92 A RAMBLE IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA 



mines. The Mintaro slate quarry is the most important 

 in Australia ; and visitors to it never fail to be delightedly 

 told by the miners that the largest slab ever quarried was 

 taken from this quarry. It measured 15 feet long, 9 feet 

 broad, and 3 inches thick — truly a sizable slate — but I 

 know not whether the boast that it is the largest ever 

 quarried can be substantiated. Certainly Mintaro slates 

 are extensively used in all parts of Australia. 



But even in its mines Australia is peculiar, and differs 

 from other continents ; and one fault of mines and quarries 

 in this district is the erratic way in which lodes and strata 

 are arranged, and the remarkable way in which they 

 sometimes " give out," or cease to yield. One of the most 

 notable instances of this peculiarity was experienced in 

 the case of the Burra-Burra copper-mine. 



In the year 1845 the Burra-Burra district was a back- 

 country sheep-run. Only a few adventurous shepherds 

 had penetrated so far inland, and these men lived with a 

 crook in one hand and a musket in the other. For although 

 the wandering blackfellows were few in number, they were 

 viperish in disposition, and many cruel tragedies occurred. 

 " Kidney-fat," too, is a temptation that the wild black- 

 fellow cannot resist, and perhaps many of the murders 

 would have been prevented if the shepherds had not 

 resented too fiercely the loss by theft of a few sheep. 

 The old class of shepherds was an uneducated one, and 

 often drawn entirely from the convict establishments, and 

 vendettas between them and the blacks were very prevalent 

 on many of the back-runs where there were no magistrates 

 and police to maintain order. 



One of these outlying shepherds, who had penetrated 

 further afield than his mates, was astonished to perceive 

 what looked to him like a huge inverted cauldron of copper 

 half buried in the earth. He reported the matter and the 

 country was prospected, and numbers of these inverted 

 cauldrons were discovered studded over the face of the 

 country, sometimes lying far apart, often clustered close 

 together. They looked, according to the description of an 

 eye-witness, like huge bubbles of copper that had welled 



