THE WORLD’S GREATEST GOLD REEF

Evening Star, Issue 17926, 23 March 1922, Page 4

THE WORLD’S GREATEST GOLD REEF

AN IMPRESSION. Richard Curio, the well-known writer and traveller, contributes tho following to tho London ‘Daily Mail’:— Now that attention is being called to the Transvaal gold industry by'the strike of the white miners on the Rand, it may bo interesting to describe what tho Johannesburg gold reef is really like. Its developed area stretches from Johannesburg to Heidelberg, a distance'of about forty miles, and from tho top of some high building you may trace it clearly by the enormous mounds of white tailings, up to 3,000,000 tons in weight, that are dotted along its length. They lie bleached and Haring in the sun, the fine dust of their surface blowing in the wind; and though attempts to grow grass upon them have been made, all have failed through tho action of tho cyanide with which they are,impregnated. The battery “stamps” are never silent. Night and day they are pounding up the rock, and there are certain spots in Johannesburg where you can hoar them-ns you lie in bed in tho ‘ stillness of tho early hours like the regular beat of distant waves. And sometimes, too, you will hoar tho muffled rumble of falling rook within old disused shafts—a rumble that shakes the houses anfl curiously resembles a genuine earthquake. Indeed, tho mines in Johannesburg itself are now mostly used up, and year by yew tho industry shifts further to the oast. Tho mines themselves are like so many self-contained towns. A largo mine, for instance, will employ 20,000 men, and have a completone? of equipment both above and below tho .surface that is astonishing. I have travelled' 3,000 vortical feet into the earth at forty miles an hour in one of these mines, and have found down there elaborate pumping machinery, electric trains, a crowd of men going about their business as if on the surface. And, up above, the hoisted rook is being pounded into powder, is passing over the mercury-coated slime-boards, is gradually being made to give up its treasure. And then, of , course, there is the social side of the mine, tho trim quarters for the whites, the native compound with its up-to- 1 dfite kitchens and bakehouse, the hospital accommodation. Yea. each mine is, as far as possible, complete in itself, The final thing they show you when you visit a mine is the finished article. That is to say, when you have observed the whole vast complex energy of the machine, they point out the results in a few bars of dull yellow metal. They are made in two. sizes, worth respectively (without tho premium) £4,000 and £2 800. I had heard some vague rumor that if you could lift one of them and carry it away you got it as a present, but I was hastily disillusioned before I could make the' attempt. Perhaps they saw the look of desperate determination in my eyes.