RIVERS OF RICHES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 84, 10 April 1933, Page 5

RIVERS OF RICHES.

WHERE GOLD GROWS. WHITE WOMEN MINERS. KENYA COLONY " RUSH." White women are among the prospectors and miners at work on the goldfield in Kenya, an encouraging report on which was recently made by Sir Albert Kitson, the noted geologist. Some of their experiences arc described in a letter from an Englishwoman who, with her husband, is camped on the bank of a small stream in the Kakamega goldfield, where they are working an alluvial claim for gold.

"Life hero is becoming intensely interesting," she writes. "We have decided to put in a sluice box to test the 'wash' and see if it is worth working properly. T. and I are the.carpenters and designers, and D. and my husband do the work in the stream, clearing, diverting, and making dams. Most Famous Claims. "All goes well as long as those who can't speak the language will leave the native 'boys' alone. The latter are shockingly slow workers and very independent. They downed tools one day, and it was only after 'some think' and ingenious argument that I got them to return to work.

j "We went over the most famous claims in the area. They belong to a most amazing character, Mrs. Johnston, an American. Her husband and she have been prospectors for years, and discovered this goldfield in 1927. They have got a phenomenal river. "It is, Avith one exception, the only place in the world where, owing to certain chemical actions, gold actually grows. They come across pockets from which they get as much as 78 ounces. One pocket produced IOOOoz in 12 days. Over the two years Mrs. Johnston has been working these claims she has averaged 6oz to Boz a day. "We learned a great deal there, but it is, in a way, depressing to come back to our own little results. One must just forget the Johnstons' show, as 2oz a day is considered good for any alluvial claims."