Arizona republican., 1895-11-06
The Great South African
 Gold Reefs.
Interesting Experiences of an
 AriZOnan.
He Considers MetabeleIand to Be the Greatest Geld Mining
 Region on Earth.

once were apt to cause rush of min CTS to the regions described, but of late years every note of Golcondas dis covered is received by the populace at large with a grain or two of salt. But from South Africa have lately been coming reports that indicate that in the newly-opened districts north of Cape Colony is arising an El Dorado that soon will vie with California in the amount of gold produced.
 The latest addition to the tales of the new mining field is from Edward Rebstock, an old-time and skilled Ar izona miner, who after an absence of three years and half, is again in Phoenix, returning to see his children, who had been here left with relatives.
 Mr. Rebstock is a cheery and frank sort of individual and entirely worthy of credence, yet at his pleasant rooms at the Ford hotel the tale he told was as full of interest and as strange as though from a fairy book.
 He had worked through Arizona in Jerome, in Harqua Hala and in Globe, and in February, 1893, determined to better his fortunes by travel. April saw him at Pretoria, 1000 miles inland from Cape Town and on the edge of left the railroad and, purchasing a donkey, procured kit and started prospecting in true Arizona fashion. They called it donkey" explained Rebstock, but if ever I saw burro, that was one I almost imagined my self back in Arizona when I saw the diminutive big-eared animal"
 Prospecting brought little save ex- perience, as the American miner slept many a night with the wolves, jackals, hyenas and African lions bowling around him seemingly in unison, and the region to the north and west, Mat abeleland, could not be entered on ac- count of hostile natives.
 He finally drifted over to Salisbury in Mashonaland. and there enlisted in the Salisbury Horse, a volunteer or ganization equipped by the Chartered Company of South Africa, for service against the Matabeles. His campaign was interesting and exciting in the ex- treme, but was more especially valu- able in the grant made to each volun- teer by the South Africa company of the right to locate farm of ten square miles and to peg off, twenty gold claims, for gold was known to exist in the new land, though among the Mat abeles mining for that metal was pun ishable by death.
 The campaign over and the savage5 conquered the Salisbury Horse dis banded and scattered after gold mines, the pioneers in an unprospected coun- try. Rebstock had for a financial packer the surveyor general of the col onies His wide experience in Arizona served him well and on the third day out he discovered mine that now is known as one of the richest He also located his farm of 6,400 acres, near where now is the thriving modern town of Gwelo and not far from Bu- leWayo, the principal settlement of Matabelel8nd, and a city larger than Phoenix The farm is upon a living stream and here Rebstock practices true Ariz0na1 ideas of agriculture, and irrigation and even has named his holding, Arizona Farm"
 ''The whole expanse of Nata- be,eland,' said Mr. Rebstock, .''is very tangle of quartz lodges or reefs as the English prefer to call them. They vary in size from two feet to fifteen in width and in value from S10 to the ton, in the standard mines up to s200. The ores are almost entirely gold, in true Cali fornia formation, in slate or diorite, and gain in sulphurets as depth is at tained, though free milling on the sur face''
 Few readers have not read flag gard's story, King Solomon's Mines. , Here in Matabeleland was his plot se- cured and Haggard himself is a sev- enth owner in the mines first discov- cred by Rebstock "The whole coun- try has been worked over in days long gone by.'' said the narrator ''The present natives say the workings were far beyond their time and it is pos sible, even probable, that the mines of Ophir, whence came King Solomon s treasures, were in this land. The Zambesi river is but a couple of hund- red miles north, and Delagoa Bay on the east could have been a landing place for the olden-time Hebrew"
 The ancients mined in a peculiar manner. Taking a ledge of gold quartz several feet in width, an open cut was made on either side and the quartz taken in it's entirety to the sur face, there to be ground down in gran ite or diorite mortars and the gold ex- tracted by hand. These cuts as depth was attained broadened, till often thirty feet wide on the surface and a hundred or more feet in depth, neatly surfaced, with narrow. zig-zag paths leading up the sloping sides to the inn mense ore and waste dumps above. Only the richer sections Of a ledge were thus worked and the limit of the the ores changed character. Unlike