In the Middle Ages there were the finds in Mexico and Peru. The Romans worked Wales and Devon and Cornwall. Ants coming up from under the earth carrying grains of gold led the Indians to their alluvial fields. Europe was worked for it - the valleys of the Rhine and the Po, Malaga and the plains of Granada.
Croesus and Midas emptied the Middle Eastern territories of gold. There were the great gold treasures of Egypt and Mycenae, Montezuma and the Incas. People have been scratching the surface of the world for gold for thousands of years. Broadly speaking, there only remains the land under the sea and the sea itself, which has a notable gold content. You may think that large areas of the world have still to be explored for gold.
In fact the gold content of the world is being worked out. 'You're not bored? Well, you were suggesting that gold production was so vast nowadays that it ought to take care of all these various consumers. We have to make sure the Factory Acts are being observed for safety and health." "Sorry, sir, routine inspection for the Small Engineering Section of the Ministry of Labour. We dressed a couple of the Gold Squad up and sent them down to knock on the door of Mr Goldfinger's factory at Reculver. Figures showed the natural progress of a well-run jewellery business. Income tax and super tax paid promptly each year.
Twenty thousand pounds at Barclays in Ramsgate. Had a quiet look at his bank balance and tax returns. But could we pin it on him? We could not. Goldfinger had been refining down his old gold, precipitating it into this brown powder and shipping it to India as fertilizer. These gave all the cargoes as mineral dust base for crop fertilizers - all perfectly credible because these modern fertilizers do use traces of various minerals in their make-up. 'The usual nosey parker in the salvage firm gossiped to one of the Dover Customs men and in due course a report filtered up through the police and the CID to me, together with a copy of the cargo clearance papers for each of Goldfinger's trips to India.
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