WITH THE MEN OUT BACK.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13325, 3 November 1906, Page 1 (Supplement)

WITH THE MEN OUT BACK.

THE HATTER OF PANAMA CREEK. No. IX. BY E. D ESTERBE. Uxßci'i'i-Ei) calm! Infinite peace lay on the atmosphere, and the broad bosom of the great sapphire lake mirrored back the clear-cut lines of the ranges, which bathed their feet in its waters,; away in the distance the opal „inge of the lake surface changed to bars of silver, where the mountains closed in at the bend and tiny patches of snow shone out near the jagged bayonetlike tops that seemed mellowed and merged into the azure of heaven by the blue and violet haze. Across the water the mountains swept up without a break, but on the Panama Cieek side they stood further back, the lower slopes close covered by a wilderness of dark-green fern, and they parted into two divisions. ' Between those divisions, and just beyond where a spur ran out into the lake in the form of a high, abrupt promontory, the creek came down to a little flax-covered flat, and then, with musical gurgle, slipped into the great sweet waters. In that peaceful spot I found the hermit of the lake, the Hatter of Panama Creek, about whom strange stories were told by the shepherds. White haired he was and bent, and yet he did not seem so very old. His white hair hung down to his shoulders and his beard was white and long, even his eyebrows were white, but beneath them there shone a pair of the keenest grey eyes I have ever seen. He had a broad and high brow, and his features were clearly cut and even delicately moulded, and his skin was more like that of ,a young girl, but so wrinkled that it gave him an appearance of unutterable age. I should say that when he was' young he would have reached the 6ft mark and would have looked a model for an athlete. He was wearing miners' boots, the tops of .which came nearly to the knee, outside the corded moleskin trousers. The upper part of his body was covered only by a sleeveless flannel; around his middle was a broad leather belt, with a sheath arid knife attached, and he had no hat".,, My experience with him was the strangest I ever met with on the goldfields. The whole valley was dotted with mounds of yellow clay, marking the-spots where he had been sinking claims in his patient search for gold. Some of the older mounds had been partially covered by fern, as though the earth were seeking to bind up her wounds. Many years before the greater portion of the whole valley had been turned over by the miners who led the way in the great Panama Creek rush, but of their work not a vestige remained save an undulation here and there. ' The solitary occupant of the field now was one of those curious, lonely characters who fossick and delve and scrape amongst old claims, and of whom almost every goldfieid in the world has tales to tell. Panama Creek never was a rich field; it has often been called "a duffer,'' but for all that a tidy amount of gold was taken out at the time of the rush. Pickpick —pickpick—pick, I could hear the blows , of his mattock as I came over the spur, and picka— —picka sounded , the echo . up the side, of the range. He was working at the extreme edge of the.old creek-bed, in under the shadow of the spur, and I could see bis white head moving and the mattock rising and falling as he plugged away at the bottom" of if a* claim. - When I came closer, within speaking distance, he turned with an angry snarl, "Where be you from?" "Maidavale Station," 1 said, and took a seat on a mound near him. "What d'you want down here?" He wasn't very sociable. Just came over for a chat with you." Then he strode over to me threateningly, with his mattock gripped in his two hands. " Looka here," he said, " this be a bad place for health when fellers come spyin' an' snealrin' round." ' "Well, just spy this," and I handed him a curious little nugget of water-worn gold. "Be it 'you, lad, be it you? To think I didn't know you," and he dropped the mattock and shook me by the shoulders. The nugget was his present to me a year before. Then he gripped me by the arm, pub his wrinkled old face close to my ear, and whispered, "I'm on it, I'm on it, lad, and it's precious good." Drawing me over to the claim he pointed to the bottom, and again whispered, looking cautiously round at the same time, "It's under that." " That" was a hard conglomerate bar, which bore the marks of his mattock. " See," he whispered again in my ear and jumped into the claim, scooped up a handful of wash-dirt from a corner, where he had broken a piece of the conglomerate, and handed it out. He was right; he was on it," for the dirt contained coarse specimens of gold. Pick—pick—pick he went to work again feverishly, excitedly, muttering, half to me and half to him; elf, "It's in there, it's in there. I can't jet at it. but it's mine. I'd shoot him if he came to take it from me." I persuaded him to come out, and, babbling like a child, he lay down to peer over the edge and watch me as I smashed up that conglomerate bar for him. It was as tough as cement, and I yelled out to him for a crowbar. "Crowbar! Yes, lad, a crowbar, a crowbar," and he set off at a run for his hut, to return staggering and tumbling over one which, in his excitement, he was trying to use as a vaulting-pole. While he was gone I ripped out another chamber to clear two or three feet more of the conglomerate. The stuff came away in great flakes before the leverage of the iron bar. and. when I lifted them out he got one look below and then dropped in a dead faint. I emptied my flask down his throat. He sputtered and "coughed and choked a bit, came to, and tore off for a bucket and shovel. I shovelled the wash-dirt in for him and carried it to the creek; there he held his dish for the dirt, but his trembling hands refused duty, and I had to " pan off" for him. The first pan yielded about 4oz of shotty gold, and he nearly went off his head. From the next dish I picked out two nuggets the size of marbles, and there was nearly 3oz of finer gold. Back and forwards we" went to the claim and the creek, the Hatter trotting excitedly in front each time as though to urge me on. and that afternoon we took out nearly 80oz of gold, the richest pocket ever struck on that field, and the finest find the old man had ever made. Towards sundown I made to go back over the range, but- he got his arms around me and screamed: " No, no, lad, you an' me be mates now; stay with me, I—l'm a little nervous." For the lonely hermit who had lived there so long, never seeking human company, forgotten of the world, to ask anyone to stay with him was rather strange; but I guessed what he meant. He need not have feared for his gold, for there was not a man within a hundred miles who would have robbed. him of an ounce; but I made a big rick of dried reeds and grass for a bed, and the old man was happy. He insisted on loading my revolver, although there was no possibility of any more dangerous intruders than swampfowl coming that way. The hut was almost as small as a ship's cabin; but it was wellfurnished, and he had a stock of books, chiefly scientific works on mining and astronomy, for the Hatter was well known as a "stargazer." While we were having tea I noticed he seemed to be lost in thought, and at last his pannikin dropped from his hand and he stared into vacancy. Then he rose, passed me without a word, and ascended a rock jutting out from the spur above the lake, and there he stood, motionless as a statue, looking out into the fading lights of the afterglow. There was a deep purple shadow resting over the waters, the ranges showed but dimly through the haze in the half-light; the only sound that came there was the ceaseless gurgle of the creek, and that seemed millions of miles ,awav. out in some limitless desert, as I

lay on the grass, sleepily watching that strange, lonely figure-on the rock. He was looking into the western sky, over the ranges, with his arms folded and his white head thrown back. The dusk was settling down like "a mantle over the mountains, and the crimson lights of the west were changing to the dying flush of gold, when the old fellow turned towards the valley, and in a full, sonorous voice, that had no trace in it of the ungrammatical character of his ordinary speech, he recited the Lord's Prayer and the Credo in the Latin tongue. No priest of the mystic rites in the Dark Ages could have looked grander than that strange old man, with his venerable head thrown into strong contrast by the black wall of rock behind him. How those grand old words, " Credo in imam Deum, Patrem Omnipotentum.'' resounded through that quiet valley! Then the old fellow chanted the Glorias," still in Latin, raising his voice higher and higher into a great, powerful note, and the echoes came back so clearly that it seemed as though there was a choir of monks stationed in the hills and he was the leader. Coming then to the very edge of the rock lie extended his bands towards his hut, as if pronouncing a benediction, and commenced to pray, this time in English, and there was such superb sentiment in that prayer and such splendid language that I forgot the surroundings and found myself unconsciously joining in the " Glory to the Father," with which he ended. Darkness had settled down now, but he remained a long time more on the rock in silence. When he descended again and came over to me he seemed to have thrown aside his priestly character like a robe, and sat down beside me to talk of leads of gold, "placer" claims, and nature of the wash-dirt in the valley. He was again the feeble old Hatter. I tried gently and diplomatically to get him to tell me his life's history, but without avail. He would ramble on about goldfields, and all I learned was that he knew the Ballarat fields in Victoria, the Gabriel's Gully fields, and had been "dry blowing" in West Australia. When I awoke at daylight the old fellow was preparing breakfast, and, by the way, he was an excellent cook. Together we worked out the rest of the pocket. I cleared the whole of the conglomerate bar ; it was only a shelf running out from the rock formation of the ranges, and evidently it had reached out into the old watercourse, and there was a bend and a pool there, forming a natural lodging-place for the gold. Below the wash-dirt again there was bed rock. The morning's work panned out about 31oz, and then the gold in the wash-dirt dwindled away to nothing. I told him I would come over again, and give him a hand to open up further back on the old water-course; but he said, "It be no use, lad; there weren't any pool above that. No, it be th' last of th' old field, an' I'm goin' home." He didn't say where "home" was. , ■ ..... •j I accompanied him as far as the foot of the lake, and have never seen or heard of him since.