King lost in Kentucky Venture.

Gisborne Times, Volume VI, Issue 242, 21 October 1901, Page 1

King lost in Kentucky Venture.

SCHEME WENT TO SMASH. Owensboro, Ky., Aug. 24. _ While comparatively few people even in this part of Kentucky know it, yet it is nevertheless a fact that in the south-eastern part of Breckenridge county, just back of the town of Cloverport, King Edward VII., while Prince of Wales, made an extensive investment and lost a good sum by it. As the passenger on the Ohio River boats passes Cloverport, a town about forty-live miles east of this city, he ie almost in sight of this royal speculation and oi a geological freak as well. The place in question is a bill about 100 feet high, comprising 1000 acres. The hill cost an English syndicate, which included the Prince of Wales, about £500,000 within a few months. Geologists say that this hill is peculiar iu that there are under it two veins of cannel coal; that there is not another vein of cannel coal within 500 miles of this deposit. Years before the discovery of petroleum coal oil was manufactured from oannel coal. So much gas was generated from this coal that a lighthouse which burned day and night was established and became a landmark near Cloverport, on the Ohio River, nearly fifty years ago. Upon the discovery of petroleum the value ol these mines decreased. About twenty years ago D. H. Y'eomans, a shrewd Easterner, acquired an interest in this peculiar hill and went to London, where he succeeded in organising an English syndicate known as “ The Breckenridge Company, Limited.” A large force of men were sent here, and money was spent as though it grew on trees. It cost more to mine a ton of coal than the product brought on the market. At last an American saved the concern from utter ruin. Litigation followed, and the syndicate spent £30,000 in lawsuits, and a few years ago the mines were abandoned. There is now in the British Museum, at London, the likeness of a human leg carved out of cannel coal taken from this mine.