Accordingly, an officer, with a corporal and two or three private soldiers were sent with him; he landed where he said the walk would be but short, and they entered the wood in their way to the mine; soon after they got among the bushes, he applied for permission to go to one side for a minute upon some necessary occasion, which was granted him; the officer continued there some hours without seeing the discoverer again, who, immediately on getting out of his sight, had pushed off for the camp by land, for he knew the road very well, and he had cunning enough to persuade the officer to send the boat away as soon as they had landed, as he supposed he would not choose to quit the place until a good guard came down; for which purpose, the officer was to have dispatched a man by land, as soon as he arrived at the place, and was satisfied that it merited attention.
The convict arrived in camp pretty early in the afternoon, and informed the lieutenant-governor, that he had left the officer who went down with him in full possession of the gold mine; he then got a few things out of his own tent, and disappeared; the party, after waiting for some hours hooping and searching through the woods for the cheat, left their stations and marched round to the camp, where they arrived at dusk, heartily tired, and not a little chagrined at the trick the villain had played them. The want of provisions soon brought him from his concealment, and a severe punishment was the necessary consequence of this imposition: however, he still gave out, that he had made the discovery which he before had mentioned, and that his reasons for quitting the officer who went with him was, that he thought, if he gave the information to the governor himself, he should certainly get what he had asked.
When the governor returned, another officer was sent with him, although every person now believed that there was no truth in what he had hitherto reported. This officer informed him, in going down in the boat, that he would not suffer him to go three yards from him when landed, and that he would certainly shoot him if he attempted to run from him; for which purpose he showed him, that he was loading his gun with ball: this so terrified the cheat, that he acknowledged he knew of no gold mine. He was then interrogated respecting the ore which he had produced, and he confessed he had filed down part of a yellow metal buckle, and had mixed with it some gold filed off a guinea, all which had been blended with some earth, and made hard. The man who tried the ore was bred a silversmith, and upon separating the different parts, he discovered that it contained a small quantity of gold: the inventor was, of course, well punished for his trick.
The observations which I made here, both for the latitude and longitude, as well as those that were made by Lieutenant Bradley, were the same as are inserted in the following tables.
