SOUTH AUSTRALIA.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume V, Issue 372, 24 February 1849, Page 3

SOUTH AUSTRALIA.

Among the English intelligence is given the resuit of a sale of colonial copper ore at Swansea on the 21st September, when prices were said to be rising: — 765 tons Burra Burra realised £14,574, averaging £19 Is. per ton ; 50 tons Kapunda sold at £16 17s. per ton; 40 tons Australian realised £l2 10s. per ton ; and nino tons Molong (New South Wales) sold at £11 Is. 6d. per ton.

On the lOcb January a public meeting wai held in Adelaide to consider the propriety of forming a company to establish a railway from Adelaide to the port. After various returns of traffic, &c.,bad been read, Mr. Hagen proposed that a company should be formed with a capital of £50,000, to be completed and established in London. This motion was put and lost. A resolution was proposed by Mr. E< M. Stephens that no proceedings should be taken till they had ascertained what was to be done in England, where the subject was in agitation also, but that the meeting should pledge itself to establish a railway company if one was not formed in England. Mr. ~ St rang ways proposed an amendment that a committee be formed at once. On being put, the amendment and motion were rejected successively, and the meeting broke up« Burra Burra shares were quoted at £135 to £140, a slight improvement on the last quotations.

Smelting. — We have ranch pleasure.Ma reporting the decisive success of the coppersmelting process, patented in this colony by Messrs- Penny and Owen, and now being carried out by those gentlemen at their new wotks, near Tothill's Scrub. The three bars of copper brought into Adelaide by Mr. Penny, and exhibited at the Exchange, are all pure copper, and have been so rendered by one operation in four hours. One of the bars was produced from what is called the black ore of the Burra Burra, of which the yield is only ll per cent. The blue carbonate yields 30, the red oxide 33, and the malachite 40 per cent., according to some recent assays by Messrs* Penny and Owen. — Register Jan. 13. The Governor. — His Excellency and Lady Young left Adelaide on Monday last ; on a tour to the noitb, and are not expected in town for the week. They were to be at the Burra Burra on Saturday last, and intend to visit ti c Kapunda before their return. — Adelaid Times, January 8.

The Burra Burba Strike. — The strike at the Burra Burra is at an end, the men who could afford to hold out, and who were proscribed by the directors, having withdrawn their opposition. A considerable number of pitches were let last week at the captain's prices, the number of applicants for employment being large. The total number of handi at present employed is 300, but an augmentation is intended.— Register, Jan. 10.