Wire the opening of the new year a great boom in silver mining shares commenced in Sydney. Its extent and the rapidity with which prices rose reminded colonists of the good old speculative days. The prices of all stocks connected with the now famous Broken Hill mines advanced by more than leaps and bounds. The Broken Hill Proprietory Company's shares, which were originally £9, advanced, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, 2,600 per cent. in twelve days, and subsequently advanced something like 22 per cent. more, but a trifling improvement like that is scarcely worth mentioning. This Company is fondly called the "curly headed boy of the Broken Hill family" and is divided into only 16,000 shares, which seem to have been originally held chiefly by the discoverers of the wealth of the hill and their friends. The stocks of the other companies which have been formed in the colony and England to work "lots" on the Barrier Range all advanced immensely in value during January, though none of them tothe same extent as those of the Proprietory Com-January almost confined to mining any; and business was at the end of
shares. Thus Broken Hill Junction, on which 15s, per share has been paid were selling at 85s., Broken Hill No. 14 with £4 11s. paid up commanded £10 in the market. Broken Hill, south, jumped, in the expressive language of the Mail from £5 12s. to £17.17.6 and Contributing stock from £5.12.6 to £17 15s. other shares rising in the same mad way. In the case of the Proprietory Company's stock there seems to be some justification for high prices, although it remains to be seen whether anything like the quotations at the beginning this year will pay holders. Rich lodes of silver have found in their mines from which a large quantity of silver was obtained last year; their mines are still in course of development and the most sanguine expectations of their future are entertained by the colonists.
other lots on the Barrier ge rich mineral lodes have been found, and aleo all ound "the hill on which The re res from the district were calleter 's mine is situated. culated to sustain the excitement in the Sydney market, the ore which was being taken out of the mines was represented as very rich, and such advices occur as that native silver is being obtained in large quantities, to say nothing of lead, chlorides and grey ore. For. besides silver, lead and tin are obtained on the hill. But so sensitive was the Sydney market that if reports were not regularly received from any of the mines @ fall in the price of its stock would immediately occur, The absence of a report for three or four hours had in some instances sent down the quotations for the defaulting mine. But we are inclined to think that the Barrier Range - will become one of the greatest mining districts in the world, Its _argentiferous deposits appear to be immense, and there is any amount of capital ready to develop the mines, and this will soon bring them into full working order. As one instance of what is being done, a tramway or narrow gauge railway was opened in January by the Duke of Manchester, which connects Broken Hill with Silverton, and at the dimmer which was held afterwards the Chairman of the Progress Committee stated that the market value of their developed mines was then £6,500,000, while the value of mines yet to be developed was about the same. We drew attention to New South Wales silver mining some time and it is now evident that the anticipations which were then formed have been much more than realised, Indeed it is not impossible that New South Wales will in future control the silver market, and, as the metal' is cheaply produced, the ores being very rich, everything that can be raised from the mines will at once be sold, The story of the discovery of the Broken Hill minerals is given in recent number of the Melbourne Leader. From this account we learn that only four years, when extensive discoveries of silver on the border land between New South Wales and South Australia were creating excitement, a stock rider on the Mount Gipps run was mustering sheep, and when riding between the site on which Silverton now stands and Broken Hill, he was much struck with the peculiar formation of the latter. He had no knowledge of mining and but little of minerals, yet he had a conviction, or as a Scotsman might have said, "it was borne in rich beneath the barren and rugged upon him" that there was somethin
rock formation of what had been known as Wilyn-wily-yoga. The country was even poorer for grazing purposes than the average of the ran, nival was not considered a very valuable one, as shown by the fact that it was leased for rider, whose name was Rasp, mentioned penny per annum per acre. The stock
his belief in the mineral richness of the land to others of the station hands, but got laughed at for his pains. Finally, two contractors on the runs, James Poole and David James, joined Rasp, and the three pegged out and applied for, on mineral lease, one of the most ru; blocks. Other lots were applied for and pegged out, until the seven persons who constituted the original confederacy heid
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.