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 veldt -- 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. Soon the
population of the mining centres became greater than that of the whole
Boer community, and consisted mainly of men in the prime of life-men,
too, of exceptional intelligence and energy.

The situation was an extraordinary one. I have already attempted to
bring the problem home to an American by suggesting that the