the peculiarity of the Rand mines lies in the fact that throughout
this 'banket' formation the metal is so uniformly distributed that
the enterprise can claim a certainty which is not usually
associated with the industry. It is quarrying rather than mining.
Add to this that the reefs which were originally worked as outcrops
have now been traced to enormous depths, and present the same
features as those at the surface. A conservative estimate of the
value of the gold has placed it at seven hundred millions of
pounds.

Such a discovery produced the inevitable effect. A great number of
adventurers flocked into the country, some desirable and some very
much the reverse. There were circumstances, however, which kept
away the rowdy and desperado element who usually make for a newly
opened goldfield. It was not a class of mining which encouraged the
individual adventurer. There were none of those nuggets which
gleamed through the mud of the dollies at Ballarat, or recompensed
the forty-niners in California for all their travels and their
toils. It was a field for elaborate machinery, which could only be
provided by capital. Managers, engineers, miners, technical
experts, and the tradesmen and middlemen who live upon them, these
were the Uitlanders, drawn from all the races under the sun, but
with the Anglo-Celtic vastly predominant. The best engineers were
American, the best miners were Cornish, the best managers were
English, the money to run the mines was largely subscribed in
England. As time went on, however, the German and French interests
became more extensive, until their joint holdings are now probably
as heavy as those of the British. Soon the population of the mining
centres became greater than that of the whole Boer community, and
consisted mainly of men in the prime of life--men, too, of