The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1908-11-08

ready to be loaded again. The cars look
like enormous ants or bugs. They are
going on the dead run over the white
sand, which shines out under the rays
of the African sun.
AS we go the train stops every few mo-
ments, and at every stop is mine. Think
of a range of sand hills, the material of
which is as fine as that you use for
securing your floors. Let it rise right
out of the green hills and extend on for
40 odd miles, and you have some idea of
these enormous piles of refuse which have
come from the reef. Remember, as you
look at it, that every grain of that sand
was once part of rock containing gold,
/ and that hundreds of millions of dollars
worth of gold has come from it. If you
continue your ride you will find fence
of iron smolSestacks along the whole 40
miles, and you will never be outside the
din of the stamps which are crushing the
rocks to get out the gold.
In Big South African Mine.
1t is only one of these mines that we
shall visit today. 1t is the Simmer and
Jack" within an half hours ride by train
from Johannesburg, covering an enormous
territory sprinlled with gold. The mine
has produced more than S5,000000 worth
of gold during the past year. and it
yielded about 100000 worth of gold last
month. 1t is a great gold factory, de-
voted to taking the rock out of the
I earth and reducing it to bullion. The ore
contains only about $3.50 worth of gold to
J the ton, and the profit is not more than
/ 81 cents on every ton handled. 1t has the
! best of mining machinery and it works
between 5000 and 5000 men day and night
/ Sunday and week day, all the year
| through. 1t has more than 1000 Chinese,
1000 black natives and the hundreds of
| .e1vil Io1,n
overseers and managers.
A Gold Sandwich.
The Simmer and Jack begins at the
/ surface and its gold-bearing rock runs
down at an angle of 43 degrees to no one
! knows how deep. The gold is in a great
sandwich of rock more than a mile wide
and on the slant four-fifths of d mile
| long Already tens of thousands of tons
of the gold-bearing conglomerate have
been taken out, and $4,000 tons are now
| being raised every month. The sandwich
| starts in a great plain. 1t leans, as have
| said, at a broad angle and one can look
I, down between the walls out of which it
! has been cut and by hanging onto ropes
! can slide down into them for hundreds Of
! feet.
: The manager of the underground work
| ings in the Simmer and Jack is an Ameri-
can He is a California engineer named
| Seagraves, who has been in Africa for
| some years. Upon my telling him that
] wanted to go into the mine he said
there We're 60 miles of tunnels and under
ground passages, and I therefore asked
him TO show me as much as he could in
| one day Before descending we put on
miners clothing. We then entered a
! great skip or bucket which had just
! brought uD two tons of ore. Then a sig
nal from the engineer dropped us down
| into the darkness. and another signal
stopped us at tunnel 800 feet from the
| surface Here we left the skip and
| walked through tunnel after tunnel cut
| ont of the sandwich now and then stop
ping TO look down the incline.
!, Imagine mighty cave just high enough
! for man to stand upright within it and
running down at angle of 40 degrees
| for hundreds of feet, making a fiat, slant
I ing hall covering acres. There are rock
| walls above and rock floors below and
away down the slant hundreds of feet
distant are scores of yellow Chinese
pounding the drills to make holes for the
blasting. The Chinese are bare to the
| waist and they sing as they work. Each
has a candle and the light from this gives
him a weird appearance as he slaves
away down there in the darkness. heT
| Chinese are paid at the rate of / cent
for each inch of hole drilled, and an or
binary man drills so inches or more in a
| day. They are gouging out the holes
for the dynamite candles. At certain
J hours the charges are put In and several
1 scores of blasts are set off at once After
this, the ore which has been blown out.
is shoveled down knto the cars in the