Red 22 - Murton Crane & Co., Nakuru - Land & Estate Agents

Smeaton - Lolgorien - There was one who sat silent, wordless, a tall, dark, rangy man named Crane. When we chided him for his silence he looked round. "You fellows have something to talk about," he replied. "So far I have been completely unlucky. What have I to talk about?" I asked why he had come into the field. He took me up on the question, telling the most amazing story we heard that night. Before taking up prospecting he was (he told us) an auctioneer, though he hated commerce and loathed the idea of working in towns or cities. Prospecting had fascinated him since he was a boy, growing up on his father's sheep station in Australia. His father, it appeared, had employed two young men. One day they came to him to give notice; Crane's father argued with them over the folly of leaving a good job but they were adamant. They wanted to go prospecting and promised, as he had been exceptionally kind to them, to let him in on something good directly they found it. Crane's father warned them against such stupid fancies, but could do nothing to stop them. Those two men discovered Broken Hill. To-day they are among the leading figures in Australian mining. "My father told me to go straight after any strike directly I heard about it," he said. "That's why I'm here. "But something else has kept me prospecting, something I believe because so far it has proved perfectly true. I've had many jobs in many trades, some have been fairly successful, some failed. The last really important job I held flopped badly, I went down to rock bottom. Then, two years ago, while I was drifting down the Nile from Uganda, almost flat broke, I met an old woman, an Egyptian, in the native market in Khartoum, who insisted on reading my hand. Everything she told me then has come true to date. She told me I would fail consistently. I have. She told me I should fail until I finished up on a beach eating nuts. I did. A few months ago I was flat broke in Zanzibar, living on coconuts on the beach. But she also told me that on a certain day I would find riches which would establish my fortune. That day is to-morrow. "That's why I'm a bit preoccupied. Ever since her other predictions began coming true I've lived for one day. To-morrow." It was a good story to finish the evening. Some of us, with our own experience of native fortune-telling, were half-inclined to believe it. The party broke up, wishing Crane good luck on the morrow, ….. [the following day] . The prediction had come true; that very morning he, too, had located a reef displaying values along a considerable outcrop, sufficient to prove that he was finally established. Crane's news brought even greater congratulations to us, for his strike was just off the borders of our claims, a good augury for the permanence of our reef at depth.

Rift Valley - Member of the Rift Valley Sports Club - Jan 1929 - Elected - 15 Dec 1925 - M.L. Crane