The Gold Rush
Further information: Witwatersrand Gold RushGold was discovered in the Johannesburg area in 1886, setting off a mass migration of people from all over the world into the settlement to find gold. The new settlement was named after two officials of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republijk (ZAR), Johannes Meyer and Johannes Rissik, who both worked in land surveying and mapping. It is widely believed that the two men combined their common first name to which they added 'burg', the archaic Afrikaans word for 'fortified city'.
Read more about this topic: History Of Johannesburg
Famous quotes containing the words gold and/or rush:
“1st Murderer. Where’s thy conscience now?...
2nd Murderer. I’ll not meddle with it. It makes a man a coward.... It fills a man full of obstacles. It made me once restore a purse of gold that by chance I found. It beggars any man that keeps it. It is turned out of towns and cities for a dangerous thing, and every man that means to live well endeavors to trust to himself and live without it.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Is this then a touch? quivering me to a new identity,
Flames and ether making a rush for my veins,
Treacherous tip of me reaching and crowding to help them,
My flesh and blood playing out lightning to strike what is hardly
different from myself,
On all sides prurient provokers stiffening my limbs,”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)