1873 £735 1874 4,710 1875 28,443 1876 (first six months) 13,650 ------- £47,538 ------- This sum can have done but little more than paid for the necessary transport of the machinery and other matters which have been carried up from the coast. It certainly cannot also have paid for the machinery itself. The bulk of the gold found has, however, been probably carried down to the coast at Fort Elizabeth or Capetown without any record. Such is all that I have to say respecting the Gold Fields of the Transvaal,--and it is very little. I did not visit them, and had I done so I do not know that I could have said much more. I conscientiously inspected many Gold mines in Australia, going down into the bowels of the earth 500 feet here and 600 feet there at much personal inconvenience, and some danger to one altogether unused to mining operations; but I do not know that I did any good by this exercise of valour and conscience. A man should be a mineralogist to be able to take advantage of such inspections. Had I visited Pilgrim Rest I could have said how the men looked who were there working, and might have attempted to guess whether they were contented with their lot;--but I could have said nothing as to the success of the place with more accuracy than I do now. The Transvaal is said, and I believe correctly, to be very rich in other minerals besides gold;--but the travellers in new countries are always startled by sanguine descriptions of wealth which is not in view. Lead and cobalt are certainly being worked. Coal is found in beds all along the eastern boundary of the country, and will probably some day be the most valuable product of the country. Did I not myself see it burning at Stander’s Drift? Iron is said to be plentiful in almost every district of the Colony and has been long used by the natives in making weapons and ornaments. Copper also has been worked by the natives and is now found in old pits, where it has been dug to the depth of from 30 to 40 feet. A variety of copper ornaments are worn by the Kafirs of the northern parts of the Transvaal who have known how to extract the metal from the mineral and to smelt it into pure ore. No mining operations in search of copper have, as I believe, yet been carried on by white men in the country. At an Agricultural Show which was held in 1876 at Potchefstroom, the chief town in the southern part of the Transvaal, prizes were awarded for specimens of the following minerals found in the country itself. Gold-bearing quartz, alluvial gold, copper, tin, lead, iron, plumbago, cobalt, and coal. The following is an extract from a report of the Show, which I borrow from Messrs. Silver’s South African Guide Book. “We believe there is no other country in the whole world