MINE SALTING IN QUEENSLAND.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 2 December 1901, Page 4

MINE SALTING IN QUEENSLAND.

An Accomplished Swindle.

His Artfulnes3 gets him Two Years

The disclosure made in a recent case heard at Brisbane of the modus Operandi of the mine-salter are amusing, and at the same time instructive. A man named John Franklin Munro Hall was indicted at the Criminal Court on a charge of false pretences by means of forged telegrams, and in the course of the evidence the following letter, which had been found in tbe prisoner's.safe, was read, being addressed from the " Camp, " Milkman's Flat, Maytown, on October 29, 1900, to " My Dear Frank," and signed " Tom.'' After introductory remarks, it stated : " I have been pested with visitors all watching the work, and my presence both at drill'and shifts was absolutely necessary-./constantly. For instance, in tho shaft out of which the large quantity of gold was obtained—as you know , it was compulsory that the ground should cave in, so thai no one could get into this after tho gold was discovered—this made it imperative that I shou'd work ib myself, »nr" zfow the smallerts o£ &Qijo£r "had been put in Qj"yfflight (that is, just before going back to camp) I made a remark to the men working that the ground was running, and I was afraid the ground would cave in, and so it did, because I went down in the middle of the night and knocked'out all the props, and then down came all the loose ground, and it did look a beautiful mess the next morning -my man said it was not safe to work in. This was all I wanted : evidence, don'tyou see —he washed the gold aud saw the whole lot—this has happened in each case. I had to arrange salting, and do it carefully, but it has been done and done well. I can (mite understand your anxiety but the moves had to be made with diplomacy, so that we were fully protected. Mind, old man, the property is a payable one outside any salting, but the actual returns would not have moved the market. I thought it best to send down tho gold "obtained" from No 1 shaft. It left today, and is of a very uniform quality, and will take the directors' eyes —particularly friend Stewart's, . . . I shall make

the reports and results' so good that even you wl'l not havo fault to Cod Now, to-day, I reoeived the bigest shock of all. Spressor's brother came to the property. I was working on the wash, and certainly in a ' of a fix. I was pleased to see him, and invited him to take out a dish, and go up to the camp and wash it. This he did. In the meantime I made a clay pi!', put in about half a grain of gold and put it in my moutb. When he handed me the dish I promptly had a sneezing fit, and the pill accidentally fell into the dish, and you should hive seen his face when ho washed if. He behaved like a schoolboy, shook hands with me, and generally played the fool. I invited him to take another dish, but ho said he was moro than satisfied—had ho not broken the ground and washed the stuff himself ? I impressed upon him the necessity of keeping it quiet, with the result that he promptly rode into town, wired his brothers, Powtes and Harte, and told everyone in town, and got them into a fever. The t operator gave ■me the tip about wires having gone, but, by Jove, I never want another sweet hour like that one again. Prom this you will gather that I am pulling the ropes correctly." Hull r- ceived two years' imprisonment, >ho Judge remarking that li9 had never known a cue in which so much artfulness had been shown by anyone to obtain possession of the property of another man by fraud,