|
When gold was discovered in the Transvaal, first on the farm Eersteling, near Pietersburg in 1869, then at Sabie, Pilgrim’s Rest and Spitzkop, and finally in the Lowveld at what was to become the town of Steynsdorp, the prospectors began arriving.
The prospect of pegging profitable claims on the newly proclaimed gold fields banished all fear of lions, crocodiles, and malaria. They came on horseback, in wagons, and on foot. The wiser and wealthier adventurers formed wagon trains and followed the comparatively well demarcated wagon road that made its way down to Lydenburg or the hunters’ trail that led in the direction of the outspan that was to become
Nelspruit.
The less knowledgeable of these newcomers made for the coastal ports in an attempt to find a passage to Lourenco Marques, from where it was thought the 200 km walk to Sabie and Mac Mac could be made in less than week. However, those who attempted this route seldom made it to the foot of the Drakensburg unharmed and many would perish along the way – the inhospitable environment and terrain taking their toll.
In the long run it was gold, and the rumours of gold, that really opened up the
Lowveld.
Karl Gottlieb Mauch thought he had found a gold field on the Tati River and boosted the reputation of the Selati River where diggers ultimately found some gold, but very little of it. After that there were finds at Eersteling, near Marabastad in the Pietersburg district, at Sabie and on the farm Geelhoutboom where the Mac Mac diggings were ultimately established.
All of these ventures produced a small amount of gold nothing, however, being substantial. They gave their discoverers a handsome reward but they could not show enough gold to encourage capital expenditure, and soon petered out.
It was not until a digger, Alec Patterson, climbed higher up the mountain above Mac Mac and found a valley that the first payable gold field was found.
Patterson looked down at the little stream that ran through this valley and thought it might be worth prospecting. He panned on the banks of this stream and knew that he had at last “struck it rich” when he found a gleaming “tail” of gold in the pan. It was on that day in September, 1873, that South Africa’s gold mining industry was born.
The gold deposits in that Valley of Gold, which Patterson christened Pilgrim’s Rest, first provided some 1200 alluvial diggers with a reasonable income and later enabled a number of mining companies to work profitably. The most important of these, the Transvaal Gold Mining Estates, founded in 1895, eventually amalgamated all the various interests and continued to produce gold for 78 years.
The news soon went round the world and brought more than 1000 diggers to this valley and the surrounding country. This was followed by the Barberton boom and discovery of the great Witwatersrand deposit.
It was the early citizens of Pilgrim’s Rest who demanded, and finally helped build, a road down from the ledge on which this town is situated, to the Lowveld and Lourenco Marques. In the early days this became the wagon road that carried goods landed at Lourenco Marques to Barberton, Sabie, Pilgrim’s Rest and
Lydenburg.
See also: Gold links
|
