A CURIOUS LOSS AND FIND OF GOLD.

Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 331, 16 May 1877, Page 4

A CURIOUS LOSS AND FIND OF GOLD.

The following account of mislaying a bottle of gold and its being found some time after is related by the Ovens and Murray Advertiser: —"Some twelve or fourteen years ago a miner at Stanley, whose name Ave have been unable to learn, when in that excessively anxious state of mind which takes possession of some men on their road home from a public-house at night, "planted" a bottle somewhere alongside his homeward path. Unfortunately for him, instead of the bottle containing whisky, it held about 41bs. to olbs. weight of gold, and in the morning, although he had a vivid recollection of burying the bottle, and Philip sober was mentally congratulating Philip drunk on his admirable cunning, when he came to think of the spot where he had hidden his treasure he was non-plussed. He, of course, sought and sought for it, and got drunk again, but apparently unaware of that curious physiological fact that if lie got into exactly the same state of drunkenness, and started for his home, he would most probably have gone straight, or tracked to the very spot where his bottle lay, he either drank too much or not enough to place himself en rapport with himself on the former occasion. Certainly he never found the bottle, and before he left Stanley his loss came to be known. The man has since died, but s jarch for the bottle has been renewed again and agaia by miners and others, especially by one " Lucky Jack," who searched for it, and trenched and fossicked for it, but without success, even his nickname proving false on this occasion. During last week, however, Ah Lea, one of a Cliinesß party, sluicing above Edward's old brewery, at the back of the township, unearthed the lost treasure, and sold the contents to the local branch of the Oriental Bank. Of course, the gold it contained belongs to them to all intents and purposes, for it was on their own ground, and even if the owner were alive, _ he would find it very difficult to identify his property.