stantial and capacious shed, used as a timber-store and saw-pit, and close by a similar one was in the course of erection for the further accommodation of the carpenters. About eleven whims were at work at the shafts. Most of these whims, as well as the great pumping engine, are at work day and night, which accounts for the busy scene presented to the eye, although long past six o'clock. The whims are situate each of them close to a shaft which communicates with one or other of the different levels under ground. Connected with the pumping engine shaft is a series of long wooden spouting, elevated upon and supported by stands. The spouts which receive the water drawn up from the mine run backward in several directions, and feed various tanks, and dams, and other places, where the operations of cleansing and dressing the ore are carried on. The refuse water is conducted to the head of the Burra Creek, down which it makes its way for seven miles, reaching the Princess Royal Mine, and ultimately running into the Murray flats. Near each shaft where the whim is at work are ranges of sheds, in which parties of men and boys are busily engaged in crushing and reducing lumps of ore from one size to another, and so facilitating the washing and separation of the copper ore from the earth and foreign matter with which it is mixed.
"There are other sheds set apart for tanks and various contrivances, by which parties of men and boys wash and sift the copper ore, until prepared for sampling. Collected near the sheds are numberless square and oblong heaps of ore, about six feet long, four feet broad, and two to three feet deep. These heaps are composed of copper ore of various qualities, and in different stages of dressing. When it is remembered, that in addition to the large heaps of ore which cover the ground near these sheds, and near the dams and tanks for washing, there are innumerable piles of ore ready for the samplers and smelters, gathered together in every available quarter of this eighty-acre area, some faint idea may be formed of the enormous masses of mineral wealth thus collected at the Burra. A pleasing aspect is imparted to them by the rich deep blue of the carbonate, and by the greenish hues which characterise the malachite ore, affording a striking contrast to the sombre appearance of the red oxide. The offices of the clerk of the works, and of the assayers, and of the samplers, form another range of buildings. The workshops of the engineers and the different mechanics engaged on the ground are of course pretty numerous, but still each place is so situate, and all the works are proceeding in such a manner, as to impress even a superficial spectator with the conviction that the most thorough order and method is the principle of the establishment throughout. A stone engine-house has been completed, and fitted up with an engine of forty-five horse power, from the Perran Foundry, Cornwall, intended for crushing the ore, and so dispensing with a large amount of expensive manual labour. A stamping machine, for extracting the leavings from the refuse copper ore which has hitherto been thrown on one side, is also very near completion. Workmen were also engaged upon a new engine-house, in which a winding-engine of thirty-five horse power, already at the mine, is to be placed. When the deeper levels of the mine are reached, this winding-engine will be connected with the ropes and iron buckets now worked by the horse-Whims, and thus save a large expenditure, which is now necessary at the several shafts. Of the extent of the operations going on at the surface of the mine, some notion may be obtained from the number of men who are employed by the Burra Company at surface work. Most of the buildings and engineering works are erected by contract, and, reckoning exclusively of the men working for the contractors, and also of the officers of