| Show ANCIENT GOLD MINES IN AFRICA i proof that extensive operations were carried on many centuries ago in british Zam besia rhodesia or british zambella Zam besia esla ranks among the chief gold bearing hearing countries of the world the ancients mined and carried away enormous quantities of the precious metal but bui under the acl entitle mining systems of the present day their operations will be greatly surpassed in the recently published work on the ancient ruins of rhodesia the authors hall and neal endeavor to discover who the ancients were and whither the gold went perhaps rhodesia was the ancient land of ophir the land of the mys cerious king solomon solomons s mines but the theory Is strongly combated by some investigators the ancient gold workings are the basis of modern workings for every ten square miles of rhodesia there was one ancient mine that is there are 75 old holes which means that a stupendous ou fore the da das a of cecil R rhodes des much such 10 of this wealth must have gone to the north and east it was probably wrought into the crown of the queen of sheba and filled the coffers of solomon the ancient smelting furnaces are still easy to recognize they are sunk into the floor the furnace blowpipe blowpipes are made ot of the finest granite powder cement and the nozzles of the blow pipes are covered with splashes of or gold when the first lining became worn by the heat a fresh lining of cement of an excellent quality which has outlasted time was smeared round on top of the old lining one caa can take an old lining split off the layer layers with a knife and find gold splashes la in abundance apparently the ancients wasted gold lavishly gold has been found in larg larger quantities in the form of pellets as a large as buckshot in the vicinity of the furnaces and also thrown away on the th debris heaps outside of the buildings the tools of the ancient worker which have so far been discovered include a small soapstone hammer and burnishing urnis hing stones of water worn rock rocks evidences t A 1 14 0 ancients anc I 1 Tents 1 e a ll 11 Z h ro r 0 1 l ara an on 1 an extensive industry in the manlutac ture ore of gold ornaments and utensils thirty five thousand dollars worth of c gold ornaments have been taken in the th last five years from the ruins of mata deleland be leland alone youth a companion |
