ng the stones, and would have been
glad to sell for a hundred pounds the land on which Johannesburg now
stands, and beneath which some of the richest mines are worked.

The Witwatersrand (Whitewatersridge) is a rocky ridge rising from one to
two or three hundred feet above the level of the adjoining country and
running nearly east and west about thirty miles. Along its southern
slope the richest reefs or beds containing gold (except that near the
village of Heidelberg) have been found; but the whole gold-basin, in
various parts of which payable reefs have been proved to exist and are
being worked, is nearly one hundred and thirty miles long by thirty
miles wide. It is called a basin because the various out-cropping reefs
represent approximately the rim of a basin, and dip to a common centre.
But there are many "faults" which have so changed the positions of the
reefs in different places as largely to obliterate the resemblance
indicated by the term. It would be impossible to give either a
geological account of the district or a practical description of the
methods of working without maps and plans and a number of details
unsuitable to this book; so I will mention merely a few salient facts,
referring the curious reader to the elaborate treatise of Messrs. Hatch
and Chalmers published in 1895.

The Rand gold-mining district at present consists of a line of mines
both east and west of Johannesburg, along the outcrop of the principal
reefs. It is about forty-six miles long, but "gold does not occur
continuously in payable quantities over that extent, the 'pay-ore' being
found in irregular patches, and (less frequently) in well-defined
'pay-shoots' similar to those which characterize quartz-veins."[59]
There are also a few scattered mines in other parts of the basin. On
this line there are two principal reefs--the Main Reef, with its
so-called "leader," a thin bed just outside, and parallel to it, and the
South Reef, with several others which are at present of much less
importance. The term "reef" means a bed or stratum of rock, and these
Rand reefs are beds of a sort of conglomerate, consisting of sandy and
clayey matter containing quartz pebbles. The pebbles are mostly small,
from the size of a thrush's egg up to that of a goose's egg, and contain
no gold. The arenaceous or argillaceous stuff in which they lie embedded
is extremely hard, and strongly impregnated with iron, usually in the
form of iron pyrites, which binds