Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 March 1893 — Rich African Gold Fields. [ARTICLE]

Rich African Gold Fields.

Baltimore Sun. The announcement is made through the London Times of fabulously rich gold fields in the British possessions in Africa. For several years past it has been known that certain parts of Africa, and notably of East Africa and in Mashonaland,' were gold-bear-ing, and that the gold mines had "Been worked there in remote ages] by a people or peoples whose nationality is* either unknown or simply conjectured. The ruins of the famous hill fortress of Zimbabye, with its inclosing wall and the discovery there qf crucibles still containing particles of gold attest this, as well as many other similar ruins of less ’ extent scattered over East Africa. Some mines have been opened in these districts. Their yield, however, with the imperfect working of the few English in that country, was small, but in one of the mines which was most promising Lord Randolph Churchill, while on his visit to Africa, took stock. And now we have a report of the astonishing discovery of a gold field eleven miles long so rich in the precious metal that mines have already been opened there and the experts who have made’careful investigations testify that “there is gold in sight of the value of £315,000,000," or, in American currency, counting $5 to the pound sterling, of $1,575,01)0,000. It is also said that “the deposits are of a nature that presents no great difficulties to the working of them, aud that the entire amount can be placed on the market in about ten years, provided methods of extraction are employed and proper facilities for transportation furnished.”

The story appears to be almost incredible, yet the Times accepts it as true and asserts that it shows “a prospect of such an addition to the world’s stock of gold during the years immediately at hand as to up set a good many of the calculations of the economists and statistical.’ - The consequences may be readily understood when it is computed that the entire amount of Australian gold put upon the world’s market during the forty years that the mines of that country have been worked has not been much more than $2,000,000, 000. Of our own mines the total product of the Comstock lode in Nevada up to 1889 was but $80,000,000 and all the California mines in their palmiest day cMd not supply more than $65,000,000 j>er annum. The Nevada mines only produced in 1890 $3,500,000, the present gold Siroduct in California is about *l2, 00,000. •‘According to the Director of the United States mint the entire gold product of this country in 1891 was but a little over $33, 000,000, scarcely more than a fifth,” says the Providence Journal, “of the promised African annual supply.”