Barberton and the surrounding locality, in my opinion, would be as healthy and have as low a death-rate as any place in South Africa, the climate being both pleasant and invigorating, if only the simplest sanitary precautions[[110]] were adopted by the authorities, and the population generally were fairly abstemious.
I wish here to correct a most erroneous impression which seems to prevail through South Africa as to the danger of residence in Barberton during the summer months. The climate of Barberton is but little, if at all, more unhealthy than that of Kimberley, and I speak advisedly from professional experience gained in both places. The only real exception that can be taken against Barberton as compared with Kimberley is, that being some seven degrees nearer the equator, the heat is more intense, and consequently greater care has to be taken in avoiding its depressing influences than in the other locality named. Let me, therefore, beg of you to disabuse your minds of the belief that Barberton in summer-time is a hot-bed of malaria. I must confess that I started to Barberton with a certain amount of trepidation as to the possibility or probability of myself or my healthiest neighbors being stricken down without warning by an attack of fever, the picturing of whose virulency had led me to expect an active counterpart to the great plague of London. Other practitioners there have owned to similar preconceived notions, of which, like myself, they soon become disabused. As a matter of fact, nothing can be further from the truth. Malaria indisputably exists in the low-lying districts situated to the north of Barberton; but a residence in and about that district, when accompanied by reasonable precautions, is as safe for a healthy man, woman or child, as almost anywhere in South Africa.
The Transvaal government, urged on no doubt by the exaggerated reports of the unhealthiness of the town, has generously given £2,000 to assist in building a general hospital. Pending the completion of this building a neat little cottage hospital has been fitted up, a medical staff appointed, and, with two trained nurses from the Kimberley hospital, who have volunteered their services, the sick poor are now fairly comfortable. The reports circulated through South Africa concerning the insalubrity of the Fields are fearfully exaggerated, but they have already attracted a number of doctors, largely in excess of the requirements of the place.
It is amusing to note the mistakes of current journalism. For instance, in the last Christmas annual issued by the Natal Mercury appeared the following remarkable piece of information: “The Kantoor is regarded as the sanatorium of Barberton, and to it the inhabitants repair on the first symptoms of illness.” It is not necessary for me to tell you that the Kantoor is thirty-five miles distant from Barberton, and I should pity the poor patient who would have to “jog his bones over the stones” in order to seek renewed health in this so-called sanatorium.
But as far as the finding of gold is concerned, the wave of modern gold discovery in Southeast Africa has flowed in an entirely opposite direction from the course it might have been expected to take, commencing in the interior and proceeding by slow and measured steps in the direction of the coast.
BARBERTON.—FIRST GAOL AND HOSPITAL.
I may here just remind you of the unsuccessful expedition sent out in 1650 from Lisbon, under Francesco Barreto, to explore the gold fields of these regions, and en passant may mention that the yearly yield of gold exported at a somewhat later date by the Portuguese was more than a million pounds sterling in value, or, according to one authority, £3,000,000. Yet these matters I will not enter into fully now, but review at once the result of the work done in recent years.
Before proceeding further I may recall a fact that many may have forgotten, viz.: that the Transvaal Republic, under President Pretorius, made it penal for any one (£500 fine) finding precious stones or metals on his farm to reveal such discovery to any one except the government, and it was not until during the more liberal régime of President Burgers that this absurd piece of senile legislation was rescinded or fell into abeyance.
But as I say, to come to modern times—Mr. H. Hartley, the celebrated elephant hunter and explorer, while shooting in the Matabele country in 1866, was led to suspect the existence of gold in that country, and so excited was he from what he saw, and also from the current stories afloat, that on the next trip which he took in the following year he brought with him a young German traveller, the late Carl Mauch, to aid him in discovering the truth or falsehood of these reports. Mauch wrote in the most glowing terms of what he saw, and of the wonderful richness of the quartz that he found, the result being that after the formation of various colonial companies Sir John Swinburne and Capt. Levert, representing the London and Limpopo Mining Co., came out from England in 1868, fully equipped, and proceeded to the Tati gold fields, of which district Capt. Levert had got a grant from Umzelegatzi. These fields, extending from northwest to southeast, a distance of forty miles long by fourteen broad, are in 21° 27′ S. Lat., and 27° 40′ E. Long. There are on the settlement itself, according to Alfred G. Lock, F.R.G.S., eleven mines (in fact nine different companies were formed) from which gold has been taken, and these are all situated, he says, on workings sixty to seventy feet deep, of the age of which some idea may be gathered from the fact that trees from 150 to 200 years old are now growing within these ancient shafts. The workings of the Tati gold fields were continued by Sir John Swinburne, and afterwards by August Griete, for about three years, when they were abandoned. One Australian miner, however, remained behind, working on what was named the New Zealand Reef, and his efforts were sufficiently successful to induce Mr. D. Francis of Kimberley, to apply to Benguela, the Matabele king, for Sir J. Swinburne’s concession, which he obtained, but up to the present time operations have been conducted without much success,