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A busy three weeks spent in the city and at Witwatersrand enriched them with much very valuable information, both particular and general, and also enabled them to acquire four excellent horses and an Indian coolie groom named Ramoo Samee, who not only bore a most admirable character, but also raised no objection when informed of the nature and scope of the adventure upon which his employers were bound.
The evidence which has been laid before your Commission has contained suggestions to establish a Board on which Government nominees and representatives of the mining industry and of the commercial community of the Witwatersrand should sit, so that the Government representatives should have the benefit of the experience of men whose daily occupation it is to look closely into all the affairs appertaining to the mines, &c.
As a consequence of this refusal, the South African Republic communicated to Great Britain that the "proposal for a five years' franchise and extension of representation of the Witwatersrand with the conditions attached thereto" had lapsed, whereby also lapsed the necessity of laying it before the representatives of the people for ratification.
The craggy mountains of Western America, the arid plains of West Australia, the ice-bound gorges of the Klondyke, and the bare slopes of the Witwatersrand veld these are the lids which cover the great treasure chests of the world.
The world never saw such a development of gold mining in a small area as has occurred on the Witwatersrand, where Johannesburg stands.
Further, there is a great saving of precious time and expense in avoiding the extra work of new delimitation which would be necessary if the country were to be cut up into equal mathematical electoral areas. The decision to adopt the old magisterial areas, which divide the Transvaal into sixteen electoral divisions, of which the Witwatersrand is only one, involves another question.
All our toil was repaid by the glorious panorama that now stretched out before us to the south. We saw the undulating veldt between the Magaliesbergen where we stood, and the Witwatersrand. Through a ravine we had a view extending for many miles, but wherever we cast our eyes there was no sign of anything that resembled the enemy.
The report and proceedings are published by the Witwatersrand Chamber of Mines in a volume containing over 700 pages of printed matter and a number of diagrams. The whole constitutes a damning indictment of the Government, as the following extracts from the report of the Commission testify:
My burghers who were mostly men from the Witwatersrand Goldfields, could of course obtain no leave for farming purposes; and great dissatisfaction prevailed. I was inundated with complaints about their unfair treatment in this respect and only settled matters with considerable trouble.
The gold fields of Witwatersrand are unique in the world. This is not my own statement, but the statement of eminent mining engineers from America. For thirty miles and more you have a continuous stretch of reef, which gives throughout a uniform yield per ton, and which has been proved to the depth of some hundred feet, and may there is every reason to believe go to unknown depths.
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