THE BIGGEST NUGGET OF THE WILD WEST.

Otago Witness, Issue 2056, 20 July 1893, Page 50

THE BIGGEST NUGGET OF THE WILD WEST.

Don't tell me that crinolines have never been useful, sir ! I remember one that saved a valuable life; gaye i a digger a capital wife, 10 children, a fortune ; the country a sterling statesman; and Parliament its leading Cabinet Minister.

It was in tho very young sixties, when gold was so plentiful that one forenoon Bill Stokes and Chowder Williams — joint owners of the pile claim in the "gutter" of Swipers' Flat—enjoying "smoko," seeing their pannikin of gold dust— their morning's washing— walked off with 'before their very eyes, simply contented themselves by anathematising the thief thusly : "Look yer ye blanket? loafer, if ye don' 6 fetch back that, there I'll come and give ye a blankety lift under the ear'ole!" Bill and Chowder's claim yielded weekly £100 a man, and that is what they divided every Saturday night, but, Lord bless you, they did not care for money, for as every Monday morniDg came round both used to be fitone broke. The only article of commerce that was at all fcarce in those days was women — lovely woman. There was .only one, Betty Martin, and she "might 'a' been" about 160 years old; but although she was anything but a beauty— she had one eye ; a piercer though— we diggers used to reverence the old lady— i c , till others came. Tint was when a certain Henry A.— now a high Government officialbrought the 40 " bloomers " from Melbourne, along with his double differential engine that wouldn't work. But let me to my story. Bill and Chowder were down their claim one night working away. Bill had just emptied his bucket at the foot of the shaft, and* turned to go back to the face, when " Swi-sh-sh-sh thud ! " something had fallen down the shaft and landed on the top of Bill's gold wash . Bill thought the windlass and fly had come down, and was about to call Chowder, when his ear was startled by hearing a sweet voice saying, quite coolly, " Don't be frightened, Bill, it's only me." "Magigie!" The next instant Bill rushed forward full of alarm. " I'm not hurt," said Maggie simply. "Not hurt! >Why you've fallen down sixty feet J" gaeped Bill. ♦ Don't look, Mister Stokes, please," said she imploringly. Tho lowest hoop of Maggie's crinoline had caught all round on a projecting edge of the third slab of the shaft from the bottom!

She only described her agility in re-habilia-meriting to Bill many years after when she

and he were man and wife away in Australia, and their eldest boy an " Hon."of the VictoriaD Cabinet, and they wealthy. Bill had found many large lumps of gold in his life before, but he always held out that to be the biggest and most valuable nugget he had ever got. " Maggie " had been goiDg to her home the night Bill Stokes and Chowder Williams worked ; she missed her w&y and fell down the shaft, but her crinoline Opening out a la parachute landed her at the bottom in perfect safety. She frequently said to Bill that if it hadn't happened Victoria could never have had the Hon. William Stokes, M P., to guide the Cabinet. Does any of my digger readers remember Bill Stokes's big nuggtt of the Golden Gutter on Swipere'Flat?