SEARCH FOR LOST GOLD REEF

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 3, 5 January 1937, Page 2

SEARCH FOR LOST GOLD REEF

NUGGET AS BIG AS TEACUP FOUND*

JOHANNESBURG. The report that a large piece of rich gold-bearing reef—by some it is said to be a nugget the size of a teacupwas found on a farm near Bankin'? Pass caused another gold rush in the Waterberg district of the Transvaal. Farmers and prospectors are once more filled with hope at the thought that the famous “lost reef of the Waterberg," the Eldorado that has been sought in vain for 39 years, may at last havo been discovered.

Thirty-nine years ago, two German prospectors died in a tent from malarin at Rankin's Pass, and among their effects were two pickle- bottles full of solid gold nuggets. They died without revealing where they found tho gold, but it was known that they had beed prospecting behind Rankin’s Pass in the broken mountainous country.

Since that time there has been a never ceasing search for the location of the site from which tho dead Germans' nuggets came. There are traces of gold everywhere at Rankin's Pass. Even the sand at the roots of the grass reveals traces of gold, and recently it came through from the bush that a “nugget as big as a teacup" had been found. Farming in Rankin's Pass has ceased for a day or two under the stimulus of that “nugget of gold as big as a tea cup," and everyone is searching.