578 W. H. PENNING ON THE GOLDEIELDS OE 



therefore, great care in manipulation. There is a casing of grey, 

 honeycombed quartz, several inches thick, on the west side of the 

 lode, which contains silver. I have made no assay of this, but was 

 informed that Messrs. Johnson and Matthey had certified 16 oz. to 

 the ton. 



(2) Three or four hundred yards to the east is " Eautenbach's 

 Eeef," a mass of soft, earthy, auriferous ground, which appears to 

 occupy nearly the whole of the ridge parallel to that of the ' Home- 

 ward Bound Eeef." There are in it, however, numerous quartz 

 strings, dipping from either hand towards a central line, and seeming 

 to indicate a downward extension of the lode in a more restricted 

 form. Some spots are very rich in fine gold, others poor and even 

 barren, the metal not being at all equally distributed. 



Since my last visit to this place, I have received a letter, dated 

 13 Dec, 1884, from which the following is a short extract : — " In 

 continuing the large cutting .... I have come on a very large lode 

 of rich quartz ; it is about 13 feet wide, and runs to all appearance 

 due E. ; it seems to branch out from the Homeward Bound Eeef. I 

 have taken out of it to-day about 60 tons, and it is very easily 

 worked." There are other auriferous reefs on the plateau, some 

 rich in gold, but only the above are yet opened to any extent. 



c'. About 14 miles to the westward of the Godwaan Plateau, I 

 have examined a block of farms on the table-land between Eland's 

 Spruit and the Krokodil Eiver, finding the rocks to be : — " Sandstones 

 on the higher ground. . . .resting upon grey thin-bedded shales, 

 which, in turn, rest upon a series of beds of chert, quartzite, and 

 arenaceous shales " *. 



Upon the block of farms between Eland's Spruit and the Kro- 

 kodil Eiver I traced the outcrop of several quartz-reefs ; these have 

 not been opened up, but the surface-specimens yielded gold in pro- 

 mising quantity. 



About 10 miles still further west the main road from N'atal passes 

 down a very steep hill into the Krokodil Valley, and shales are 

 exposed from top to bottom of the descent, except where intersected 

 by some large diorite dykes. 



About thirty miles further down the valley, and on the opposite 

 side of the Krokodil Eiver, the road from Spitzkop also comes down 

 a very steep incline. This shows shales in its upper portion, which, 

 part way down the hill, rest directly upon the granite of the Kaap 

 Valley. 



At the head of the Stadt's Eiver, which about here joins the 

 Krokodil, I went over a farm, finding it to consist of shales, except 

 on the highest ground to the JST.W., which is sandstone. The whole 

 country from here to Lydenburg is nearly all shale, with sandstone 

 on the higher ridges. 



cT. Around Lydenburg the rocks consist principally of a series 

 of shales, several hundred feet in thickness, with occasional beds of 

 sandstone, dipping to the westward. On the Lydenburg town- 

 lands " a reef of quartz, 2 feet in width, crops out along the top of 

 * Eeport, March 1884. 



