The free press. (Poplarville, Miss.) 1890-19??, 1900-07-05
ARooNAUTs OF SOUTH AFRICA.
Scenes Following the Discovery of Gold
in the Transvaal.

in the Transvaal.
Klyda r. Steege, writing of South
Africa in st. Nicholas, tells of the dis
covery of gold in the Transvaal, and
the growth of johannesburg.
A German named Mauch was the
first to discover evidences of gold in
the Transvaal, but, failing to interest
his fellow countrymen in mining in SC
difficult and distant country, moth
ing came of his discovery. Not until
an Englishmau, Struben by name,
found the gold of the Transvaai again,
was any special interest taken in the
matter. He spread the news, and in
years time from the first opening of
the country, twenty thousand people
had arrived on the spot, eager to make
fortunes. They came from every part
of the world and included every class
of persons-miners from California
and other Western States, younger
sons of wellknown English families,
Adventures, and spectators, and peo-
pie who had given up respectable,
steady occupations and businesses to
join in the mad rush for gold. This
crowd of excited, eager men (some
women and children were among them,
tool pitched tents, or nailed together
a few boards for protection, or built
frail, leaky shanties with roofs of iron
bent into wavy ridges-corrugated-
and began their new life.
They were over thousand miles
from the sea-coast, and some of them,
who could not find any other method
of travelling, or could not afford an
other, had come, after leaving the
railroad, five hundred miles on foot.
There they were, when they reached
the gold-felds, in a country without
trees or vegetation other than grass,
on the high, bare veldt like our
prairie), the great South African pla-
teau, which is, in the Transvaal,
about six thousand feet above sea-
level, and to which all material for
building, oil conveniences and neces-
sites for living, and much of their
food had to be brought in ox-carts,
and carried sometimes from even the
distant coast.
This was in 1886, and now, where
the first little wooden sheds and tents
were put up, stands johannesburg,
city of one hundred thousand inhabi-
tants, fine town with good buildings,
electric lights, and street railways.
Stretching away from it toward the
east and west runs the gold region,
some forty or fifty miles in length.
You will hear this reef, which was in
prehistoric times the edge of a great
ocean basin, called the Rand. This
term is an abbreviation of Witwaters-
rand, which means white water ridge,
and the ridge, or reef, forms tie water
shed between the Atlantic and Indian
oceans. There are a great many of
these Rand mines, and the amount Of
gold taken from them has long since
exceeded the supply from any other
part Of the world. California and Aus
tralia are left quite behind in their
production. You would not care for
too many figures, but when you realize
that the Transvaal gold has frequently
reached value of about five million
dollars month, it is quite an over
whelming thought how rich the mines
are. Enormous fortunes have been
made from them, and men who arrived
in the Transvaal without cent have
grown rich, while, on the other hand,
numbers of people have ventured every
thing and lost all they had. johannes
burg is a city where everybody specu-
lates, and great amount Of money is
wasted every day. People make
money quickly, and spend it as fast,
and one pays for almost everything a
great deal more than it is worth.