Dorado

A Deserted El

Prom a Special Correspondent

South Pacific Base, Jan. 1.

rE declaration of a gold prospecting area in Guadalcanal, and the arri val of Australian prospectors there during the term of office of Sir, Harry Luke as High Commissioner, is recalled by a visit which three US soldiers recently paid to the interior of the island, penetrating to one of the most remote and rugged parts.

Led by native guides, they finally arrived at a group of five large build ings, deserted except for a faithful native caretaker, who had learnt fo speak English at a British native mission school. From him they heard that it had been the camp of five prospectors who had left the island when the Jap anese arrived. The largest building had been their living quarters, furnished with beds with springs, mattresses and bed ding, wicker chairs, tables, a 200-book library and a white enamelled, kerosene operated refrigerator with ice cube trays.

The caretaker explained how 40 natives had been needed to get this refrigerator there, and they had been paid in tobacco for their labour, for most Guadalcanal natives smoke pipes—women and child ren included. No Japanese had pene trated as far as the gold camp, although an enemy plane had once circled low over the buildings, according to the care- Two of the other buildings had been native quarters and the remaining two were tool sheds, still full of equipment— -50 picks and shovels, carpenter’s tools, washing pans, a surveyor’s transit, photo developing equipment, much rope, and a number of buckets of gravel which the prospectors had evidently been examin ing just before their departure.

The library contained technical man uals on gold-mining; and from the size of the camp and the amount of the equipment, the visitors concluded that rich deposits of gold had been discov ered and that rather extensive mining operations had been contemplated.

Night was spent at the camp, the care taker looking after the soldiers much as he must have looked after his former employers. He made the beds, pumped water for the shower, brought in bana nas, pawpaws and tomatoes from a large garden maintained as a part of the camp. The soldiers were even furnished with spare uniforms while their own were drying! The natives here have car ried large amounts of salvaged army equipment into the interior.

THIS camp is located high on a ridge where the mountains of the interior rise to peaks 8,000 feet above the sea. The most difficult part of the trip was in fording rivers that rush down from the mountain-sides, swollen by continual tropical rains. In most of these rivers the water was chest deep, and the swift current made it necessary to enter the stream about 50 yards above the point where they wished to emerge on the other side.

The soldiers, all of whom had partici pated in the US Army’s mapping of Guadalcanal, were dependent on their native guides to pick out the trails and the least treacherous places to ford the rivers. The guides had to be obtained in the interior, and one whole afternoon was spent at a native village obtaining them. The most effective way to induce the natives to give their assistance seemed to be to show a happy disposi tion, for they enjoyed the sight of a man laughing.