We have read the story of the political
mistakes. Only too soon we shall come to the broken heads.
This, then, is a synopsis of what had occurred up to the signing of
the Convention, which finally established, or failed to establish,
the position of the South African Republic. We must now leave the
larger questions, and descend to the internal affairs of that small
State, and especially to that train of events which has stirred the
mind of our people more than anything since the Indian Mutiny.
CHAPTER 2.
THE CAUSE OF QUARREL.
There might almost seem to be some subtle connection between the
barrenness and worthlessness of a surface and the value of the
minerals which lie beneath it. The craggy mountains of Western
America, the arid plains of West Australia, the ice-bound gorges of
the Klondyke, and the bare slopes of the Witwatersrand veld - these
are the lids which cover the great treasure chests of the world.
Gold had been known to exist in the Transvaal before, but it was
only in 1886 that it was realised that the deposits which lie some
thirty miles south of the capital are of a very extraordinary and
valuable nature. The proportion of gold in the quartz is not
particularly high, nor are the veins of a remarkable thickness, but
the peculiarity of the Rand mines lies in the fact that throughout
this 'banket' formation the metal is so uniformly distributed that
the enterprise can claim a certainty which is not usually
associated with the industry. It is quarrying rather than mining.
Add to this that the reefs which were originally worked as outcrops
have now been traced to enormous depths, and present the same
features as those at the surface. A conservative estimate of the
value of the gold has placed it at seven hundred millions of
pounds.
Such a discovery produced the inevitable effect. A great number of
adventurers flocked into the country, some desirable and some very
much the reverse. There were circumstances, however, which kept
away the rowdy and desperado element who usually make for a newly
opened goldfield. It was not a class of mining which encouraged the
individual adventurer. There were none of those nuggets which
gleamed through the mud of the dollies at Ballarat, or recompensed
the forty-niners in California for all their travels and their
toils. It was a field for elaborate machinery, which could only be
provided by capital. Managers, engineers, miners, technical
experts, and the tradesmen and middlemen who live upon them, these
were the Uitlanders, drawn from all the races under the sun, but
with the Anglo-Celtic vastly predominant. The best engineers were
American, the best miners were Cornish, the best managers were
English, the money to run the mines was largely subscribed in
England. As time went on, however, the German and French interests
became more extensive, until their joint holdings are now probably
as heavy as those of the British.
