THE TRANSVAAL GOLD-FIELDS.
BY ONE ON THE SPOT.
The gold-fields of the Transvaal, which have been heard of by fits and starts during the last twelve years, have of late begun to excite considerable attention both at home and in South Africa; and as the future of the Transvaal, and indeed a great portion of South-eastern Africa, depends very much on their proper development, a short description of the gold-bearing region may prove interesting to readers of this Journal.
Gold has been found scattered over a considerable extent of country here, and indeed is known to extend up to the Zambesi; but the part most frequented by the gold-seeker is a belt of country running almost north and south, commencing on the Kaap River, a few miles east of the village of Middleburg, in the Transvaal, and terminating about ten miles north of Pilgrim’s Rest, in the Lydenburg district. The principal ‘farms’ on which gold has been found in the Lydenburg district are Pilgrim’s Rest, Berlin, Lisbon, Graskop, Mac-Mac, Spitzkop, Elandsdrift, and Hendriksdal—these so-called ‘farms’ being merely tracts of ground surveyed, but in scarcely any case used for actual farming purposes. There are numerous other ‘farms’ on which gold has been found; but the above-named have, up to the present time, produced the largest quantity. From the Kaap River gold-fields, about fifty miles from Lydenburg, a considerable quantity of gold has also been extracted, partly on unallotted government ground, and partly from the ‘farms’ of private owners; but this district has not been so extensively worked of late, owing to its unhealthiness in the lower reaches of the river, and also to the difficulty of working in such a broken country.
At the present time, comparatively little work is being carried on in either of the above districts, from causes which will be explained presently; but that gold exists in considerable quantities, there is not the shadow of a doubt, as the returns of banks and merchants for native gold purchased can show; and although no capitalists have until recently made their appearance on the gold-fields, yet several exceptionally lucky diggers who came here with nothing beyond experience and stout hearts, have realised a competence, in spite of the disadvantages and troubles which such a rough life implies.
All the gold hitherto found, with very few exceptions, has been of the kind known as alluvial—that is, existing in the ground, and capable of being extracted by means of water alone, without the intervention of machinery; but at present there are two Companies with machinery starting work-crushing quartz, the returns from which are looked forward to with much interest, as it will then be seen whether it will pay to import machinery on a large scale or not. When the gold-bearing ground lies at a comparatively low level, enabling water from any of the numerous streams running through the country to be brought on it, the process of gold-washing is very simple, the ground being merely picked loose and thrown into the water, or washed away by the water, which is then conducted through a long box, or race, about eighteen inches in width and depth, open on top, and paved with hard rock or quartz on the bottom, falling gradually for a distance of from twenty to two hundred feet in length, according to the strength of the stream running through the ground, and the quantity of ground washed per day. Once or twice a day the water is turned off from this race and a small stream of clean water run through it; the race is then carefully examined from end to end; and any nuggets or particles of gold which, by the action of the water and their greater specific gravity, may have been deposited in the ripples or inequalities of the bottom-paving, are then picked up, and the work resumed. In cases where the gold is of a fine nature, and liable to be carried away if the race alone were used, the coarser stones are sifted from the ground, and the combined ground and water run over coarse blankets, which, from the nature of their texture, catch all the fine particles of gold and allow the lighter soil to flow away. These blankets are periodically washed out; and the fine particles of gold resulting are combined with quicksilver, which, from its affinity to gold, brings the whole into one mass, which is then placed in a retort, and the quicksilver evaporated off and recaught for future use, leaving the gold in a solid mass behind.
The above process, costing very little in the way of outlay, has been of necessity almost the only one adopted by the diggers, who for the most part have been working-men, with little or no money; and in cases where the alluvial ground has lain so high above the level of the rivers as to prevent it being worked in the same way, the only difference has been that the ground has had to be excavated and brought to the water-race by carting or otherwise, the process of washing being the same. But in the case of quartz containing gold, the quartz has to be reduced almost to a powder in water by means of machinery; the crushed quartz then flows over plates coated with quicksilver, which catch the greater part of the gold; and that which escapes the quicksilver is caught by means of the blankets before mentioned, which receive it after passing the silvered plates.
It has struck many people who are acquainted with gold-mining in both Australia and California, that in no two places in the Transvaal are the indications of gold the same. In one place it is in vain to look for it except on the top of a hill; in another, the valley alone will yield gold; and not a few geologists and so-called mining experts who have visited the gold-fields lately, for the purpose of reporting on properties for intending purchasers, have been much at fault regarding the possibility of finding payable gold, and confessed that it is necessary to spend a considerable time before a property can be even cursorily examined. In most cases, it seems that the diggers themselves, through their actual experience, are better acquainted with the payable and non-payable ground than any stranger, however experienced otherwise, can be.
From 1873, the gold-laws of the Transvaal permitted a digger to take out a license for a claim on any gold-bearing property held to be the property of the government, and the digger paying the amount of this license for his right to dig for gold. When a claim was exhausted or found not payable, the digger was at liberty to abandon it and mark out another, in the event of this other not being occupied. This law, in a sparsely populated country, where scarcely any agriculture was carried on, worked very well and harmoniously; but on the retrocession of the Transvaal by the British government, a new order of things sprang into existence. In order to increase the revenue—which fell rapidly off on the departure of the British government, and has in consequence caused a widespread distress ever since amongst those who were the first to rise against British authority—the Volksraad or Boer Parliament granted concessions for every manufacture that could be carried on in the Transvaal—that is, allowing one man, on the payment of a certain sum per annum, the sole right to manufacture spirits; another, gunpowder; another, wool, &c.—in each case imposing a countervailing duty on articles of the same kind coming from Europe, so as, if possible, to insure the sale of the Transvaal-made article. It is to be remarked, en passant, that the European articles, though thus hampered, still continue to have by far the largest sale. Amongst other concessions, a gold concession law was passed, specifying that the owner of any gold-bearing farm could, on the payment of a sum to be agreed upon per annum, obtain the sole right to work for gold on his farm, on condition that he compensated any diggers who might be on his property, working under the old government license.
The consequence of the promulgation of this last law has been that nearly every owner of a gold-bearing farm who could pay a year or two’s concession rental for his property, has taken out a concession, with the idea of disposing of both concession and farm at a high profit in the European market, and in few cases with the intention of digging for gold. As nothing is stated in the gold concessions about the time in which the original diggers are to be compensated, or any fixed basis on which their claims are to be valued, this has almost led to a dead-lock in the gold production, and caused much litigation in the High Court at Pretoria. The diggers decline to enhance the value of any concessionaire’s property by further exploring and opening it up, and the concessionaires in but few cases have the capital wherewith to compensate the diggers. As European investors, however, are not so easily influenced by a high-flown prospectus as formerly, it is probable that before long the owners of the farms bearing gold will see the propriety of again throwing them open at a rental to diggers, and thereby increasing their own revenue and that of the country generally; for, with a large mining population, both merchants and farmers find a ready sale for their goods and produce; the natives are taught to work, which is by far the most civilising influence that can be brought to bear upon them; and money will be circulated in a country where the want of it has never been felt more than at present.