CHAP. VI CHILLAGOE CATTLE STATION 6i 
cool down that narrow black hole, that I thought, here 
at any rate we will get away from the heat and glare. 
We did get away from the glare certainly, but the heat 
was stifling, and the men below, little expecting to see 
a lady come down, were working in the very scantiest of 
clothing. 
The reef here was thirty-seven feet through and very 
rich all the way, indeed the whole place seemed a 
mountain of silver, and as, in a few months' time, the 
machinery will be up and they will start crushing, great 
things are foretold. There are tin, copper, and silver 
mines in every direction in this part of the country, but 
everything is as yet in its infancy. 
After seeing the mine, we started at two o'clock 
for Chillagoe Cattle Station, to the owner of which, 
Mr. A., I had a letter. 
I was driven there by Mr. C. in a small one-horse 
trap, the material of which needed to be of the strongest, 
for the road was an exceedingly rough one, for the 
most part over broad beds of rock and pebbly ground. 
The whole country is a vast undulating plain, dotted 
with rugged masses of curiously -outlined limestone 
ridges, rising to many hundreds of feet, straight out of 
the ground, giving the landscape a stem and oppressive 
grandeur ; the deep fissures of these towering walls are 
filled with gnarled and hoary trunks of trees striking 
and grasping the massive fragments with their rootlets 
and creeping and twisting in and out of crevices. 
Below, the huge blocks of stone are overgrown with 
an intricate wilderness of shrubs and creeping plants ; 
while high above, these dark and towering walls are 
destitute of any living thing, and their stricken, 
shattered -looking peaks, networks of sharp pinnacles 
with needle -like points, stand gray and arid -looking 
against the intense blue of the sky. 
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