But what she has wanted in gold she has made up in copper. And in some respects the copper has, I think, been better than gold, as affording a more wholesome class of labour. There is less of gambling in the business,--less of gambling even among the shareholders and managing people, and infinitely less temptation to gamble among the workmen. The fact that the metal must be dealt with in large quantities, that vast weights must be moved, and that heavy machinery must be employed, that no man can find enough to support himself for six months by a stroke of luck and carry it away in his waistcoat pocket, gives a sobriety to the employment which the search after gold often lacks. It is quite true that latterly the great discoveries of Australia have needed works as ponderous, shafts as deep, and machinery as costly, as any other description of mining enterprise; but, nevertheless, the enormous wealth which may be represented by a small quantity has a direct tendency to create a speculative spirit in the minds of all employed. The miner who earns his £2 10_s._ a week by blasting a quartz reef may work as steadily, and certainly does work as hard, as he who is picking up coal or copper-bearing dirt, but he is conscious all through that it is gold upon which he is working, and his imagination, aroused by the richness of the metal he is seeking, is ever pushing him on to personal speculation;--till the goal before his eyes is not the few hundred pounds which he certainly could save by industry as a miner, but the fortune which he might possibly make by some happy circumstance in his favour as a speculator. The circumstance now and again does occur; but the result is not always happy. There is much less of such incentive to gambling among copper mines;--though it is not altogether absent, for copper mines are also worked upon tribute. The Kapunda copper-mine is the oldest in the colony, having been discovered in 1843, by two gentlemen engaged in squatting operations. It was considered to be a great day in the colony when the first ore was raised from this mine on January 8, 1844. The Kapunda mines are still worked; but their celebrity was soon eclipsed by the famous Burra Burra mine, and has now been altogether cast into the shade by the mines at Wallaroo and Moonta. I did not visit Kapunda, but I was told that the town itself is prosperous and well ordered.