Where to Pick Up Millions.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 24 July 1914, Page 8

Where to Pick Up Millions.

MARVELLOUS PROFITS OF THE

RAND

Thirty-seven million pounds' worth

of gold in twelve months. That is

the output of that particular sixtymile tract of rocky country iv South Africa known as the Rand, which was the scene of terrible strike warfare recently ; arid it is calculated that the end of the century will not see thfi gold mines exhausted. Since gold was first discovered in the Rand about thirty years,ago something like £359,000,000 sterling have been extracted from 208,000,000 tons of rock torn from the bowels of the earth. The working expenses, of course, are enormous, and some idea of the labour involved may be gathered from the fact that from the £.37,000,000 worth of gold produced in. 191.2, £13,555,000 was paid in wages, £7,865,000 going to Europeans, of whom 23,118 are employed at the mines, and £5,601,000 to coloured people, of whom 193,341 are employed. Tn stores consumed on the mines and for the working of the mines, including coal, £9,753,000 was spent, ias well as £5,800,000 in developing either existing mines or opening up new ones. This left a balance of £8,000,000 to be paid in dividends; so that, roughly speaking, out of £37,000,000 sterling. £29,000,000 remained fn the country. These remarkable figures concerning the vast industry of the Rand gold fields are provided by Sir Lionel Phillips, one of the shrewdest and most successful of the giants of the gold-mining industry, and equally interesting is the story which he unfolded during a lecture recently, of how gold came to be deposited in the Rand, or Witwatersrand, to give it its proper geographical name. Many years ago Witwatersrand was really an inland ' sea enclosed by mountains, which were gradually torn down by the' action of the water, and rocks deposited to a depth of over four and a half miles. After this a volcanic upheaval took place, dispersing the sea am! breaking up the country into fragments. "At the time this upheaval took place," said Sir Lionel, "the whole of the earth's cracks came up plutonic rocks —molten rocks —and after them came up fumes —gold in a gaseous state. These rocks brought up solutions or vapours containing the gold. No doubt these vapours were chemically associated when they came up, possibly with chlorine. The chlorine would cling to the gold; but as it has a greater affinity for i iron, it leaves the gold and clings to the iron, and that deposits the gold free in the rock. "The theory as t<s the' way which the gold was deposited, which has the greatest scientific weight, is the theory of impregnation. The beds •which have been deposited these ages before were permeated by these fumes or solutions, and the chlorine having taken the. iron and freed the gold, left the gold in the rocks as we find it to-day.—"Tit Bits."