Gold in the Hills

In the side of a valley a large piece of bedrock had cracked away, split by the roots of an ancient fig that had expanded in a crack on their tenacious search for water. What drew Campbell, the geologist, to the site was the way the rock had split off at its base.

“Piri”, he called to his local bearer. “Follow me down here, bring a water bottle.”

He dropped over the edge of the ledge clinging to the roots that formed his only hold and slid clumsily down to the broken rock. His surefooted bearer followed more gracefully and landed softly beside him.

“Suh?” asked Piri. “What is it?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe we’ve got something here.”

The rock had cracked horizontally along a dark green seam in the rock, darker than the greenish tint that made up the main colour of the rock face. Campbell took a small pick from his belt and tapped at the thin line carefully collecting the chippings in a small piece of linen. When he thought he had enough he turned to Piri.

“Wash this gently.” Piri dribbled water onto the cloth as Campbell moved it slowly back and forth. The dust began to separate out. Tiny glittering specks began to collect at the bottom of the cloth sieve and Campbell intense face softened to a broad grin.

“Thank your gods, Mr Piri. We’ve struck gold!”

Piri whistled softly as he looked down at the shining flecks that were unmistakably the precious metal. “Cuulwa malinzhi eeci? How much?” he asked.

“This, just this, could be worth five pounds”, responded Campbell scratching the waste to one side and carefully wrapping the cloth and stowing it in his belt pocket. “But in there, who knows?” It was Campbell turn to whistle as he waved expansively at the rock face.

Still with only a permit to prospect, Sovereign took a big risk and invested huge capital in building a supply road to the site. They brought in heavy equipment, forged in the distant steelworks of Sheffield, to the location on heavy trucks. Cheap labour, locally recruited reduced their costs a little but the place was remote and the going tough. The water was unreliable and they needed huge amounts to feed the washing process. Using just picks and shovels, local labourers piled rocks on to small carts from deep in the hillside and manually pushed them along steel rails to the shaft entrance. It was dry, hot and dusty even down in the dark mine. When a miner got sick he was shipped out and a replacement found. There was no healthcare or welfare.

The machinery turned day and night, and miners worked in shifts to feed the rocks and stones into the pounding hammers of the crusher. Men fell exhausted on their makeshift beds to sleep fitfully through the endless monotonous thumping that echoed through the hills.

The seam of gold continued deep into the valley floor protected by hard unforgiving rock. It yielded up tiny amounts of the precious metal, barely enough to cover the costs of the work but Campbell remained resolutely optimistic in his reports back to the London head office. In a report in early 1939 he detailed that “the initial seam is still producing regular small amounts of high quality mineral and there is likelihood that further sources will be found shortly given the nature of the fissures in the bedrock being exposed.”

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