Smelter, Ltd., but the revival was a short-lived one, as it only lasted long enough to allow the company to prove that ore still remained in the old workings, and the water was allowed to flood the workings again. Last year, near the end of it, another company was formed under the title of the Fremantle Trading Company, Ltd., and Mr. W. G. Sutherland, the manager, visited London to meet the directors and he is now organising the plant with a view to carrying on operations at the smelters and the re-opening of at least one of the old mines at Northampton. There have been numerous small syndicates, organised in London, which developed copper and lead mines in the Northampton district from 1860, but the mining and smelting returns show that their production. was inconsiderable from an economic and practical point of view. In a report written by Mr. Harry Woodward, ex-Government Geologist, in 1902, it was stated that the mines are mostly situated on private property, the titles being held with all mining rights. This is an encumberance, it may be remarked, which has been inherited from the early days of the Swan River Settlement. The ruling power of those days, military and such officials as constituted authority in all British colonies up to 1850, invariably sold any valuable mineral area that came into their hands. Records up to 1850 are wanting, but from that year onwards the production to 1901, for the Northampton district, was £512,710 for copper and lead ore exported from Western Australia. The handicap to the Northampton district lies in the fact that freehold lands for which the mineral rights are held privately instead of by the State, will never tempt prospectors, nor will mining investors trouble with such lands unless they give unmistakable indications of being very rich, or contain gold in attractive guise.

How the West

Australian

scored off the "t'other Sider."

How "Sleepy Hollow," as Perth might aptly have been termed had it nestled in the valley where is now impounded the waters of the Helena River to supply the Eastern Goldfields with water, managed to rub along in these peripatetic, or, shall I say, mushroom like booms in mining, the old identities alone can tell you. That the capital of the colony did get along fairly well is shown by the way in which the cream of the agricultural lands, within the coastal area, is still in the hands of the men who were fist granted the lands; or, at any rate, their descendants are still in occupation, and while the mining magnates—the men who piled up great heaps of gold, the produce of the country's gold mines-have drifted away and in many scores of cases had never seen the sources of their wealth-the West Australians have seen out the one time despised "t' other sider." Consequently, they may be said to have taken advantage of the energy of the foreigner and his capital to win from Mother Earth a mineral which they knew full well would in the long run have to pay full toll before it left the shores of this country.

Gold exported when W.A. is 50 years of age.

The records of exports from the Swan River Settlement for the first 50 years of its life indicate the torpitude of the period. There was hardly a ripple of what might be called movement in any industry until Western Australia had attained an age of half a century, and then before it was a decade older a better record is observed in the annals of the colony. Gold first appeared as an item in the exports in 1886, when it was entered at the Customs House as being of a value of £1,207; five years later the same line figured at £421,385, and it constituted half of the total value of the exports for the State and in a total of £918,147 wool was represented by £244,972.

One often is asked what is the meaning Nomenclature of Coolgardie in aboriginal lingo. If -Coolgardie, I may accept the dictum of Jackie, etc. a native of the district, then "Golgaida" is the rightful name of this famous goldfield, which name if used at all would have to be applied to Coolgardie and to East, North and North-East Coolgardie. This informant, one Jackie, spoke with some authority in 1896, as he had been employed on an exploring and prospecting expedition fitted out by Sir John Forrest and Mr. Alexander Forrest. Golgard'uh that one water--a little gnamma hole in rock, into which rain drained from off its hard surface," said Jackie, "not Kalgoorlie, that one name fellow Kalgorlah," which he explained is the native name for a fruit growing in that locality. There is something akin to Golconda about this black's interpretation of the native name for this world-famed gold camp. Bayley and Ford, two Victorian miners, left Perth in April, 1902, and took a north-east track for 250 miles, when they lost their horses and had to make for Newcastle to procure others. With new steeds to carry the outfit they started out again, traversed the Southern Cross district on the Yilgarn field, where stampers were pounding away, and making eastward along the faint track marks of Hunt's expedition of 1864-5, they arrived at a point very near to Coolgardie and here they were once more compelled to return to the last water on the route to fill their bags. They gave the horses a couple of days' spell, after which they pushed ahead again, and went north-west this time, and luckily found the native well "Golgarda," which gave them good feed for their horses on the flat where the town of Coolgardie is now built upon.

It is not remarkable that Bayley and Ford, in a region where there are scores of ridge, and outcrops of quartz, all fairly bare of vegetation, owing to the excess of ionstone on the surface, should pick the best and richest spot at the first attempt. They "pouched" about 200 ounces in three or four weeks, when rations became short and Arthur Bayley, along with his mate, returned to Southern Cross without disclosing their discovery in that camp. Having filled up their "tucker" bags, the pair left Southern Cross to return to the Find on the first Sunday following and when they reached the old camp Bayley's lode revealed itself. It is quite within the bounds of possibility that the two men looked at the outcrop very often during the few weeks they were engaged in fossicking and specking gold in the alluvium. That day, according to the story told afterwards, they hammered out 500 ounces of gold in specimens, one bit of stone holding 50 ounces! Two men who were at Southern Cross it would appear did not credit the return of Bayley and Ford in the way that the prospectors of Coolgardie desired they should do, for these other fellows, Foster and Baker, felt certain that the men were on gold," and they soon got onto the tracks of Bayley and his mate and coming to their" find," knocked out 200 ounces of gold quickly. Bayley at once returned to Southern Cross, riding in there on September 17, 1892, and applied for a lease of the lodes found, and at the same time exhibited to Mr. J. M. Finnerty, the Gold Warden (and he is still Warden of the Coolgardie and Yilgarn Goldfields) 554 oz. of gold as a proof of his discovery.

News leaks out: The Rush.

Need I write any more of this mile-post in the progress of gold mining in Western Australia? Three days later Southern Cross was practically de serted-the news was flashed all over Australia, and the desert of sand, saltbush and mulga became peopled by Britons and their hardy sons all imbued with the quest of that talisman-gold. A new era had begun the Coolgardie era! What

quantity of gold the discoverers of Bayley's Reward won from the mine is not on record, as in November, 1892, they sold to Mr. Sylvester Brown, of Melbourne, for £6,000 cash and one-sixth interest in shares. A deposit of £100 was made by the purchase and he speedily took the balance from the mine to pay the full sum. In April of 1903, 2,500 oz. of gold was sold to the bank and June 7, 3,185 oz., and in September 3,605 oz. had been dollied from the stone by the new owners of the mine. So rich was the Reward that in December, 1893, or about fourteen months after the find was reported to the Warden of the Yilgarn Goldfield, gold to the value of £30,000 was extracted from the mine. An oil engine drove two panklasts which constituted the crushing power at the mine in the days when it returned upwards of £100,000 in profit.

Although additional leases were acquired and the mine sold to a London company, which subsequently passed through several reconstructions and is now known as New Bayleys Mines, Ltd., it is still at work and last year, in May, crushed 111 tons for £2,000. At July, 1901, the mine had yielded 134,061 ounces gold valued at £529,454, and paid in dividends £183,600. Mr. B. Begelhole was its first manager, 1892-4.

The Londonderry Fizzle.

The next lode find of importance on the Coolgardie field was that of the Londonderry, in May, 1894, an outcrop richer than Bayley's, which was located by a patry of Victorians of whom John Huxley was the leader. It was located about 12 miles south from Coolgardie and clean gold dollied (and banked at time the discovery was reported to the Warden) to the amount of 4,300 oz., which was taken from a hole about five feet by four feet and three feet deep! Besides the dollied gold specimens were lodged in the bank estimated to contain gold to a further value of £5,000. According to Mr. Finnerty's written report the outcrop was a bold one and visible for a quarter of a mile on the surface, but no gold was traceable except at the spot where the rich pocket was found. When this treasure trove electrified the gold seekers the agents of London syndicates had begun to flock to the field and Huxley and his mates became rivals of if not more famous than Bayley and his mate, and bidders for the Londonderry from London met them on the field. One specimen estimated to be worth £3,500 was taken from the mine to London and shown there by the vendor syndicate, which ultimately bought the prospectors' mine for, so it was published, no less than £180,000. The canny men who prospected this "pot hole " sank a dummy shaft close by, filled up the pot hole with concrete, fenced it off from intruders, and passed it over to a London company of whom Lord Fingall was a leading spirit, but this phase of the purchase and flotation in London of the Londonderry is too long a story to give here, except to say that it did more to discredit the gold fields of this country than any other circumstance connected with company promotion had done up to that time. The Londonderry yielded its new owners 11,344 tons, which gave 12,889 oz.-value about £50,000.

Dunn's Wealth of Nations.

Another rich pocket was that located in August, 1904, by an Indian camel driver, Conick Mahomet, in the employ of J. G. Dunn, a prospector sent out by a Perth syndicate, and it was called the Wealth of Nations, and the syndicate took out gold to the value of £23,000. The diggers who rushed. this outcrop also took a lot of gold, also from the detritus, or alluvial, on one side of the hill containing the outcrop. Dunn and Co. were lucky enough to sell their mine for £140,000 and Mahomet, who was employed as a water carrier, got 10s. from Dunn, as he frequently said afterwards, but the bulk of that

find did not stick to Dunn, who a few years later had squandered his share and became a well-known Terrace figure anxious to get a "fiver" to make another start into the mulga. This mine, the Wealth of Nations, was another disappointment for the London investors, as the ore proved of low grade and though many managers have tried it since none have made much profit except tribute parties. The richest specimens were three pieces which contained 800 oz. 197 oz., and 147 oz.

The Dryblowers spread

These were the days of the dryblower -the man who with a tin dish, pick and a shovel, who turned over the surface and perhaps dug for a few feet if the alluvium was kindly and dished off the stuff broken-minus water, and to give the required effect he blew away the last of the surrounding stuff, the gold by its weight remaining in the dish. Others had shakers" which took the place of the cradle so well known to the Eastern States alluvial miner. As a consequence there was more gold going into the banks from the alluvial than from the lodes, despite the richness of the three "potholes" already mentioned in this review of the discovery of Coolgardie. Districts known now as Bonnievale, on the north side of Coolgardie and distant about six miles, where the chief companies afterwards were the Westralia and East Extension, and the Vale of Coolgardie, and Burbanks to the south of Coolgardie about five miles, where to-day the chief mines are Burbanks Birthday, the Burbanks Main Lode, both London controlled concerns, and then away to the north is Kunanalling, 20 miles distant, where a number of small mines continue to get good gold, the Ninety-mile (meaning 90 miles from Coolgardie towards Menzies), Broad Arrow (still a mining centre for reefing), White Feather (better known as Kanowna), which was the richest alluvial field of the State, as much as 20,000 oz. in a single day being sold to the banks, and even to-day a few slugs are unearthed, but the White Feather line of reef-worked by the White Feather Main Reef, the White Feather Reward, and the North White Feather companies-is still yielding a fair monthly output, even though a lot be from tributors' work. These camps sprung into existence with marvellous rapidity, all showing good lodes, from which the alluvial. was shed, but the conditions-scarcity of water, high price of rations, and great cost for transport of machinery-did not encourage the prospector to open up at depth with a view to sale of his show for flotation purposes in Adelaide or London, and consequently almost as soon as the best of the alluvial had been

specked" interest in these camps, for the time being, waned and the digger and his camp followers moved on across the desert, as the aridity of the region and the extreme density of the most of the subterranean water or waters below the lake surfaces made living difficult.

HANNAN'S FIND: KALGOORLIE.

Hannan and his Reward Lease.

The name of Patrick Hannan, the discoverer of Kalgoorlie, will always be inseparably connected with the world's richest gold bearing area, within a certain limited area, as bere in June, 1893, about nine months after Coolgardie was found, came Patrick Hannan and his mate Flannagan, and 150 others, who were all on the way bound to a distant rush-they had travelled about 25 miles, a day's stage from Coolgardie. Being light, i.e., wearing only short trousers and carrying water bag and some food, they were a good distance in advance of the teams bringing water and heavier articles such as tools and provisions. They camped to await the arrival of the teams. A welcome shower of rain fell, so one chronicler writes, and from whose narrative I have taken many facts to tell this story, filling the

rock hollows and making the travellers secure from thirst pangs for a few days, but the eager crowd pushed, being too impatient to wait the arrival of the teams. Hannan and Flanagan, however, were left in the rear to search for a stray horse and the last named prospector picked up some slugs, the result being that the pair in a few days specked 100 oz. gold! To return to Coolgardie was the next step. So Patrick Hannan harked back along the track and put in an application for a reward area on a site that is now the north-east end of Hannan's Street, Kalgoorlie. This Reward lease is still worked by the Hannan's Reward, Ltd., in conjunctoin with others which the company has purchased, and although the property has never been among the first flight of gold producers yet last year's operations by tribute parties gave the company a dividend of 5 per cent. from material which yielded a trifle more than 2 dwt. per ton! The alluvial ground of Kalgoorlie, at no time very extensive, embraced the slopes of Mt. Charlotte, Maritana Hill, Cassidy's Hill and the flat on which was located the Ivanhoe Venture lease, which made Mr. (now Sir Edward) Wittenoom famous on account of his decision that only ground to a depth of 10 ft. from the surface should be open to alluvialists to enter and win the gold. As already recorded in these notes, the decision had to be revoked in response to public clamor.

As a matter of fact, Kalgoorlie as a poor man's field cannot be compared to half a dozen of the other camps which made history in the early days of the Eastern Goldfields. For at Hannan's, or the Kalgoorlie or north end of the camp, where the best of what alluvial was found there has not been found anything very rich at great depth, if I except the pipe of telluride in the Hidden Secret, which did not come to light until nearly ten years after Hannan and his mate Flanagan pegged out the Reward. At the Golden Mile end of the Kalgoorlie field-then known as Brookman's sheep walk or paddock, where in a year or two later was mined and is still being won marvellous yields of sulpho-telluride ore-there has been found. scarcely any profitable ore bodies or lodes below the alluvium. On the west side of the Ivanhoe Hill and the Golden Horseshoe mine, which was the side of the deepest alluvial ground and adjaecnt to the town now known as Boulder City, the ground was so poor in gold that much of it remains untouched if a few shallow shafts and costeens be excepted made by fossickers and gold stealers, who were making others believe they were winning the precious metal from the alluvium. The surface shows when first exposed on the whole presented no attract vie features for either the digger or the company promoter. An exception was that of the late T. McLeary's mine, the Kalgurli, which for some time held the pride of place among the "shows" of the camp. The hill on which the Kalgurli Co.'s mill stands to-day, part of that held by the Associated, in after years has yielded gold to the value of upwards of a million sterling from a lease of 18 acies. A young miner who first possessed the Ivanhoe Hill, a lease of 24 acres and from which the Ivanhoe Gold Corporation up to the end of December last had obtained gold worth five and three-quarter millions, failed to earn a living, nor could this young chap discover on it any stone that carried gold to give an ounce to the ton. He said there was gold in the surface stone, but not sufficient to warrant a penniless prospector persevering at the game. He offered the claim to one Alfred M'Donnell, one of the prospectors of a good little show at Broad Arrow known as Hill End mine. When the prospector left Ivanhoe Hill W. G. Brookman and Pearce added it to their extensive "goat farm." And in a degree the Golden Horseshoe-a 24 acre block which has since vielded £7,080,000-did not reveal a speck of any kind in the outcrop nor was anything found below for some considerable time. Early crushings from

the Gt. Boulder and the Lake View Consols gave no evidence of the vast storehouses of wealth that lay below, nor for that matter did the initial crushings of the Ivanhoe. The great bonanzas of the Golden Mile did not come till later and had to be content with careful nursing until such time as speculators and market operators in Adelaide, Melbourne and London were ready to get to work. One rich parcel which was shipped to Wallaroo, in South Australia, from the Kalgurli (McLeary's show) indicated what was in store when London and Paris, through their representatives, took a hand.

Advent of London Capital.

This

This country may owe its phenomenal success, in a great measure, to the fact that its goldfields were the first to attract genuine attention by British investors of capital in mining propositions. Most of the other fields in Australia up to then, if a few mines at Gympie (Q.) and one at Lucknow (N.S.W.) be excepted, had been dependent upon such capital as the Australians-and they were chiefly Victorians at that could find for the early development work after the prospector had gutted. out the oxidised or surface ore, and as a consequence such mines had to rely upon their production to carry the ventures below the level and find equipment to pump out the water and then extract the ore. view does not convey the meaning that the Australians. lack pluck in mining speculations, on the contrary, they are as enterprising as the Britisher and probably keener over a bargain. For this reason most of the gold mines in Western Australia at the early period of their history were first bought by Adelaide and Melbourne men, and subsequently when the British capitalists backed by deep money bags made overtures to gain complete control of the Boulder Belt the local speculators having been well rewarded for their enterprising speculation were willing to part with their interests on the terms offered. One thing contributed to this apparent want of foresight-the Australian mine owners were often handicapped from insufficiency of working capital to quickly open up and develop their mines, or were susceptible to the glamor of the fancy prices dangled before their eyes by London agents who by some fakir means were able to convert mines on paper into gold and double or treble the value of a gold mine by the simple operation of splitting the scrip.

The Brookman Syndicate.

It

How much better off these Eastern men would have been had they held on it is now a matter of conjecture to say. It is on record, so one writer says, that an Adelaide syndicate, now deceased for a decade, the memory of whom will never fade in the circles where its sovereigns were scattered galore during some years, and this was the Coolgardie Mining and Prospecting Co., put into liquidation in Adelaide in 1898, after four or five years of life. was organised with £150 as its capital in ten shares of £5 paid up and five shares reckoned as paid to £5 and this little venture was got together in Adelaide to dispatch three men to Kalgoorlie to do their bset for themselves when they got there and those who sent them. The organisers of this syndicate were the brothers George and William Brookman, who hitherto knew more about jam making and the selling of groceries than of finding or buying a gold "show." A miner named Pearce accompanied W. G. Brookman (he died at his father's residence, at Prospect, near Adelaide, in December last) who on reaching Hannan's Find were soon at work to fulfil their quest for a mine, and finding plenty of spare ground some three miles to the south-east of Hannan's Reward, they promptly drove in their pegs. No one took the slightest interest in the operation and all the blocks are still to-day marvels of similarity in shape and areas. Brookman

and his mate had no trouble whatever over making their choice-it was the bigness of their ideas that afterwards astounded the late comers who tried "to get in " when the cards were thrown on the table. This business to the ordinary prospector of these early days had no attraction whatever, for it looked all Lombard Street to a China orange that Brookman and his precious Adelaide syndicate would not see the application fees back again. Yet ponder over the figures that follow. Mr. G. Brookman on October 14, 1898, was in the chair at the final meeting of the syndicate in Adelaide. The meeting was so pleased with the work of its secertary, Mr. A. Bristowe, that it voted him £150-the nominal capital of the syndicate. The chairman, however, stated for public information "that the capital value of the shares in the companies promoted from their holdings at the Golden Mile, Boulder, was then £7,275,350." Those companies had produced at that date gold weighing 17 tons and worth £24,000,000. The money distributed among the Adelaide shareholders was £950,000 in cash and in shares £3.421,000. A vote of thanks to the original. prospectors it is recorded in the Melbourne Argus of October 15, 1908, was the closing item of that final meeting of the syndicate.

London has Control.

In the following year, 1899, the market values of such mines as the Gt. Boulder the Lake View Consols, the Associated, and the Horseshoe, shot up with rocket-like rapidity, due in a measure to the bonanza yields of 65,000 oz. a month from the Lake View Consols, and the consistent returns from the Gt. Boulder, while the Perseverance and the Ivanhoe were being equipped to put through greatly increased. tonnages of high grade ore by treatment plants which were in those days the most costly and intricate in the world, thanks to the fostering hand of British capital and the helping hands and brains of the leading mining engineers and metallurgists of the world. London had ere this point was reached taken unto itself all the shares it could obtain and, what was just as good, the Britishers were so eager to get in that they adopted all the offspring too-in the shape of pups, and not a few proved feline in species.

My story is coming to a close, owing to exigencies of space, and to compress into a few paragraphs the remainder of the history of gold mining in Western Australia is not easy, but the reader in all probability will have quite enough to convince him that but for the gold discoveries the Swan River Settlement would be of slender proportions to-day, even though the progressive policy of the Moore ministry has created what is now called the Agricultural Era. It was the market of the goldfields gave farmers their chance, assisted by a protective tariff before and after Federation and now in the heyday of her youth this marvellous country for gold and wheat, cattle and wool, pearls and timber and an increasing population bids fair to be the greatest and wealthiest of the six States of Australia.

When the mines of this country were Splendid fashionable in the Old Country, the Extravagance. riding camel, it is said, raced with the London agents on their backs to and from the distant fields, and a corps of speedy cycle riders carried messages across hundreds of miles of desert lands to the nearest telegraph station. Some highly excited representatives of these London buyers cabled full reports and it is said with particulars of code book maps quite reckless of cost and one agent who was engineering the Black Flag mine, in the North Coolgardie district, at this time spent £1,200. It was all done on " an Oriental scale of extravagance,' and these engineers drank champagne as if it were water, instead of a couple of sovereigns a bottle. One well known mining man, who had the ears of a strong

crowd in London, used to drive out from Coolgardie behind a team of spanking greys, and pulling up behind the nearest hill order, down a man who drove pegs here and there and going on further the operation was repeated and then the "eminent eminent engineer " drove back to civilization, filled in a cable, and of course described the "show" technically and the flatheads in London cabled out the money to secure the "mine." The Bank of England and other leases on the outskirts of the Mile were pegged out in this way and in regard to the latter a manager was appointed who had done good work for the Argus in press reports at £1,000 a year, but the appointment had to be cancelled in three months! This, however, did not affect the engineer, who in a year or two later made a "big punch" at Mt. Lyell in North Lyells for the Mines Selection Syndicate, and later at Broken Hill, when the South Blocks were acquired by the Lake View Consols was one of the vendors-the Hill Syndicate, of which Mr. W. L. Baillieu was a member and he it will be remembered in 1900 paid a visit of inspection to the Associated, Kalgoorlie, owing to depletion of the ore and a big market fall. His report, however, did not affect the position.

There was a boom in these buck reef shows, foused on London by the Coolgardie crowd of agents, which of course soon collapsed and "the short experience " of London on the market shattered prices and speculations for the ensuing couple of years, but the mining barometer changed its locale from Coolgardie to Kalgoorlie and it became the storm centre. Things, however, began slowly as dividends were not accumulated quickly after the treatment plants started running. In May, 1897, the whole State only had eight mines on the dividend or at least the right side of the ledger. As the list is worth reproducing, here it is, for seven companies :

It goes without saying that a quarter of a million pounds from Kalgoorlie mines did not in those days. of feverish markets go much towards restoring confidence in the future of gold mining in that part of the country, and how unconvincing it was in regard to the distant and outback mines it is not necessary to chronicle. A few big things were opened at this time -Peak Hill, by Darlington Simpson, who gave a great banquet at the Palace in Perth and had a great gold dish on the table made from gold from the mine; the Westralia Mt. Morgans, on the Mt. Margaret Field, for which Mr. A. E. Morgans was sponsor and is still managing director of and has remitted dividends amounting to over £200,000, but the mine has since seen some parlous days; Lancefield, at Laverton, on the same field; the Sons of Gwalia, at Mt. Leonora, one of the best of the State's mines outside Kalgoorlie to-day; the Cosmopolitan, at Kookynie, which has also paid profit to its shareholders but is now let on tribute. Any of these mines if offered now would have saved a situation."

Coolgardie; the weir at Mundaring when it overflows holds 4,690 million gallons of water. The total cost was £2,800,000 and the cost of water to high grade mines was last year raised from 5s. to 7s. per 1,000 gallons. Sluicing water to get rid of the residues is Is. 6d. per 1,000 gallons. Domestic water for towns, etc., is sold at schedule rates. Condensed water before the scheme arrived was about ten times the cost of Mundaring water. The pipe is laid on to Kanowna, 12 miles beyond Kalgoorlie. Several of the towns. near the pipe track are reticulated from the schemeYork, Northam, Beverley, Meckering, Southern Cross, Coolgardie, Kalgoorlie, Boulder, etc. But the Government does not get within £90,000 a year of the maintenance cost and interest and sinking fund charges. The scheme was launched publicly by Sir John Forrest, the premier, and it was designed by the late Mr. C. Y. O'Connor, C.M.G., who also carried out the Fremantle Harbor Works. This work, the Coolgardie Water Scheme, gave renewed life to the Boulder mines by enabling them to treat greater tonnages of a lower grade ore and consequently the year the water arrived the gold yield rose to over 2,000,000 oz. and the dividends next year were £2,050,547. The dividends return in 1905, owing to the splendid yields from the Gt. Fingall, at Day Dawn, and the Oroya-Brownhill, at Kalgoorlie-two of the Bewick, Moreing groupwas the highest in the history of mining in Western. Australia-£2,167,630. It will be seen that in building railways for mines, opening up tracks and sinking wells, lending camels and contributing to cost. of outfit for prospectors and grants to assist mines to develop, approved by the State Mining Engineer, the State has not neglected the industry.

Railway construction to serve mines is in progress at Port Hedland towards Marble Bar, Mt. Margaret to Sandstone to serve Black Range district, where the

Oroya-Black Range Co. and the Black Range G.M., Ltd., have both paid regular dividends for several years, and from Meekatharra to Nannine, a progressive and promising Murchison centre.

The State battery system has also assisted in the development of the mining industry and about. twenty mills are at work in various parts of the immense territory which is auriferous in Western Australia, the latest to be built being that at Marble Bar. The capital cost of the mills was in round figures a quarter of a million; the value of the gold won up to December 31 was £2,658,966, being the product of 696,128 tons milled, yielding 728,880 oz. gold.

Kalgoorlie's Working Costs beat the World.

The foregoing facts all speak plainly and pertinently of the beginning, the rise and progress of gold mining in this country, and probably much of the great success achieved at Kalgoorlie is due to the men whom the mine owners entrusted with the work, for unless a gold mine has a good man to operate it the venture will not pay, as many a good mine has been condemned solely through mismanagement and in some cases-even so at Kalgoorlie-through dishonesty on the part of those in charge allowing themselves to be made the tools of market riggers. However such cases have been rare and the Australians who are in the majority in managing the great mines of this country can take credit to themselves that their brains, their energy, and the confidence the London capitalists have in them and the Westralian mine worker enables them to claim for Kalgoorlie that it leads the world in the tonnage of ore extraction per man and taking into consideration the conditions for mining and the fact that white labor only is employed, the working costs are lower than even the Rand working costs.