Show V conary on ary in south A if artter write atter on gold mining iacch bt ringham son or of mr nir 4 I 1 II 11 who ho Is gooud I 1 d in the south african mia mis ion of the L D 8 church writes an interesting te resting account ot of gold nun min ing ain in that far away country the me aletter letter as written at johannesburg fand and Is 13 as follow follows the first hard task alter liter you ob tain your permit to go down a fold jold mine Is to get your companion out c of bed early enough to be on nn time we took the main reef bus out to Langla itte ei tates several miles from the centre of town there are mines alth their great yellowish mid rid greyish grayish dumps strung out klor alra the reef for forty or fifty miles ahse dumps look like small hills it was here at that gold was disc discovered it was found by one walker on a sunday on his way to church in the days when ft ti ere ere no churches said the auh le today the village deep Is the e 4 pest in the world about feet vertically CallY the temperature Is 93 degrees Cle grees fahren eit elt at the bottom they use blocks of ice down their to keep cool 1 they are 3 2 feet leet below sea level the largest deports of gold in the world are found here at johannesburg it Is found in rock which la IB called banket you cannot see a the gold it lies in a thin film around grayish greyish pebbles which help to com pose the ilif the whole mass of wt reef rock or ore Is yellowish but that Is due to the iron which la is embodied throughout most gold other than gold U found in gold caring bearing quartz africa Is tin only place where the banket gold Is found unless there are the dollars worth orth of gold per ion um the ore Is not worth morth working ite Langla agte average Is 6 SO 50 per ton just before the tho party started out our friend the tat fat man from london said we must get one more because there were thirteen of 0 us who nho int going down the mine tiley clothed us in heavy rubber coats and hats we looked like a lot of at amt fishermen elder christensen and I 1 climbed into the third etory story of the cage par R tholand thou and feet we vent ent straight down and then the cage tipped lipped backward and vent bent thumping down clown a thirty degree incline it almost ironed the wrinkles out of my ears mrs with that big englishman on top of me after leeral several hours bours we ue arrived near the bottom our crazy gaide g aide said we had been isa iss I ss than five the minutes ni nil at least we had the th consolation of knowing that we had gone a mile and a halt half on one cable I 1 had lived wed in a mining all mv my life and had had to come to africa to go down a mine it was very ery much like a cave lights were ere burning tunnels running in all directions ions I 1 was surprised at the tile large amount ot of machinery there i v as down don a mine the me first place pla they took us was the pumping station there were huge pumps capable of pumping millions at of gallons of water por pr p r day our guide said that this mine waa was comparatively dry nevert nevertheless helesa we soon found why they had given us the rubber clothing for water waa as dripping ever everywhere here this la is to settle the dust which hith gete gets into the lungs and causes the dreaded nun antin rs the dust fills the 1 lungs arul and hardens them like stone anne ri n die in two years of it there are five thousand thou band natives blacks working down in this mine how men will wilt give ghe their lives tor for gold would make an interesting te article and well worth publishing As the reef Is dipping into the earth at about a 30 degree angle the mining Is all done by it Is caught in trucks at the bottom of the slope and pushed along on the narro narrow tells through the tunnels where here it Is dumped into great hoppers in the rock beneath these big bins run the skips the ore Is emptied anto the skips and hauler by the great cable to the surface trains carry it to the refinery every its own refinery right on the mine property reducing ore Is an expensive process ss the efficiency of separation depends on how fine the ore la is powdered it Is first carried through loom of belt belts where skilled kaars wrt sort out the rock rock Is used in the grinding further on the ore ts 13 then sent through great hammering machines each ham hammering machines mi chines each hammer weighing a ton it wu was so noisy in there that aou ou could not hear yourself think the powdered par tides are ar continually carried off by water the me last blinders grinders are big horizontal cylinders cylinder the rock the kaffir sorted out Is used in them thern they looked like a lot of 0 giant roll ing pins revolving on and on 1 ast st waiting for action sixty percent ot of the fold gold Is caught on ordinary cor car duroy cloth the rest Is sent on to the cyanide process the llie cloths are washed and the tile washing sent oer a sloping table which sends the entirely separated gold into drums containing mercury reducing it to a grayish greyish white powder out but after it I 1 Is heated and the mercury daiv en off it looks like a yellow sponge the gold cold Is then melted in a crucible the melted gold told looking for all the world like a flame it Is poured into moulds and made into bricks of 1000 ounces or roughly rough ay 61 62 tto th can you ima imagine how rich I 1 fa felt trying to lift two brick bricks of wi gold orth BOOM dollars |