Show A letter from the Transvaal purporting purport-ing to come through tho lines Is published pub-lished in the Engineering and Mining Journal I says that nearly all the mines have been deserted employees both black and white having left the iWltwatcrsrand Very few of the man ngcri wero allowed to reman and these nro of other nationalities than English 2he mines were not molested but they were left without attention and their costly machinery must deteriorate rapIdly rap-Idly At thobeginning the Transvaal Government seized the six largest and richest mines the Robinson the Bonanza Bo-nanza tho Wimmer the Ferrelra the Ferreira Deep and the Village Main jReef and tried to work them Tho writer says tho result Is almost a complete com-plete failure cither because the machinery ma-chinery wag unsklllfully handled or else the engineers had purposely disabled dis-abled some parts of the machinery before be-fore leaving ITo estimates that It would require 250000 to repair tho damage to thcso mines |