REAL LOST GOLD MINES

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 202, 15 August 1908, Page 4

REAL LOST GOLD MINES

S'o more amazing story of buried treasure has been made public in these '. litter vears than that cabled from Lls- , boil the other day concerning the recovery of a lost sold mine in southern , Am.'oia.. It had been worked, it. would appear, 1-v Porliieucse monks, who had apparently all been massacred, for their skeletons" were found scattered about the galleries. Mingled with the bones were numbers of gold bars, valued at CI 00,1100. There is nothing inherently improbable in this, for Angola was the first portion of Africa (leaving out the Mediterranean littoral) to be settled by white men. and gold is known to have been exported thence during the latter part of the sixteenth century and the early years of the seventeenth, wh .n (lie 'supply suddenly ceased. These early gold miners were a won-d'-rfullv secretive lot, so that, when (hey died, their knowledge usually perished with them, ft seems probable now that Hie Zimbabwe mines were thus lost to the world for the boiler part of five I hundred years. 'l Those are situated, of course, on the /opposite side of ihe Continent, but inapproximately the same latitude. They were rediscovered in IStiS bv Adam Renders, an ivorv trader, who brought away seven sucks f„ll of il„. precious met il. Other adventui-ei-s. too, visited the ancient o-alleries. some of whom were even more" fortunate: while 3(r. R. X. Hall, who nude a sysieiualic excavation of il-.. whole siic'some five or six years back, found gold ingots "strewn broadnails on (he lloor of a carpenter's shop." '