Original Research

Mount Anderson: South Africa’s forgotten gold rush in the first decades of the 20th century situated in regional historical and geomorphological context

Jane Carruthers

Received: 11 Nov. 2025; Accepted: 05 Mar. 2026; Published: 28 May 2026

Copyright: © 2026. The Author. Licensee: AOSIS.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Abstract

Major localities that first attracted gold seekers from many parts of the world to the Transvaal in the 1870s and 1880s were along the river valleys that intersect the great eastern escarpment that rises high above the lowveld. The history of alluvial gold mining in the eastern region of South Africa has received attention from scholars of mining engineering, mine management and economics, as well as from academics in the fields of geology, mining and mineral legislation. In particular, it has also fascinated the popular reading market because of romantic tales that chronicle the excitement of a digger serendipitously finding a large gold nugget lying in a riverbed. The larger alluvial mining sites in Mpumalanga, like Pilgrims Rest, Sabie, Barberton and Kaapsche Hoop, are no longer commercially worked, having long been superseded by the deep-level riches of the Witwatersrand. However, the unexplored history of many small alluvial gold discoveries is worth recording. It is the purpose of this article to contextualise the little-known Mount Anderson gold rush of the early 20th century within the broader historical and geological background of the area, and to bring these small mines to wider attention as part of South Africa’s regional industrial heritage.

Contribution: In combining the disciplines of history and geology, this article highlights a little-known goldfield at Mount Anderson. It provides information about the locality and the extraction of gold from its small mines that operated until well into the 20th century.

Keywords: Mpumalanga; Mount Anderson; gold mining; goldfields; small-scale mining; economic history; geology; geomorphology.

Introduction

The eastern escarpment of South Africa, abruptly descending into the lowveld around Mashishing (Lydenburg), in Thaba Chweu Local Municipality, Mpumalanga Province, is dominated by the imposing peak of Mount Anderson, 2284 m high and 12 km north-east of the town. This is an extremely rugged landscape, the magnificent scenery characterised by rocky outcrops, ravines and crags. Lying within the Lydenburg Montane Grassland biome, its Afromontane flora has links to the Zimbabwean highlands to the north and to the Southern Drakensberg to the south. The climate is subalpine, with high rainfall (800–1200 mm per year), subject to frequent heavy mists, fierce winds and winter night-time temperatures that frequently reach -6°C to -8°C, whilst lows of -10°C to -15°C are not uncommon.¹ In 1990, Mount Anderson was declared a water catchment reserve because its grassy bogs and sponges are the sources of numerous rivers that flow both to the east and west, providing high-quality and life-giving water vital to downstream communities.²

As will be explained later in this article, undergirding the area is a complex geology that determined its geomorphology and impacted its patterns of settlement and its mining activities. As was to become clear when 19th-century geologists began exploring, this area is rich in minerals, gold amongst them. The first gold rushes in the vicinity occurred in the 1870s and 1880s.³ However, it was later, in the 1920s and 1930s, that Mount Anderson had a brief gold rush of its own, as is elucidated here. The environmental consequence to the landscape was considerable. Many abandoned workings of these small mines remain visible on the ground, providing a window into what digging for riches in this hostile landscape entailed. This micro-history has been overshadowed by romantic tales of early diggers in the Zoutpansberg, Sabie, Pilgrims Rest, Barberton, Kaapsche Hoop and other alluvial fields,⁴ as well as by the immense deep-level riches of the Witwatersrand. For this reason, this little-known – indeed generally forgotten – gold rush is worth recalling. Whilst the older popular literature on the earlier goldfields is well established, academic scholarship is thin, and has been dominated by the Witwatersrand mines, the impact of which determined the country’s wider history, technical development and labour relations.⁵ Minor regional mines – like Mount Anderson – the legacy of which is marginal, and even the more significant Pilgrims Rest, Barberton and Kaapsche Hoop, have not attracted academic historians in any number.⁶ For this reason, the work of Tempelhoff on Eersteling is worth noting as a rare example, and one which this article seeks to emulate.⁷ Moreover, in light of the current changing rural economy around the Mount Anderson area, and the development of recreational facilities, environmental conservation, and rising interest in matters of heritage, it is hoped that this article provides a window into its mining and industrial heritage value.

Precolonial settlement

The whole region has a wealth of precolonial history, and there is abundant evidence of settlements, stone walls, granaries and ancient terrace cultivation. Close to Mount Anderson lies one of the most significant archaeological sites in South Africa that yielded the Early Iron Age enigmatic terracotta Lydenburg Heads, discovered in the 1960s and dated to around AD 500–700.⁸ The area was also long occupied by the Late Iron Age Bokoni and Pedi people.⁹ In the lower reaches of the Ohrigstad River valley on Mount Anderson, one can see the ruins of dense settlements which, although now overgrown with vegetation, still show the typical central cattle pattern. Gold, together with ivory, hides and beads, was an item of trade long before the colonial era, and a close analysis of precolonial mining activities in this area would repay careful study.

Colonial occupation

Modern mining activities in this area began after land had been formally allotted to white settlers in the mid-19th century. At that time, attracted by ivory and other products of the hunt, as well as freedom from British hegemony, emigrating Voortrekkers established the village of Lydenburg in 1850 after Ohrigstad, founded in 1845 and situated a little further north, had been abandoned on account of endemic malaria and livestock diseases.¹⁰ Lydenburg gave its name to the short-lived Boer republic that eventually combined with three others to become the Zuid–Afrikaansche Republiek (ZAR) in 1864.¹¹ This precipitous mountainous region of the eastern Transvaal was unsuitable for settler pastoralism, whilst the Pedi, one of the most powerful African polities in eastern southern Africa, fiercely defended the homeland from intruders. For these reasons, colonial settlement was slow in the mid-19th-century, accelerating however, in the 1880s when the Pedi had been defeated and with the advent of mining.

The name of Mount Anderson commemorates Irish brothers William Alfred Blackburn Anderson and Harry Mitchell Anderson, who were land surveyors in the ZAR (officially registered in 1870 and 1873 respectively). In 1883, William Anderson surveyed the boundaries of the farm Hartebeesvlakte 155 (163JT),¹² which borders on Mount Anderson, the peak that bears his name.¹³ Converging around the peak to the north and west are settler farms that, in the early 20th century, supported several small, but productive, mines that are described here. In earlier decades, and at a time when the Transvaal as a political entity was rich in land – having wrested it from indigenous communities – but poor in monetary or other wealth, the government granted large farms to civil servants in lieu of paying salaries to them. State land was also easily available, with the simple confirmation of a grondbrief affirming evidence of ownership.¹⁴

One such farm is Kranskloof 143 (554KT), some 3415 morgen, that lies north of Mount Anderson, taking its name from its sheer cliffs [krantzes] and ravines [kloofs] and given to Jacobus Johannes Burgers on 22 May 1875.¹⁵ In 1886, after Burgers’s death, it was acquired by its second owners, Schalk Burger and Abel Erasmus, two famous 19th-century Transvaalers, who were at first joint owners, but who later (in 1895) subdivided the property. Burger was a politician, Boer general and acting president of the ZAR from 1900 to 1902 during the exile of President Paul Kruger.¹⁶ His partner, Erasmus, was a hunter, trader and much-feared Native Commissioner. In the gold rush of the 1870s, Erasmus became wealthy through property transactions in the Lydenburg area. By 1896, he had acquired Krugerspost from his parents-in-law and owned portions of Kranskloof, Weltevreden 878 and Grootboom 864.¹⁷ Thereafter, in 1903, having been financially ruined in the South African War (1899–1902), Erasmus sold his portion of Kranskloof to Hugh Romilly Abercrombie, Boer sympathiser, Pretoria businessman, author, lawyer and investor in numerous mining ventures.¹⁸

With its southern apex at the peak of Mount Anderson lies Kliprots 614 (158JT and 558JT), 3625 morgen, also aptly named for the stony [klip] and rocky [rots] terrain. At 2238 m, Kliprots peak is almost as high as Mount Anderson. The first owner, Lourens Jacobus de Lange, was granted the farm in 1885 amid disputes around boundaries and ownership status.¹⁹ De Lange also acquired Finsbury 621 (156JT) – west of the peak – in the same year, apparently having been told it was gold-bearing.²⁰

Another property near the summit is Goedverwacht 660 (152JT), 3676 morgen in extent, its name (meaning ‘good expectations’) indicative of its gentler topography. In 1886, this farm was allocated to Jacobus Marthinus Prinsloo, although the archives suggest that the family had occupied it since the 1870s.²¹ Other farms surrounding Mount Anderson to the south are the much smaller Mount Prospect 159JT, Mountain Top 161JT, Little Joker 157JT and Formosa 203JT. In the period dealt with here, these remained unallocated government ground (see Figure 1).

FIGURE 1: Part of sheet 6 of the Jeppes’ six-sheet map of the Transvaal, 1899, showing Lydenburg and the farms around Mount Anderson at the time of their proclamation and early in the 20th century.

Gold rushes of the 19th century

As is well known, the first rich gold strike of the 19th century occurred in Coloma, California, in January 1848, precipitating a worldwide mania to find more. Diggers infected with gold fever flocked in thousands to potential goldfields around the globe. These ‘rushes’ were often driven by, or informed by, the geological theory of Sir Roderick Murchison, the eminent and influential Scottish geologist who headed the British Geological Survey from 1855 until 1871, and who founded, and was four times president of, the Royal Geographical Society. Murchison postulated that gold had been infused into quartz veins within the deformed rocks of Silurian strata and had then been slowly eroded into fairly shallow surface deposits, primarily alluvial in situation and mainly in riverbeds, having been washed down with silt and accumulated debris.²² The consequence of following this theory was that rocky river and stream beds were targeted by gold-seekers.

Local men were also caught up in this gold fever. Pieter Jacob Marais, son of a wealthy Paarl man, was amongst the first. As a youth, Marais travelled the world searching unsuccessfully for alluvial gold before returning home and venturing into the Boer republics, where no prospecting had yet been done. In October 1853, he found what he called ‘a few specs [sic] of gold’ at the confluence of the Jukskei and Crocodile rivers near Broederstroom (today a plaque commemorates the site), and subsequently panned along the Braamfontein Spruit, a tributary of the Jukskei River in northern Johannesburg.²³

By the 1860s, rumours of gold in the southern African interior were already circulating, and the region gained increased attention from prospectors. With them came improved knowledge of the regional geology. Some of the earliest work was done in the 1860s and 1870s by German explorers Carl Mauch,²⁴ Friedrich Huebner²⁵ and Emil Cohen.²⁶ At that time, geology in the German states was well advanced because of good technical education and institutional support linked to the mining industries of central Europe.

In 1865, Mauch, then a schoolteacher in Natal, arrived in Rustenburg. From there, he travelled extensively, noting and collecting rocks and minerals, and mapping his routes meticulously. Owing to his efforts, the first map of the Transvaal was compiled in collaboration with Friedrich Jeppe and Alexander Merensky in 1868.²⁷ Then, on the banks of the Tati River – a tributary of the Shashe River in present-day Botswana – Mauch found gold. This was announced in the Transvaal Argus in December 1867,²⁸ and the Tati diggings were soon crowded with hopeful entrepreneurs. In fossicking around riverbeds, working with a theory like Murchison’s, Mauch had postulated that the Sabie and Mashishing areas would also contain gold, and he set off to explore there, becoming the first known white person to prospect around the area of Mount Anderson.²⁹

By the late 1860s, the Transvaal government had become more secure in its internal political control over the region, but it was extremely poor. Once the Boer factions had reconciled and the civil war had ended (1864), finding gold, or other precious metals and minerals, seemed to offer a solution to filling the empty coffers and buffering a worthless local currency. In 1866, President Marthinus Wessel Pretorius lifted the ban on prospecting,³⁰ and the Volksraad passed Resolution 5 that year, regulating mining for the first time.³¹

Following Mauch’s prediction that the eastern part of the Transvaal would be rich in gold, in 1869 and 1870, Edward Button, a Natal Settler who had worked with Dr Peter Sutherland, the geologically inclined Surveyor-General of Natal,³² and James Sutherland,³³ a Californian miner, discovered gold around the Murchison and the Sutherland ranges. These did not, however, prove economically viable. Button and his party continued their search, finding payable gold in 1871 in the malaria-ridden Soutpansberg, at Eersteling, near Marabastad, lying between what was then Potgietersrus (Mokopane) and Pietersburg (Polokwane). As Tempelhoff explains, diggers quickly made their way there.³⁴

Discovering and working the Lydenburg Goldfields

In 1873, in the words of Owen Letcher, ‘came the first really important gold discoveries at MacMac, Pilgrims Rest and Sabie, and from these discoveries grew annexations and wars and a development, which could not be gainsaid or repressed, of the extensive auriferous deposits of the Transvaal’.³⁵ The area was opened as a public diggings in May 1873 and named the Lydenburg Gold Fields because it was located in that landdrost district, although it was a distance of some 60 km from the town of that name, indeed a day’s horse ride away or a 2-day trek with loaded wagons.³⁶ Apparently, the Landdrost at first ‘viewed the discovery with interest and excitement, but later with perturbation and alarm, when the discovery of gold was followed by an influx of diggers from all parts’.³⁷ Within a few months, alluvial gold was discovered to the north-east of Mount Anderson on the farms Graskop 27, Geelhoutboom 220 and Ponieskrans 1351 (Pilgrim’s Rest).³⁸ Soon the rush began in earnest, and before long, every nook and cranny in the valleys below the escarpment had its share of diggers. Most of these newcomers were English-speaking colonists from Natal and Australia, or citizens of the British Isles – all of them energetically working in rivers and streams.³⁹

Both Kaplan and Van der Schyff remind us that Roman Dutch law, introduced to the Cape with the Dutch East India Company in the 1600s, contained very little relating to mining. The Transvaal Republic thus had to devise its own legislative path in this regard.⁴⁰ In 1871, the first Gold Laws in the Transvaal were published,⁴¹ and these reserved gold mining as a state enterprise controlled through a Commissioner of Mines. More laws and Volksraad Resolutions followed between 1872 and 1877, further defining the respective rights of landowner, the miner and the state – some focussing on regulating specific mining areas.⁴² However, in many accounts as has often been recited, exciting as these finds were, they were not enough to improve the economy of the ZAR, and the country remained an impoverished agrarian state, one ‘based on a barter or near barter economy in which money was chronically scarce’, civil administration basic and communications rudimentary.⁴³

In 1872, Pretorius was replaced by Thomas François Burgers,⁴⁴ and the following year the new president paid his first visit to the Lydenburg diggings.⁴⁵ Burgers and his government, badly in need of access to the gold which was being mined – and this area seemed to offer the first sign of payable gold – were amenable to compromising with the demands of the cosmopolitan digger population, and improvements in the administration of, and legislation applying to, the goldfields, followed.⁴⁶

However, 5 years later, in 1877, without resistance, the Transvaal was annexed by Britain. Burgers had been an ineffectual leader, the Transvaal was near bankruptcy, and the Republic’s wars against the Pedi had been unsuccessful and expensive.⁴⁷ According to Frederick Fynney, who accompanied Sir Theophilus Shepstone into the Transvaal, once under British administration, improved economic development, effective administration and easier mining conditions could be anticipated.⁴⁸

After the First Anglo–Boer War had ended (1880–1881), the London Convention of 1884 restored full independence to the Transvaal, and by then the Pedi threat – owing to British military assistance during the annexation period – had abated. The renewed state remained in dire financial straits and dealt with this situation by replacing much of the earlier mining legislation with a vigorous policy of concessions to mining companies – essentially granting potentially lucrative monopolies.⁴⁹ Then, in 1884, a profitable alluvial strike was made in Barberton. With easier pickings along the riverbeds and valleys, and with new discoveries being made, there was little interest in prospecting or exploiting the inaccessible high ground of Mount Anderson. Two years later, the extraordinarily rich and geologically complex goldfields of the Witwatersrand were discovered, changing the nature of the game entirely.

Geological context

The arrival of men searching for gold and therefore familiar with rocks and minerals increased the knowledge of Transvaal geology.⁵⁰ A great deal of modern, reliable scientific information is readily available, and it is pertinent here to provide only a brief outline in order to understand how the Mount Anderson gold rush aligns with the wider geological history of goldfields in the region.⁵¹

In essence, the present professional consensus seems to be that some 3000 million years ago, Mount Anderson lay buried beneath a shallow inland sea.⁵² The seabed consisted of barren granite, the Archaean Complex of the Kaapvaal Craton, argued to be the Earth’s first sizeable continent. Over the aeons, a portion of this continent began to subside and sediment that eroded from the surrounding higher ground accumulated in the depression. This initiated the formation of the Transvaal Supergroup that included a great variety of mainly sedimentary rocks, amongst which are those on Mount Anderson that bear ripple marks of the sandy seabed.

The initial deposits (i.e. the lowest) consisted of gravel, sand and mud flats in deeper water. This group of strata is known as the Black Reef Formation, in which there are sporadic gold occurrences. The Black Reef can be seen along the edge of the eastern escarpment, and elsewhere, and it has been mined for gold at Kaapsche Hoop, Pilgrims Rest, the East and West Witwatersrand, as well as at Kromdraai, Tweefontein and Sterkfontein, near Krugersdorp.⁵³ It is closely associated with the second sedimentary layer which, unlike the Black Reef, contained bacterial life and which became dolomite and chert. At the time of its deposition, the region would have appeared something like the Australian Great Barrier Reef but deposited by photosynthesising bacteria (cyanobacteria) rather than corals.⁵⁴ This layer also contains some gold and was mined at Pilgrims Rest and Sabie.⁵⁵

Subsequent depositions consist of interbedded quartzite and shale. Sand washed down onto the seabed eventually crystallised into extremely hard quartzite rock. This alternated with shale between the quartzite tiers to become the Pretoria Group millions of years later, and in four definable stages. The first, lowest stage is the fine-grained Timeball Hill Formation. In the Mount Anderson area, Timeball Hill quartzite appears at the Devil’s Knuckles on Long Tom Pass. Above this quartzite lies the Daspoort Formation, which outcrops on Mount Anderson, and it is in this layer that a few rich seams of gold were found. Then follows the Magaliesberg Formation, and finally, the narrow uppermost layer of the Smelterskop Formation, each with a separating deposit of shale between them.

Scattered gold deposits are to be found in the Black Reef Formation, the dolomites, and the Pretoria Group, and four mining areas cluster around Mount Anderson in these Formations. Firstly, close to Sabie, the mines are in dolomite and shale. Secondly and thirdly, in Pilgrim’s Rest and in the Vaalhoek–Bourke’s Luck mining area, they are in the dolomite and chert. Fourthly, around Mount Anderson itself, where the ore deposits are bound in the strata of the fine-grained quartzite reefs of the Daspoort Formation. The Mount Anderson mines appear mainly to be of the flat reef type, but there are also deep, narrow excavations which might indicate reefs that are lens-shaped.

Some 2000 million years ago, this slow deposition process was massively disrupted by the enormous upwelling of liquid magma, giving rise to a layer about 7 km thick and known as the Bushveld Complex. At Mount Anderson (and elsewhere), this brought to the surface what is called the Dullstroom Formation, composed primarily of basaltic andesite lava flows.⁵⁶ Although extremely weathered, the upper parts of the peak of Mount Anderson consist of such lavas – amygdaloidal andesite – and it is this intrusion which produced a second escarpment above the first. Mount Anderson thus rises above the platform of shale and dolomite which surrounds it. On the eastern slopes of Mount Anderson, there is a succession of some nine layers of rock.⁵⁷

The Bushveld Complex is one of the most highly mineralised areas in the world, and there are numerous mines that currently operate productively around Mashishing as well as in the Steelpoort and Dwars River valleys to the west. Mount Anderson itself contains goethite (which appears as golden crystals within quartzite) and titanite, which, although a common mineral, is not often encountered in the form of the large crystals on Mount Anderson, and is found embedded in the granite bedrock now exposed through weathering and erosion.⁵⁸ The exposed layers of quartzite and shale weathered at different rates and, eventually, the harder quartzite protruded as a series of long ridges separated by valleys. What is popularly referred to as the Transvaal Drakensberg in Mpumalanga is an escarpment consisting of a broad shelf of the Pretoria Group, unrelated to the Drakensberg in KwaZulu–Natal.⁵⁹ Around the main centre of the Bushveld Complex, magma was injected through vertical cracks in the rock mass and formed dykes, especially along layered bedding planes, forming sills. The accompanying heat generated the deposition of quartz and some gold. These bedding parallel intrusive sheets can be seen on Hall’s cross-section as ‘db’ (see Figure 2).⁶⁰

FIGURE 2: Section across Kranskloof, near Kruger’s Post, N. of Lydenburg (Daspoort Quartzite Horizon).

In 1905, Ivar Thord–Gray was amongst a number of geologists who had begun to understand this sequence, and who described in some detail what was then the contemporary geological interpretation of Mount Anderson.⁶¹ Thord–Gray wrote:

On the farms Nooitgedacht 945, Finsbury 621 and Goedverwacht 660, some 15 miles east of Lydenburg, three reefs are exposed, the lower one being approximately 3,500 feet above the base of the series. In upward order, we find on Nooitgedacht the Davidson Reef 280 feet above the stream which is 4,800 feet above sea level. It is made up of sandy grey shale, copper and iron pyrites, hematite (which is also found with a small botryoidal structure), pure and impure varieties of quartz, clay-slate and mica; malachite and azurite are also found in places. Some 230 feet above the Davidson Reef the ‘Button Reef’ occurs and, excluding the mica, its composition is practically the same as that of the Davidson Reef. About 1,180 feet above the point of the stream of which altitude has been given we find on farm Goedverwacht 660 the ‘Upper Reef’, which is also exposed on Finsbury 621 and Paardeplaats 556. It is composed principally of quartz, hematite, and – in places – of magnetite altered into hematite.⁶²

According to Wilfrid J. Wybergh, a mining engineer trained at the renowned Mining Academy in Freiberg in Sachsen, and who was then (1925) a senior official in the Department of Mines – and as explained by Thord–Gray – there are three gold-bearing formations on Mount Anderson. Firstly, there are the interbedded reefs (Finsbury or Sterkspruit Reef, Button Reef and Davidson Reef), secondly, vertical leaders, and thirdly, alluvial deposits. The interbedded reefs occur mainly on Nooitgedacht, high above the Spekboom River. In addition, they occur on the farms Formosa and Little Joker. The Button Reef is also evident principally on Nooitgedacht, and Wybergh anticipated that working this particular reef would require a considerable amount of stoping (viz. the opening of underground rooms, or stopes, as the ore is excavated).⁶³

By 1895, the age of the individual digger was coming to an end and well financed large mining companies controlled the industry in this area. It was around this time that mining concessions were applied for on the Mount Anderson farms. P.D. de Villiers, the local field cornet was perhaps the first to apply for a government concession to dig for gold on Goedverwacht in 1885.⁶⁴ As the century came to a close, mining rights on other properties around Mount Anderson, including Kliprots, Finsbury, Paardeplaats and Nooitgedacht, had been acquired by the Lydenburg Mining Estates Ltd,⁶⁵ one of the precursors of the Transvaal Gold Mining Estates Company.⁶⁶

Mining at Mount Anderson in the 20th century

When peace was restored after the South African War in 1902, prospectors returned to the Transvaal. By this time, however, the Witwatersrand mines dominated the gold mining industry, and it was clear that those in the eastern Transvaal held little promise of any long-term prosperity. In the early years of the 20th century, the main problem for operating a mine in the Lydenburg region was the lack of transport. Although the motor car and the railway between Graskop and Sabie arrived in about 1914, aerial ropeways remained the major way of moving ore from the mountainside to the stamp mill.⁶⁷ Power supplies came principally from water turbines and benefited mines situated near water. The Transvaal Mines Department Report of the Geological Survey for 1906, The Geology of the Central Portion of the Lydenburg District between Lydenburg and Belvedere, noted that most of the rivers joining the Blyde River from the east drained the quartzite shelf of the Black Reef and the Department advised, in particular, that economic attention should be directed to the auriferous zone on Nooitgedacht, viz. at Mount Anderson.⁶⁸

Mount Anderson developed as a goldfield in consequence of several factors. Although small traces of gold had been discovered on the high ground and concessions to work it had been granted in the 1880s,⁶⁹ these farms were too remote, too rugged, and their gold deposits too small and difficult for diggers to exploit at that time, particularly when there were easier pickings elsewhere.⁷⁰ However, with the outbreak of war in 1914, the demand for resources, including minerals, increased. There was thus renewed interest in Mount Anderson. Only Nooitgedacht, however, seemed to show real economic potential, and portions of the farm were proclaimed a public digging and called the Mount Anderson Goldfield.⁷¹ This development attracted considerable publicity, and in 1914, the Secretary for Mines and Industries placed the following notice in the Government Gazette and local newspapers to remind prospectors of the hardships that lay before them:

Warning is hereby given to prospectors and all other persons proceeding to Mount Anderson, district Lydenburg, Mining District of Pilgrims Rest, Transvaal Province, that communications in the district are difficult and that shelter and stores almost unattainable. Persons are consequently advised not to go into the district unless well provided with the necessities of life and suitably equipped to withstand a rigorous climate.⁷²

The isolated and remote location of the Mount Anderson fields impacted the diggings from the outset. In 1918, the Minister of Mines visited Lydenburg to hear complaints from the mining community there. As his record on file at this time revealed, the Mount Anderson eluvial (deposits near the point of origin) fields seemed to be reaching their peak, and good finds of gold were being made. However, the diggers told the Minister that they could not sell their gold because sales permits had to be obtained from the Mining Commissioner in Pilgrims Rest – a considerable distance away. The Minister tried to ease the situation by allowing such selling to take place, provided that the Lydenburg bank and the Mining Commissioner communicated by telephone on the matter.⁷³

The Mount Anderson fields were extraordinarily difficult to work. Prospectors and diggers had the hope of reward to spur them on, but they said that they found it extremely difficult to attract African labour to this isolated, remote and inhospitable highland area.⁷⁴ Regrettably, however, for this period, the archival sources of the Department of Mines are silent on the matter of Black labour on Mount Anderson. There is but one mention, and it is couched as a bland statement in The Annual Report of the Government Mining Engineer for the year ended 1934, noting an accident on Little Joker Mine in which a Black miner was killed. The name of the miner is not recorded, nor are any details of the circumstances of his death. As the Mount Andersson mines were ‘one-man’ operations or small groups of men working some considerable distances apart from one another on very small-scale mines, there was no communal labour force or organised accommodation, and each miner employed his own labour. The formal records do not indicate the number of Black miners on Mount Anderson, or details of regular labour or inspections other than beacons and pegs. Nor do they suggest how labour was recruited or retained by these individual mining enterprises. The white miners themselves were described by the Beacon Inspector as ‘a poor lot’.⁷⁵ However, it is noted that the white official, the Beacon Inspector, the civil servant whose task it was to inspect claim beacons regularly, found his duties extremely miserable, and no doubt the same could be said of the Black labourers – and their employers – who shared this remote and rugged environment.

In 1915, workings had begun on Finsbury, Nooitgedacht and Natalshoop, and prospecting was being done on the surrounding farms. The inspector therefore had to spend days on end on the mountaintop and, as he informed the Secretary of Finance:

… the work is at present very heavy, as, in addition to farms already been worked, there are at least three farms in an active state of prospecting and it has therefore been recommended to the Public Works Department that they should erect a small hut and suitably furnish it. A tent would be useless as wind and rain would render it practically useless within a few weeks, apart from the fact that it would have hardly ever have time to dry.⁷⁶

His report continued:

… climatic conditions up there are such that it is impossible for me to do my work without some place to stay and work in. My work up there is so heavy that I am … often up there for a week or more up to five or six weeks at a time. Whilst staying there recently, we had to shift from camp to camp practically begging for food and shelter. The diggers too are on the whole a poor lot, and in any case their accommodation is too limited to accommodate strangers or officials for more than a day – even so it is a tax on them in the matter of food.⁷⁷

For months, the Public Works Department, whose contractors were also reluctant to work in Mount Anderson’s mist and cold, refused to build a small hut for the Beacon Inspector, but after pressure from the Mining Commissioner in 1914, a modest dwelling was finally agreed to.⁷⁸ A few years later, in 1925, another Beacon Inspector, P.J. Roux, noted that:

I had to dispose of my motorcycle which had covered more than 2 100 miles and was becoming ruinous in upkeep expenses, besides being inadequate for the work in this district … Efficient transport is urgently needed here. There are numerous surveys and inspections outstanding and it is essential to keep in touch with the numerous prospectors. Hired animal transport is almost impossible to obtain and moreover unreliable and slow, and the charges for motor transport are extortionate.⁷⁹

An indication of the situation in the early 1920s can be gleaned from correspondence in the files of the Department of Mines and Industries dating to 1921. A.B. Rollins, who lived in Nigel, had written to enquire whether ‘capital of £200 would be sufficient for two men to embark on operations sufficient to provide a steady living’. The Department’s reply on file with this letter was discouraging:

I have the honour to inform you that these diggings are very small in extent, and although they contained some rich patches of gold shed from leaders, these are now worked out and the chances of discovering further such patches are not sufficient, in the opinion of the Department, to justify a stranger to the fields, risking the capital required to proceed there and start prospecting – the rich patches of gold which have been struck have all been very small in extent and derived directly from the decomposition of a local leader, and the calling of these areas alluvial gold fields creates an entirely false impression.⁸⁰

It seems, however, that in 1925, there was still gold to be had. According to the local claims inspector:

More especially Mr Wilfrid de Lorme, who, when sober, works his extraordinarily rich leader [on Nooitgedacht]. He tells me that within the past two weeks he had taken out some 200 ounces of leader gold, in fact, on Friday last he turned up at my Sabie office with a tobacco tin full of native leader weighing some 26 ounces and asking me to give him the necessary permit to sell the same to the Sabie Bank, evidently to provide him with sufficient funds to enable him to have, as he calls it, a glorious bust and then back to work again …⁸¹

In November 1925, the Beacon Inspector reported that all the creeks had been pegged in anticipation of the rainy season and that diggers were poised to begin their panning operations despite – as the report stated, a shortage of African labour. The Inspector’s report also noted that many of these operations were extremely small, but there was a number of them, operated by, for example, F. Mathews, M.G. Taute, C.A. Garreau and F.P. Neve. In addition, this same report referred to one D. Poland, of Lydenburg, who ‘has a diminutive one-stamp-battery operated by a native turning a handle’. The Inspector also made the point that one Schoeman, had to stop work because of the labour shortage, ‘and has gone to the Platinum Fields’.⁸²

In 1925, Wybergh surveyed the area, and his report provides a contemporary assessment of these mines. He noted that this field was of minor economic importance, particularly because gold was being found only in extremely inaccessible places. He explained that the reefs which were being worked at Mount Anderson were in the Pretoria Group between the Timeball Hill and Daspoort Formations. Furthermore, they were in vein quartz and consisted of flat lodes which had become exposed at the top of the summit between an altitude of 1500 m – 1800 m. The Finsbury reef, he noted, outcropped on Finsbury and Nooitgedacht, and could also be traced on Formosa and Little Joker (which were worked by several miners). On the boundary of Formosa and Mount Prospect, the reef appeared still to be the Finsbury and was being worked by a small company called Mountain View Mine (leased by G.P. de Jager and others in 1934).⁸³

The fact that different kinds of reefs were being worked on the diggings around Mount Anderson and that a variety of ways were used to extract the gold can be seen in the extant diggings on Mount Anderson, some of which are shallow whilst others are deep adits.⁸⁴ Vertical parallel quartz leaders on the farms Formosa and Mountain Top seem to have been rich in gold. The claims of Messrs Forest and Williams on Mount Prospect, and the O’Donovan Brothers on Nooitgedacht (between 1918 and 1922),⁸⁵ were being worked on four parallel leaders with well-defined walls of shale. An anecdote recounted by Cartwright in Valley of Gold concerns the O’Donovan brothers and indicates the serendipity of this goldfield. Cartwright recounts that the pair were butchers in Lydenburg who were on their way to Glynn’s Mine at Sabie to tender for the meat supply and they took an old track over Mount Anderson to get there. Near the summit, they off-saddled to rest their horses and sat down to smoke a pipe. Whilst doing so, one man noticed that glistening in the grass near the feet of his brother, Joe, lay a large gold nugget. They quickly pegged 20 claims, carried all their equipment up the mountain, and found gold amongst the roots of the grass before hitting a rich vertical leader that yielded a good return over the next 2 years.⁸⁶

Although underground reefs were being actively worked, there was still some alluvial gold, probably shed gold from local leaders. The main alluvial workings were on Finsbury, where several diggers working systematically had apparently brought satisfactory results. Mining Commissioner Wybergh observed that the gold was coarse and typically alluvial, mentioning that nuggets up to several ounces were found.⁸⁷

In part, the search for minerals throughout the Transvaal in the 1920s accelerated because in 1924, Hans Merensky (1871–1952), later regarded as the greatest prospector and analyst of mineral deposits in South Africa’s history, had alerted the world to the enormous mineralization of the Bushveld Complex and to the possibility of finding quantities of rare and valuable minerals – particularly platinum – throughout its extent.⁸⁸ However, the fall in the price of gold that accompanied the depression of the late 1920s brought many companies to their end. One of them was the Mount Anderson Gold Mining Company, which existed between 1927 and 1929. Mount Anderson Alluvials was finally liquidated in 1936 when the directors were unable to pay an outstanding amount of £123.1.3 to C. N. Hurly, the company’s secretary and public officer.⁸⁹

South Africa’s economic depression ended once the country joined Great Britain and others in abandoning the gold standard at the end of December 1932, a controversial political move at the time. The price of gold rose at once and continued to rise steadily. Naturally, this increase brought small mining operations back into the picture, and Mount Anderson received a boost. In the late 1930s, the BBS Sindikaat, owned by a few men in Lydenburg, was working on Kliprots.⁹⁰ In 1933, a discoverer’s certificate was issued in respect of a portion of Kranskloof, owned by Abraham Burger. Soon, the claims of Burger and his partner William Swanepoel, which had been pegged in 1932, were bought out by a company named Golden Hill Mines.⁹¹

The major force behind Golden Hill Mines appears to have been Lawrence Allen Lever, described as a mining engineer. After a life of unsuccessful mining in many places in the Transvaal, and moving in and out of various companies, when he died in 1943, there were insufficient funds even to pay for the advertisements of his estate.⁹² In 1943, Kliprots also passed into the ownership of Transvaal Gold Mining Estates. However, by this time, and with World War II in progress, any real energy had gone out of these mines.

Post mine closure: Timber and trout

Mining never seriously resumed at Mount Anderson, although previous mineral licences remained in force until their expiry. In the early 1990s, compilation diagrams then housed in the Mining Titles Office in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, indicated that Anglo American Prospecting Services held precious metal licences on Kranskloof, as did Theo Potgieter Gold Mine (Pty) Ltd, and a number of individuals. There was also a record of other rights on this farm. As far as Kliprots was concerned, at this date, there were numerous claims, the first pegged in 1926, the last in 1986, the earlier ones having lapsed.⁹³

The Mount Anderson goldfield and its reefs, Nooitgedacht, Davidson, Button and Formosa, have left their mark on South African mining history. The most productive area was around Mount Anderson, which is surrounded by a continuous line of outcrop. This mine is said to have attracted more attention and yielded more than any other flat lode in the Daspoort Formation.⁹⁴ The environmental and industrial legacy of mining in this rugged area can be seen in the detritus left in the landscape – the piles of rocks, collapsed stone walls, the abandoned bits of metal and worn implements – as well as the heavily disturbed soil and vegetation.

Mining no longer plays a part at Mount Anderson, except as heritage tourism. The economy of this highland region has shifted to trout-fishing and tourism. The farms on which gold was found are now luxurious recreational retreats, the nearby rivers and impoundments stocked with trout.⁹⁵ In addition, the Mpumalanga Heritage Association arranges visitor tours to the old mines in the Spekboom River valley from time to time, and Finsbury boasts a small mining museum for guests.⁹⁶ Other regional environmental changes are even more evident. The lower levels of the escarpment and around Pilgrims Rest and Sabie are no longer renowned for their yellow gold but for their green gold in the form of forestry plantations, mainly species of pine, that cover the hills and make a substantial contribution to the economy of Mpumalanga and to the country more generally.

Conclusion

This micro-history of Mount Anderson, and particularly the period of its mining past, is important to understanding the underrepresented diversity of heritage in the region and to the little-explored history of land-use and small-scale mining in South Africa.

Acknowledgements

I acknowledge with tremendous gratitude the voluntary work of author and compiler Dr Cornelis Plug, whose meticulous open-access S2A3 Biographical Database of Southern African Science is an invaluable tool for any researcher on the history of science in South Africa. The biographies, with references, of every scientist mentioned in this article can be accessed via https://www.s2a3.org.za/bio/Main.php. I would also like to acknowledge the late Dr Michael Dale, who was of great assistance with my research in the mining titles office in Johannesburg and who did much to broaden my understanding of mining and mining legislation. Professors Terence McCarthy and Bruce Cairncross, both eminent academic geologists, kindly read a draft of this article and made many helpful comments, as did Vincent Carruthers. I also thank David Evans who, many years ago, invited me to visit Mount Anderson and originally encouraged this research. I am also grateful to Duncan Ballantyne, chairman of the Mount Anderson Catchment Nature Reserve, and who has been involved in the area for many years, and shared his research into the Spekboom river valley mines.

The author declares that no financial or personal relationships inappropriately influenced the writing of this article.

Jane Carruthers: Conceptualisation, Methodology and Writing – original draft. The author confirms that this work is entirely their own, has reviewed the article, approved the final version for submission and publication and takes full responsibility for the integrity of its findings.

This article followed all ethical standards for research without direct contact with human or animal subjects.

The researcher received no special grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

The author declares that all data that support this research article and finding are available in this article and its references.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and are the product of professional research. It does not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated institution, funder, agency or that of the publisher. The author is responsible for this article’s findings and content.

References

Footnotes

1. L. Mucina and M.C. Rutherford, eds., “The Vegetation of South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland.” Strelitzia 19. (Pretoria: South African National Biodiversity Institute, 2006), 403-04.

2. Mountain Passes South Africa: Goudvelde Pass. https://www.mountainpassessouthafrica.co.za/find-a-pass/mpumalanga/595-goudvelde-pass.html.

3. A.P. Cartwright, Valley of Gold (Cape Town: Howard Timmins, 1973); A.R.C. Fowler, “Mining at Transvaal Gold Mining Estates, Limited 1872–1967,” Journal of the Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy 68, no. 7 (1968), 7–11, 291–335.

4. See, for example, books by T.V. Bulpin, Lost Trails of the Transvaal (Cape Town: Howard Timmins, 1956); The Golden Republic (Cape Town: Howard Timmins, n.d.); Lost Trails on the Low Veld (London and Cape Town: Hodder & Stoughton and Howard Timmins, n.d.); Cartwright, Valley of Gold.

5. For the Witwatersrand see for example: J. Davenport, Digging Deep: A History of Mining in South Africa (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2013); E.N. Katz, “Revisiting the Origins of the Industrial Colour Bar in the Witwatersrand Gold Mining Industry, 1891–1899,” Journal of Southern African Studies 25, no. 1 (1999), 73–97; E.N. Katz, “The Underground Route to Mining: Afrikaners and the Witwatersrand Gold Mining Industry from 1902 to the 1907 Miners’ Strike.” The Journal of African History 36, no. 3 (1995), 467–89; A.E. Payne, H. Pirow, and F.G.A. Roberts, “Historical Review of Mining Conditions on the Witwatersrand and the Changes Which Have Taken Place Since the Early Days of the Fields,” in Silicosis: Records of the International Conference Held at Johannesburg, 13–27 August 1930, International Labour Office (London: International Labour Office, 1930), 107–28; D.R. Petterson, “The Witwatersrand: A Unique Gold Mining Community,” Economic Geography 27, no. 3 (1951), 209–21; P. Richardson and J.-J. Van Helten, “The Development of the South African Gold-Mining Industry, 1895–1918,” Economic History Review (1984), 319–40; C. Van Onselen, New Babylon New Nineveh: Everyday Life on the Witwatersrand, 1886–1914 (Johannesburg and Cape Town: Jonathan Ball, 2001).

6. See: P. Bonner and K.A. Shapiro, “Company Town, Company Estate: Pilgrims Rest, 1910–1932,” Journal of Southern African Studies 19, no. 2 (1993), 171–200. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057079308708365; A.R.C. Fowler, “Mining at Transvaal Gold Mining Estates, Limited 1872–1967,” Journal of the Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy 68, no. 7 (1968), 291–335; R. Peacock, “Geskiedenis van die Lydenburgse Goudvelde tot 1881 [History of the Lydenburg Gold Fields up to 1881],” PhD thesis, University of Pretoria, 2008; A. Mabin and G. Pirie, “The Township Question at Pilgrims Rest, 1894–1922,” South African Historical Journal 17, no. 1 (1985), 64–83. A. Mabin, “The Land Clearances at Pilgrim’s Rest,” Journal of Southern African Studies 13, no. 3 (1987), 400–16; G.H. Pirie, “Public Administration in Pilgrims Rest, 1915–1969,” New Contree 20 (1986), 27–32; G.A. Watermeyer, “Mining and Surveying in Barberton,” South African Journal of Science 30, no. 7 (1933), 20–27; C.R. Anhaeusser, The History of Mining in the Barberton Greenstone Belt, South Africa, with an Emphasis on Gold (1868–2012) (Johannesburg: Economic Geology Research Institute School of Geosciences, University of the Witwatersrand, 2012).

7. J.W.N. Tempelhoff, “Eersteling: Bakermat van die Suid-Afrikaanse Goudmynbedryf [Firstborn Cradle of the South African Gold Mining Industry],” New Contree 9 (1981), 5–11. For early literature see: F. Jeppe, “The Kaap Gold-Fields of the Transvaal,” Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record of Geography, (1888), 438–46; F. Jeppe, “The Zoutpansberg Goldfields in the South African Republic,” Geographical Journal (1893), 213–37.

8. T. Maggs and P. Davison, “The Lydenburg Heads,” African Arts 14, no. 2 (February 1981), 28–88; G. Whitelaw, “Lydenburg Revisited: Another Look at the Mpumalanga Early Iron Age Sequence,” The South African Archaeological Bulletin 51, no. 164 (1996), 75–83.

9. For details see for example: P. Delius, T. Maggs, and A. Schoeman, Forgotten World: The Stone-Walled Settlements of the Mpumalanga Escarpment (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2014); P. Delius, ed., Mpumalanga: History and Heritage (Pietermaritzburg: UKZN Press, 2007); P. Delius, The Land Belongs to Us: The Pedi Polity, the Boers, and the British in the Nineteenth-Century Transvaal (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1983).

10. P. Delius and R. Cope, “Hard-Fought Frontiers: 1845–1883,” in Mpumalanga: History and Heritage, edited by P. Delius (Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2007), 137–39.

11. Delius and Cope, “Hard-Fought Frontiers,” 137–39.

12. The original farm numbers given here are taken from F. Jeppe and C.F.W. Jeppe, Jeppe’s Map of the Transvaal or S.A. Republic and Surrounding Territories, 1:476,000 (London: Edward Stanford, 1899). And from the Alphabetical Index to Farms of the Transvaal, compiled by Hugh F. Marriott (Johannesburg: Argus Printing and Publishing Co., 1904). In later decades, new numbers were applied which included letters indicating the registration district, e.g. JT. Names and numbers can be correlated through the Deeds Office or Chief Directorate: National Geo-spatial Information (NGI) within the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development.

13. TAB (Transvaal Archives Depot) SS 160 R1479/73; SS 160 R1478/73; SS 292 R24447/78; SS 120 R277/70; MHG 0/8158 1893. William Anderson surveyed Pretoria in 1878 during the British annexation. In 1875, he was recorded as a Director of the Nil Desperandum Co-operative Quartz Company to mine gold in a quartz reef on William Jennings’s farm Bluebank (Blaauwbank) in what is now the Cradle of Humankind. In the 1880s, he spent some time on the Barberton goldfields and became a well-known and wealthy resident of Johannesburg. Harry lived in Pretoria and Anderson Street in Brooklyn is named after him.

14. S. Trapido, “Reflections on Land, Office and Wealth in the South African Republic, 1850–1900,” in Economy and Society in Pre-Industrial South Africa, edited by S. Marks and A. Atmore (London: Longman, 1980), 350–68.

15. It is unclear from the archival record whether the first owner, Burgers, is a misspelling of Burger and perhaps a relative of Schalk Burger, a later owner of Kranskloof. See survey document Oct. 1902 Deed of Grant 926/1875.

16. J.M. Schoeman, “Burger, Schalk Willem,” in Dictionary of South African Biography, Vol. 2, edited by W.J. de Kock and D.W. Krüger (Pretoria: HSRC, 1972), 633–34. An opponent of Paul Kruger, Burger was Volksraad member for Lydenburg in 1886 and a delegate to the National Convention in 1910. He chaired the 1897 Industrial Commission of Enquiry into the Mining Industry.

17. P. Delius, “Abel Erasmus: Power and Profit in the Eastern Transvaal,” in Putting a Plough to the Ground: Accumulation and Dispossession in Rural South Africa, 1850–1930, edited by W. Beinart, P. Delius, and S. Trapido (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1986), 176–217; A.P. Van der Merwe, “Erasmus, Jacobus Abel,” in Dictionary of South African Biography, Vol. III, edited by D.W. Krüger and C.J. Beyers (Pretoria: HSRC, 1977), 275–76.

18. A. Harington, “Abercrombie, Hugh Romilly,” in Dictionary of South African Biography, Vol. 4, edited by C.J. Beyers (Pretoria: HSRC, 1981), 1–12.

19. TAB SS R563/85 records a protest from A.H. Nellmapius that the government had already given Finsbury and Kliprots to one R.C. Green, as per grondbrief advertised in the Staats Courant No. 198, 6 Nov. 1884 (this is probably Robert Cottle Green, of Market Street, Pretoria, who was involved in the Nil Desperandum Co-operative Quartz Company mining at Blaauwbank in January 1875); TAB SS R1410/84 records an 1884 query from Hubert Juta concerning his concession on Little Joker of which further details are not known; in 1884, Carl Jeppe recorded “Concept concessie op Gouvernements grond ‘Golden Hill’” to O. van Niekerk, see TAB SS R5174/84.

20. Pretoria, Deeds Office, Farm record books. See also TAB SS 1118 R5274/85 grondbrief in respect of L.J. de Lange for Finsbury TAB SS R563/85; R504/85; R505/85, R804/85.

21. See TAB SS R3736/85 and Deed of Grant 410 of 1886.

22. See R.I. Murchison, Siluria: A History of the Oldest Fossiliferous Rocks and Their Foundations (London: J. Murray, 1839).

23. P.N.A. Coates, “Pieter Jacob Marais’ Search for Gold in the Transvaal,” New Contree 22 (1987), 31–33; W.B. Van der Vyver, “Marais, Pieter Jacob,” in Dictionary of South African Biography, Vol. 2, edited by W.J. de Kock and D.W. Krüger (Pretoria: HSRC, 1972), 445–6.

24. C. Mauch, The Journals of Carl Mauch: His Travels in the Transvaal and Rhodesia, 1869–1872, edited by E.E. Burke (Salisbury: National Archives of Rhodesia, 1969).

25. F.A. Huebner, S2A3 Database of Scientists. https://www.s2a3.org.za/bio/Biograph_final.php?serial=1350.

26. E. Cohen, Erläuternde Bemerkungen zu der Routenkarte einer Reise von Lydenburg nach den Goldfeldern und von Lydenburg nach der Delagoa Bai im östlichen Süd–Afrika [Explanatory Notes on the Route Map of a Journey from Lydenburg to the Goldfields and from Lydenburg to Delagoa Bay in Eastern South Africa] (Hamburg: L. Friederichsen, 1875).

27. J. Carruthers, “Friedrich Jeppe: Mapping the Transvaal c. 1850–1899,” Journal of Southern African Studies 29, no. 4 (2003), 955–76.

28. O. Letcher, The Gold Mines of Southern Africa: The History, Technology and Statistics of the Gold Industry (Johannesburg: The Author and Watlow & Sons Ltd., 1936).

29. Mauch, The Journals of Carl Mauch, 71–80.

30. A.N. Pelzer, “Pretorius, Marthinus Wessel,” in Dictionary of South African Biography, Vol. 1, edited by W.J. de Kock (Pretoria: HSRC, 1968), 648–54.

31. L.V. Kaplan, “The Development of Various Aspects of the Gold Mining Laws in South Africa from 1871 until 1967” (PhD diss., University of the Witwatersrand, 1985), xiv; E. Van der Schyff, “South African Mineral Law: A Historical Overview of the State’s Regulatory Power Regarding the Exploitation of Minerals,” New Contree 64 (2012), 131–53, 139.

32. Edward Button, S2A3 Database of Scientists, https://www.s2a3.org.za/bio/Biograph_final.php?serial=439.

33. James Sutherland, S2A3 Database of Scientists, https://www.s2a3.org.za/bio/Biograph_final.php?serial=2766.

34. Tempelhoff, “Eersteling [First Child],” 5–11.

35. Letcher, The Gold Mines of Southern Africa, 49. See also W.H. Penning, A Guide to the Gold Fields of South Africa, with Map (Pretoria: J.F. Cilliers, 1883), 49, and K.F. Wynne, “The Discovery, Administration, and Development of the Goldfields in the Eastern Transvaal until about 1886” (MA diss., University of Pretoria, 1934).

36. Kaplan, Development of Various Aspects of the Gold Mining Laws, xi; “Regulations for the Lydenburg gold Field, Volksraad Resolution 22 October 1873, Art. 193.” See also Van der Schyff, “South African Mineral Law”; E.F. Sandeman, Eight Months in an Ox-Waggon: Reminiscences of Boer Life (London: Griffith and Farran, 1880), 212–20.

37. Wynne, “Discovery, Administration, and Development of the Goldfields,” 6.

38. Wynne, “Discovery, Administration, and Development of the Goldfields.”

39. Fowler, “Mining at Transvaal Gold Mining Estates”; Peacock, “Geskiedenis van die Lydenburgse Goudvelde [History of the Lydenburg Goldfields]”; J.U. Swiegers, “The Gold Deposits of the Pilgrims Rest Gold Mining District, Transvaal,” South African Journal of Geology 51, no. 1 (1948), 81–132; Bonner and Shapiro. “Company Town.”

40. See Kaplan, Development of Various Aspects of the Gold Mining Laws; Van der Schyff, “South African Mineral Law.”

41. Kaplan, Development of Various Aspects of the Gold Mining Laws, xi.

42. See for example “Table of Gold Laws and Related Volksraad Resolutions,” in Kaplan, Development of Various Aspects of the Gold Mining Laws; 1872 Regulations for Marabastad: 1872 Regelende de ontdekking, het Beheer, en bestuur van de Velden waarop edelgesteenten en edele metalen in dezen Staat gevonden worden; 1873 Regulations for Lydenburg.

43. J.H. Henry and H.A. Siepmann, The First Hundred Years of the Standard Bank (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), 50–51.

44. F.A. Van Jaarsveld, “Burgers, Thomas Francois,” in Dictionary of South African Biography, Vol. 1, edited by W.J. de Kock (Pretoria: HSRC, 1968), 133–37.

45. Wynne, “Discovery, Administration, and Development of the Goldfields.”

46. For laws and Volksraad resolutions relating to mining in the ZAR and later Transvaal see: Van der Schyff, “South African Mineral Law”; Wynne, “Discovery, Administration, and Development of the Goldfields”; Kaplan, Development of Various Aspects of the Gold Mining Laws. Kaplan’s thesis contains a table of the relevant legislation. During the Annexation period, no new mining legislation was promulgated.

47. Delius, The Land Belongs to Us.

48. F.B. Fynney, “The Geographical and Economic Features of the Transvaal, the New British Dependency in South Africa,” Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society of London 22, no. 2 (1877), 114–25.

49. Penning, A Guide to the Gold Fields of South Africa, 5; D.J. Pieterse, Die Geskiedenis van die Mynindustrie in Transvaal, 1836–1886 [The History of the Mining Industry in the Transvaal, 1836–1886], Archives Yearbook for South African History, Vol. 6 (Pretoria: National Archives of South Africa, 1943).

50. See, for example, M.G. Culshaw and A. Forster, “W. Henry Penning: A 19th-Century Applied Geologist,” Mercian Geologist 20, no. 2 (2021), 130–39.

51. Information in this section is based on the following sources: M.R. Johnson, C.R. Anhaeusser, and R.J. Thomas, eds., The Geology of South Africa (Johannesburg: Geological Society of South Africa and Council for Geoscience, 2006); and T. McCarthy and B. Rubidge, The Story of Earth and Life: A Southern African Perspective on a 4.6–Billion-Year Journey (Cape Town: Struik, 2005).

52. For information on early geologists and geological explorers in South Africa, see: A.W. Rogers, “The Pioneers in South African Geology and Their Work,” South African Journal of Geology 40, no. 1 (1937), 1–101.

53. V. Carruthers, Cradle of Life: The Story of the Magaliesberg and the Cradle of Humankind (Cape Town: Struik Nature, 2019), 43.

54. This episode is critically important, as it probably gave rise to the first free oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere.

55. See P.R. Janisch, “Gold in South Africa,” Journal of the South African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy 86, no. 8 (1986), 275.

56. P.C. Buchanan, W.U. Reimold, C. Koebert, and F.J. Kruger, “Geochemistry of Intermediate to Siliceous Volcanic Rocks of the Rooiberg Group, Bushveld Magmatic Province, South Africa,” Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology 144, no. 2 (2002), 131–43.

57. A.L. Hall, The Geology of the Pilgrim’s Rest Gold Mining District, Geological Survey, Memoir No. 5, 1910.

58. B. Cairncross and R. Dixon, Minerals of South Africa (Johannesburg: Geological Society of South Africa, 1995), 210, 248.

59. F.H. Hatch and G.S. Corstorphine, The Geology of South Africa (London: Macmillan, 1909). See also Hall, The Geology of the Pilgrim’s Rest Gold Mining District; T. McCarthy, How on Earth? (Cape Town: Struik Nature, 2012), 38, 138.

60. I am indebted to Bruce Cairncross and Terence McCarthy for their assistance with this section.

61. See also G.A.F. Molengraaff, Geology of the Transvaal (London: T. & A. Constable, 1904) and Hatch and Corstorphine, Geology of South Africa. Both books contain geological maps.

62. I. Thord-Gray, “Notes on the Geology of the Lydenburg Gold Fields,” South African Journal of Geology 8, no. 1 (1905), 66–81.

63. W.J. Wybergh, The Economic Geology of Sabie and Pilgrims Rest, Geological Survey, Memoir 23 (Pretoria: Department of Mines and Industries, 1925), 112–15.

64. TAB SS R3736/85; SS R6727/86; SS R411/73; SS R627/86, E.M. Meintjes to State President.

65. C.S. Goldmann, South African Mines: Their Position, Results and Developments. Vol. 2. Miscellaneous Companies (London and Johannesburg: Effingham Wilson and the Argus Printing and Publishing Company, 1895–1896), 32–33.

66. See also Cartwright, Valley of Gold; Fowler, “Mining at Transvaal Gold Mining Estates, Limited 1872–1967.”

67. Fowler, “Mining at Transvaal Gold Mining Estates, Limited 1872–1967,” 309–11.

68. Transvaal Mines Department, Report of the Geological Survey for the Year 1906: 73–100. “The Geology of the Central Portion of the Lydenburg District between Lydenburg and Belvedere.”

69. See, TAB SS 1091 R3993/85 awarding a concession on Nooitgedacht 945 to Hollard and Keet in 1885; SS 2463 R10656/90 mentions a mynpachtbrief on Nooitgedacht 945 to A.W. Baker in 1890.

70. A great deal of detailed information on the various Mount Anderson mines, the properties and their owners, is available in the Annual Report of the Government Mining Engineer, Department of Mines. See years 1906–1938.

71. See proclamation 11894, Government Gazette 331 dated 25 April 1894; Proclamation 25 of 1915 dated 16 March 1915.

72. SAB (Central Archives) MNW 253 MM2823/14.

73. SAB MNW 434 MM 2479/18.

74. SAB MNW 755 MM 59/25. P.J. Roux, Beacon Inspector Sabie to Mining Commissioner, Pilgrims Rest, 16 November 1925. Regrettably, as there is no information on the matter of Black labour, one can only assume that their living and working conditions were as bad as those for the White miners mentioned here, although one suspects that they were worse.

75. SAB MNW 755 MM 59/25.

76. SAB MNW 755 MM 59/25.

77. SAB MNW 755 MM 59/25.

78. SAB MNW 251 MM 2671/14.

79. SAB MNW 755 MM 59/25.

80. SAB MNW 586 MM2776/21.

81. SAB MNW 755 MM59/25.

82. SAB MNW 755 MM59/25. P.J. Roux, Beacon Inspector Sabie to Mining Commissioner, Pilgrims Rest, 16 Nov. 1925.

83. See SAB URU 1654 1591; SAB URU 1566 494, leasing Finsbury 367 to Mountain View syndicate; also, Wybergh, Economic Geology of Sabie and Pilgrims Rest, 112–15.

84. An adit (from Latin aditus an opening) is a horizontal passage to an underground mine.

85. Annual Report of the Government Mining Engineer, UG 38–19.

86. Cartwright, Valley of Gold, 135–36.

87. SAB MNW 755 MM59/25.

88. E.W. Machens, Platinum, Gold and Diamonds: The Adventure of Hans Merensky’s Discoveries (Pretoria: Protea Book House, 2009).

89. The chairman was J.F. Fourie and the registered address was 19 Rensburg Street Lydenburg. TAB TPD 8.847. Liquidation of Mount Anderson Alluvials.

90. Annual Report of the Government Mining Engineer, Department of Mines UG 13–1939.

91. Details of mining in this area and which companies were involved, can be found in the Annual Report of the Government Mining Engineer, Department of Mines UG 17–1935; UG 19–1937; UG 17–1938; UG 13–1939.

92. TAB WLD 256/1937. TAB MHG 974/43. Estate late L.A. Lever; TAB WLD 1082/1939, 1083/1939; TBD 5/120 RSC 31/1919. Relevant to Mount Anderson was the case of Golden Hill Mines Ltd. versus Johannesburg Gold Mining Corporation Ltd., in 1937 the latter being Burger and Swanepoel from whom Lever had bought the farm. It seems that there were difficulties in getting Lever to fulfil his contractual obligations, although both sides seem to have engaged in some questionable dealings. What is certain from the record, however, is that Golden Hill Mines was believed to have a significant future but instead petered out in 1940. Lever had bought the farm and the mine for £25 000 and had invested more money in it. In the event, an arbitrator was appointed to sort out the difficulties but any documentation that might have shed light on its demise have been lost.

93. Memorandum on results of research at the Mining Title Office in Braamfontein Johannesburg. Unpublished manuscript. I thank Alisha McKerrow for conducting this search on my behalf in November 1996.

94. E.C.I. Hammerbeck, “Gold Outside the Witwatersrand Triad,” in Mineral Resources of the Republic of South Africa, edited by C.B. Coetzee, Department of Mines, Geological Survey, Handbook 7, 5th ed. (Pretoria: Department of Mines, 1976), 89.

95. Finsbury Estate, https://finsbury.co.za/. Mountain Passes South Africa: Goudvelde Pass, https://www.mountainpassessouthafrica.co.za/find-a-pass/mpumalanga/595-goudvelde-pass.html; Nooitgedacht Trout Lodge and Hatchery, https://www.nooitgedachttroutlodge.co.za/; Rivendell Trout Estate, https://www.rivendelltroutestate.co.za/.

96. Nooitgedacht Trout Lodge and Hatchery, https://www.nooitgedachttroutlodge.co.za/; Finsbury Estate, https://finsbury.co.za/; Rivendell Trout Estate, https://www.rivendelltroutestate.co.za/; D. Ballantyne, A Brief History, Spanning 117 Years of the Discovery and Mining of Gold in the Spekboom River Valley, Lydenburg, 4th ed., 2025, Unpublished manuscript; Lowvelder 22 July 2022, https://www.citizen.co.za/lowvelder/news-headlines/2022/07/22/a-venture-into-the-hidden-spekboom-valley-with-mpumalanga-heritage-experiencing-2/.