Harper's Round Table, January 28, 1896

Copyright, 1896, by Harper & Brothers. All Rights Reserved.

I'm going to have a shy at that gold when we get up to Potosi, Jack. I tell you forty thousand dollars in gold is worth looking for these days.
Ned Peterson leaned back in one of the great rocking-chairs on the upper gallery of the Hôtel de France, in Port of Spain, on the island of Trinidad, and puffed his cigar as complacently as though the gold were already in his trunk. He was fresh out of the School of Mines of Columbia College, and so felt at liberty to lay down the law to his fourteen-year-old brother Jack. They were both on their way into the heart of Venezuela, to the gold-mines of Naparima, of which their father was superintendent and part owner.
Oh, that's just one of your romantic notions, Jack replied, standing by his brother and looking through the jalousie-blinds at the coolies squatting in the park across the street. You want a chance to write to your chums in New York that you're searching for lost gold in the bottom of the Orinoco River. It sounds well, but it won't amount to anything.
You don't know what you're talking about, the young man retorted, with great dignity. We know the gold is there, and it will be an easy matter to find out just about where the canoe was when it capsized and dumped it into the river. Of course there has been a great deal of searching for it, but never under as favorable circumstances as we shall find. Last November, when the gold was lost, the water in the Orinoco was sixty feet higher than it is now. At this time of year, midwinter, it is so low that the steamers cannot go further up the river than the City of Bolivar. At Potosi the water is not more than three or four feet deep just now, and by sounding in the mud we will have an excellent chance of finding the box. Anyhow, it's worth trying for. Forty-one thousand three hundred and forty dollars is the exact value of it.
You have it down fine! Jack laughed. Couldn't you take off a dollar or two?