4 S. &. EWMONS 
northern boundary of the South African republic. This state is 
more commonly known as the Transvaal, because it lies beyond 
the Vaal River, the northern and main fork of the Orange River, 
which divides the South African republic from thé Orange Free 
Stare: 
These first discovered gold fields now comprise many districts, 
the most prominent of which are the Lydenburg on the north, 
and the De Kaap and Komati on the south of the Crocodile River. 
Furlonge describes this region in the following words: ‘A large 
plateau stretches from east to west across the Transvaal, which 
is called the ‘High Veldt.’ It is generally level or gently rolling, 
-and has an average elevation of 6000 feet above the sea; it is 
destitute of timber, and in fact greatly resembles the western 
prairies of North America, and rock outcrops are not common. 
It terminates very abruptly to the east and northeast, the descent 
of 2000 to 3000 feet into the mountainous country that occupies 
its borders being made in a very short distance. These mount- 
ains extend in an easterly direction for a distance of forty miles, 
when they again terminate, very abruptly, in an apparently flat 
region composed of marshes and sandy plains, sloping gently 
but regularly to the shores of the Indian Ocean, a distance of 
about 100 miles.” 
It was the gold fever, resulting from the rich discoveries in 
the De Kaap district that started prospecting in the spring of 
1886, and caused the unexpected discovery of gold in fair 
‘quantity and of great extent in the Witwatersrand (white water 
range) at the northern end of the great plateau of the Orange 
Free State and thirty miles south of Pretoria. Toward the end 
‘of the same year the township of Johannesburg, now a city of 
30,000 inhabitants, was laid out and lots sold to the amount of 
#13,000. Shares were quoted on the Johannesburg exchange in 
June 1887, and by November of the same year sixty-eight com- 
panies, with a nominal capital of 43,000,000 had been formed. 
A boom soon set in, which lasted till the end of 1889, when it 
burst, and the reaction continued for several years, but the 
increasing output of gold and augmentation of dividends in 1892 
