commenced under the management of Captain Mathew Bryant. By February 1881 one furnace was “almost completed and another in a forward state”. Miners were “busy getting out the ore” and, as reported by a resident, “the deep sound of a blast or shot as they call it, startles us eight or ten times a day”. The description of Mount Hope in February 1881 was optimistic about the prospects of the settlement. The writer noted that “Mount Hope has arisen again from the ashes of the first attempt to develop its grand mineral resources, and what was a desert of rocks a few months ago is now a busy little town that may soon rival Cobar”. It was estimated that the adult male population was about fifty or sixty. Women and children were also present; the writer remarked: “I never saw such a place for children; it is like an ant bed, but they all seem healthy and happy”. In August 1881 new machinery installed at the New Mount Hope Mine was started up. The steam engine was “a horizontal engine of twenty horse power with Cornish boiler”, driving “Madden’s new patent crackers, with winding gear and rollers for crushing the ore”. Two furnaces were in operation, to which the crushed ore was conveyed by a tramway. Since the first furnace started in April there had been “140 tons of copper turned out and sent away”. The population of the township “exceeds 400 souls, but as soon as rain comes it will double that number”. There were two stores, “one just newly opened”, as well as “three hotels, two bakers’ shops, two blacksmiths’ shops, two butchers’ shops, also numerous other business palaces of minor importance, and private dwellings are dotted here and there, scattered as on all new mining townships”. In November 1882 it was reported that “a Government tank of 25,000 yards is being excavated for the benefit of the public” at Mount Hope. A post office and a bank had opened in the township. Four stores were established “and another in course of erection”. The population “exceeds 500 souls”. The Great Central Copper Mine south of Mount Hope township had re-commenced operations during 1882. A company had been formed in 1881 to work the mine and, beginning in April 1881, three shafts were sunk under the management of C. L. Cawse. By late 1882 furnaces, sheds and an engine-house