AjSTTIYEESART ADDEESa, 33 



It is remarkable how at tMs juncture the eastern. Colonies of 

 Australia exhibit, contemporaneously, a great development both 

 of tin and copper. Surely this, and the revival of our auriferous 

 wealth (mostly, be it noticed, by mining in the rock) is not with- 

 out a very significant design on the part of Providence. 



Errors in the practical management of these deep-seated trea- 

 sures, whether by the G-overnment or by the community, may 

 lead to difficulties of immense importance, bringing with them 

 corresponding inconveniences to all. 



Respecting the development of copper, its appearance has been 

 made known in great abundance within the last year in the far 

 western interior, which was generally considered to be a flat 

 uninteresting desert between the Lachlan, Began, and Darling. 



Coba, about 90 miles S.E, of Eort Bourke, is now a mining 

 district ; and having examined them, I can speak favourably of 

 the value of its ores. Some gold has been detected in another 

 quarter nearer the Darling, and iron, which also occurs at Coba, 

 is found on the New Tear's Eange, S.E. of the junction of the 

 Began. Copper is expected also from that Eange. The cha- 

 racter of that then waste country given by Sir T. L. Mitchell — 

 " low, bare ridges, scanty vegetation, v/ater very scarce, and vast 

 level plains" — will shortly deserve to be exchanged for one of a 

 more valuable kind. 



Beyond the Darling, too, in the very region where Captain 

 Sturt found " an inhospitable desert," and met with great priva- 

 tions, copper has since been found and indicated to me by the 

 excellent and enterprising Commissioner of Crown Lands for the 

 far distant Albert District, one locality of which is not far from 

 the vast hill of magnetic iron ore mentioned by Sturt, at Peisse's 

 Knob, of which he gives a figure in Central Australia (II., 127), 

 and another is close to Mount Lyell. 



The ranges and veins of metallic ores running IT. and S., parallel 

 with other ranges east and west of them, are either jjarallel with, 

 or on the strike of, the great copper and iron mines of the Clon- 

 curry in Queensland. 



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