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The Spike: or, Victoria University College Review October 1911

The Wayfarer

page 28

The Wayfarer.

Towards the close of an October day in the early sixties of last century, there might have been seen a small ketch beating against a fresh ocean breeze towards a bay opening to the Western sea. At nightfall she rounded the fern fringed crag guarding the entrance and running into the wind, dropped anchor close to a shelving beach.

Next morning at daybreak her crew of two landed and proceeded to the Northern end of the beach where they carefully examined a large stream which rushed swiftly into the placid waters of the day.

This is a tale of the Golden Coast when the gold fever had spread throughout the land and gripped the soul of man; and when the old sailor told to the Wayfarer the story of a bay in the far North and of a stream whose beaches abounded in fragments of quartz studded with glittering gold, he instilled into his restless spirit new life and hope.

Thus it came to pass that they determined to explore the stream in search of an El Dorado in the mountain range beyond. Securely they anchored the ketch and returning to the stream entered the deep gorge.

Many days later the Wayfarer returned to the beach alone. Haggard and exhausted; he boarded the ketch, and, slipping anchor, made sail out of the Bay to the South. To him alone was it known how they had climbed into a precipitous valley through which fell the stream in veil-like cascades, and how, when they had given up hope, they had discovered a reef thickly veined with heavy gold surpassing all dreams of wealth and richness; and to him alone was it known how the sailor had been lost in the mountains.

The Summer had almost passed before the ketch returned to the western bay and took up her former anchorage Several men landed on the beach, and, led by the Wayfarer, entered the Stream Gorge. Steadily they climbed. Until they reached the pool into which the first cascade fell from the Valley above, and there they were halted by the Wayfarer. Warning them of the danger of the cascade, he ordered them to climb in single file while he brought up the rear. One by one page 29 they safely made the ascent, but the Wayfarer never reached the summit. An uprooted flax bush hanging on the face of the treacherous cliff marked the spot where he had lost his footing, and in the ravine below, beyond all human aid, they found him. In such way on the large Cascade were ended he hopes of the expedition. Ceaselessly they explored the valley, but no sign of the reef could be discovered, and in the end they abandoned the hopeless search.

Many expeditions have since landed at that peaceful bay, but the Valley of the Cascades, beautiful ye mysterious, retains to this day the secret of the Golden Reef.

—J.F.T.