ABSTRACT
In 1886, in the dry and dusty high veldt of South Africa, a man named George Harrison stumbled across an outcrop of gold. This accidental discovery had significant consequences. The remote farming region was soon transformed into a hive of activity: financiers and mining companies arrived from London and Amsterdam, as did tens of thousands of workers from other parts of southern Africa. The city of Johannesburg grew out of this gold rush. The deposit that lies below the metropolitan area has since produced, by some estimates, a third of all the gold ever mined. 1
