A TALE OF THREE LIONS
Page: 3

story, which I will repeat, as nearly as I can, in the words in which
Hunter Quatermain told it to me one night in the old oak-panelled
vestibule of his house in Yorkshire. We were talking about gold-
mining--

"Gold-mining!" he broke in; "ah! yes, I once went gold-mining at
Pilgrims' Rest in the Transvaal, and it was after that that we had the
business about Jim-Jim and the lions. Do you know Pilgrim's Rest?
Well, it is, or was, one of the queerest little places you ever saw.
The town itself was pitched in a stony valley, with mountains all
about it, and in the middle of such scenery as one does not often get
the chance of seeing. Many and many is the time that I have thrown
down my pick and shovel in disgust, clambered out of my claim, and
walked a couple of miles or so to the top of some hill. Then I would
lie down in the grass and look out over the glorious stretch of
country--the smiling valleys, the great mountains touched with gold--
real gold of the sunset, and clothed in sweeping robes of bush, and
stare into the depths of the perfect sky above; yes, and thank Heaven
I had got away from the cursing and the coarse jokes of the miners,
and the voices of those Basutu Kaffirs as they toiled in the sun, the
memory of which is with me yet.

"Well, for some months I dug away patiently at my claim, till the very
sight of a pick or of a washing-trough became hateful to me. A hundred
times a day I lamented my own folly in having invested eight hundred
pounds, which was about all that I was worth at the time, in this
gold-mining. But like other better people before me, I had been bitten
by the gold bug, and now was forced to take the consequences. I bought
a claim out of which a man had made a fortune--five or six thousand
pounds at least--as I thought, very cheap; that is, I gave him five
hundred pounds down for it. It was all that I had made by a very rough
year's elephant-hunting beyond the Zambesi, and I sighed deeply and
prophetically when I saw my successful friend, who was a Yankee, sweep
up the roll of Standard Bank notes with the lordly air of the man who
has made his fortune, and cram them into his breeches pockets. 'Well,'