Before making our entry into Mosquito Pass, which was a passage through
the cliff, worn probably by water in prehistoric times, we tried to
fan a volume of smoke ahead of us, but the effort was useless, as
the strong wind poured it back into our faces. Lowering ourselves to
bed-rock, we began the advance, the glow from our lanterns falling upon
the saltpetre that coated the rocks, and lighting the mazy clouds of
insects that were always busy about our faces. The sides of the tunnel,
which was some forty feet in length, were smooth and very wet; a few
stalactites pointed from the unseen roof; bunches of moss and some pink
fungus spread over the stones; around our feet were numbers of big-eyed
frogs, bloated and too indifferent to move. The passage curved sharply
at the finish, and we were short of breath by the time we saw the light.
The inspector, my partner, Akshelah, and myself stepped out into the
sunlight which poured over the seamed rocks. The troopers and Morrison
had been left behind to keep guard and to work. The blue sky ahead
floated in vapour, but the tunnel brought out among a wilderness of
huge rocks, so that we could see nothing of the unknown land.
“Frightful hole!” said Hanafin, looking back. “Anyhow, a big smudge
this end will clean out the mosquitos, because the wind will carry the
smoke through from end to end.”
“Where in Jerusalem does the wind come from?” said the factor.
The precipice leaned over slightly, as it towered away some hundreds of
feet above us.
“This wall is the wind-break of the country,” said the inspector. “All
the currents from the north concentrate here, and are forced through
the vent-holes, to make a single volume in the canyon.”
We climbed upward for another hundred yards, and then entered a
channel, about three-eighths of a mile long, with a circular dip in the
centre. From the dip we descended, the channel curving every few yards.
“Columnar basalt,” Hanafin observed, indicating the perpendicular
sides. “The dark grain is magnetic iron. Here we have hornblende. When
I have found mercury I shall be content.”
“Platinum?” queried MacCaskill, whose knowledge of mining was equal to
mine.
“Platinum and gold lie together,” said Hanafin.
Then the channel made its last curve. Below us, unpromising and bare,
and pent in on all sides by chains of strong mountains, spread out--
Bonanza!
I noticed a stronger flush upon Hanafin’s face. He was thinking of that
somebody at home! The muscles down my partner’s neck swelled out. Two
of our small party were excited; two were not. I thought I had never
looked upon a more desolate tract of country.
Away to the south-west went a narrow lake of a dirty-grey colour.
A stream flowed into this lake, and had shoaled a large part of it
near its mouth. Before us a dreary succession of rounded hills rose
and fell, all of the same height, shape, and appearance, very thinly
covered with scraggy spruce and a little black poplar, with some white
birch and pitch-pine. In a very few spots we found a couple of inches
of loam under the moss, the sub-soil being invariably gravel, but the
surface was more usually composed of rock, with sand intervening.
A wide river cut its curving channel between the dreary hills and its
own flats of beach. We could see that this river was very shallow,
because long bars of gravel or silt lifted along mid-stream, and the
“ripple” betrayed other spots where the wash had just sufficient depth
to pass. The stream was reddish in places, probably owing to a rock
bottom of granite, where the gravel had been washed away.
“Bad for boats,” said MacCaskill.
“Chiefly gravel,” said Hanafin. “Sand-bars shift, and gravel doesn’t.
What would you call the temperature of that water?”
MacCaskill looked puzzled. It was a warm day, well over seventy in the
shade. He hazarded:
“Sixty-four.”
“I’ll say fifty-three,” said Hanafin; and when he came to take the
temperature with a little spirit thermometer, he found he was only one
degree out.
Not a bird was to be sighted, not even a creeping thing upon the
ground. It was a land of silence, and desolation, and hidden treasure.
Hanafin pointed out a clear-cut channel, which ran back from the river
between the hills, curving south-easterly, and meeting a similar
channel, which branched off sharply, and ran back, bending out of sight.
“Will you name the creek to the left?” he said, looking at me; then,
seeing my puzzled expression, he added: “Will you give your name to it?”