When giving his evidence before the Senate committee of 1907 Mr. von Hamerstein begged to be excused from divulging results of his work in boring for petroleum in the McMurray district, as other people had entrusted their money with him in the enterprise. He said he felt at liberty to state that their works so far made him very confident that they were going to have one of the biggest petroleum fields in the world. There was no doubt he said, petroleum would be found all through that country, from Athabaska river to Peace river. He remarked that when his party was boring once they struck natural gas, and one hundred and fifty feet of salt. They went down through a hundred feet of salt, and then they abandoned it. At this particular place they went about eleven hundred feet altogether. They never went lower than eleven hundred feet.
Mr. von Hamerstein added: “As far as petroleum is concerned, I have all my money put into it, and there is other people’s money in it, and I have to be loyal. As to whether you can get petroleum in merchantable quantities, that is a matter about which I would not care to speak. I have been taking in machinery for about three years. Last year I placed about fifty thousand dollars worth of machinery in there. I have not brought it in for ornamental purposes, although it does look nice and home-like.”
In the winter of 1910, Corporal A. H. Schurer, of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, made a patrol from Athabaska to McMurray. In his report he states:—“I visited the oil wells sunk by Baron A. von Hamerstein at Poplar island, six miles below McMurray. I could see very little with the exception of the machinery, as the snow had covered everything up. A Mr. Falkner, supposed to be representing a party of eastern capitalists, has been staking out claims between McMurray and McKay for oil, during the past two months, and I understand that he is also to prospect Clearwater river east of McMurray for petroleum and other minerals. In December last Mr. Julius Alteschul, a German, claiming to be a representative of a London, England, financial house, visited McMurray, and after having been there for a few days, stated that he had found a mineral more valuable than radium, and that as soon as Athabaska river was navigable, he would place one hundred workmen and their families at McMurray, where he intended to start an industry; what this industry was to be Mr. Alteschul did not make clear. It is the general impression that Alteschul was merely paying a visit to a much talked of place in order to find out what minerals actually existed, but did not want his mission to be known.”