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Otago Witness, Issue 2545, 24 December 1902, Page 48 (Supplement)

to save others that night, and escaped with his life, only to lose it a few months afterwards through being caught in the machinery of a gold dredge on the Molyneux. Frank *yd open as the clear light that scintillated in his fair blue eyes, Harry Palmer was a fine young fellow, of a type of which any country might be proud. He was generally beloved, and a wide circle of friends felt keen sorrow at his untimely death. In the years gone by Bill Palmer was a smart man, and master of several handicrafts. When his

fishing was my boyish delight. But since then the snows of Time have blanched his hair, and dimmed his eye and dulled his mind. When I interviewed him six years ago, I was astonished to hear the ready alacrity with which he replied to my questions concerning the olden times, but on a recent visit to the old man I found that the intervening half dozen years had wrought sad havoc with thews and sinews and mind. "My memory is failing," he complained ;

And, indeed, a halo of romance clings about those surfbeaten rocks, where a number of hardy Englishmen, selfbanished from home and friends and civilisation, eked out a precarious living by as wild and adventurous an occupation as one could well imagine. And of all the crowd one alone remains to tell in halting sentences the story of Taieri Island and its bold buccaneers in the good old days of more than half a century ago.