An African Adventure

in opening up this greatest of all gold fields but they loomed large in the drama of the Jameson Raid. One of their number, John Hays Hammond, the best-known of the group, was sentenc

t to believe that thirty years ago this thriving and metropolitan community was a rocky waste. We are accustomed to swift civic transformations in America but Johannesburg surp

cted into "'Frisco," so is this animated joytown called "Joburg." I made the mistake of dignifying the place with its geographical ti

emphasis on 'Joburg') is one of

berley history repeated itself for the gold rush to the Transvaal was as noisy and picturesque as the dash on the diamond fields. It exceeded the Klondike movement because for one thing it was more accessible and in the second place there were no really adve

lopment today is in the eastern section. People do everything but eat gold in Johannesburg. Cooks, maids, waiters, bootblacks-indeed the whole population-are interested, or at some time have had an interest in a gold mine. Some histo

Perkins and Captain Thomas Mein. Together with Hamilton Smith, another noted American engineer who joined them later, they had all worked in the famous El Callao gold mine in Venezuela. Subsequently came John Hays Hammond, Charles Butters, Victor M. Clement, J. S. Curtis,

be called the second generation of American engineers, which included Sidney Jennings, a brother of Hennen

ho had produced gold mining engineers of large and varied practical experience. When Rhodes and Barnato (they were both among the early nine mine-owners in the Rand) cast about for capable men they naturally pi

ron pyrites found here are not oxidized. They hold the gold so tenaciously that they are not amalgamable. They must therefore be abstracted by some other process than with mercury. At the time that the outcrop in the Rand become exhausted, what is today known as the "cyanide process" had never been used in that part of the world. The mine-owners became discourage

ruger, the President. Although these outsiders, principally English and Americans, outnumbered the Boers three to one, they were deprived of the rights of citizenship. The Reformers organized an armed campaign to capture Kruger and hold him as a hostage until they could obtain their rights. The

ng was that Jameson should not invade the Transvaal until he was needed. His impetuosity spoiled the scheme. Instead of waiting until the Committee was properly armed and had seized Kruger, he suddenly cr

ed to death. He afterwards escaped by the payment of a fine of $125,000. As a matter of fact, four other prominent American mining engineers were up to their necks in the reform movement and got long terms in prison. T

not developed in 1899 it is altogether likely that, judging from her whole campaign of world-wide interference, Germany would have arranged so that it should break out in 1914. In this unhappy event she could have struck a death blow at England in South A

g happened to be together when the news of Roosevelt's coup in Panama was published. The author

hen replied somewhat sadly, "This ma

you still see the old house where Kruger lived. It was the throne of a copper-riveted autocracy. No modern head of a country ever wielded such a despotic rule as this psalm-singing old

treasure-trove. The mines at Kimberley together constitute the largest of all diamond fields but the Premier Mine is the biggest single mine anywhere. It

cely been scraped. You can see the natives working in its two huge holes which are not more than six hundred feet deep. It is still an open mine. In the Premier Mine was found the Cullinan diamond, the largest ever discovered and which made the Koh

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