TOPICS.

Colonist, Volume XLVII, Issue 11206, 12 December 1904, Page 1 (Supplement)

TOPICS.

It is a romantic story that is being told of the young North Shields man vrho discovered a gold mine in New Zealand as the consequence of picking up a stone to throw at'a wood pigeon; but it is only one of many similar romances in the story of gold mining. It was when digging his partner's grave that Oliver Martin's pickaxe struck the famous £5500 nugget known by hia name, the largest ever found in California. The prosperous mine of the Antilles was discovered through the accident of a rabbit running to earth and an Indian trying to dig it out. The Hualipi mines, in Arizona, might still be undiscovered but for an accidental explosion of dynamite, carelessly handled by a couple of cowboys. It was while two fuel gatherers were preparing an earth oven for a haunch of yeniaon that the rich Trojan mine in Calaveras County was unmasked, and the second largest nugget California has yielded so far was the reward of a young Indian who chanced to wash his overalls in the stream where it was in hiding.

A correspondent of "The Times" at Tokio tells a remarkable story. Three hundred years ago a member of the Tokugawa clan received from his father the province of Owari and a number of little statues of horses cast in gold. He was directed to preserve them until some national emergency arose. Though feudalism fell in 1874, and the house of Owari became comparatively poor, its successive heads religiously obeyed the order of their ancestor until a short period ago. . Then the family, belier~ ing that the emergency had arisen, transferred the secret hoard, £100,000 to the national Treasury, afterwards publiclj informing their ancestor's spirit that the trust had been faithfully performed.