e reefs go deeper,
and that our improved scientific appliances will enable us to extract
far more of the metal than the old miners could get by their simple
breaking and washing of the quartz? No doubt the old workings were
carried on by labour incomparably cheaper than could now be obtained;
but against this may be set the greater efficiency of the machinery
which will be at the disposal of the miner when transportation
facilities have been provided.

Arguments of this kind are resorted to only because the data which
experiment has hitherto supplied are insufficient. I found much
difference of opinion in the country itself regarding the value of the
reefs. Some mining engineers took a less sanguine view of the reefs they
had examined than did the general public in Fort Salisbury or Bulawayo,
and (it need hardly be said) a much less sanguine view than the
prospectuses of the companies conveyed to investors at home. On the
other hand, results had been actually obtained in some other places
which promised extremely well if the rest of the reef proved equal to
the portion sampled. Men of what is called in America "a conservative
temper" seemed to think that there is "payable gold," probably plenty of
gold, in the country, and that out of the many companies formed to work
the claims a fair, but by no means a large, proportion will turn out
sound undertakings. I doubt if it will be possible to say anything more
positive until stamping batteries have been erected and a considerable
quantity of quartz has been treated. This process can hardly begin till
the railways to Bulawayo and Mtali have been opened, and those
interested may therefore have to wait till 1899 or 1900 before they can
feel sure as to the value of their properties.[57]

Other minerals besides gold have been found. There is iron in many
places, copper in others. Coal has been proved to exist, of good if not
first-rate quality, on the edge of the Zambesi Valley south of the
Victoria Falls, and further east, to the north of Gwelo, and if the
gold-reefs turn out well it will certainly be worked. Indeed, railways
have now (1899) been decided on to connect Bulawayo and Gwelo with these
coal basins. It may be added that a railway is now being constructed
from Bulawayo to Gwelo and Fort Salisbury, and that there is a prospect
of another being pushed on to the Zambesi and the boundary of northern
Rhodesia at the south end of Lake Tanganyika. A line is also to be made