Word Finder - rand

definition

The border of an area of land, especially marshland.

definition

A strip of meat; a long fleshy piece of beef, cut from the flank or leg; a sort of steak.

definition

A border, edge or rim.

example

At the wald's rand.

definition

A strip of leather used to fit the heels of a shoe.

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(basket-making) A single rod woven in and out of the stakes.

The Rand reefs, first mined in 1886, cover a large area.

Taylor, Political rand Constitutional History of Roane (1899).

The chief exports, not all products of the province, are coal, wool, mohair, hides and skins, wattle bark, tea, sugar, fruits and jams. The import trade is of a most varied character, and a large proportion of the goods brought into the country are in transit to the Transvaal and Orange Free State, Natal affording, next to Delagoa Bay, the shortest route to the Rand.

Two years later, in 1886, the Rand goldfields were proclaimed, and the tide of trade which had already set in with the Transvaal steadily increased.

Meantime it was agreed by the Cape, Transvaal and Natai governments that, subject to Natal entering the Union, its share of the Rand import trade should be 25% before and 30% after the establishment of the Union.

In that year the government sanctioned the building of a " steam tramway " - a railway in all but name - from the Boksburg collieries to the Rand gold mines.

A continuation of the Springs-Breyten line eastward through Swaziland to Delagoa Bay will give a second independent railway from that port to the Rand, some 60 m.

The principal gold-bearing reefs are found along the Witwatersrand (" The Rand ").

Probably connected with the Rand i For projected routes, shortening the journey between Europe and Johannesburg, see the Geog.

The British element is chiefly gathered in Johannesburg and other towns on the Rand and in Pretoria.

In 1905 when a full supply of labour was again available the output was 4,760,000 oz., in which year the sum distributed in dividends to shareholders in the Rand mines was over £4,800,000.

The Klerksdorp and Potchefstroom goldfields, known also as the Western Rand, were proclaimed in 1887 and up to the close of 1908 had yielded 446,224 OZ.

The reefs are narrower than those of the Rand, and the, ore is usually very hard.

There are extensive beds of good coal, including thick seams of steam coal near the Rand and other goldfields.

In 1887 coal was found at Boksburg in the East Rand, and a mine was at once started.

The principal collieries are those at Boksburg and at Brakpan, also on the East Rand, with a coal area of 2400 acres; at Vereeniging and Klerksdorp, near the Vaal; at Watervaal, 12 m.

The building and construction trade is an important industry on the Rand, where there are also brickworks, iron and brass foundries, breweries and distilleries.

The Witwatersrand municipalities are for certain purposes combined into one authority, and representatives of these municipalities, together with representatives of the chamber of mines, compose the Rand water board.

In 1883, before the Rand gold mines had been found revenue and expenditure were about £150,000; in 1887, when the mines were beginning to be developed, the receipts were £668,000 and the expenditure £721,000; in 1889 the receipts had risen to £1,577,000 and the expenditure to £1,226,000.

A local division of the Supreme Court, formerly known as the Witwatersrand high court (consisting of one or more judges of the Supreme Court) sits permanently at Johannesburg and has civil and criminal jurisdiction throughout the Rand.

In 1886 the Rand goldfields, which had just been discovered, were proclaimed and Johannesburg was founded.

From that time the gold industry made steady progress until the Rand gold mines proved the richest and most productive goldfield in the world.

The Delagoa Bay railway being at length completed to Pretoria and Johannesburg, Kruger determined to take steps to bring the Rand traffic over The Netherlands railway Drifts began by putting a prohibitive tariff on goods from the Vaal river.

Not to be coerced in this manner, the Rand merchants proceeded to bring their goods on from the Vaal by wagon.

They induced Alfred Beit, who was an old personal friend of Rhodes, and also largely interested in the Rand gold mines, to lend his co-operation.

In the absence of Charles Leonard, who had been sent as one of the delegates to Cape Town to interview Rhodes, Lionel Phillips, a partner in Messrs Eckstein & Co., the largest mining firm on the Rand, was elected chairman.

In November of 1901 the main body of the Uitlanders were allowed to return to the Rand.

Great Britain finally (in 1906) abandoning all her claims. The commercial depression was due to many causes; of these the most apparent was the shortage of labour at the Rand mines.

Finally, to enable them to work their mines to their full capacity, the Rand houses asked for leave to import Chinese labourers.'

The home government concurred, and during1904-1906over 50,000 Chinese were brought to the Rand on three-years' indentures.

General Botha was defeated at Pretoria East by Sir Percy Fitzpatrick, and at Georgetown - a Rand constituency - Mr Hull was beaten by Sir George Farrar.

As revenue flowed in from the gold-mines on the Rand many fine buildings were erected in the capital, which was placed in railway communication with Cape Town in 1893 and with Lourenco Marques and Durban in 1895.

The grateful perfumed powder abir or rand y is composed either of rice, flour, mango bark or deodar wood, camphor and aniseed, or of sandalwood or wood aloes, and zerumbet, zedoary, rose flowers, camphor and civet.

Large numbers of natives sought employment in Natal and at the Rand gold mines, and Zululand enjoyed a period of prosperity hitherto unknown.

In the vicinity is St Mary's (Anglican) parish hall (1905-1907), the first portion of a large building planned to take the place of "Old" St Mary's Church, the "mother" church of the Rand, built in 1887.

There are also on the Rand, and dependent on the gold-mining, three towns possessing separate municipalities - Germiston and Boksburg, respectively 9 m.

Characteristic of the Rand is the fine white dust arising from the crushing of the ore, and, close to the batteries, the incessant din caused by the stamps employed in that operation.

By far the most important addition to the Australasian product has come fromWestAustralia,which began its production in 1887 - about the time of the inception of mining at Witwatersrand ("the Rand") in South Africa-and by continuous increase, which assumed large proportions towards the close of the 19th century, was £6,426,000 in 1899, £6,179,000 in 1900, and L8,212,000 in 1905.

In 1907 during a period of severe and prolonged trade depression the imports had fallen to £5,263,930, but the exports owing entirely to the increased output of gold from the Rand mines had increased to £37,994,658; gold and diamonds represented over £37,000,000 of this total.

A variety of spices - the wealth of the land - are named on these altars, as rand, ladanum, costus, tarum, &c. Frankincense appears as luban, and there are other names not yet understood.

In 1886, the year in which the Rand mines were discovered, President Kruger was by no means a popular man even among his own followers; as an administrator of internal affairs he had shown himself grossly incompetent, and it was only the specious success of his negotiations with the British government which had retained him any measure of support.

He was appointed in 1900 chairman of a commission to inquire into the various concessions which President Kruger and the Rand had granted to companies and private individuals in the Transvaal, and to report which should be maintained and which annulled.

There flocked to the Rand many thousands of British and other Europeans, together with a considerable number of Americans.

Rhodes, who had large interests in the Rand mines, had consistently endeavoured to conciliate the extreme Boer section in the Transvaal and win it over (as had happened in the case of the Cape Dutch) to a policy which should benefit the whole of South Africa.

Mr Chamberlain still desired Kruger to grant immediate reforms and propounded a scheme of " Home Rule " for the Rand.

The first necessity was to restart the gold mining industry on the Rand.

The Uitlanders, who had fled from Johannesburg just before the war opened, began to return in May 1901, and by the time the war ended most of the refugees were back on the Rand and mining was resumed.

This depression was in considerable measure due to, and was largely aggravated by, the comparative inactivity of the Rand mines, and that inactivity was due in turn to the insufficiency of native labour - Kaffirs being employed to do all the unskilled work on the mines.

Then, too, an increasingly important factor was the competition of Louren90 Marques for the Rand trade.

An agreement between the Transvaal and the Portuguese governments, concluded in April 1909, while the fate of the draft constitution was still in doubt, assigned to Lourenco Marques 50 to 55% of the import trade to the Rand, and (with certain exceptions) provided for free trade in native products between the Mozambique province and the Transvaal.