44 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS — SECTION B. 



country it is still less understood. The Witwatersrand is usually 

 looked upon by such- people as an extraordinary place where 

 almost anything can happen, and which frequently exerts a dis- 

 turbing influence on an otherwise peaceful country. 



Before making more special reference to the Eand, it may be 

 instructive to glance for a moment at one or two simpler 

 examples. 



The influence of a profitable mineral deposit in opening up 

 a new country comes out perhaps in the most striking manner 

 when the occurrence is comparatively small and situated in a 

 district which, either by its inhospitable nature or its remote 

 situation, might otherwise have remained practically untouched 

 for an indefinite number of years. Two instances, which have 

 come especially under my notice, have always seemed to me to 

 afford most stimulating food for thought, and it may be interest- 

 ing to refer briefly to them to illustrate the point I wish to make 

 with regard to more important deposits. 



One of the examples which I have in mind is the Tsumeb 

 Mine in South-West Africa. The mineral deposit mined at 

 Tsumeb consists mainly of ores of copper, lead and silver, and 

 is one of those remarkably concentrated mineral occurrences which 

 appear entirely disproportionate to the effects which their dis- 

 covery and exploitation bring in their train. The whole outcrop 

 of the ore body could be covered by a moderately sized public 

 building, and its cross section continues to be of much the same 

 dimens.ions in depth. If we attempted to indicate such an ore 

 body to scale on an ordinary wall map of Africa, it would have to 

 be represented by an almost invisible dot, or, taking its depth also 

 into account, by a pin prick not much deeper than the thickness 

 of the paper on which the map is printed. 



Yet this deposit, which beans such an absurdly small propor- 

 tion to the area of the province in which it lies, and which, 

 without being worked for much more than two or three hundred 

 feet in depth, was the means of building, equipping, and, what is 

 also satisfactory, paying for, a railway from the coast to the mine, 

 some 350 miles in length. The mine then continued for some 

 years to pay unusually large returns to its shareholders, and still 

 remains a very productive concern. A small township has 

 developed around it, and constitutes a centre of activity for a 

 considerable district. Few things I have seen have impressed 

 me so forcibly with the potentialities of a mineral deposit 

 in bringing a railway into country otherwise not particularly 

 attractive, than the experience, after the long railway journey 

 from the coast up to the Tsumeb Mine, of finding at the end of 

 that stretch of rails, what at first sight would appear to be so 

 insignificant a body of mineral. And perhaps no less remarkable 

 than the length of such communications is the speed with which 

 they may be established when a rich mineral depos.it is the 

 objective in sight. 



The second and similar example I have in mind is the re- 

 markable deposit of ores of lead and zinc at Broken Hill in 



