Here They Camped Until One Morning, Janet, Recovered Of His Hurt,
Picked Up A Nugget Of Gold, Strangely Enough, Close To The Track From
Roger's Camp To The Reef He Was Working.
This nugget was the first-fruit
of a plentiful harvest, and presently they went down to the coast where
poor Cable could be properly attended to in hospital.
Pickering and Janet
returned as soon as possible, but not before some inkling of their find
had leaked out; consequently when they returned, just at the time of our
arrival on the scene, their tracks were followed, and a "rush" set in.
We were not long in making our camp at the new diggings, or in getting to
work to hunt for gold. Being out for a syndicate, who naturally wanted
something big in the way of a reef, we were precluded from the alluring
search for alluvial, "specking," as it is termed.
It seems the simplest thing in the world to find a good mine - that is, as
I said before, after you have found it! On Sunday, February 17th, Paddy
and I took a walk, and stepped right on to an outcrop of quartz showing
beautiful gold. Quite simple! Any fool can prospect; all he wants is a
little luck, and the strange inner urgings that make him examine a certain
quartz reef or blow that others have passed, perhaps dozens of times,
without happening to look in the right place! Roughly marking out an area,
to establish our prior claim to the ground amongst those already on the
field, we returned to camp and gave Jim, who had been packing water from
the granites, the joyful news.
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