FOUND MILLIONS

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 144, 21 June 1930, Page 20

FOUND MILLIONS

George Honeyball, one of the men who Hiscovercd the greatest goldfield in the world, has been found living as a pauper in a hamlet of the Transvaal province in South Africa. Over one thousand million pounds > worth of the precious metal has been taken-out of the gigantic Witwatersrand deposits since that morning in 1886, when, a company of prospectors, of which the old fellow was one, stumbled on the spectacular find, writes Eric Rosenthal in the "San Francisco Chronicle."

There is a tradition among the pioneers of this continent that the people who make important discoveries nearly always die poor. Actually the assertion is not quite true, since one of Honeyball's fellow searchers, Struben, is a millionaire in England, but there are many instances where such men have lost every penny they ever made.

A "colleague" of Honeyball, a bricklayer named Walker, fell upon such evil days that he eventually lived upon the bounty of the Transvaal Chamber of Mines, which made him the grant as an acknowledgment of the fact that he had started an industry now worth £50,000,000 a year.

Similarly Trader O'Reilly, the man who in -1867 picked up the historic pebbles froiri Farmer Van Niekerk'a children, which turned out to be the first diamonds known in Africa, ended his life in indigent circumstances! not long ago. Since then the output of gems totals about £400,000,----000.!':: . ..

Tie man who found the very first platiBum in the land during 1924 secured the

GOLD SEEKERS WHO DIE POOR

sura of £100, while latecomers earned millions. , . .■..-'■ Honeyball's announcement that he was alive proved a surprise to the people of the gold-mining city that he originated. A local news writer had written a history of the city, and the work came to the notice of a storekeeper oi' Pienaar's River, a tiny settlement in the. Northern Transvaal. He read the if act that a prospector of George's name figured in the discovery of the Witwatersrand. and had subsequently been lost sight of. It struck the trader that a certain old greybeard living in the neighbourhood who bore the name of Honeyball might be the same person. On inquiry it turned out that he was : right. ; ■'■ ' ' Immediately the Johannesburg Press was notified, and the reporters begged him ! to' tell something about' His present life. j From the pioneer's statements it appeared t: it this finder of a £1,200,00p,000 goldfield was at present subsisting on an oldage pension worth £2 10s a month.

"I sold out my original rights'for £300," said the prospector, "and of that nothing is left to-day."

Efforts are being made to provide a more comfortable existence for George, to whom jointly with Walker the major part of South Africa's present progress and well-being is due. Ups and downs characterise life on the goldfields to-day. George' Honeyball still hopes that he may yet make the fortune he so, nearly missed in the year 1886.