212 THE DIAMOND MINES OF SOUTH AFRICA
distance by rail between Kimberley and Johannesburg and Cape Town. The war has, for the time being, stopped this work.
The
Natal Government is also proceeding with the construction of north and
south coast lines : one through Verulam to Zululand, and the other to
the Cape border, where it will connect with the extension of the
Sterkstroom-Indwe line.
Twenty-five
years ago only 781 miles of telegraph were open in all of South Africa.
A message of twenty words from Cape Town to East London cost 17s. 6d. At
the outbreak of the late war 19,000 miles of wire were working in Cape
Colony, and probably 10,000 miles in other states and colonies. The
march of the telegraph through South Africa will be later detailed.
In
addition to the railway and telegraph, several thousand miles of
excellent roads have been made, and every river of magnitude has been
spanned by substantial bridges. The great Zwarte Berg Pass, which rises
3400 feet in eleven miles from base to summit, is one of the finest
monuments of road construction to be seen in any country.
At
every port the shipping accommodations have been extended and
improved, and approaches to the coast have been made safer by
construction of numerous lighthouses.
The
impulse given by the Diamond Fields development for prospecting for
mineral deposits of all kinds led to the discovery of the mines of
Lydenburg, De Kaap, and the Rand. In the year preceding the discovery
of diamonds Thomas Baines had led a party from Durban to prospect for
gold in Matabeleland, and secured a concession from Lobengula in April,
1870, to dig for gold in the district between the Gwelo and Ganyona
rivers. But Baines's party found no largely promising deposits, and
without the excitement of the rush to Kimberley there would hardly have
been any considerable and determined effort to push prospecting far
beyond the Vaal. Luckily, shortly after the rush to the Diamond Fields
in 1871, reef gold was found by prospectors at Eersteling and
Marabastad, and, two years later, gold placers were discovered about
thirty-three miles east of Lydenburg, at Pilgrim's Rest,
