Incwadi Yami; or, twenty years' personal experience in South Africa

by J. W. Matthews

Jamestown, however, may take the credit to itself of being, as it has been styled, “the cradle of the country which was in future to populate our reefing districts.”

Some of the diggers becoming dissatisfied with their luck left the place, went in a southwest direction, and struck some very rich gold reefs, together with some insignificant alluvial diggings, on certain of the farms, thirteen in number, the property of Mr. G. P. Moodie, the Surveyor General of the Transvaal. The choice of the farms has since proved a very lucky stroke for Mr. Moodie, for although when he acquired them from the government he might possibly have looked forward, in the distant future, to a railway being constructed from Delagoa Bay to Pretoria, which would enhance their value, yet at the time he became their owner no one ever dreamt of the possibility of their being gold-bearing. This gentleman had made in 1870 and 1871 three official journeys from Pretoria to the coast, with the object of discovering the best line of road either for rail or wagon, and on his second journey he passed through this tract of country.

I may mention, in passing, that, touching the geology of the district, a late writer states that “the formation consists chiefly of argillaceous slates and schists, sandstones, and conglomerate, in some places disturbed by granite and traversed by quartz-reefs and igneous dykes. The reefs are for the most part vertical, and run almost due east and west, with a southerly inclination.”

But to return to the history of these gold fields, discovered on Mr. Moodie’s farms: In November, 1882, certain terms on which diggers were allowed to peg out claims on these properties were posted up at the Gold Commissioner’s office at the Kantoor by Mr. Moodie’s attorneys, and as a consequence many proceeded thither to prospect. Their reports being considered satisfactory, a general rush was made, for with the most crude and primitive appliances it soon became generally known that a comparatively large quantity of gold was being turned out. The number of diggers increased rapidly, spread out into three camps, and everything went on prosperously until towards the end of 1883, when Mr. Moodie disposed of his property to a Natal syndicate for £240,000. Before doing this he rescinded the terms which he had made with the diggers during the previous year, and the consequence was that great dissatisfaction was caused among them. The Natal directorate, evidently with the intention of squeezing out of the diggers all that they could get, and forgetting the possibility of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs, immediately began to impose the most exorbitant taxes. They demanded £3 a month license money per claim, and a royalty of from 7½ to 4½ per cent. on all gold turned out. These changes, together with payments for wood, water, charcoal, grazing, and stand rents, soon was attended with the result that might have been foreseen—the diggers were led to prospect on the government farms adjoining, and situated to the northeast, on which in 1885 a public gold field was proclaimed.

In the winter of 1884, Messrs. Barber Bros., gentlemen well known in the Cape Colony, at the time joining business with pleasure, were shooting game in the Kaap Valley. In the month of August, they came to a stream known as the Umvoti Creek, about half a mile distant from the site of Barberton, a township which has since been named after them, when, on looking up the side of the steep ravine bordering it, they detected a quartz reef jutting out, which on examination showed visible gold. This, with the assistance of Mr. T. C. Rimer, who can well lay claim to be one of the pioneers of the Transvaal gold fields, they opened up, imported a ten-stamp battery (the first on the Kaap fields) and began, as soon as it was erected, to crush at once. From the moment their returns became known the death-knell of Moodie’s Co. was tolled, either as a paying investment, or as regards any further important increase in the prospecting or mining on their property, although the various sub-working companies, notwithstanding their being so heavily taxed, are in many instances doing fairly well. The diggers now made the rush to which I have above alluded, and left Moodie’s almost deserted, when the mountains and gorges, the rugged slopes and defiles along the Makoujwa range, became peopled by prospectors, attracted from all parts of South Africa, and many valuable properties were discovered; but it was not until “Bray’s Golden Quarry,” ten miles from Barberton, was found (May, 1885), that the South African world became awakened to the fact of the richness of the Transvaal as a gold-yielding country. This wonderful mine was, as the discoverer himself told me, accidentally found after five months prospecting on the Sheba range by Mr. Edwin Bray, whom I knew in 1871 as a pioneer diamond digger, and whose name will now forever stand associated with the development of this auriferous region. Although the company which he formed did not at the time possess its own machinery, and was for months compelled to send its quartz eight miles away over a rugged country to be crushed at an expense of at least one oz. of gold per ton, pending the completion of a tramway to the Queen’s River, yet it paid back in fifteen months 63½ per cent. of its capital in dividends; its £1 shares sold readily at £75 or over, and the return of its crushing averaged 7 oz. 3 dwts. per ton; and this, although from tests applied it had been proved that the refuse-tailings contained 4 oz. of gold per ton, lost through imperfect manipulation.

The sight of the quarry at once raised endless speculations in my mind as to the vastness of its wealth. To form even a remote idea was an impossibility. On the one hand I could look from the bottom of a deep, almost precipitous, ravine, where the reef could be measured 100 feet in thickness, and see towering between 400 and 500 feet above me the capping of the quartzite reef, lying at an angle of fifty degrees on the edge of the quarry proper, while on the other no limit to the extent of the reef hidden from view beneath my feet had yet been determined; neither had the length of the vein, although almost certain indications had been found that it extends nearly half a mile. I began to calculate what the return of this company will be with the 100 stamps about to be erected at daily work, until dreams of untold wealth came over me, from which I awoke to warmly congratulate my old friend on his marvellous success, which as one of the most active mineral prospectors in the Transvaal he so richly deserves. On my visit to Mr. Bray’s I noticed that the road to Sheba is dotted with canteens. Although the distance is only twelve miles, yet the inner man can be supported six or seven times before arrival at Eureka City, (within a stone’s throw of the Sheba Reef), and when there almost as many canteens as houses may be counted. Notwithstanding, however, the great amount of prospecting work which has been done, very few really payable gold reefs have been as yet struck. Speaking of prospectors’ work, I may state that on the day I left I counted in the Gold Co.’s office 513 registered blocks of amalgamated claims; but of these more anon. There can be no doubt that the precious metal exists in various degrees of richness in the quartz-veins that are to be seen all around the Kaap Valley, yet these have not been discovered in quantity rich enough to warrant the great influx of diggers and men of almost every trade or profession, or the absurd speculation in claims and shares which has taken place.

SHEBA REEF, BRAY’S GOLDEN QUARRY, BARBERTON.

The public have been warned over and over again that these are no “poor man’s diggings,” but at a distance the very name of gold serves to call up the most enchanting visions, and forbids the difference between alluvial diggings and quartz mining being sufficiently weighed. There is such a thing in this world as living on a name; many a “worthless son of a worthy sire” has found out this secret, and the name of Edwin Bray and the stupendous wealth of his quarry has tended to enable company on company to be floated which never will pay a dividend between this and the day of their liquidation. To Natal men the credit is certainly due of first developing the fields. The object which they had in view in forming companies was to found dividend paying concerns, with small capitals only sufficiently large to provide adequate machinery to develop the property; whereas some, though of course not all, of the other speculators, who came in at a later period, formed large companies, took in any number of claims, whether proved gold-bearing or not, so long as they would swell, with an appearance of justification, the enormous capital of their prospectuses, got thousands of pounds promotion money, and, by means of a nicely managed ring, ran up the shares to a premium and then sold out.

As time goes on I feel certain that many things will have to be rectified, none more so than the pegging out of claims by power-of-attorney. If this absurd system be continued, there is nothing to prevent the four hundred millions who inhabit the Celestial empire, or even the Man in the Moon and his family—could communication be established with Earth’s satellite—holding claims to the direct detriment of those whose energy, determination, and self-sacrifice have prompted them to seek their fortunes in this new El Dorado.