GOLD RUSH PIONEER

Southland Times, Issue 21091, 24 May 1930, Page 3

GOLD RUSH PIONEER

MAN WHO FOUND MILLIONS. One of the four original discoverers of the Rand goldmines, which have been valued at £200,000,009, has been found living in penury in a remote part of the Transvaal. He is Samuel Honeyball, who for long has been believed to be dead. Shaggy and unkempt, he tells how, with Frederick Struben, the original finder, he beat the quartz in an old tin to extract the gold. To-day he has only a pension of 12s 6d a week, half of which goes in rent. Mr Struben now lives at Spitchwick Manor, near Ashburton, Devonshire. When the news was telephoned to him he said: “I barely remember the name of Honeyball.” Forty-six years, however, have elapsed since the great gold rush. Mr Struben, who is a man of 80, told recently how he led the rush in 1883. If his faith in the newly-found goldfield had been shared by his companions, he said, the whole Rand territory might have been bought for a song. In the vanguard of the rush was a companion of Honeyball’s, who died recently worth millions—Sir J. B. Robinson.