SEARCH FOR LOST GOLD REEF

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 337, 19 January 1937, Page 7

SEARCH FOR LOST GOLD REEF

KUGGET 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 teacup—was found on a farm near Rankin’s 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 have been discovered. Thirty-nine years ago, two German prospectors died in a tent from malaria at Rankin’s Pass, and among their effects were two pickle- bottles full of solid gold nuggets. They died without revealing where they found the gold, but it was known that they had been 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 the 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 aa 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 in searching.