it together. It is in this stuff, or
sandy and ferreous cement, that the gold occurs. The Boers call the
conglomerate "_banket_" (accented on the last syllable), which is their
name for a kind of sweetmeat, because the pebbles lying in the cement
are like almonds in the sugary substance of the sweetmeat. The gold is
pretty equably diffused in the form of crystals or (less often) of
flakes--crystals of such extremely small size as to be very rarely
visible to the naked eye. Here and there, however, the banket is
traversed by thin veins of quartz rock, and nuggets, mostly quite small,
are occasionally found in this quartz.

The "Main Reef series" consists of several parallel beds of varying size
and thickness, which have not been correlated throughout their entire
length; at some points two may be workable; at others three. The Main
Reef bed varies from one to twenty feet in thickness; its "leader,"
which is richer in gold, from three inches to three feet; and the South
Reef, also generally rich, from three inches to six feet. The Main Reef
proper, however, is of too low an ore grade to be profitably worked
under present economic conditions, though at two or three mines a
percentage of it is milled in conjunction with the richer ore from the
other beds.

Where these beds come to the surface, they are inclined, or "dip," as
geologists say, at an angle of from 60 deg. to 30 deg., and the shafts are now
usually sunk to follow the line of dip. But as they are followed down
into the earth, the angle diminishes to 30 deg. or 25 deg., and it appears
certain that at a still greater depth they will be found to lie nearly
horizontal. This fact is extremely important, because it promises to
make a much larger part of the beds available than would be the case if
they continued to plunge downward at a high angle, since in that case
they would soon attain a depth at which mining would be impossible,
because the heat would be too great, and probably unprofitable also,
because the cost of raising the ore would be extremely heavy. The
greatest depth to which workings have been carried is about 2400 feet,
but skilled engineers think it possible to work as deep as 5000 feet,
though labour becomes more difficult above the temperature of 100 deg.
Fahrenheit, which is reached at 3000 feet beneath the surface. No
difficulty from temperature has been felt at 2,400 feet, and the water
is found to give little trouble; indeed a very experienced e