WORLD CONTAINS MORE BURIED TREASURE THAN DREAMED OF IN FICTION

Manawatu Times, Issue 6848, 1 March 1929, Page 3

WORLD CONTAINS MORE BURIED TREASURE THAN DREAMED OF IN FICTION

Lost Gold in Sunken Ships and Tombs HOARDS THAT ARE SELDOM BROACHED Every year the world’s supply of gold is added to enormously, yet the total shows no sign of reaching the absorption <point. Largely the reason is that so much, of it vanishes every year—so great a quantity that the total is estimated at £2,000,000,000. Who gets it 1 It has vanished into the world’s largest go-id mine, into tL*. hoard of the miser, gone down in sunken 6hips, or buried in tombs. Much is lost also through flit wearing down of the coins ir. hanging

In all the world the total 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 tlio gold that has been mined, according tc competent statisticians, since Columbus discovered America. They say 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 ill

The truth abou: m..ch of this uti’f counted treasure is that it has become tb rough a myriad of processes, a part 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 gold back into service as money. It would come from many strange places. It would reach the assay offices 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 New Yotk assay office was asked if they received many old coins in the course of a day’s work there, and if many persons came in to have tb ” great-grandmother's ear-rings molteu down for the gold that was in them. “The truth is,” he said, “that a great number of our customers deliver gold 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 out-moded settings, melt these down for their gold, and then sell that gold to us. Melted Down by Thieves.

“Some of the gold that comes to us has been melted down by thieves to disguise it beyond recognition by its true owners. But that it not our business either. If you were to bring us a chest of pirate treasure drenched with the blood of the victims from whom it was stolen, you would not be bothered with impertinent questions. Your name, your address, that would be all.; and if you wish to buy gold for any purpose wo will sell you as much as you wish, giving you a dollar’s worth for every dollar.” In some respects gold has the properties of a fluid, and the gold that once ornamented the Queen of Sheba’s alluring arms as bracelets may now be merged with virgin red gold from 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. Benvenuto Cellini, medieval artist in metals, has left in his 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 all that men control wore by some magic to be assembled there would still be a great portion of that ten billions of dollars’ worth that we should have set down as “missing.” An incalculable amount has been lost beyond recovery. In the middle ages, during the time, for example, when the successive romances of that paunchy monarch, Henry VIII., were making excellent 'copy’ that went to waste because there were no newspapers to make use of it. there was a severe law that mado it a capita! crime for anyone 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 oanves sack all the gold coins of which they could get possession, and then shaking thorn so vigirously that particles of gold were in this manner dislodged from each of the coins. Money-lenders dusted thej coins passing through their hands as faithfully as tho bankers of to-day charge interest on all that they lend. This gold dust was not lost, of course, but was turned iuto 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 tho 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 aro a variety of needs for this most accommodating of metals, and one of the commonest uses to which it is put by the current crop of mortals is as a packing for defective teeth. Wedding rings, and other golden circlets on the fingers of these, as well as the gold deposits 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 treas-! ure in tho biggest-gold mine—the hidden gold that has been used by man and then lost to sight [