THE DEAREST CAFE.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3334, 16 August 1926, Page 8

THE DEAREST CAFE.

(By Bassett Digby, F.K.G.S.) Ihe world’s most expensive restaurant. is to he found not in London, Paris, or New York, but out in the wilds of California, among a hastily run-up scattering of plank and galvanised iron huts, the scene of a gold tush in the hinterland of the village of Kramer.

Crude paintings on the outside walls announce that makeshift but filling meal-, arc procurable for live dollars (one pound) upwards, and that water costs two hits (tonpencc) a cup All toed and water have to ’ make a long journey through the desert. Bootleggers were among (he first arrivals, and wore, soon selling illicit still rye whisky at thy same price as water! Ihe camp would be a remarkable sight for tiie rough, bearded, hardbitten old minors ol ’49.. No red flannel shirts, no oxeu-drawn wagons and littered packs of - picturesque impedimenta. The modern gold-rushers wear wrist-watches and silk shirts. They have come across the Mojave Desert in expensive motor-cars. The groat majority ol the first-comers arc men from varied stations in life, the only thing they have in common being a. complete ignorance ol the elements of mining, a touching trust in the lead given by experts, and a haunting desire to grab a seemingly worthless piece of waste land and sell it for a large sum. I be new field, which lias been named Cold Oust, covers about forty square "dies, and is about seventy miles north •T ''an Bernardino.

About lb .OUU worth ol gold was mined here twenty years ago by a poor prospector named Bercham, who then moved on to investigate a. still more promising vein that proved to he the )ellnw Vster, and made millions of dollars for him.

The eiihmmiting iueideni .sounds like a story by 0. Henry. Au old stager i m ned an interested eye upon another abandoned slialt in the district, and lomid three holes ijored twenty years ago lor a charge of dynamite that had ne'er been exploded. He bought the derelict claim, plugged the holes with dynamite, and pressed the switch that ignited it. Hie ore that came clattering down was worth £2O a ton.