The discovery of gold in the Witwatersrand hills and the Transvaal region of South Africa sparked a rush in the late 1880s. Competition between the British and Boer settlers for access and control of this valuable commodity was one of the underlying causes of the second Anglo-Boer war (1899–1902) in which the British eventually won control of the territory. In this work, published in 1898, the mining engineer and Fellow of the Geological Society of London John Yates outlines the state of the booming industry on the eve of war. He discusses the work of key companies and includes technical specifications and illustrations of the equipment used in the new gold mines, such as the shafts, mills and cyanide works. An appendix by his fellow engineer Hennen Jennings addresses the question of government assistance in subsidising the huge start-up costs of these mining projects.