The national forum., 1910-09-24
NUGGETS or GOLD
Some Of the Largest Ever Struck
Were Found by Chance.
THE OLIVER MARTIN CHUNK.
II Was Turned Up by Miner Who
Was Digging Grave For His
Drowned comrade--A Starving Miner
Unearthed the WELCOME Stranger"

Nowhere does fortune indulge her
love Of the dramatic and the sensa.
tional more fully than in the gold
fields.
Take, for instance, the story of
s1e discovery Of the world famous
blanche Barkley" nugget in the early
days Of Australian gold mining, which
sent thrill around the world. Sam
uel Napier, sailor, with his brother
Charles and one Robert Ambrose, their
cook and general handy man, had been
digging for gold for six months at
Kingower, about forty miles from Ben
iigo, without discovering as much Of
the precious metal as would pay their
living expenses, when one August day,
to tell the story In Napier's own words:
"We had dug down about fourteen
feet to the pipe clay stratum and We're
shuflling around in the bottom of the
shaft more dead than alive from the
heat. Old Ambrose lit his pipe and
leaned against the side of the hole to
rest. Just then | struck something
With my pick. l turned it up so the
light could strike it, and, by Jimmy,
1t was chunk of gold as big as
hubbard squash" The nugget sold for
$4,000.
Among the thousands who flocked to
the Victorian gold fields in the early
lfties were two Cornish miners, John
Deason and Richard Oates, who staked
claim near the village of Moliaque.
They set to work with vigor, confident
that in few months they would be
able to retire to their native Cornwall
rich men, but their expectations were
doomed to cruel disappointment. Not
only months, but many years, passed
and found them still as far removed
from fortune as at the beginning, and
by 1869, fifteen years after they began
their search for gold, they were re-
duced to the last straits. Starvation
stared them in the face.
In despair the miner seized his pick
Ind wandered away to the outskirts Of
the gold field, and as he wandered,
1owncast and heavy hearted, he no.
ticed a gleam of yellow in a rut made
by pcddler's cart. Lifting his pick,
with few frantic blows he brought to
light an enormous nugget which, with
all his strength, he could barely raise
an inch from the ground. The nugget,
which was soon known the world over
as the "Welcome Stranger" actually
weighed two hundredweight and was
sold for nearly $4,000.
And these were but few of the
many similar blocks of gold discovered
in Australia under equally dramatic
conditions. While native shepherd
named Kerr was tending his sheep one
day his attention was arrested by a
yellow rock projecting few inches
above the soil. In his excitement at
the discovery he ran to fetch his mas
ter. The rock was unearthed and
proved to be nugget Of two hundred
weight, from which 100 pounds of pure
gold were extracted.
A few years later another monster
nugget made its appearance at Balla-
rat. A party of miners had worked a
claim to a depth Of sixty yards when
one of them struck with his pickax a
hard, irregularly shaped mass, which
on being unearthed proved to be Il
block of almost pure gold twenty
inches long, a foot wide and seven
inches deep. Its weight was almost
one hundredweight and quarter and
its value $46,625.
1t was the periodical discovery at
Ballarat of these monster nuggets
which first fired the blood Of the en-
tire world In the faraway fifties. But
even Ballarat has no other romance to
rival that of the discovery of two huge
nuggets within few days in the same
claim. The story runs that four miners
had worked their claim down to about
sixty feet when one Of them brought
to light nugget weighing nearly
one hundredweight and worth $27 800.
In their joy at such rich treasure
trove the men abandoned the dig
gings and took their nugget with them
to England. They had scarcely left
Ballarat when their successors in the
claim, with almost the first stroke Of a
pick, turned over another nugget heav-
Ter than the first and valued at more
than $35 1000.
OF all the romantic stories told of
gold discoveries in California not one
is more remarkable than that of which
Oliver Martin was the hero. For
months Martin and companion
named Flower had been prospecting
for gold to no purpose. Worn out by
hardships and half dead from starva-
ton, they were on the point Of aban-
donlng the quest in despair when fate
administered her last crushing blow.
They were oyertaken by terrible
storm, in which Flower was drowned.
Martin, weak though he was, set to
work to dig his fallen comrades grave
at the foot of tree and had dug
down barely two feet when his spade
struck hard, unyielding substance,
which, to his amazement and delight,
proved to be an enormous nugget, the
largest ever found on the American
continent The "0liver Martin Chunk" !"