Los Angeles herald., 1907-08-04
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~ oTIIA, the famous Boer guerilla gen.
~ erai. British premier and feted in
Ed London; the Transvaal, after three
years of warfare and five of military rule,
once more self-governing colony under
Boer control-how strangely events re-
verse themselves And yet Johannesburg,
which created the Transvaai and Is nine
tenths of 1t, goes on serenely, pouring
forth gold in a continuous stream, I'M
mindful Of political change, and will con-
tinue, doubtless, to do SO, till the last pay
ing particle Of the auriferous metal has
been extracted. Then the mines will close
down forever, the houses tumble to decay,
I'd the myriads Of migrating springbok
' Ill once more wander over the site of
the great mining city.
Dumped down in the middle Of vast,
rolling sea Of barren uplands, crowned
with strong granite hills, Joined to the
southern coasts, over a thousand miles
away, by only two slender railway lines,
johannesburg is emphatically dependent
for its existence on the gold output. Just
one-and-twenty years ago party OF pros
pectors made a discovery of gold upon the
farm of an ignorant Boer named Johann,
desolate region where it had been stated
officially that gold could not possibly be
found. They offered him a price which
seemed enormous for the sale OF his prop
erty. The old man pocketed the money
packed his wife, children, and household
utensils inside his ponderous wagon, In
spanned his oxen, and trekked away north
ward into the wilderness. To-day his farm
is valued in billions and now, where once
the weld was blackened with antelope
herds stalEed by tie lion and leopard and
a few adventurous frontersmen, there
stands a city of 100000 souls, white,
black, yellow and brown. known as Jo-
hannesburg.
1t is a long, irregular, strung-out Sue
cession of mining villages, amalgamating
into fine town toward the center OF
their length, and stretching away for
about thirty miles along the course of the
famous reef-a series of tall chimneys,
miners huts, groups of stores, negro and
Chinese compounds, hudded beneath the
shadow of the great wheels which crown
the headgear at the entrance to the shafts.
From miles away, when everything is hid
den under the noon haze, or floats, a
dancing mirage, between earth and sky,
may be seen the immense heaps of tail
inFs', which is the name given to that
refuse that remains after the gold has
been extracted by cyanide of mercury
from the pulverized ore and shines, whittier
than snow, in immense mounds along the
whole course of the outcrop. So vast are
these heaps that when, during the exciting
days OF revolution and the Jameson raid.
Boer officials suspected that maxim guns
ana rifles were hidden therein, thew were
searched systematically for days without
their contents being discovered.
There Is probably no city in the world
which has seen so many eventfud DAVIS
or held such an assorted population. The
fame which Johannesburg attained on the
discovery there of the richest gold fields
In the world, sustained by her constant
prominence in the eternal Anglo-Dutch
feud In South Africa, attracted thither
Adventures and fortune-hunters from all
corners of the earth. Here we NAV 500
the Englishman, recently arrived and
superciiously scornful of colonials; the
miner from Wales, speaking no tongue
but Welsh. drawn thlther by high wages:
the Yankee, supreme in enterprise and
slowly ousting all his competitors from
business; the French investor, the Ger
man brewer and, of course the Scotch
bank clerk. Indian coolies, Afghans with
horses Persians In round. embroidered
caps; Syrians peddling and hawking,
Greeks and Italians pushing great bar
rows laden with fruits and luscious