214 THE DIAMOND MINES OF SOUTH AFRICA
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over which he and others were tramping day after day. It was soon
noticed by roving prospectors, and by settlers in the district, that
there was gold-bearing sand in the beds of the little river and creeks
rising in the Witwatersrand, but no noteworthy search for gold was
attempted until an Australian mining man, Armfield, a reputed expert,
was sent to prospect in this region during the British occupation from
1876 to 1880. He made some tests of quartz ledges on a farm adjoining
Paarde-kraal, but found nothing of value.
The
credit of the first important revelation of gold in the district
undoubtedly belongs to Mr. Fred Struben, who had given his earnest
attention to the gold developments in the Transvaal, and who prospected
the Witwatersberg district in 1883, and found traces of gold in creeks
and reefs, as well as ancient workings for copper. In the following
year his elder brother, Mr. H. W. Struben, purchased two small farms on
the northwestern end of Witwatersrand, and both the Strubens continued
their prospecting energetically during the year. In the summer of 1884
a gold-bearing vein or reef was discovered and traced for several miles
by Fred Struben. Ore shoots and pockets were found which assayed over
one thousand ounces of gold and silver to the ton. The rich ledge,
named the Confidence Reef, was supposed to be of prime importance ;
and the Strubens erected a five-stamp battery on the ground to crush
the ore of this and neighboring ledges. Several samples of the ore were
tested in the stamp mill, but the best ore yielded only eight
pennyweight to the ton. Work on the Confidence Reef was greatly
disappointing, for the gold-bearing rock was soon proven to be a small
deposit.
In
August, 1885, I visited a small mine called Kromdraai, situated about
twenty miles, in a northwesterly direction, from the present site of
Johannesburg, but at a much lower elevation, near the old Pretoria and
Kimberley wagon road. A small reef of gold-bearing rock was being
mined, and the ore crushed in a little mill in the immediate vicinity.
I also spent a few days looking over the Confidence Reef, with the
Strubens, who were
