The Lost Nugget.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVI, Issue 43071, 21 March 1907, Page 2

The Lost Nugget.

AN AMUSING INCIDENT. Mr William Anderson, a Sydney entertainer, is a consummate advertiser. To attract people to his Wonderland" City at Bondi he bought a nugget of gold worth £2O and buried it in the beach below his city, announcing that he or she who found it could keep it. There was one condition; all who would seek the buried treasure must first buy a spade from him for sixpence. This stipulation landed him in a difficulty. When every shop aud warehouse had been ransacked only 1000 spades wt-re availably, and many thousands wanted to dig. Having got their toy spades the crowd gathered at the barricade which kept them from the beach until the signal was given. ..A Wonderland employee clambered on an elephant, and explained that thirty six boxes had been buried, thirty five of which were delusions, and the thirtysixth contained the nugget. When the gun went the crowd rushed throug narrow entrance, amid the shneks of women and children, and fell to ig 0 g furio sly for the nugget. Every part of the beach, says the “ Daily Telegrapn. was filled with men, women and chdoxe i sitting, standing or kneeling. Her was a grey headed woman on her knees with her lap foil of sand and her arms working convulsively; there was . a man and two small sons digging in a triangle; yonder, and yonder, and yonder were fashionably dressed ladies delving, ana scratching, and fossicking below the surface, Some worked quietly and steadily ; others ran from place to place, many broke their spades in their excite - ment. In five minuses the beach was like a buffalo wallow, but the sand had. not given up its treasure.” Every now and then a digger would jump up from a crowded position as if stung, and it would be seen that he hal a box in his hand. In a moment' he would be surrounded and jostled, till it became known that the box was one of the thirty-five empty ones, and the crowd would laugh and resume digging. Most of t e diggers tired of their work at the end of threequarters of an hour, and left tfie beach, but hundreds worked on with an earnestness of purpose that conquere disappointment, aching arms and sore backs. They dug on over new and ola ground, but all to no purpose. Nobody found the nugget. Mr Anderson was disappointed at the result, and decided to • give £2O, the worth of the nugget to , the Children’s Aid Society. The “Da yTelegraph ” calls the scene “ a pageant of greed and curiosity.”