COPPER. 77 



about 500 feet above the river. The rock is a light green and greenish- 

 grey clay-slate containing irregular layers of a grey fine-grained slaty 

 sandstone, and dipping north to north-east at from 30° to 40°. The ore, 

 with which there is little or no mundie, occurs in both varieties of rock. 

 Throughout the entire thickness cut through in the galleries (some 

 3 feet), cupriferous layers occur here and there, while in the intervals 

 the ore only occurs very sparingly or in specks. The lenticular cupri- 

 ferous layers, which are parallel to the bedding, vary in thickness up 

 to several inches, or even occasionally, as Bisman told me, up to a foot. 

 Throughout these the ore is more or less abundantly disseminated, 

 and little nests or short irregular layers of the pure mineral sometimes 

 occur as much as half an inch, or an inch thick. The main passages 

 descend with the dip of the beds from the out-crop, the deepest being 

 46 feet in length. There are three others close to this, one of which has 

 fallen in. They were perfectly dry in January. 



Five feet below these galleries there is an abandoned trial opening, 

 and another about 100 feet higher up, from both of which copper in small, 

 but not paying, quantity was obtained. Seven hundred feet above the 

 river there are several openings throughout a thickness of 20 or 30 feet 

 of strata, which have been abandoned, and nearly all of which have fallen 

 in. It appears then that throughout a thickness of at least 200 feet 

 these slaty rocks contain cupriferous bands at intervals, and that a few 

 of these are moderately productive. But out of fifteen or sixteen 

 galleries opened, the majority have been abandoned and allowed to fall in. 

 Bisman informed me that only three had paid. As lessee of the mines 

 however, he would not be likely to unduly magnify their value, and 

 it is possible that some of the abandoned galleries were given up from 

 their having been driven as far as the miners thought it safe to o- . 

 If the information Bisman gave me be correct, the average yield of 

 copper from the picked ore is about 4 per cent. He told me he had 

 made 72 mans of copper (of 40 paka sirs) during his year's tenure of 

 the mine. 



( 77 ) 



