THE WITWATERSRAND GOLD REGION Wei 
ios) 
Many other gold districts have been discovered in the Transvaal, 
Rhodesia, Natal, the Portuguese possessions, and other parts of South 
Africa, but the Witwatersrand still easily maintains its pre-eminence. 
Geological relations of the gold deposits.—The gold of the Witwaters- 
rand occurs as an impregnation of certain conglomerate beds which 
are members of a series of quartzites, conglomerates and s'ates known 
as the Witwatersrand system. These strata lie unconformably on 
Fic. 1.—Underground photograph at the Nourse-Deep Mine, Witwatersrand Dis- 
trict Transvaal, showing dike and faulting in the gold-bearing conglomerate. The 
speckled rock in the picture indicates the conglomerate. 
older rocks known as the Swazieland series and classed by the local 
geologists as Archaean.t The Witwatersrand system has as yet 
afforded no fossils, so that its exact age is not known, but judging from 
fossils found in overlying formations, the Witwatersrand rocks are 
supposed to belong at least as low as the lower part of the Paleozoic 
and possibly lower in the geological column. 
The Witwatersrand system is divided into an upper and a lower 
series, though there is no unconformity between them, the orly dif- 
t Hatch and Corstorphine, The Geology of South Ajrica, 1895. 
