BUSIED TREASURE

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 24, 29 January 1934, Page 16

BUSIED TREASURE

BENEATH BRITAIN'S SOIL Beneath the soil of Britain lo romance and .tragedy. . In the depths there are gold, silver, amethyst, tin, lignite, arsenic, and 'other' precious minerals, all of which, at one time or another, have made and. lost fortunes, says the "Sunday Express." : There is gold in Scotland, Ireland, and Kent, but the mo.st famous mines are in Wales and on the Welsh border. Companies have been floated toi work veins there, and they have paid large dividends—-until the ore suddenly petered out. The wedding ring on. the Princess Royal's hand was from a mine at Caio,- in Breconshirc. About 30 miles from Caio lies the Forest of Dean, where the great English gold rush took place, and where claims were actually staked out by Free Miners on the mysterious Wigpqol MoOr, near the village of Mitcholdcan;' '• The Free "Miners,; a curious body dating back to Silurian times, have the right to dig and search for minerals anywhere within the precincts of the. forest. "They, were bitterly disappointed—the "gold" turning out to be yellow ochre, with which the forest . abounds. Besides uhworked red ochre and ron (the Eoman "cindus" are still sometimes smelted), there actually is gold here. . Even more, of a geological "freak" is the valley of Coombe Martin, near Ilfracombc, North Devon, where gold, silver, iron, copper, tin, and .'loadabound. ' Imminent, geologists -.think that an untapped source of almost untold wealth still exists. Amethyst, could also still be mined iii Britain. There was a shaft at Cape Cornwall, ;n'car Land's End," working what the Cornishmcn will tell you was the only known rich lodo in England. The unemployed tin miners get this stone still, and sell it for a few pence. They also find amber on the beaches among the flotsam washed up by the tide. That strange stuff shale is, perhaps, tho unwoiked mineral with the greatest "future"/in Britain today. \ It has already lost fortunes. At Kimmeridge, on tho Dorset coast, one can.still sec the evidences of such a "crash." In 18G0 a French company was formed to work the seams of oil-bearing rock. It built a pier, sank a shaft, aud for a time nil went well. A boat arrived, took the rock away, and sold the oil to the Parisians. But : shale oil. gives off a terriblo smell and soot while burning,'and the boat,sailed less often, till it stopped. ■