Silver Mine

The old mine tunnels into the mountain at Pniel was into solid rock and two hundred and fifty years was aa solid as the day it had been working. Lady Anne Barnard had recorded that the mine never actually produced any silver but when the shareholders, who included the then Dutch East India governor of the Cape began to get annoyed, the operator, a chap called Muller, melted down a few Rix dollars and presented that as the production to keep them quiet.
Muller's assertion that there was silver in the Simonsberg was greeted with excitement as the Dutch East India Company was finding the gold and silver it owned growing scarce and the suppliers in the Dutch East Indies were not prepared to accept any alternative in the form of promissory notes or commodities.
 Jimmy, my guide, asked if it looked possible for there to have been silver and I told him there were many signs of quartz and that could mean there was precious metal in the area.
The old shaft was barricaded off but I could still see down it and there was a wooden ladder of uncertain age hanging there, which Jimmy said I could climb down to the lower level. I had only a hand torch and having tried tricks like that with a proper mining lamp and new chain ladders  and found they didn't reach far enough and I had to climb all the way back up, I declined.
The pictures show the tunnel, one of the crannies where the workers had placed a candle, the shaft and a bit of a dyke that didn't even look worth sampling.

www.sullatoberdalton.com

Kersefontein

Having finished with Rickety Bridge, I was scratching around in my files when I found a note on Kersefontein farm on the Berg river. I've checked and it is still owned by the Melcks and is still taking visitors. The old house was originally built in 1740 but was bought by Martin Melck in 1770. Martin had emigrated to the Cape in 1740   to work for the Dutch East India Company when jobs were scarce in his native Prussia. He worked on the silver mine scam at Stellenbosch for a while (I'll get to that another day) but did well and when he won a contract to supply meat to the Company, he bought Kersefontein. While the farm is now a National Monument, the present owner, Martin works it as a mixture of farm and cowboy ranch.

www.kersefontein.co.za