BID FOR FORTUNE

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIII, Issue 7, 19 December 1932, Page 6

BID FOR FORTUNE

GOLD IN HEART OF JUNGLE LONELY WHITE MAN'S TASK. ''SITTING ON A MILLION.” How George' Herlihy, the only son of a former lieutenant-commander 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 1 persuaded his father to tell me something of the epic struggle his boy is making,” said the narrator. “George doesn’t like publicity,” his father said simply. “But when I urged that such a story would be a fitting answer to the critics who are for ever shouting that modern youth is degenerate, he began to tell me the facts. George Herlihy was at the School of Mines at Camborne when the war broke out, and before he was 18 he insisted on leaving to join the Public Schools Battalion. WORK BEFORE LEAVE. “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 not go back. With the end of the sjar he returned to Camborne. Then he got a job with an oil company and went to Bagdad. He was there until invalided home with malaria, but a little thing like that would not keep his adventurous spirit at home. He had learned Persian, Arabic, Spanish and French—and off he went to the Frontino gold mines, in Colombia, South America. “For seven years he has been a surveyor with them; then he was due for leave. His passage was booked, and we expected him home in January. The next thing we heard was that he had given up his have because lw had a chance' to join another man to seek gold 27 miles from Zaragoza in South America. ‘I feel that here is my opportunity,’ he told us. ‘l’d looked forward more than I can say to my holiday, but work comes first, especially work like this ' ROAD CARVED IN JUNGLE. “His new mining concession is in the heart of the jungle, and between him and any sort of civilisation there are three rivers. It took 10 hours for a coolie to go by canoe from his mine to Zaragoza—but nearly five days to get back, because the current is so strong. ‘ ‘George set to work at once to make a road through the jungle, and for three weeks they toiled at it, building rafts across the rivers, and now he 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 rainy season is setting in, has declined to remain. George, however, is determined not to give in, although he is the only white man in his camp. “Food and money have run short, but in his Hast letter to us he declares that he will get a job in another gold mine until tne rainy 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. ‘l’m sitting on a million pounds,’ he said m one Iptter, ‘and I won’t shift until I’ve got it I’ ” LIVING ON FISH. Here is an extract, from one of his Hast 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 1 have made a mill, grind the cane, boil the juice until it thickens, and therp you are. Rice and maize I am 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—■ 6.30 a.m. to 3 p.m. and the other from 3 to 11 p.m. I have a string of old oil lamps, and jt gives 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 1 heard a mighty rumbling, and out shot the guagua into the rher. WEIRD HOWLS THROUGH NIGHT. “I had visions of a foodless 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 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 1 can heard 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 sprung up. Still*, it’s a great life!”-