201 



^vith the requirements of the very numerous boilers and smelters, 

 utilise all the water likely to be conserved. 



Should this be the case, how is the tremendous amount of 

 water required to concentrate the huge deposits of low grade ore 

 ^o be provided ? On this question depends the very existence of 

 some of the mines, and the doubling of dividends by others ; so 

 that I ask for this paper the fullest consideration which the very 

 great importance of the subject demands, and as it appears 

 evident that, contrary to usual experience, the lode itself has 

 utterly failed to supply the quantity needed, it becomes necessary 

 to seek it elsewhere. 



We know that the Cretaceous area, which supplies the mag- 

 nificent artesian wells in this colony, Queensland, and New South 

 Wales, lies far too far away from Broken Hill to be available ; 

 and with regard to the scheme for bringing water from the 

 River Darling, not only is the distance very great, but the very 

 intermittent supjDly contained therein has always seemed to me 

 entirely prohibitory, an opinion intensified by the paper read by 

 Mr. Russell before the Royal Society of New South Wales, 

 November, 1886, and also by the testimony of my friend, Chas. 

 Barritt, Esq., Mallara, River Darling, who writes me — " The 

 river here stopped running in 1866 and 1884, but has several 

 times been nearly stopping, but I cannot specify dates. I do 

 not think the idea of water from the Darling is feasible, except 

 at an enormous expense for conservation. The evaporation on 

 large bodies of water is, roughly, six feet a year, and the Darling 

 not to be relied upon. Twice during the last ten years have I 

 pumped as much as was flowing in the river — once with horse- 

 pump, with two and a-half-inch pipe, and once with steam-pump, 

 four-inch suction. Once I had to dam the river and cut a 

 trench to a waterhole for a supply." 



Now, as to an unlimited supj^ly. Flanking the Archa?an rocks, 

 which extend to the eastward of Broken Hill and the Barrier 

 Ranges generally, lies a very large area of the Newer Tertiary 

 ■deposits of intercalated clays and sands ; this area is bounded on 

 the north, as far as the Weniteriga Run, by the eastern extension 

 of the Archaean rocks, and along their edge, and in a northern 

 extension of the basin, Messrs. Riddoch have sunk several wells 

 (see chart). Across the river, opposite Wilcannia, some sixty 

 miles to the east. Mount Manara forms the eastern outcrop of 

 the Archaean rocks, which gradually sink down until covered 

 by the recent clays. The southern boundary is to be looked for 

 ■&t the overlapping of the Newer on the Older Tertiaries as repre- 

 sented by the Murray Clifls. Professor Tate was the first to 

 point out, in his paper on tlie "Basin of the Lower Murray 

 River," read before this Society in 1884, and published in Vol. 



