“Why have the clothes been kept?”
“Before he died he gave orders that they were not to be used and his wishes have been respected. My husband has told me that he was a man of many peculiarities and as it was due to him that we have the farm we cherish his name and respect his wishes.”
“What were his peculiarities?”
“One was that he paid several visits to the Cape and when he returned he always brought with him a bag of money, but to the day of his death even his son, my husband, did not know how he came to have it. With this money he bought land and cattle and sheep and thus became rich. Had he lived he would have been the richest Boer in this part of the country. Then his death was a mystery and a mystery which has never been cleared up. He had grown to be old and feeble and he did no more work, but nothing could keep him out of the hills. If anyone followed him he flew into a great passion and cursed him roundly. My husband feared that some accident would befall him in his wanderings and the fear was at last realized. These clothes were his best and he prized them very much, for he said that they had brought him ‘good luck.’ It was for that reason he wanted them kept, no doubt. One day he went away to the hills and he never came back. The whole country joined in the search but no trace was ever found. He was not able to walk a long way and could not have wandered any distance and that was what made his disappearance the more strange. Some were of the opinion that he was carried off by the Kaffirs, some that he had been murdered, for it was well known that he always had gold in his pocket. Whatever befell him no one knows.”
I took up the coat and hat and could have sworn that the man I had followed to the hills was dressed in precisely the same garments. Could it be possible that after all these years I had found his grave? Had it been his ghost which I had seen night after night issuing from the house and making its way to the lonely grave in the hills? Had his wealth been derived from the sale of the gold which he had dug out of the pit? Admitting these facts, why had I been chosen to solve the mystery? Was it possible that a sympathy existed between the dead and gone Boer miner and the needy prospector, myself? These questions I was unable to answer. My common sense revolted at such conclusions and yet, argue as I would, the gold was in my pocket to prove their truth.
There remained another explanation, it was that I had not been awake during the periods in which I saw the old man. I had developed into a somnambulist and had got up in the night, imagining that I was following an old man and while in that state picked up the gold found in my pocket in the morning. Unfortunately this theory did not account for the previous existence of my ghostly guide. I realized the uselessness of attempting to explain to my Boer friends the peculiar circumstances of the case and in consequence kept silent. From that hour I abandoned my search for a mine, which was alike a mine and a grave, the location being only known to ghosts or somnambulists.
A MAORI LEGEND.
A New Zealand Story.
I spent a week in a pah down in the hot lake country, the King’s land, New Zealand, a short time before the destruction of the Pink and White Terraces. One night as I lay in my thatched hut, with the boiling water singing and simmering on every side, an old Maori wise-man paid me a visit and told me the following story.
“A thousand moons ago my people came over the sea in great canoes from the islands. Then the Maori was like the white man of to-day, restless as the wind, ever roving to and fro from land to land. The canoes came ashore down at the coast and it was beside these lakes that the pahs were built because the fern root grew here in the warm, damp earth and the Great Spirit made the water boil, in which to cook it. Then our wise men said, ‘Here is our home and this land was made for the Maori. Here shall be found that which we so long have sought.’ All would have been well if our people had listened to these words. After a time there spread from ear to ear the story of a wonderful lake, hid away up in the mountains. No man could tell where the story came from, for no man could be found who had ever seen the lake. The mountains, or the lakes, or the boiling springs, or the pink hills, may have whispered it at night into some ear. It may have been a dream, but it came and at last that no man doubted it. Many a Maori set out to find the wonderful lake and wandered among the mountains, which grew blacker and blacker and higher and higher as he went on, but one and all came back telling of great streams, of jagged rocks, of dark caverns, but never catching a glimpse of the lake.”