74 Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 



a little before five o'clock, a rumbling, protracted, and moderately 

 loud sound was heard, but no shock was perceived. A few fleecy 

 stationary clouds were observed, which disappeared in the evening. 

 Many inhabitants were busy in pitching tents, and some in placing 

 wagons, in the squares of Cape Town, in wljich they slept during 

 some weeks. The night was very fine and calm, the sky without 

 clouds, and the stars shone uncommonly clear. 



Much interest was excited by what was said to have been ob- 

 served at Jan Biesjes Kraal, and at Blauweberg's Valley. It was 

 stated "that the earth had opened, that volcanic eruptions had 

 taken place, that craters had been formed, and that lava had issued !" 

 Numbers of persons flocked to these spots, and I went also on the 

 9th to examine them ; but what I found fell considerably short of 

 what I expected from the wonderful accounts I had heard, yet was 

 nevertheless remarkable and interesting. Near the Kraal I found 

 rents and fissures in the ground, one of which I followed for about 

 the extent of a mile. In some places they were more than an inch 

 wide, and in others much less. In many places I was able to push 

 into them, in a perpendicular direction, a switch to its full length, 

 of three or four feet. By the people residing in the vicinity I was 

 informed that they had observed these fissures on the morning of 

 the 5th of December, in some instances three and four inches wide, 

 and that one person had been able to push the whole length of an 

 iron rod, used to fix curtains upon, into them, and that others had 

 been able to do the same with whip-handles of even ten feet in 

 length. 



The house at the Kraal in question (the residence of a Mr. Bant- 

 jes) I found to have suffered so much, that it was not habitable, 

 and consequently had been evacuated. In the walls were numerous 

 clefts ; by which they were rent completely asunder, so that I could 

 put a stick from one side to the other in many places. The clefts 

 extended from the top to the bottom, and corresponded with fis- 

 sures in the ground. 



At Blauweberg's Valley, I found the sandy surface studded with 

 innumerable holes, resembling in shape, but in nothing else, craters 

 ia miniature. These holes were from six inches to a foot and a 

 half, and some even three feet, in diameter, and from four inches to 

 a foot and a half deep ; of a circular form, and the sides sloping to 

 the centre. They were lined with a crust of blueish clay, of about 

 a quarter of an inch in thickness, which had been baked by the 

 sun, and according to its nature had cracked and curled up in frag- 

 ments, which however adhered still to the sloping sides of the holes. 

 I reckoned seven of these holes, of different dimensions, in an area, 

 contained within a circle which I drew around me with a walking- 

 stick, and which might have been somewhat more than ten feet in 

 diameter. 



The appearance of the blueish baked clay, which had given rise 

 to the story w Uva ! was easily accounted for, from the rain (a 

 great quantity of which had fallen in the preceding season) having 

 been [prevented by the substrata from penetrating and sinking 



deep 



