Fighting for Gold in an American Jungle

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 152, 24 December 1932, Page 6

Fighting for Gold in an American Jungle

How George-Herlihy, the enly son of a former lieutenant-commanider in the Royal Navy, is fighting for a. fortune in gold was told recently by a writer who visited the young man's father in Devonshire.

"It was with the,utmost reluctance that I persuaded his father to tell me something of the opic struggle his boy is making, said the narrator. "George doesn't like publicity," his father said simply, "But when I urged tihat saeh a story would be a fitting aiiswer to the critics who are for ever eh outing that modern youth is degenerate^ he began to tell me the facts. !

George Herlihy was at the Sciool of Mines at Camborne when the war broke out, and before ho was eighteen.1 he insisted on leaving to join the ■ Public Schools Battalion. :

"Don't say much about his war service," begged his father. "He transferred to the Machine Gun Corps, was badly hit at Arras, and could uot go back. With the end of the war the returned to Camborne. Then he a job with an oil company and wemt to Badgad. He was there until invalided home with malaria, but a little Ixhing like that would not keep his adventurous spirit at home. He had learned Persian, Arabic, Spanish and Fremch— and off he went to the Frontino go\& mines, in Columbia, South America^

"For seven years ho has been a •surveyor with them; then he was due for leave. His passage was booked, and we expected him home in January. T2he next thing we heard was that he had given up his leave because he had; a chance to joiiv another man to seek gwld 27 miles from Zaragoza in South America. 'I feel that here is my opportunit}',' he told us. 'I'd looked forward more than I can say to my hofliday, but work comes first, especially work like this.'

. "His new mining concession is in tha heart of the jungle, and between hEni and any sort of civilisation there aro three rivers. It took ten. hours for a coolie to go by cano© from his mine to> Zaragoza—but nearly five days to gets back, because the current is so strong. "George set to work/at once to.mak&l a road through the jungle/ and for three.5 weeks they toiled at it, building rafts, across the rivers, arid now ho has brought his mine within a two days * journey. My boy, who is an experienced gold prospector, is certain that his mine means a fortune, but his partner, now that the Tainy season is setting in, has declined to Temain. George, however, is determined not to give in,

although he is tae only white man in his camp.

"Food and money have run short, but in his last letter to us he declares that he will get a job in another gold mine until the lainy season is over, and then return to the battle -with his savings. Sometimes he has been so short of food that he has had to shoot monkeys to keep himself and his coolies alive. 'I'm sitting on a million pounds,' he said in one letter, 'and I won't shift until I've got it!' " Here is an extract from one of his last letters, which gives a vivid picture of the life this young adventurer is living. .

"We live almost entirely on the fish we catch," he writes. "For sugar I have made a mill, grind the cane, boil the juice until it thickens, and there you are. Eice and maize lam growing, but as'the crop is not yet ready, we are managing with a plant called yuca, something like potatoes, which does as vegetables and makes up into decent bread.'

"Had a treat to-day—a) melon ripened, and I did enjoy it! I am working two shifts at the moment—6.3o a.m. to 3 p.m. and the other.from 3 to 11 p.m. I have a string of old oil lamps, and it giyes the effect of gnomes working in some fairy mine.

"We were short of grub the other day, and as the river, was too high for dynamiting fish, we went after guagua —about the size of a badger—and the flesh tastes like pork. He has to be dug out by dogs. I have five, a mongrel crew, but good at this work*. Well, we needed the flesh badly, so as soon as we found a hole, in went the dogs. Presently I heard a mighty rumbling, and out shot the guagua into the river. "I had visions of a foodlcss day, but luckily shot him, and then- dived in to retrieve his body before the dogs could get at him—poor brutes, they were hungry, too. To-day we went out hunting again and came across the weirdest animal.

"It was the size of a fox, long and black, with a diamond-shaped yellow patch over the shoulder. There" were three of them up a tree, and one of my coolies told me that if they catch a native alone they will never leave him until he is done.

"It's getting late now . . . outside my hut I can hear the chittering and squealing; grunts and weird howls from the jungle outside —imagine, there are .hundreds of miles of it unexplored, right •through Brazil, Venezuela, and Bolivia, '■with breaks for the townships that have tsprung up. Still, it's a great life!"