"UNRIPE" GOLD

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 286, 3 December 1938, Page 1 (Supplement)

"UNRIPE" GOLD

PLATINUM, one of the world's mo6t precious metals, was once actually nf SC s ff, C ? Uterfelt !So many gilded ingots passed into the hand's and Pnrtl!™ American traders that platinum was refused entry into Spain ' almoßt impossible to refine, its thick, silvery e \ lWl i back A nt ° the rivers of Ecuador and Columbia bv dis-gold-seekers, little dreaming that this strange, heavy metal ;Z il °" e i x 6 W i° r Va ? t BUms in ma ' k «ts tliat ranged from the je e er s bench to the chemists laboratory. For platinum, the unripe gold which Indians once buried to mature, is one of the world's most useful and versatile metals. In the sixteenth century a Spanish explorer founft a stone that it was impossible to weak, and christened it platina, or "little silver." Some of the gilded doubloons for which seventeenth century counterfeiters were langed found their way into English laboratories, and chemists and metallurgists set to work to analyse this unknown white substance that was infusible, unmalleable, and heavier than any known metal. Yet it was almost fifty years before the chemical secrets of platinum were discovered, and someone managed to draw it out into a wire. Platinum was aeteated. 10-day two troy ounces can be stretched into a wire which will almost girdle the world. What would the modern mechanical world be without platinum? Almost indestructible, it is used wherever it will be subject to great heat or the action of acid—in telephone equipment, radios, searchlights, fountain pens, cigarette lighters, as fuse wire in torpedoes and. shells, in surgery and dentistry, and indirectly in the production of foodstuffs and textiles. In the laboratory platinum crucibles can resist almost any temperature, and are thus invaluable in analytical and experimental work. Gold and silver have their seekers, but platinum draws the treasureseeker, too. Colombia, where the conquistadores threw away the precious "little silver," was for long believed to be platinum's only source. With the rise of the white metal market treasure-seekers went out all over the world in quest of this new bringer of wealth. Canada brought a horde of prospectors, and in South Africa platinum took its place beside the glittering Mecca of gold and diamonds. In the remote Ural Mountains hunters who had used platinum bullets for generations turned prospector and went out washing sand along the lonely Russian rivers. Here is a treasure hunt with very little return, but that a rich one. All the platinum yet taken from the earth would hardly amount to six months' return of gold—yet that small mount of silver metal is worth fabulous sums. Its lure takes men to fever-ridden, mosquito-haunted South American rivers where the great dredges scrape and groan, scooping up enormous mouthfuls of river bed. The labour of camp building, of hacking away jungle and matted tropical. undergrowth, bridging

A Fortune Thrown Back To A River

swamps and foi ling rivers, is nothing to these modern conquistadores who count the white platinum grains ample payment for the herculean task of taking a mammoth dredge bit by bit through miles of steamy hot jungle country. Columbian rivers are lined with camps, each centred around a mechanical monster with an insatiable appetite. As the sand and gravel are gouged out of the bed it is swished over screens and through riffle boards, and the heavy grains of white metal sift to the bottom. They go eventually to refineries far away, where the pounding of the pulverising machine mingles with the roar of great furnaces. A far cry from the jungle rivers are these refineries, with their vats of glowing metal, and the quick-fingered, dark-spectacled technicians who pour the boiling metal into ingot moulds. So much has been learnt about platinum that none of the puzzling mistakes of the first scientists are repeated; (the metal has the curious property of changing radically when alloyed., becoming brittle and even inflammable!) Along the rivers Indian girls, with stones tied to their bodies, laboriously dive for the platinum-bearing sands that their ancestors pointed out to the Spanish explorers. Men on the banks wash it in wooden pans in the same old .vav which hrs been used in gold prospecting for so many years. Within earshot of the Inonster creaking and splashing of the dredge this primitive prospecting goes on, for the modern Indian, though perhaps he may believe with his forefathers that the silver metal is but unripe gold, knows that he can get a fair price for it. The same scene may be seen in Ethiopia, that country of precious metals. Along tributaries of the Blue Nile, wftolly-headed black folk work under supervision of the Italian overseers, industriously washing' both by hand and dredge the platinum sands that, together with gold and copper, make Ethiopia a rich possession. The minute quantity taken from tons of material (for only a few grains of crude platinum are take a from each cubic yard of sand) doe? not daunt the miners. Yet the market is a fluctuating one, and a drastic descent in price is by no means unlikely. Popularity on the jewellery market may wane with fashion, and pale jewellery, which made a distinct impression on the <rold market, make a sudden descent in favour of its brighter brother. Nevertheless, none of the metal will ever be idle. Almost indestructible, brooches will be turned into acid plants and rings into armament fuses. The mechanical world is greedy for this substance, which has filled such a gap in the realm of metals. Decay, bacterial attack and the passing of years leave it as unaltered in shape and weight as when it was first moulded. For this reason it is used in world capitals for standards of •weight and measure, as lettering on historical plaques and monuments, and for important trophies. Alloys of the platinum family, iridium, osmium and so on, are used i:>r plating and decoration as well as jewellery.