The Lost Explorers Author:Alexander Macdonald Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III Golden Flat THE small settlement of Golden Flat was situated away out on the desert's fringe beyond Kalgoorlie, and beyond the reach of any civil... more »izing railway. It was essentially a pioneer's field, for no deep lodes had yet been discovered; indeed at this time the history of Golden Flat was but a few days old. Xuggety Dick, a roving prospector and miner, had been lucky enough to find rich specimens of the- coveted metal on the surface of the flat during one of his perambulating journeys through the silent bush, and instead of wildly rushing back to Kal- goorlie to proclaim his " strike," he had quietly taken a note of the place and gone his way to inform his old associates, who were toiling with but little success on a worked-out alluvial patch near C'oolgardia. Such is the spirit of the bush; comradeship come? before all, and happy-go-lucky Dick had never once thought of applying for the standing reward which a shrewd government had promised for discoveries of gold in such remote districts. Had he claimed it, a rush would have been the immediate consequence, and the chances of Dick's companions securing a favorable claim would have been reduced to a minimum; so he set out on his high- backed camel and rounded up the "boys," as he affectionately called them, and steered them back to the ironshot plain among the mulga scrub, which he had euphoniously,if ambitiously, termed " Golden Flat." And now, within a week after their arrival, the Flat presented every appearance of industrious energy. Further nuggets had been found all along the line of a scarcely perceptible depression in the land surface, which, nevertheless, most evidently marked the course of a very ancient waterway, long since silted up. "It'll be an alluvial war boys," remarked Dick, with happy sati...« less