humid
nature; further north, or in Canada, it is stated it cannot be used with
success, as our atmosphere is not sufficiently moist, and it would
therefore lay inactive in the soil; should this apprehension prove to be
correct, it can never come largely into use here until some means of
irrigation is devised to dissolve it, so that it may be absorbed by the
tender rootlets of young and growing plants. This fertilizer is
principally used in England for turnips, and is drilled in with the
seed. When applied to this crop it produces the most wonderful effects,
stimulating the young plants to a rapid growth, thereby overcoming the
ravages of the fly so destructive in its early stages.
The great rival to the Canada phosphate beds are those of South
Carolina, which were opened ten years ago. I find by the United States,
government returns, that in 1870 the sum of six millions of dollars was
then invested by capitalists in working them, and the products from
these mines have been shipped to Europe in large quantities. These
phosphates are not nearly so pure as those on the Ottawa, yielding only
40 per cent., and as ours become better known in the old world, they
will be the more sought after.
The Canadian phosphates supplied to the States are principally used
there to mix with the poorer class received from South Carolina, which
are manufactured into superphosphate at Brooklyn; the sulphuric acid
used for treating the ores being that which has already done service in
the coal oil refineries of Ohio and Pennsylvania. The margin is so great
between the phosphate and the superphosphate, the former being worth
$15, and the latter $50 per ton, that the question of manufacturing an
article ready for use ought to be seriously taken into consideration by
some of our capitalists. The refuse sulphuric acid could no doubt be
very cheaply had from the London and Hamilton oil refineries, and it
would only be a question whether it would be better to convey the acid
to the phosphate or the phosphate to the acid, as the latter is not a
very easy thing to handle. Should it be found necessary to manufacture
the acid, it is understood there is any quantity of material for the
purpose in the eastern townships, both as regards copper pyrites and
sulphur beds; and if our deposits of phosphates turn out anything like
what present indications would lead one to expect, at no distant day
large manufactories, both of the acid and of the superphosphates will be
established, most probably near Montreal, that being the most central
point for operations.
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