THE MEN OF PRETORIA. 145 



experts, and members of the various professions which 

 enable money to be made 011 the credit of auriferous 

 quartz being found in sufficient quantity to enable the 

 formation of a limited liability company. But all these 

 good people had one story to tell they had all lost 

 their money. Ask whom you would, converse anywhere 

 with high and low alike, the knowing and unwary, the 

 sharp and the dupe, all had lost and suffered at the 

 collapse of the great bubble. The tale of the Johannes- 

 burg boom w r as all one heard ; it was as though a mighty 

 financial storm had raged and the shore was strewn 

 with the bodies of these unhappy and disappointed 

 speculators. It was a golden period, this era of the 

 boom ; anything served to float a company, and the 

 price of shares rose daily. On all sides men purchased 

 scrip, or held the shares they obtained by the process of 

 flotation. At length a fall took place, owners still held, 

 thinking the check temporary and that recovery must 

 take place ; but the collapse became sudden and severe 

 and nothing could be saved of the fortunes so rapidly 

 made they existed on paper, and as paper they now 

 remain. Cautious workmen who had saved a few 

 hundred pounds were drawn into the vortex and lost 

 their little all. A young baker once travelled with 

 me in a coach who had managed to acquire by his 

 business in the Transvaal some 3000, with which" he 

 returned to England. The echo of the boom brought 

 him once more to the Transvaal with his money, 

 every penny of which he lost, and he was when I met 

 him working as a journeyman baker once more. The 

 most extraordinary story of the vicissitudes of fortune 

 in the Transvaal that I ever heard, related to two 

 worthies who possessed together about 200 in cash 

 and a wagon and oxen. They arrived at a canteen 

 many of which are a curse to the country and abso- 

 lutely drank and gambled away the whole of their 

 money ; they then sold the wagon and oxen for the 

 same purpose and with a like result. They were soon 

 penniless, and appealing to the keeper of the canteen 

 where they had ruined themselves, induced that indivi- 



