Search for Gold

Manawatu Times, Volume 60, Issue 53, 5 March 1935, Page 10

Search for Gold

SCOTTISH BOEDER AEEA The Borders of Scotland may be the centre of a gold rush shortly. Strong traces of alluvial gold have been prospected in tho moors round Galashiels and Melrose, and a company has been formed in Edinburgh to carry out a complete survey of the area. It is hoped that the lodo will be discovered in the Yarrow Valley, where already nuggets of gold have been panned out of the river. One man has found and had assayed, gold worth more than £2OO in tho last three years.

The South of Scotland has been known for centuries to contain gold deposits. More than 000 years ago a Gorman surveyed tho whole of the Borders area from west to east, and stated that tho lode ran from Leadhills in the west to. the Korth Sea coast in the east.

Eor two centuries all the gold for the Scottish kings was mined in the Leadhills district by scouring tho hillsides with artificially made ditches—a system invented by the monks who settled iu Leadhills after tho Eoman occupation. Recent discoveries of puro gold, which experts have declared to be fragments of the lode, have been found both at Leadhills and in tho Yarrow Valley. Residents in Leadhills say they are convinced that the area borders on the goldfield. Many of the men, lead miners by trade, spend their spare time “panning off" in the hill streams and beating the gold they find into wedding rings.