NEARLY THE CENTURY.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 11, 14 January 1929, Page 5

NEARLY THE CENTURY.

AN ADVENTUROUS LIFE.

DEATH OF MR. C. DEVERALL.

REFUSED A DIAMOND FIELD.

A long life of adventure closed this morning when Mr. Cornelius Deverall, of Dexter Avenue, passed away. He was only four years off the century, having been born in 1833, four years before Queen Victoria ascended' the throne. He was a native of Devises in Wiltshire.

Evidently born under a restless star, Mr. Deverall wandered far and wide during his long life. While still a young man he visited the Crimea, just at the end of the war with Russia. He went out as an engineering mechanic to attend to the fitting of pipes in the military hospitals, and w,hile engaged on the work he met the famous Florence Nightingale. In those days screwed pipes were unknown. The only way the engineers knew of joining one to another was to make the end of one pipe overlap the next, and allow the two to rust together—hastening the process by using some corrosive substance like sal volatile. It was known as "rust-jointing."

Young Deverall's next venture was to America, and there he tried farming in Texas, which was a wild place in those days. The district where he settled was infested by mosquitoes, and those ferocious insects eventually drove him away. He next went to South Africa, and there just missed joining the ranks of the diamond millionaires. An old Dutchman named de Beers, the founder of the millionaire family, offered his property at Kimberley to Deverall for a total price of £2000. The offer, however, did not appeal to the young Englishman, and he refused it. It was that very place that afterwards became famous as the de Beer diamond fields. Mr. Deverall had no luck there at mining, and then turned his attention to ferrying trekkers across the Vaal River, for those were pre-bridge days. For a number of years he worked a punt drawn from side to side in the usual way, but later used a steam launch. Half a mile below his ferry was a well-known ford, but the bottom of the river was full of boulders, which in time of flood caused many accidents to the lumbering bullock carts of the burghers.

About forty years ago he came to New Zealand, and liked this place the best of all that he had seen in his wanderings, so he decided to end his days here. He always hoped to complete the century, as he wanted to put up a record in a family remarkable for the longevity of its members, many of them living to over 90.