LURE AND ROMANCE OF GOLD

Evening Star, Issue 21315, 20 January 1933, Page 11

LURE AND ROMANCE OF GOLD

GREAT FORTUNES WOK AND LOST IN A MONTH « ■ ——— KOI A SIMPLE MY, OF MAKING MOKEY Reports of important, gold discoveries have been very prevalent ; of late. New Zealand described its Otago discovery as the richest alluvial gold find known to the present-generation (writes Cecil Nurcombe, in the London ‘ Daily Telegraph ’). ■ Johannesburg mining houses claim to have found an important extension of the Witwatersrand, running for thirty miles to the west of Krugersdorp. Kenya Colony has come into the limelight as a potential producer of gold. It would seem that the world’s store of the glittering metal is not locked up in the French and American vaults, after all. Of Otago we cannot say much. It is admitted that the workings are alluvial, which generally means little nuggets of practically pure gold secreted in debris washed up in narrow creeks, or incredibly rich veins of gold reef located in the . hillsides. The trouble is they do not last; one day men are in the midst of the stuff, which is so rich that the gold can be seen with the naked eye; the next it is gone. GLITTER OF GOLD. Sometimes the reef narrows away until it becomes unworkable or ceases altogether. Elsewhere the reef continus but loses its gold content. Again, when the find is tolerably rich but narrow, it pays to work on the face, but at depth the expense of haulage and support—for the overhang must be propped up—turns profit into loss. Gold-mining is not the simple way of making money that some people think it is.' The writer has seen an outcrop reef at Barberton, where the first important goldtinining activity in the Transvaal took place, which glittered in the sunlight and yielded ounces to the ton. A dolly—a miniature battery—was erected, and a few optimists sot to work to win a fortune. After a month the reef was lost and never found again. In that one month the machinery had paid for itself ten times over, and, if the syndicate, had abandoned the venture and gone elsewhere in quest of the yellow dust, all would have been well. Instead, all the profits were spent, and much more besides, in a futile search for the lost reef. • , FRUITLESS SEARCH. Hence, the necessity for consistent values and ore reserves when discussing mining prospects.* 1 have taken samples ' across the width of an outcrop reef near Moulder's Drift, where, it is alleged, the latest South African discovery was made by a picnic party. After crushing with pestle and mortar .and' washing in a prospector’s pan, a little “ tail” like a tiny comma was clearly seen at the end. of the thin, white streak of washed sand. But it would never pay to mine it, and the prospectors knew it. Why, the whole of the countryside •surrounding the Rand has been crisscrossed with trenches and dotted with prospector’s shafts, for as the central

mines were worked out the mining houses scoured the whole country in a fruitless search to find a new reef to replace the most consistent —if not the richest—goldfield in the world. Therefore it may be accepted that no spectacular outcrop values ■would have been missed at Moulder’s’ Drift. “Then,” the reader will ask, “ what of this thirty-mile stretch of new reef discovered beyond the limits of the Witswatersrand Main Reef mine?” _ The 1 answer is simple. We knew it was there, but we did uot know that it was payable, and, for that matter, it has yet to be proved. . True, the Consolidated Gold Fields are arranging a £500,000 company to exploit the discoveries made by boring, and, in one area, payable values have been encountered, but that does not mean that a new Witwatersrand will be developed p west of Randfontein. There are miles and miles of gold-bear-ing reef round Johannesburg whicb will never be mined, because the returns cannot justify the development 'cdsts; : v ’ "" • '■ *- ! f BIG-DEPTHS DOWN. ■ It is an expensive business, this sinking of shaft! thousands of, feet, beneath the: veld to intersect the reef. Where it dips from near the surface, or outcrops, as it did .at the old Ferreira and other central worked-out mines, the problem is, simple, but when the banket follows the horizontal plane at great depth the game will -not be worth the candle. unless, it has width and a high gold content. ■ It. costs a million pounds of South African money:—about one-third as much again in sterling—to develop a deep-level mine: The expenditure in shaft sinking and winding plant is • enormous; the battery, cyanide plant, and the whole, of the extraction plant costs a fortune, and then the tale is not' told. • . . • . Taxation, direct and is high; heavy conti'ibutions to the Government’s Phthisis Insurance Fund are exacted, and, in addition, share of the profits, .based on a sliding scale, must be paid to the State. Under this last heading one East Rand company . paid the Receiver of Revenue a cheque for £1,358,888 12s Id in 1927. This is probably one of the bjggest cheques ever drawn in Africa. A copy, of the original lies before the writer, and it, is crossed and marked “ Not negotiable.” It would to know if any unauthorised person in the world would have the courage to attempt to negotiate such a cheque! Thus a discovery of 'gold does not necessarily mean a profitably, mine, which explains why so many known gold-bearing reefs are not being exploited. For the same reason some of the big producers have huge areas of exposed reef, which they are compelled to leave below the surface because the costs of extraction would be too high. And Some of the richest reef has to be left as well, either in the form of pillars to support the overhang or because the way 1 is barred by extensive areas of low-grade ore. ’ Another difficulty is the Union s retention of the gold standard, which, by keeping up costs and lowering the cash proceeds from gold sold in London and remitted to Africa, produces the unexpected paradox that the present high value of gold is detrimental to the gold mining industry in a country that adheres to a gold standard. Still we continue prospecting, taking options over farms (which the farmers will sell for a single shilling if .it means that there is a prospect of'selling their farms at good prices) and forming syndicates. We play for high stakes, and although wo lose often there is just the chance that wo shall lift the table. PANNING OUTCROPS. It is a great game; more exciting, perhaps, when we pan the outcrops and test lonely reefs than when we bore over the extensions of the Rand and correlate results through a period of years. But the end is the same—geld. Gold that has caused turmoil through the ages and puzzles us to-day. The glitter that led Jason in search, of the golden fleece and finally to suicide, Scipio to sack Carthage, Cortez to lay waste Mexico, and Britain to coino to grips with the Boers. Gold—the spur to avarice, and, through selfish iminipuiation, the cause of untold misery. Few there are who 'handle it or even see it in those enlightened days. Most of us covet it. [Since this was written South Africa lias gone off the gold standard.]