STORY OF JOHANNESBURG.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XV, Issue XXI, 23 November 1895, Page 635

STORY OF JOHANNESBURG.

THE CITY BUILT BY GOLD IN THE INTERIOR OF SOUTH AFRICA. The story of the city of Johannesburg, South Africa, is a story of the power of gold in turning an utter wilderness into a great and thriving urban community. Less than ten years ago, says the A’ew York Sun, in 1886, the first discovery ot gold was made in the region where Johannesburg is now situated. Just the kind of region it was then can be understood from the statement that it lay 400 miles back from the east coast of Africa. It was uninhabited by civilised men and the track hither was as dangerous as any ever travelled by prospectors in the United States. But a prospector made the journey and found gold-bearing rock, and when the find had been explored it was shown to be one of the largest and richest the world has seen.

For three years, as a matter of course, progress was slow. It took time for mining men with capital to examine the veins and reefs of mineral-bearing rock, and so it happened that in 1889 the community was a mere mining-camp of the Rocky Mountain model. There was not a building in it more than one storey high or composed of better material than slender wooden frames with corrugated zinc-white sheets of iron over them.

The capitalists who took hold were first cautious enough to learn just what they had underground and then enterprising enough to bring to their aid the most expert engineers and the most modern appliances and processes for extracting the metal from the ores. The result was an extraordinary yield of gold per ton of rock from the very beginning and an aggregate yield that is stupendous. The figures of the aggregate yield are not at hand, but during the month of June of the present year the output amounted to 200,941 ounces — say

The building of a city where a camp had been set up was no small task. The place was 400 miles from port, and the route was of the roughest. Hardware and other materials had to be hauled in ox carts a journey of forty days and more. How the price of a keg of nails, for instance, grew during such a journey the people of the Rocky mountain camps can guess. But the nails were brought, and so were all the other things needed. Banks and mercantile houses of cut stone and brick, a great stock exchange, two theatres, hotels fit for millionaires, street railways—in short, everything for the convenient transaction of business and for the comfort of life is found there.

Last of all has come a railroad, a monument to the perseverance and resolution of one man — President Kruger. The enterprise was fraught with many difficulties, but in July last regular trains began to run. The town itself numbers 40,c00 inhabitants, besides the 30,000 and more men at work in the mines and prospecting for more mines in the country round about. And now that the railroad has assured a market, agriculturists are flocking to the region to take advantage of the rich soil and favourable climate of the Transvaal. In Butte and Anaconda, Montana one may find towns somewhat like Johannesburg, but if one may believe the stories told by travellers there is nothing in the world to equal what has been accomplished by the citizens of this newest South African citv.