The Romance of Industry and Invention Part 6

The stream of water carrying the lighter sand empties itself into the cyanide vats, and as each successive vat is filled up, the water is allowed to drain through the sand. A solution of cyanide of pota.s.sium is then pumped up and evenly distributed (by distributors) over the sand, and dissolves the gold in its progress, leaving pure sand alone in the vat. The gold-containing liquid (or solution) having left the vat, is led into a series of boxes filled with zinc shavings, the gold separates from the liquid, and settles on the zinc shavings in the shape of a small black powder. The cyanide solution now freed from the gold runs into the solution vats, and is restrengthened and ready for further use.

_Gold Recovery._--In the mill or battery the copper plates are sc.r.a.ped daily, and the amalgams (that is, quicksilver and gold) are weighed and placed in the safe in charge of the battery manager. This amalgam is generally retorted once a week, that is to say, the quicksilver is evaporated (but not lost) and the gold is left in the retort. This retorted gold is then smelted into bars.

The concentrates recovered by the frue vanners are generally treated by chlorination (roasted). This process is gone through so that the iron can be separated from the gold. Concentrates are sometimes treated by cyanide, but the process, if cheaper, is slow and less effective.

Chlorinated gold is also smelted into bars.

_Cyanide._--The gold from the zinc shavings is recovered by retorting.

It is afterwards melted into bars and called 'cyanide gold.'

Slimes (or float gold) are generally conserved in a dam, and when the quant.i.ty is sufficient they are treated by chlorination, or by a solution of cyanide of pota.s.sium.

After treatment all sand is still retained, and is really a small unbooked a.s.set of the various gold-mining companies. The Rand undoubtedly is the best field to-day for students who wish to acquire the details of gold recovery. In no other country has science produced such excellent results. At least 95 per cent. of the gold in the ore can now be recovered, and scientific men from all countries are resident on the fields, and advantageous discoveries in the treatment of various ores are of almost daily occurrence.

STORY OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN GOLD-FIELDS.

There is material for the philosopher in the fact of gold-finding having occurred in connection with a part of the world to which King Solomon the Wise sent for supplies of gold and 'almug-trees,' for the mysterious Ophir has been located in Mashonaland, and the Queen of Sheba identified with the Sabia districts, which, though not in 'the Randt,' are curiously connected with the rise and progress of the mania.

Let us briefly trace that romantic history, merely mentioning by the way that, even in European history, African gold is no novelty, for the Portuguese brought back gold-dust (and negro slaves) from Cape Bojador four hundred and fifty years ago. The ruins of Mashonaland were discovered in 1864 by Karl Mauch, who also discovered the gold-field of Tate on the Zambesi, of which Livingstone had reported that the natives got gold there by was.h.i.+ng, being too lazy to dig for it. When Karl Mauch came back to civilisation, people laughed at his stories of ruined cities in the centre of Africa as travellers' fables, but a number of Australian gold-diggers thought his report of the Tate gold-field good enough to follow up. So about 1867, a band of them went out and set up a small battery on the Tate River for crus.h.i.+ng the quartz. This may be called the first serious attempt at gold-mining in South Africa since the days of the lost races who built the cities whose ruins Karl Mauch discovered and which Mr Theodore Bent has described. A Natal company a.s.sisted the Tate diggers with supplies, and enough gold was found to justify the floating of the Limpopo Mining Company in London. This was in 1868, and was practically the foundation of the 'Kaffir Circus,'

though its founders knew it not. Sir John Swinburne was the moving spirit of this enterprise, and went out with a lot of expensive machinery, only to meet with a good deal of disappointment. The diamond discoveries in Griqualand soon drew away the gold-seekers, who found the working expenses too heavy to leave gold-mining profitable, and for a time the Tate fields were deserted. They were taken up again, however, twenty years later by a Kimberley enterprise, out of which developed the Tate Concession and Exploration Company, to whom the unfortunate potentate Lobengula granted a mining concession over no less than eight hundred thousand square miles of Matabeleland.

Just as the Australians were breaking ground on the Tate, Thomas Baines, the traveller, was making up his mind to test the truth of tales of gold in the far interior, which the Portuguese from Da Gama onwards had received from natives. In 1869 he set forth from Natal with a small expedition, and in 1870 received from Lobengula permission to dig for gold anywhere between the rivers Gwailo and Ganyona. Some seventeen years later this same concession was repeated to Mr Rudd, and became the basis from which sprang the great Chartered Company of British South Africa.

In the course of his journey, Baines encamped on the site of the present city of Johannesburg, without having the least idea of the wealth beneath him, and intent only upon that he hoped to find farther inland.

On the map which he prepared of this journey is marked the 'farm of H.

Hartley, pioneer of the gold-fields,' in the Wit.w.a.tersrandt district.

Hartley was known to the Boers as 'Oude Baas,' and was a famous elephant-hunter, but as ignorant as Baines himself that he was dwelling on the top of a gold-reef. And it was not in the Wit.w.a.tersrandt, foremost as it now is, that the African gold boom began.

While the Tate diggers were pursuing their work and Baines his explorations, a Natalian named b.u.t.ton went, with an experienced Californian miner named Sutherland, to prospect for gold in the north-east of the Transvaal. They found it near Lydenburg, and companies were rapidly formed in Natal to work it. Such big nuggets were sent down that men hurried up, until soon there were some fifteen hundred actively at work on the Lydenburg field. The operations were fairly profitable, but the outbreak of the Zulu war, and then the Boer war, put an end to them for some years.

And now we come to one of the most romantic chapters in the golden history of South Africa, a history which was marked by hard and disheartening days what time the lucky diamond-seekers at Kimberley were swilling champagne, as if it were water, out of pewter beer-pots. There is more attraction for adventurers, however, in gold-seeking than in diamond-mining, for gold can be valued and realised at once, whereas diamonds may not be diamonds after all, and may be spoilt, lost, or stolen, before they can find a purchaser.

It is to be noted that much as the Transvaal Republic has benefited from gold-mining, the Boers were at first much averse to it, and threw all the obstacles they could in the way of the miners. And it was this att.i.tude of the Boers, especially towards the Lydenburg pioneers, that led to the next development.

One of the tributaries of the Crocodile River (which flows into Delagoa Bay) is the Kaap River, called also the River of the Little Crocodile, which waters a wide deep valley into which projects the spur of a hill which the Dutch pioneers called De Kaap (the cape). Beyond this cape-like spur the hills rise to a height of three thousand feet, and carry a wide plateau covered with innumerable boulders of fantastic shape--the Duivel's Kantoor. The mists gather in the valley and dash themselves against De Kaap like surf upon a headland; and the face of the hills is broken with caves and galleries as if by the action of the sea, but really by the action of the weather. Upon the high-lying plateau of the Duivel's Kantoor were a number of farms, the chief of which was held by one G. P. Moodie.

One day a Natal trader named Tom M'Laughlin had occasion to cross this plateau in the course of a long trek, and he picked up with curiosity some of the bits of quartz he pa.s.sed, or kicked aside, on the way. On reaching Natal he showed these to an old Australian miner, who instantly started up-country and found more. The place was rich in gold, and machinery was as quickly as possible got up from Natal, on to Moodie's farm. On this farm was found the famous Pioneer Reef, and Moodie, who at one time would gladly have parted with his farm for a few hundreds, sold his holding to a Natal company for something like a quarter of a million. Then there was a rush of diggers and prospectors back from the Lydenburg district, and the De Kaap 'boom' set in. The beginning was in 1883, and two years later the whole Kaap valley and Kantoor plateau was declared a public gold-field. Two brothers called Barber came up and formed the centre of a settlement, now the town of Barberton. Every new reef sighted or vein discovered was the signal for launching a new company--not now in Natal only, but also in London, to which the gold-fever began to spread (but was checked again by the De Kaap reverses).

Some fifteen Natalians formed a syndicate to 'exploit' this country on their own account. Some were storekeepers in the colony, some wagon-traders, and some merely waiters on fortune. Only eleven of them had any money, and they supplied the wherewithal for the other four, who were sent up to prospect and dig. After six months of fruitless toil, the money was all done, and word was sent to the four that no more aid could be sent to them. They were 'down on their luck,' when as they returned to camp on what was intended to be their last evening there, one Edwin Bray savagely dug his pick into the rock as they walked gloomily along. But with one swing which he made came a turn in the fortunes of the band, and of the land, for he knocked off a bit of quartz so richly veined with gold as to betoken the existence of something superexcellent in the way of a 'reef.' All now turned on the rock with pa.s.sionate eagerness, and in a very short time pegged out what was destined to be known as 'Bray's Golden Hole.'

But the syndicate were by this time pretty well cleaned out, and capital was needed to work the reef, and provide machinery, &c. So a small company was formed in Natal under the name of the Sheba Reef Gold-mining Company, divided into 15,000 shares of 1 each, the capital of 15,000 being equitably allotted among the fifteen members of the syndicate.

Upon these shares they raised enough money on loan to pay for the crus.h.i.+ng of 200 tons of quartz, which yielded eight ounces of gold to the ton, and at once provided them with working capital. Within a very few months the mine yielded 10,000 ounces of gold, and the original shares of 1 each ran up by leaps and bounds until they were eagerly competed for at 100 each. Within a year, the small share-capital (15,000) of the original syndicate was worth in the market a million and a half sterling. This wonderful success led to the floating of a vast number of hopeless or bogus enterprises, and worthless properties were landed on the shoulders of the British public at fabulous prices.

Yet, surrounded as it was by a crowd of fraudulent imitators, the great Sheba Mine has continued as one of the most wonderfully productive mines in South Africa. Millions have been lost in swindling and impossible undertakings in De Kaap, but the Sheba Mountain, in which was Bray's Golden Hole, has really proved a mountain of gold.

The De Kaap gold-field had sunk again under a cloud of suspicion, by reason of the company-swindling and share-gambling which followed upon the Sheba success, when another startling incident gave a fresh impetus to the golden madness.

Among the settlers in the Transvaal in the later seventies were two brothers called Struben, who had had some experience, though not much success, with the gold-seekers at Lydenburg, and who took up in 1884 the farm of Sterkfontein in the Wit.w.a.tersrandt district. While attending to the farm they kept their eyes open for gold, and one day one of the brothers came upon gold-bearing conglomerates, which they followed up until they struck the famous 'Confidence Reef.' This remarkable reef at one time yielded as much as a thousand ounces of gold and silver to the ton of ore, and then suddenly gave out, being in reality not a 'reef'

but a 'shoot.' There were other prospectors in the district, but none had struck it so rich as the Strubens, who purchased the adjacent farm to their own, and set up a battery to crush quartz, both for themselves and for the other gold-hunters. The farms were worth little in those days, being only suitable for grazing; but when prospectors and company promoters began to appear, first by units, then by tens, and then by hundreds, the Boers put up their prices, and speedily realised for their holdings ten and twenty times what they would have thought fabulous a year or two previously. And it was on one of these farms that the city of Johannesburg was destined to arise as if under a magician's wand, from a collection of huts, in eight years, to a city covering an area three miles by one and a half, with suburbs stretching many miles beyond, with handsome streets and luxurious houses, in the very heart of the desert.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Prospecting for Gold.]

It was one Sunday evening in 1886 that the great 'find' was made which laid the base of the prosperity of the Johannesburg-to-be. A farm-servant of the brothers Struben went over to visit a friend at a neighbouring farm, and as he trekked homeward in the evening, knocked off a bit of rock, the appearance of which led him to take it home to his employer. It corresponded with what Struben had himself found in another part, and following up both leads, revealed what became famous as the Main Reef, which was traced for miles east and west.

A lot of the 'conglomerate' was sent on to Kimberley to be a.n.a.lysed, and a thoughtful observer of the a.n.a.lysis there came to the conclusion that there must be more good stuff where that came from. So he mounted his horse and rode over to Barberton, where he caught a 'coach' which dropped him on the Rand, as it is now called. There he quietly acquired the Langlaagte farm for a few thousands, which the people on the spot thought was sheer madness on his part. But his name was J. B. Robinson, and he is now known in the 'Kaffir Circus' and elsewhere as one of the 'Gold Kings' of Africa. He gradually purchased other farms, and in a year or two floated the well-known Langlaagte Company with a capital of 450,000, to acquire what had cost him in all about 20,000. In five years this company turned out gold to the value of a million, and paid dividends to the amount of 330,000. The Robinson Company, formed a little later to acquire and work some other lots, in five years produced gold to the value of one and a half million, and paid to its shareholders some 570,000 in dividends. With these discoveries and successful enterprises the name and fame of 'the Rand' were established, and for years the district became the happy hunting-ground of the financiers and company promoters. The Rand, or Wit.w.a.tersrandt, is the topmost plateau of the High Veldt of the Transvaal, at the watershed of the Limpopo and the Vaal; and on the summit of the plateau is the gold-city of Johannesburg, some five thousand seven hundred feet above the sea.

Soon the princ.i.p.al feature in Johannesburg was the Stock Exchange, and the main occupation of the inhabitants was the buying and selling of shares in mining companies, many of them bogus, at fabulous prices. The inevitable reaction came, until once resplendent 'brokers' could hardly raise the price of a 'drink;' though, to be sure, drinks and everything else cost a small fortune. To-day the city is the centre of a great mining industry, and the roar of the 'stamps' is heard all round it, night and day. From a haunt of gamblers and 'wild-catters,' it has grown into a comparatively sedate town of industry, commerce, and finance, and the gold-fever which maddened its populace has been transferred (not wholly, perhaps) to London and Paris.

The Stock Exchange of Johannesburg sprang into existence in 1887, and before the end of that year some sixty-eight mining companies were on its list, with an aggregate nominal capital of 3,000,000. During the 1895 'boom' in the market for mining shares in London and Paris, the market value of the shares of the group of South African companies was in the aggregate over 300,000,000! It is true that these are not all gold-mining shares, but the great majority are of companies either for or in connection with gold-mining. In 1887 the Transvaal produced only about 25,000 ounces of gold; in 1894 the output was 2,024,159 ounces; in 1895 it was 2,277,633 ounces.

Just before the Californian discoveries--namely, in 1849, the world's annual output of gold was only about 6,000,000. Then came the American and Australian booms, raising the quant.i.ty produced in 1853 to the value of 30,000,000. After 1853 there was a gradual decline to less than 20,000,000 in 1883. This was the lowest period, and then the De Kaap and other discoveries in Africa began to raise the total slowly again.

Between 1883 and 1887 the El Callao mine in South America and the Mount Morgan in Australia helped greatly to enlarge the output, and then in 1807 the 'Randt' began to yield of its riches. The following are the estimates of a mining-expert of the world's gold production during 1890, 23,700,000; 1891, 26,130,000; 1892, 29,260,000; 1893, 31,110,000; 1894, 36,000,000; 1895, 40,000,000.

As to the future of the South African sources of supply, it is estimated by Messrs Hatch and Chalmers, mining engineers, who have published an exhaustive work on the subject, that before the end of the present century the Wit.w.a.tersrandt mines alone will be yielding gold to the value of 20,000,000 annually; that early next century they will turn out 26,000,000 annually; and that the known resources of the district are equal to a total production within the next half century of 700,000,000, of which, probably, 200,000,000 will be clear profit over the cost of mining.

These estimates are considered excessive by some authorities; nevertheless it is to be remembered that the productivity of deep level mining has not yet been properly tested, that even the Transvaal itself has not yet been thoroughly exploited, and that there is every reason to believe that Matabeleland and Mashonaland are also rich in gold. But we have not to look to Africa alone. In Australia, besides the regular sources of supply which are being industriously developed, new deposits are being opened up in Western Australia at such a rate that some people predict that the 'Cinderella of the Colonies' will soon become the richest, or one of the richest, members of the family.

The following shows the contributions towards the world's gold supply on the basis of 1894:

United States 7,950,000 Australasia 8,352,000 South Africa 8,054,000 British Columbia and South America 2,000,000 Russia 4,827,000 Other Countries 4,807,000 ----------- 35,990,000

JOHANNESBURG--THE GOLDEN.

The railway journey from Capetown to Johannesburg of about three days is through a seemingly endless sandy country, with range succeeding range of distant mountains, all alike, and strikes a greater sense of vastness and desolation than an expanse of naked ocean itself. First and second cla.s.s have sleeping accommodation, the third being kept for blacks and the lowest cla.s.s Dutch. Well, we reach Johannesburg, which has not even yet, with all its wealth, a covered-in railway station; whilst by way of contrast in the progress of the place, just across the road is a huge club, with tennis, cricket, football, and cycling grounds, gymnasium, military band, halls for dancing, operas, and oratorios, &c., which will bear comparison with any you please. Its members are millionaires and clerks, lodgers and their lodging-house keepers, all equal there; for we have left behind caste, cliques, and cathedral cities, and are cosmopolitan, or, in a word, colonial. An inst.i.tution like this gives us the state of society there in a nutsh.e.l.l, for, as wages are very high, any one in anything like lucrative employment can belong to it; and the grades in society are determined by money, and money only.

Johannesburg, the London of South Africa, which was a barren veldt previous to 1886, is now the centre of some one hundred thousand inhabitants, and increasing about as fast as bricks and mortar can be obtained. It is situated directly on top of the gold, and on looking down from the high ground above, it looks to an English eye like a huge, long-drawn-out ma.s.s of tin sheds, with its painted iron mine-chimneys running in a straight line all along the quartz gold-reef as far as you can see in either direction. The largest or main reef runs for thirty miles uninterruptedly, gold-bearing and honeycombed with mines throughout. This, even were it alone, could speak for the stability and continued prosperity of the Transvaal gold trade. In a mail-steamer arriving from the Cape there is sometimes as much as between 300,000 and 400,000 worth of gold, and the newspapers show that usually about 100,000 worth is consigned by each mail-boat.

As we enter the town we find fine and well-planned streets, crossed at places with deep gutters--gullies rather--to carry off the water, which is often in the heavy summer rains deeper than your knees. Crossing these at fast trot, the driver never drawing rein, the novice is shot about, in his white-covered two-wheeled cab with its large springs, like a pea in a bladder. Indeed, one marvels at the daintily dressed _habitue_ of the place being swung through similarly, quite unconcerned, and without rumpling a frill. We pa.s.s fine public buildings, very high houses and shops--somewhat jerry-built, it is true--but now being added to, or replaced by larger and more solid buildings. Indeed, bricks cannot be made fast enough for the demand, both there and in some of the outlying Transvaal towns where the 'gold boom' is on. There are lofty and handsome shops, with most costly contents, which can vie with London or Paris.

Let us watch from the high-raised stoep outside the Post-office, looking down over the huge market-square. What strikes us first are the two-wheeled two-horse cabs with white hoods, recklessly driven by Malays in the inseparable red fez, and these with the fast-trotting mule or horse wagons show the pace at which business or pleasure is followed. As a contrast comes the lumbering ox-wagon with ten or twelve span of oxen, a little Kaffir boy dragging and directing the leading couple by a thong round the horns, and the unamiable Dutch farmer revolving around, swearing, and using his fifteen-foot whip to keep the concern in motion at all. Then pa.s.ses a body of some two hundred prisoners, Kaffirs, and a few whites leading, marched in fours by some dozen white-helmeted police and four or five mounted men, all paraded through the main streets, innocent and guilty alike, to the court-house, and many escaping _en route_ as occasion offers. Well-dressed English men of business, and professional men, women in handsome and dainty costumes, hustle Jews of all degrees of wealth; carelessly dressed miners, and chaps in rags come in from prospecting or up-country, with the Dutchman everywhere in his greasy soft felt and blue tattered puggaree, Chinese shopkeepers, Italians, Poles, Germans; whilst outside in the roadways flows a continual stream of Kaffirs in hats and cast-off clothing of every sort imagination can picture, who are not allowed by law to walk upon the pavement.

GOLD-FIELDS OF COOLGARDIE.

It was at one time generally believed that the unexplored regions of the vast Eastern Division of Western Australia consisted merely of sandy desert or arid plains, producing at most scrub and spinifex or 'poison plants.' In recent years, however, a faith that the interior would prove rich in various mineral resources began to dawn, and rose in proportion as each report of a new 'find' was made to the government. But only a few ventured to cherish a hope that tracts of fertile country were lying beyond their ken, awaiting the advent of the explorer whose verdict upon the nature of the soil, or possibilities of obtaining water, would result in settlement, and prosperity, and civilisation.

By the opening up of the country surrounding Coolgardie--situated at a distance of three hundred and sixty-eight miles inland from Fremantle, the port of Perth--it has been proved that not only thousands of square miles of auriferous country are contained in these once despised 'back blocks,' but also large areas of rich pasturage and forest-lands.

At Coolgardie the country is undulating; and in the distance Mount Burgess makes a bold and striking feature in the landscape, isolated from the neighbouring low hills. A few miles to the south lies the vigorous little town, surrounded by a halo of tents. It is situated thirty-one degrees south, one hundred and twenty-one degrees east; the climate is therefore temperate, though very hot during the dry season.

It has been judiciously laid out, and promises to be one of the prettiest inland towns in the colony. In the princ.i.p.al street all is bustle and activity: teams arriving from Southern Cross; camels unloading or being driven out by picturesque Afghans; diggers and prospectors setting out for distant 'rushes;' black piccaninnies rolling in the dust, or playing with their faithful kangaroo dogs--their dusky parents lolling near with characteristic indolence--and men of every nation and colour under heaven combine to give the scene a character all its own. In March 1896 Coolgardie was connected by rail with Perth.

There are good stores, numerous thriving hotels; and a hospital has lately been started in charge of two trained nurses. The spiritual needs of the population are supplied by Wesleyan services and Salvation Army meetings, and other agencies. As yet the public buildings are not architecturally imposing; the princ.i.p.al one is a galvanised-iron shed which does duty for a post-office. When the mail arrives, the two officials, with the aid of an obliging trooper, vainly endeavour to sort the letters and newspapers quickly enough to satisfy the crowd, all eager for news from home. During the hot dry months, Coolgardie has been almost cut off from the outside world. It was found necessary to limit the traffic between it and Southern Cross, owing to the great scarcity in the 'soaks' and wells along the road. Condensers have been erected at various stations close to the salt lakes, and the water is retailed by the gallon; by this means the road can be kept open till the wet season sets in.

Prospectors are energetically exploring the country in every direction around Coolgardie, and from all sides come glowing accounts of the quality of the land, which, besides being auriferous, is undoubtedly suitable for agricultural and pastoral purposes. To the eastward lie many thousands of acres of undulating pasture-land, wooded like a park with morrell, sandalwood, wild peach, zimlet-wood, salmon-gum, and other valuable timbers. The soil is a rich red loam, which with cultivation should equal the best wheat-growing districts of Victoria. So green and abundant is the gra.s.s that it has been described as looking like an immense wheat-field before the grain has formed. Several kinds of gra.s.s are to be found: the fine kangaroo variety; a species of wild oats; and a coa.r.s.e jointed gra.s.s, all of which stock eat with relish, and thrive, it is said.

A Water-supply Department has been formed by the Western Australian government, and measures are being taken to obtain supplies of artesian water, as well as to construct a system of reservoirs and dams on a large scale.

Mr Bayley's discovery of Coolgardie might serve as an apt ill.u.s.tration of the 'early-bird' theory. While on a prospecting expedition in September 1892, he went one auspicious morning to look after his horse before breakfast. A gleaming object lying on the ground caught his eye.

It was a nugget, weighing half an ounce. By noon, he, with his mate, had picked up twenty ounces of alluvial gold. In a couple of weeks they had a store of two hundred ounces. It was on a Sunday afternoon that they struck the now world-famed Reward Claim, and in a few hours they had picked off fifty ounces. Next morning they pegged out their prospecting area. But whilst thus profitably employed, they were unpleasantly surprised by the arrival of three miners who had followed up their tracks from Southern Cross. The discoverers worked on during the day at the cap of the reef, and by such primitive methods as the 'dolly-pot,'