IN THE RICHEST OF ALL GOLD MINES—THE CALEDONIAN.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXVII, Issue 4357, 2 August 1871, Page 3

IN THE RICHEST OF ALL GOLD MINES— THE CALEDONIAN.

"If you can fiDd our old friend Freekins anywhere out iv your quarter of the world, let him know that a fortune has been left him. His friends have heard nothing of him for many years, and conclude him to have passed over to the majority." We read thus in a letter received nearly two years ago from an old London friend, with whom ourself and Freekins had, twentytwo years ago, been fellow clerks. The missing man had never been seen or heard of by us, and, as no funds were forwarded to pay for hunting him up, we dismissed the matter from our mind, our duty being only to tell him of the fortuue awaiting him if he came within ken. Freekins had nearly faded from our remembrance. Pimly we recalled him as a very easy-minded youth, who was blessed with good health and good digestion, and bothered himself with no cares or ambitions. Now, as we recalled him, it appeared all right enough that a fortune should be left to such as he. He would never otherwise have been likely to get one. But why did he disappear from the world that he knew and that knew him, I as he appeared to have done ? He was never likely to become eccentric or misanthropic, and do as Lawrence Oliphant, English M.P., lately did when he left the House of Commons and his Scotch constituency and the gay world of London, and, unknown to all, buried himself for a long time in some semimonastic society on the shores of Lake Erie, in America. Nor was Freekins likely to become cnminal,and to flee from justice and the faces of his fellows. We did not think it was so easy for a man to disappear out of society, to drop through a trap on the stage of life, and not be discoverable anywhere below or behind the scenes. It would seem though that Freekins had so done. We had to go down to New Zealand some eighteen months or so after the receipt of the advice about a missing friend, and we can safely say that we never gave him a thought, through the sickness of the sea journeys there and thereabouts, or the novelty of the new land and its different aspects. We had landed on the South Island and travelled northwards through its townships up to the far end of the Northern Island— just as far as we could go in that direction. As we stood there we stood as far from London as any one could be upon this globe. That was at Auckland. There were places of note to be seen thereabouts, one of which was the Thames gold diggings, situated on a barren sea-shore on the eastern coast, some sixty miles from Auckland — the most unpropitious place in appearance that it was ever our fate to look at. Fortune there, however, had hidden her largest store of gold, as Captain Kidd is supposed to have hidden his wonderful treasure, where folks would be least likely to look for it. Ifc fell to our fortune to be there only in January last, and it fell to our misfortune to have n:> "second sight;" to know nothing of the place that we were in, any more than that weary work was going on there, as elsewhere, in the hope that it might be successful. We could have bought mining shares, now gone far beyond our purse, for next to nothing. We rubbed shoulders, as it were, with the winner of the Derby, before the start, and knew nothing of his excellence, nor of what we were doing. We had gone to the farthest antipodal part of the world from our London home, and had entered the house of Fortunatus, and knew it not. i We had not Aladdin's lamp to see our i way, and noticed not the thousand hands that, all unseen to us, were everywhere holding out bags of gold — in front of the nose that we could not see beyond. " Well, my word, what shall we see next ?" The voice came from one who stopped our way in Pollen-street, Grahamstown, Thames Diggings. The town is situated on a strip ofsea-shore, washed by the Firth of Thames on one side, and banked up by a high mountain range immediately on the other. We knew not our querist, who was dressed as a digger, and we mildly hinted that he had the advantage of us. " So has any one that's got brains," he said ; " Don't you know Baldwell ?" We mildly expostulated that we could not be expected so recall the events of a lifetime afe once, nor remember, at call, all the faces that had some time or other been familiar to us. " Well, you have not altered a bit since '48, anyhow, and how is old Slopgoose?" A touch of that familiar sort made us kith and kin at once. We knew all about it now, and twenty-three years rolled away as a mist does before the sun. " And to meet you here!" we said. "We have cornea long way tosee something or other, and that something, at present., appears to be you ;— what are you doing here P" Our newly discovered friend, with the good memory for faces, had, we found, been working at these Thames Gold Mines for many months. When we had met him last he was the well-provided-for son of a well-to-do father in London, and connected with one of the professions. Here he was, a working digger, with a horny hand, and the marks of labour everywhere upon him. The change had come about, we found, naturally enough. Nature had " thrown back" in the son to the original type of perhaps the great grandfather. He was intended to be a labouring man of the bended back and perspiring brow, one who was to live by musculaT labour; and he had gradually declined to his destiny. It was of no use to prop him up and think to keep erect a marble figure on the feet of clay. Here, as a digger, with a short pipe in his mouth, he was happy, and the right man in the right place. We did not say " Alas,'' for we were quite sure, after a few minutes' talk, that everybody would be as happy as our friend was if they could find out their right place in the world as he had done. The labour fitted for him was to him no toil, evidently enough. "We left you a gentleman of fortune," we said, " on the high road to keep a carriage and pair, and a house in Belgrave-square; and what fortune-teller could have dared to prophesy this change ?" He said, " Look here, old fellow : lam well off and happy with a good day's work for my hands, and that I never felt myself to be while trying to work with my head. The old man tried me at everything, but it was no go, and, when the money had all gone, 1 found, in emigration and hard work out here, just what I was fitted for. I'm all right, and am healthy, lively, and strong ; what more could I wish for ?" We began to perceive that there was much to be said for our friend's view of the question, and that, perhaps, the refinements of a London life, and the exercise of the nerves and brain in place of the muscles of a man, might not be the best way of getting through life happily, and coming healthily in at the finish. This man " toiled all day in the eye of Phoebus, and slept in Elysium," without doubt. We were ready to buy that sound night's sleep of him -were it purchasable, and there were other things that we envied him the possessing. After dinner he would take us to his workshop " up there" — pointing to the mountain rung© above as. His workshop as lie called it was the Caledonian Mine «-Dftw tto Qrot Ctledoaiw Jtinc, the

rich Caledonian Mine, and to be known as tha richest gold-mine that man ever opened in this world, as far as history supplies a record. The Caledonian Mine was, however, nothing then. Its entrance looked but a dirty hole — a perpendicular grave-like entrance on the bleak seaward side of a barren mountain — a home for sea birds, and sea winds, and for nothing else. Yet that hole in that sea-wall led to the house of Croesus. Through that doorway of dirt El Dorado lay. Through that entrance came two tons weight of melted gold in two months, and that successionally. Ten thousand pounds daily, week after week, and month after month, were handed down out of that unpropitious-looking hole. To have been in the richest mine in this world is something, and to have gene into itto some purpose is something more —and we did that. In dining with Baldwell we heard the history of a quarter of a century, and began to perceive how long life is, and how very short also, and how a life should be measured by the number and importance of the ideas and actions that it develops, and not by the number of its years. We found that we had travelled to hear news also, and some very unexpected tit-bits in that way tamed up in our talk. It seemed at last that the quarter of a century of time had been but a dream, for we got lo a distinctness of memory about minutiro that might hare been had of the events of last week only. We found Baldweli's superiority over us in matter of muscular work when we walked up to the mine with him. It was a terribly toilsome up-hill trudge, quite a climb. The day was hot too, and the moisture of the sea beneath us exhaled and made us suffer that worst of warmth — a moist heat. We got faint and tired, and very perspiring over the job. The mine was reached at last, and we entered the " drive "" — a long passage of about six feet by four, into which if we went again we should prefer to go in a coal sack, with two holes cut as an opening for our arms, and with a coal-heaver's fantail hat on our head. How thoughtless people are in such matters ! We spoilt a good hat in that excursion, and our coat ,was nothing to speak of afterwards. In the halls of this burrow we saw mea working by candle-light and lamp-light all about us, and listened to all the details and made the usual remarks that politeness demanded. We had a piece of brownish-looking stone given to us also, which we have now, in which stone, further onwards in the workings, all the masses of gold were afterward* found lurking. Anything more unlike gold than the stuff we inspected could not well be imagined. A handful of fuller's earth would be as promising a " prospect," and yet here was all the wealth that could be wanted, and more than could beimagined. When Dumas gave to Monte Ghristo the enormous fortune that he did, he had the great trouble of imagining how to store it away. He imbedded the hundred millions in a hill in a lonely island in the Mediterranean, and made the fame of that island for all time, and his oven fame also. We were in a veritable Monte Christo place here in the Thatnes-diggings, and in the subterraneous place we stood was buried a Monte Chriato amount of wealth — existing in fact and not in fiction : " A potentiality of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice," as Dr. Johnson phrased the brewer Thrale's fortune. That wealth could have been ours too had we been able to see but one short month into the future. We do not shave, and that is satisfactory, or the result might be, that reflecting on what might have done in January, 1871, would be too much for our o'erwrought mind — with the razor so near to our throat. " Here's another old Londoner," said Baldwell, smacking the shoulders of a digger standing near ; and he forthwith detailed to that digger how he had met us on the shore below, and had known us twenty -five years back, in a very different place. "We little thought ever of meeting at the end of the earth, and to such purpose as this," said Baldwell, " but I have lost a day to good purpose in the talk we've been having of old times." We suggested here that it would be as well to renew that tale in the evening if Baldwell would come to our lodgings and bring his friend, the other Londoner, with him. That being agreed upon, we went on to see the rest of the workings and then to see the machinery, and then to hear of the richness of this neighbouring mine and that one, and how the leads were all supposed to run out to sea, and how the workings there would have to be under water. " You had better take shares with us before you leave the place, for now's the time to buy before we hit the vein." So they counselled us, but we had not faith in the hitting of that vein, and had done our fair share of quarlzmining adventures away over the sea in Australia. The results there had satisfied us. For the majority they generally prove satisfactory, and that in the sense in which the worsted one in a fight answers that he has had enough. Blinded mole that we were, standing amidst moles, at moles' work too — how could we see into the middle of next month, when we could not well discern, in the half darkness, the face of those that we talked with ? For instance, the face of that Londoner digger whom Baldwell had spoken to with us was but imperfectly visible, so much so that we did not know him again when Baldwell stopped him at the entrance as we were making our exit, and said, "Mind, Perkins, that you come down to Burton's to-night." We thought that we had seen the look before that Perkins wore when he nodded affirmatively to that injunction. "What did you call that man?" we said to Baldwell. He answered that he called hint Perkins, and that such was his name; " and what's the matter with you?" he added. Perhaps the blood had left our cheek to assist our brains in an effort at memory called upon now by the look of that face seen in the daylight.and by the name of Perkins. The name was near enough to Freekins, and the face was nearer still, if we could remember faces rightly. To settle the matter we stept up to him, and a few words told us that he was our man, the man wanted for the fortune in England.' We had unkennelled him many hundreds of feet underground in this out-of-the-way corner of the earth, and though we missed our fortune in the Caledonian mine, we gave the news of a fortune to Freekins,and had not gone down to tho Thames diggings for nothing, always supposing it to be more blessed t^ give than to receive. In the evening we heard the long story told of the past life of the missing man, and a not uninteresting story it was. It greatly helped us to understandthe story of the claimant oftheTichbornebaronetcy. It had been mythical fco us up to that time how a man could disappear from the world for a number of years and keep himself unknown to all his friends and relatives. After hearing Freekins's story we began to understand that uuoh could be done, and that the Enorh Ardent and the Tichbornes of this world a*o not no uncommon as we unagino<i The Btory we heard shall be moulded some day,and told, and be told, as the mlo of the richest gold mine of this world. In all but the right names we bay* commenced it h^rt «,