The times. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1890-1903, 1900-09-30

(By s. c. Norris, examining Commissioner
of Rhodesia)
In 1856 it would have fairly staggered
any expert in the production of gold to
have been told that in the Witwaters-
rand where Ferreira's Camp then was
and Johannesburg now is, there await
ed the miner an accumulation Of the
precious metal which would be four times
the amount of all that has been obtained
from the Australian gold fields.
Il is only within the last five years,
though, that this astounding fast has
been proved. The proof OF it has been
long and expensive process, which re-
ceived it's crowning touch only when one
of the costly bore-holes reached depth
of 500 feet.
The gold is so finely scattered through
out the ore that in order 10 obtain Il
cubic inch of the precious metal no less
than a half a million OF cubic inches of
solid rock have to be crushed and pound
ed up and ground into fine sand. The
machinery for such work is, of course,
very powerful, though it is only one por-
ton of the various costly appliances
which are in operation at Witwatcrs
rand. In fact. there are to be seen
along those twenty-nine miles of reef.
some of the finest engineering in the
world and some of the ablest manage
11ent thatfeyar- controlled a gigantic in
d,lstry. It is all at high pressure and
no pains are spared to carry out all the
intricate operations of mining crushing
and ore-reduction with the utmost eff
cheney
Up to the time of the war, the value
of the gold which had been produced,
was not much more than $500, 900 600, so
there remains to be extracted from this
belt, in all probability, gold which Will
amount to upward of $4,000, coo, OCO in value
But this grand total of gold production
viii be wrought by far fewer workers
than those horles of gold-diggers from
whom Messrs. Bret Harte and Bolderwood
have drawn their galleries of characters
Such a thing as a poor mans diGgings is
quite unknown in the country around
Johannesburg. The auriferous deposits
of California and Australia were easily
washable in their earlier stages by
unsklled labor. By stlndry primitive
methods OF slutcing at trifling cost, gold,
was directly obtainable from graveIs and
soils Nuggets, too, We're plentiful. Thus
there We're fortunes awaiting the more
lucky in thousands of instances
In each of the larger batteries of the
Witw3lterSrand no less than 500 tons of
rock are pounded up daily. Night and
day, necessarily, there are 200 stamps
pounding away III this one battery AS
each stamp weighs half a ton the weight
of the geo is exactly 100 tons: and as they
are all laundering away at the same time
the noise they make is deafeiling, and the
solid earth seems to shake under your
feet.
The sound of this machinery can be
heard at distance of seven or eight
miles The battery-house is an enormous
corrugated-iron structure, with massive
timber framing. The wagon-loads of ore
are tipped from tramways against great
screens, and the larger rocks are put
through the jaws Of gigantic stone-crush-
ers. In these strong iron chambers there
are anVhs or dies, on which the great
half-ton stamps pound away incessantly.
reducing the rock to powder
Each stamp will crush four and a half
tons in twenty-four hours. There is a
carefully regulated flow Of water carving
away the fine sand to which the rock has
been reduced. and spreading it over wide
surfaces OF quicksilver analgam. to which
most of the gold adheres
At the end of nearly four weeks of con
tlnuous work the stamps are STONED
The amalSam is then scraped off the
plates and put in retorts for the separa
ton OF the quicksilver from the gold The
sand which has been washed over the
plates is made to yield further supplv
of gold by cyanide treatment and bv 9TH
er processes of gold extraction.
As it is at the end of each calendar
month that gold is separated and COL
lected. the custom is universal of declar
ing the output OF gold month by month.
and this system is made compulsory bv
Government regulation.