534
SIR ERNEST OPPENHEIMER
Goedgenoeg
induced the belief that the investigation of that area could with
advantage be followed up by an examination of the country to the south,
across the Vaal River, and farther to the west. Various mining houses
accordingly acquired options over large blocks of ground in the Orange
Free State, and south-western Transvaal, and have commenced intensive
exploratory work in these areas. Among the more important of these new
prospecting areas are those under the control of the Anglo American
Corporation of South Africa Limited, the Anglo Transvaal Consolidated
Investment Company Limited, and the Union Corporation Limited, and your
company was offered participation in all of these ventures. These
offers were accepted and your company has now a direct interest in five
different prospecting ventures in the area referred to. Diamond drills
are now operating in four of these areas. Some of the results obtained
have been encouraging. I should like to emphasize one point about
which, judging by comments in the Press, there appears to have been
some doubts. This company has not disposed of its interest in any of
these prospecting ventures to any other company, but retains intact a
direct interest in each of the ventures in which it originally
participated.
At
the time that this speech was made, some important further developments
had taken place. The early financial difficulties of Wit. Extensions
have been referred to in a previous section; after the breakdown of
the arrangements between that company and the Anglo-French Exploration
Company, Wit. Extensions turned to Dr. Merensky for relief. In January
1936 Dr. Merensky acquired a three-year 'working option' on the Free
State area belonging to Wit. Extensions. In December of the same year,
under date of the 24th, Ernest Oppenheimer was writing to Dr. Hans
Merensky, then in Germany:
It
is not often that we correspond with each other, but I want to send you
a line about the prospecting work which is going on in the Free State.
Bancroft, as you know, is in charge of this now, and in so far as the
area is concerned which we took over from you we are still busy
collecting geological data. The two boreholes which we are putting
down are both still in lava at a considerable depth, but Bancroft is
going on in the hope that before long he may find the underlying beds
and that this will give him a line on locating a borehole where the
lava is not so thick. As regards the Wit. Extensions area, Wilhelme has
kindly kept in touch with Bancroft and advised him of developments, and
there also I gather you are still a long way off any important
discovery.
I
have been turning over in my mind this whole question of the Free State
prospecting, and the Wit. Extensions area is virtually the only one in
which we have not got an interest. When we took over the other area
from you we did not discuss the question of a participation with you in
the drilling
