LOST GOLD.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 46, 23 February 1929, Page 17

LOST GOLD.

IN SUNKEN SHIPS AND TOMBS. WORLD'S BICHEST GOLD MINE " EOAS]>S THAT ARE SELDOM ■ r BROACHED. Every year the world's supply of gold is added to enormously, yet the total showr no sign of reaching the absorption point. Largely the reason is that so much oi it vanishes every year—so crreit a Quantity that the total is estiLa'.fr- at £2,000,000,000. Who gets it? ■It has vanished into the world's largest '■sold mine, into the hoard of the miser, gone down in sunken ships or buried in tombs. Much is lost also through the vearing down oi coins in handling. In ali the world the total of gold for financial uses, including bullion in storage, as well as money in circulation, is an"amount that may be expressed as £1.600,000,000; yet this is less than half of the gold that has been mined, accordjaol to competent statisticians, since Columbus discovered America. They say that the total of gold produced "from the world's mines in that time would be worth, according to existing values, £3,600,000,000. That leaves £2,000,000,000 worth of gold to be accounted for. What became of it? Who has it?

The truth about much of this unac-counted-for treasure -is that it has become, through a myriad of processes, e pan of a reservoir of wealth that financiers know is the world's largest gold mine. A shift in values, a sharp reduction in the amount produced by the mines of the world over a period of years, would certainly bring some of this lost gald back into service as money. It would come from many strange places. It would reach the assay omces on its way to the mint in the form of sacred church vessels, old and blackened jewellery, ancient coins of governments that have ceased to exist. A few weeks ago an official of the Xew York assay office was asked if they received many old coins in the course o"f t day's work there, and if inanv persons came in to nave their STeat-crand-eo tier's ear-rings melted down for the gold that is in them. "The truth is," he said, "that a great many of our customers deliver gofd to us in a form which they themselves have given it by melting it down. A pawnbroker, for example, will extract the precious stone from ont-moded sei- ' tings, melt these down for their gold, "•■rnd then sell that gold to us. Melted Down by Thieves. " Some of trie gold that comes to us has been melted down by thieves to dis- . guise it beyond the possibility of iden- ' tincation by its true owners." But *W. is not our business either. If you were to brinij us a chest of pirate treasure drenched with the blood of the victims from whom it was stolen, you would not be oothered with impertinent questions. Your name, your address, that would be all; ?.nd if you wish to buy gold for any purpose we will sell you as much as you wish, giving you a dollars worth of gold for every dollar." In some respects gold has the properties of a fluid, and gold that once ornamented the (,;ueen of Sheba's alluring arms as bracelets may now' be merged with virgin red gold irom Australia in that watch-chain that spans your abdomen. _ In spite of the tendencies of all mankind to hoard it, to devise strange hiding places for it, it is an incurable wanderer, and strays over .the earth taking many forms. Eenvenuto Cellini, medieval artist in metals, has left in hia autobiography a record of many fine things that existed, first of all in his brain, and then in exquisite forms of gold; but those .that survive to-day in the collections of museums and millionaires are the things he cast in metals less valuable. A restless. substance,, gold, so that it is no wonder that much of it is counted as missing. The world contains to-day more buried treasure than has been imagined by all the fiction writers of our day. The people of every nation have been accustomed to secrete their treasure with a cunning that sometimes has defeated the purpose of the effort. It is a natural instinct. Men hide wills. They hide jewels, and they hide gold; and sometimes they die leaving their treasure still hidden, to become a part of the greatest store of gold, the unknown quantity that is a constant puzzle to economists. Lost Beyond Recall Much of that unknown quantity, of course, is at : work, but assuming that ail that men control were by some magic to be assembled there would still be a great portion of that ten billions of dollars' worth that we should have to set down as "missing." An incalculable amount has been lost.beyond recovery. In the middle ages, during that time, for example, when the successive romances of that paunchy monarch, Henry MIL, were making excellent "copy" that went to waste because there were no newspapers to make use of it, there was a severe law which made .it a capital crime for any one to subject the gold or silver coins of the realm to a process known as "dusting." Shrewd individuals had been in the habit of dumping into a canvas sack all the gold coins of which they could get possession, and then shaking them so vigorously that particles of gold were ii: this manner dislodged from each of the coins. Money-lenders dusted the coins passing through their hands as faithfully as the bankers of to-day charge interest on all that they lend. This gold dust was not lost, of course, but was turned into freshly minted coins. However, that susceptibility of gold coins to lose by abrasion always has been an important cause of wastage. Baser metals used as an alloy in the modern methods of coinage by hardening the coins have reduced this loss materially, but not, of course, entirely. If gold were not a commodity it would be far less satisfactory as a medium of exchange or a standard of values; but fortunately in the arts and in- industry there are a variety of needs for this most accommodating of metals,- and one of the commonest uses to which it is put by the current erop of- mortals is as a parkins for defective teeth. Wedding rings and other golden circlets on the fingers of these, as well as the gcid deposited in their teeth, could it by some process of recovery be brought together in a single mound, would have a fabulous value: but since the bulk of that gold is lost beyond recovery so long as our civilisation lasts, it has become a part of the treasure in the biggest gold mine—the hidden gold that has been used by man and then lost to sight.