Discovery of thr Witwntersrand Gold Fields 199 



done nothing but take the profits. The local and 

 Natal newspapers published most eulogistic articles 

 about the service I had rendered South Africa, but 

 too lenghty to insert here. In those early days 

 Fred and I were recognised as the discoverers of the 

 Witwatersrand gold fields, having opened up and 

 proved the reef for forty miles, from Vogelstruis- 

 fontein on the west, to Driefontein near Boksburg 

 on the east. Since then many persons have posed 

 as pioneers and discoverers after the event. A man 

 named Walker had worked for me and seen our 

 pannings of the conglomerates along the reef. He 

 did get some rich specimens of the main reef on 

 Langlaagte, but he cannot be considered the dis- 

 coverer of it, as my brother Fred had found it before 

 though nowhere so rich. Fred was undoubtedly the 

 actual personal discoverer of the Witwatersrand 

 gold-bearing conglomerates or " Banket." 



I wrote numerous articles on the subject of 

 mineral discoveries from 1853-1858, 1860-1866, 

 1869-1872, all ancient history now. On June 25th, 

 1885, Mr. Richard Smith of the Metallurgical Labora- 

 tory Royal School of Mines, London sent an ex- 

 haustive report of analyses of a box of ores sent by 

 me to him in November 1884. The figures would 

 not be interesting in this narrative. 



In 1886 I purchased the then best known coal 

 field at the source of the Wilge-river known as 

 Steen-kool-spruit, the coal proved to be of excellent 

 quality, but I did not work it. Now there are coal 

 fields opened up all over the country, but competition 

 has brought the price down, so that it hardly pays 

 to mine coal, though this coal supply has made gold 

 mining possible on a large scale. In an interview 

 given in 1908 to " South Africa " by me is the 

 following extract : 



