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Rh lead and copper at Champion Bay, in preference to collecting a few sheep and cattle farmers on the limited pastures of Leschenault Inlet.

The metal-bearing country was stated in 1862 to occupy a space of between four and five thousand square miles, one-fourth of which was "known to contain extensive beds of copper and lead, and seams of coal, with silver, antimony, plumbago, and arsenic and iron in smaller quantities; minute specks of gold have also been found by washing the sands in the beds of some of the streams." The lead and copper workings which have been established have proved that the quality of both ores is very fine, but the same circumstances which have obstructed the development of the colony since its commencement, and prevented it from outgrowing its early disadvantages, have also hindered the owners of the mines from realizing any vast amount of profit, and what those circumstances arise from will be related in the following chapter.