Having received the same hospitable attention, as elsewhere, at Vryburg,
our wagon party once more resumed its journey. Thirty miles brought us
to the south-western frontier of the Transvaal, from whence we travelled
on, through the most dreary, flat, uninteresting, barren, treeless
plain, for two or three days more, sleeping every night on the veldt,
until we reached Klerksdorp, about 120 miles from Vryburg. The
south-western part of the Transvaal is certainly exceedingly inferior in
appearance to what I saw in Bechuanaland. We remained at Klerksdorp
three days. While there I visited one or two of the gold mines of this
promising district.
At the Nooitgedacht Mine I saw the process performed of pan washing of
the previously crushed quartz. I also went to the stamping house, where
a machine for crushing has been erected of twenty stamps. I inspected
the mine generally, and its various shafts already sunk. The work
appeared to me to be well and systematically conducted. Before leaving
this mine the great gold cake lump, weighing 1,370 ozs., which was being
forwarded, the day I was there, to the Paris Exhibition, was put into my
hands. It seemed a wonderfully big lump of the precious metal, which is
so earnestly sought for by every race of civilised man.
I also went over another mine, at present in the early stage of its
development, but which struck me as being conducted, as far as the
working management was concerned, on good, sound, business
principles--belonging to the Klerksdorp Gold Estates Company.
My stay at Klerksdorp much impressed me with the idea of the future of
this town of yesterday's growth. It is only fifteen months ago, (a
little more than a year) that the whole of the town on the side of the
stream where the Union Hotel is situated, was begun. The inhabitants
already number some thousands; and the indications I have seen in the
mines, of great prospects of gold being found in large and payable
quantities, are very strong. Klerksdorp may yet become a second
Johannesburg, whose remarkable and rapid development I was told, would
astonish me.
[Illustration: Decorative]