TALES OF GOLD-SEEKERS

Greymouth Evening Star, 11 April 1933, Page 10

TALES OF GOLD-SEEKERS

FASCINATION OF THE GAME Pictures from Kenya of gold-seekers crouched over a stream and a basin of water recall to me some of the deepest thrills I have ever known — the lure of seeking and finding gold in the raw, washed out in gleaming yellow specks which may mean wealth to the finder —pure waterworn gold picked up for no more than the trouble of throwing the “dirt” into a pan and washing the mud away (writes Bond Cable in the Manchester Guardian). The method of “panning” is the same in every country, because it is the simplest and easiest to yield results which will indicate whether the “pay-dirt” is rich enough to work systematically. But it can only be used where the gold is in alluvial soil, soft mud, or sand easily scooped up. The lot of the prospector seeking gold scattered in minute specks through hard rock is a good deal harder and much less thrilling, except in the rare cases where the lumps of it are as plain in a “specimen” as plums in a pudding. Such a prospector, almost invariably working out in the wilds many miles from civilisation, has a choice of two methods. He may knock off chunks of rock from a likely outcrop, and, if he gets bits that look to him like good specimens, may either pouch them in a sack that gets more and more uncomfortably heavy and nobbly and awkward to carry by man or animal pack or painfully pound the rock to powder with hammer, pestle, and mortar, and then wash out the gold by the method of panning. In either case the slowness and drudgery and waiting for results sadly reduce the thrill that one feels in the game of prospecting in alluvial, especially when that is done along the banks of a stream where the water is right to hand; and if you do not pan out enough from one good-looking spot you just push along upstream to try another. The wildest excitement of all comes if, in your slow progress up the stream, the pan yields richer and richer results, indicating that you are approaching the spot where the heaviest lumps, washed down through thousands or millions of years from the higher ground , sank quickly and formed the richest deposits.

THE OLD-TIMERS ! have known old-timer prospectors who had spent a lifetime at the game, who had barely education enough to sign their names or spell out simple words in print, but who knew as much as any expert from a, college of mineralogy about the lie of the land, the strata, the rock, and the soil that offered a good “prospect.” To these men it is not the wealth itself that counts apparently, because I have known some who when they made “a strike” and had it proved and developed lost all interest, sold out tor were done out of) what, shares they held, and contentedly packed their traps and grub” enough for the planned trip, and pushed out into the wilds, intent only on seeking fresh fields. I have known enough of the hire of such gold-seeking—even as a verv inexperienced and amateurish helper clnn 1 V 1 Cry ?, ld hand nt it ~ to understand how the fascination can grip a man to the exclusion of everything

else. It was the old-timer who trudged along the banks of the stream with a roving eye on the contours of the low hills around and on every backwater, sand-bar, and pool, and who when we reached a worth-while spot halted and got to work. But I had .the chief thrill out of it because he was a great believer in what he called “beginner’s luck,” and always sent me off to try the other bank, or any place I fancied above or below him, and wash my own pan. The procedure was Always the same, and the results were varied enough to leave us emptying out the sediment with a groan, a grunt, or a sigh of disappointment, or to set the pulses racing and the heart pounding at sight of glittering pin-point specks of yellow that shone like light itself even in glistening sand, bigger pinhead points, and perhaps a pellet or two the size of a split-pea. I have washed a pan that yielded several pinhead specks and four little lumps grading up from a small to a biggish green pea, and although the lot might perhaps have been weighed down in the scales by a half-sovereign, I got more excitement out of that shining metal than out of the fattest cheque I have ever received.

That was the best pan we made on the whole trip, but it kept the excitement going with every pan we washed. If, was hard sometimes to be steady and methodical enough to follow th© careful routine procedure—scooping sand and mud into the basin, filling up with water, swirling it round and round with a steady, even motion that kept the muddy watei- movingfast enough to hold the mud in suspension, slow enough to let the heavier particles (of which even the smallest grains of gold are the heaviest) sink to the bottom; then letting the swirling muddy water slop over the edge, filling the basin again with clear water, repeating the process untill no more sediment would rise io dim the water and the last of it could be drained slowly and carefully off, leaving a thin coat of pebbles and debris at the bottom, with the gold specks gleaming—if any were there. Our total earnings on that trip wei 3 less than we could have made as picl;-and-shovel street navvies.

THE SIGHT OF THE GOLD Another experience confirms me i i my belief that it is not the resultai t wealth that counts as much as thn seeking and finding and the sight of the raw gold itself. This time I was on a big barge-dredger ripping up the bed of a. wide and shallow stream i i the Philippine Islands, dumping th j mud on to a sort of fop deck or store v of the dredger, hosing it into liqui I, and letting it spill down a long slub e with riffle-bars across the bottom of it. at short intervals. Just as Ti panning, but on a bigger scale, the heavier grains or lumps of gold sai k and were caught by the bars, whi’c Ihe muddy water spilled over aid away.

'Plie dredger belonged to a company which had a concession to dred; e that river for gold. The dozen whit's and scores of blacks working the dredger were servants of the compai y on salary and wages, without ary stake in the takings or any reward from from an increase in them. I was not even that, only a chance visitor off a tramp steamer in (he roadstead enjoying the hospitality of the dredger’s white crew. But when the dredge and the hosing were stopped to allow the riffles to be cleared, and

a yell and a. jabber of excitement went up, followed b.y another and another and by a, panting Filippino rushing aft. and spilling on I a bucketful of pebbles and grit spa tiered with pellets and lumps of gleaming gold up to the size of half a cigar, 1 found my throat as dry and the palms of my hands as wet. as if f had owned the dredger and the river and all the gold that might come out of if. It was just a touch of (hr craz< — the madness, if you like-—(lmi holds and lures the gold-seeker.