REMARKABLE "FINDS" OF GOLD.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume VII, Issue 652, 13 October 1882, Page 2

REMARKABLE "FINDS" OF GOLD.

A volume might be filled with anecdotes of remarkable '* finds " in Victorian goldfields. In midsummer, 1860, two poor men were at work in a gully, when, on digging round the roots of a tree, the pick of one of them came upon something very hard. The man exclaimed he wished it had been a nugget, even if it had broken his pick. It proved to be a nugget, and one destined to be famous. A waggoner was one day driving his team along the road, when his wheel, in turning up the soil, suddenly exposed to view a considerable lump of shining matter. The waggoner stopped to pick it up, and by so doing became the owner of a nugget which proved to be worth £1.600, In the early days of sluicing, a Scotchman was working an extensive claim, and employing a number of men under him. Mis last shilling was spent before any gold was found . Me told his men he had no more funds, and could go on no longer. They had great respect for him, and subscribed among th<vnselvo9 enough to cirry on the works for a few weeks. Gold wan soon afterwards found in abundance. The Scot retired with £40 000, and made over the mine, whi'e still in full yield, to the men who had so generously helped him. On one occasion two men who had just arrived from England sat down to rest on the outskirts of a spot to which there had been a recent rush. It was a broiling hot day, and they were glad, after their toilsome walk up the country, to rest in the shade of an old gum tree. As they sat, one of them ruHbing up the ear!l> with the heel of his boot, disclosed to view something hard and yellow looking. Pulling it from the ground, they found it was a huge cako of veritable gold. Without having had to use pick or spadt?, they h id rea ! ised a fortune, an 1 speedil) , turnin-jj ih"ir bieks on the diggi'i'jrs 'hey took the firs, ship Home —'• Cities of the World."