gold
has hitherto been found to occur arc singularly uniform. In all the
noted gold districts, we have the older slates penetrated by masses of
greenstone and mostly, if not always, granite near. As I have already
shown, in the case of the tract under consideration, two out of three
of these conditions are wanting. The rocks are of comparatively modern
age, and there is no granite nearer than some hundreds of miles beyond
the Vaal River.
In
the eighties, when the opening up of the Rand inaugurated a general
expansionist movement in mining, mining operations of a more serious
nature began in the Orange Free State, in the neighbourhood due west
of the town of Vredefort, and
situated
on and close to the Vaal River near Schocman's Drift. The various
gold-bearing banket reefs traversing these farms in approximately a
northerly and southerly direction were discovered early in the year
1886 and immediately claimed the attention of various prospectors and
prospecting syndicates, foremost among the latter being the Philippolis
Lindequesfontein Gold Company, the Philippolis Gold Mining Company and
a syndicate hailing from Kroonstad. ... A considerable amount of
excitement was occasioned and active prospecting operations were
carried on in the district generally, but more specially on the three
abovementioned farms. ... So contented were all parties concerned with
the quality and quantity of the reefs that the Free State Government
decided to proclaim the farm Lindequesfontein a public digging and this
was done on 7 November 1887, the digging being known as the
Lindequesfontein Gold Fields. ... In the early nineties a general slump
in gold-mining ventures spread over the Transvaal and, as was only
natural, these fields were equally affected. Claims were consequently
abandoned until at the beginning of '92, owing to the revenue derived
from the ground then held being insufficient to meet the expenses of
the administration of the fields, the Free State Government decided to
deproclaim the farm. This was done by proclamation dated 6 August 1892.39
This
field was reproclaimed in December 1904. In 1905 a series of
companies—Orangia Main Reef Limited, Vaal Rand Mines, New Discovery and
New Rand Limited—were engaged in prospecting operations in the
Vredefort district. The last-named company was directed by the late A.
R. Sawyer, who spent some thirty years of his life in the effort to
discover payable gold in the Orange Free State. He died in 1933, on the
very eve of the new era in the Orange Free State. He, and another
geologist, Dr. Carrick (who lost his life on the Waratah in 1909 and who concentrated his interest on the Lindequesfontein
39 Orange River Colony, Mines Department. Annual report for the year ending 30 June 1905.
