| 1873 | £735 |
| 1874 | 4,710 |
| 1875 | 28,443 |
| 1876 (first six months) | 13,650 |
| £47,538 |
This sum can have done but little more than paid for the necessary transport of the machinery and other matters which have been carried up from the coast. It certainly cannot also have paid for the machinery itself. The bulk of the gold found has, however, been probably carried down to the coast at Fort Elizabeth or Capetown without any record.
Such is all that I have to say respecting the Gold Fields of the Transvaal,—and it is very little. I did not visit them, and had I done so I do not know that I could have said much more. I conscientiously inspected many Gold mines in Australia, going down into the bowels of the earth 500 feet here and 600 feet there at much personal inconvenience, and some danger to one altogether unused to mining operations; but I do not know that I did any good by this exercise of valour and conscience. A man should be a mineralogist to be able to take advantage of such inspections. Had I visited Pilgrim Rest I could have said how the men looked who were there working, and might have attempted to guess whether they were contented with their lot;—but I could have said nothing as to the success of the place with more accuracy than I do now.
The Transvaal is said, and I believe correctly, to be very rich in other minerals besides gold;—but the travellers in new countries are always startled by sanguine descriptions of wealth which is not in view. Lead and cobalt are certainly being worked. Coal is found in beds all along the eastern boundary of the country, and will probably some day be the most valuable product of the country. Did I not myself see it burning at Stander’s Drift? Iron is said to be plentiful in almost every district of the Colony and has been long used by the natives in making weapons and ornaments. Copper also has been worked by the natives and is now found in old pits, where it has been dug to the depth of from 30 to 40 feet. A variety of copper ornaments are worn by the Kafirs of the northern parts of the Transvaal who have known how to extract the metal from the mineral and to smelt it into pure ore. No mining operations in search of copper have, as I believe, yet been carried on by white men in the country. At an Agricultural Show which was held in 1876 at Potchefstroom, the chief town in the southern part of the Transvaal, prizes were awarded for specimens of the following minerals found in the country itself. Gold-bearing quartz, alluvial gold, copper, tin, lead, iron, plumbago, cobalt, and coal. The following is an extract from a report of the Show, which I borrow from Messrs. Silver’s South African Guide Book. “We believe there is no other country in the whole world that could have presented to the public gaze such a variety of minerals as were seen in the room set apart for their exhibition and which upon first entering reminded one of a charming museum; and all these minerals and earthy substances, we are informed, were the products of this country. We saw gold both quartz and alluvial,—not in small quantities but pounds in weight; coal by the ton,—silver, iron, lead. We do not know what to say about this last mineral; but there it was, not in small lumps, as previously exhibited, but immense quantities of ore, and molten bars by the hundred.”
This is somewhat flowery, but I believe the statements to be substantially true. The metals are all there, but I do not know whether any of them have yet been so worked as to pay for expenses and to give a profit. All the good things in the Transvaal seem to be so hard to come at, that it is like looking and longing for grapes, hanging high above our reach. But when grapes are really good and plentiful, ladders are at last procured, and so it will be with the grapes of the Transvaal.
The ladder which is especially wanted is of course a Railway. President Burgers among his other high schemes was fully aware of this and made a journey to Europe during the days of his power with the view of raising funds for this purpose. Like all his schemes it was unsuccessful, but he did raise in Holland a sum of £90,958 for this purpose, which has been expended on railway materials, or perhaps tendered to the Republic in that shape. These are now lying at Delagoa Bay, and the sum above named is part of the responsibility which England has assumed in annexing the Republic.
The question of a Railway is of all the most vital to the new Colony. The Transvaal has no seaboard, and no navigable rivers, and no available outlet for its produce. Pretoria is about 450 miles from Durban, which at present is the seaport it uses, and the road to Durban is but half made and unbridged. The traffic is by oxen, and oxen cannot travel in dry weather because there is no grass for them to eat. They often cannot travel in wet weather because the rivers are impassable and the mud is overwhelming. If any country ever wanted a Railway it is the Transvaal.
But whence shall the money come? Pretoria is about 300 miles distant from the excellent Portuguese harbour at Delagoa Bay, and it was to this outlet that President Burgers looked. But an undertaking to construct a railway through an unsurveyed country at the rate of £1,000 a mile was manifestly a castle in the air. If the absolute money could have been obtained, hard cash in hand, the thing could not have been half done. But President Burgers was one of those men who believe that if you can only set an enterprise well on foot the gods themselves will look after its accomplishment,—that if you can expend money on an object other money will come to look after that which has been expended. But here, in the Transvaal, he could not get his enterprise on foot; and I fear that certain railway materials lying at Delagoa Bay, and more or less suited for the purpose, are all that England has to show for the debt she has taken upon her shoulders.
I am not very anxious to offer an opinion as to the best route for a railway out from the Transvaal to the sea. Ne sutor ultra crepidam;—and the proper answering of such a question is, I fear, beyond the reach of my skill. But the reasons I have heard for the Delagoa Bay seem to me to be strong,—and those against it to be weak. The harbour at the Bay is very good,—perhaps the only thoroughly good harbour in South Africa, whereas that at Durban is at present very bad. Expensive operations may improve it, but little or nothing has as yet been done to lessen the inconvenience occasioned by its sand-bar. Durban is 450 miles from the capital of the Transvaal, whereas Delagoa Bay is only two-thirds of that distance. The land falls gradually from Pretoria to the Bay, whereas in going to Durban the line would twice have to be raised to high levels. And then the route to the Bay would run by the Gold Fields, whereas the other line would go through a district less likely to be productive of traffic. It is alleged on the other hand that as Delagoa Bay belongs to the Portuguese, and as the Portuguese will probably be unwilling to part with the possession, the making of a railway into their territory would be inexpedient. I cannot see that there is anything in this argument. The Americans of the United States made a railway across the Isthmus of Panama with excellent financial results, and in Europe each railway enterprise has not been stopped by the bounds of the country which it has occupied. The Portuguese have offered to take some share in the construction, and by doing so would lessen the effort which the Colony will be obliged to make. It is also alleged that Lorenço Marques, the Portuguese town at Delagoa Bay, is very unhealthy. I believe that it is so. Tropical towns on the sea board are apt to be unhealthy, and Lorenço Marques though not within the tropics is tropical. But so is Aspenwall, the terminus of the Panama Railway, unhealthy, being peculiarly subject to the Chagres fever. But in the pursuit of wealth men will endure bad climate. That at Delagoa Bay is by no means so bad as to frighten passengers, though it will probably be injurious to the construction of the railway. To the ordinary traffic of a constructed railway it will hardly be injurious at all.
If the Natal Colony would join the Transvaal in the cost, making the railway up to its own boundary, then the Natal line would no doubt be the best. The people of the Transvaal would compensate themselves for the bad harbour at Durban by the lessening of their own expenditure, and the line as a whole would be better for British interests in general than that to the Portuguese coast. But there is but little probability of this. Natal wants a line from its capital to its coast, and will have such a line almost by the time that these words are published. But it cares comparatively little for a line through 175 miles of its country up to its boundary at Newcastle, over which the traffic would be for the benefit of the Transvaal rather than for that of Natal. Estcourt and Newcastle which are in Natal would no doubt be pleased, but Natal will not spend its money for the sake of Estcourt and Newcastle.