Next we find Mr. Melville Chater back on the South African railroad bound for the Witwatersrand Gold Mines at Transvaal, an eastern state on the coast. He details this journey in "The Transvaal: The Treasure-House Province," National Geographic Magazine, April, 1931.
The extensive South African railway system was developed to meet the needs of the gold and diamond mines. Mr. Chater's experience of a sleeping car and dining car reminds me of those in the movie, "Murder on the Orient Express."
Built on this gold mine of Witwatersrand, in 1931, the city of Johannesburg, Transvaal, was "the largest African town south of Cairo and the chief commercial plexus of the Union's hinterland, "Jo'burg" has a municipal area of nearly 82 square miles and some 300,000 people" (p 482). Annually, $225,000,000 worth of gold was produced there.
"Impressive" is an understatement of this immense mining operation. In 1931, this mine descended 1 1/3 miles below the earth's surface. 190,000 workers DAILY toiled in the "shafts, avenues, and streets totaling 4,000 miles" (p. 483). 90% were native Africans.
"Besides its gold and diamonds and its valuable deposits of asbestos, this province also mines platinum, coal, iron, copper, and other minerals" (photo caption, p 488).
Mr. Chater traveled by car through Kruger National Park, a nature "reserve containing two main herds of elephants and something like 500 full-grown lions, not to mention buffalo, leopards and hyenas" with only a revolver for protection (p. 501).
Chater also viewed zebras, many herds of deer, wildebeest, monkeys, baboons, giraffes, leopards and several of the lions he was hoping to see. "Generally. . .the park's deer species will stand, more surprised than fearful, regarding your car sidelong as if it were some strange creature . .having lived there undisturbed, generation after generation. . .they do not mistrust man" (p. 501).
After he left the reserve which is twice the size of Yellowstone National Park in the United States, Mr. Chater concluded, "Understandable by anyone who has seen the beauty and dignity of wild life in the forest, we felt we should never care to look upon a caged creature again" (p. 504).
Last, he entrained for Pretoria, the state's capitol. This was a pleasant and exciting trip through a most impressive South African state today.
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