The Stone Ages of South Africa. 59 



Vaal Eiver are two well-defined terraces of gravel, the longer one 

 usually being covered with a considerable thickness of loam." 



Mr. J. P. Johnson in a subsequent publication '■^'' qualifies this 

 statement, 



" All along the Vaal Kiver there are well-defined terraces. There 

 are usually two : the upper and older one consisting of a thick bed 

 of gravel; the lower and newer one being, as a rule, a stratum 

 of gravelly detritus lying at the base of a varying thickness of 

 alluvial loam." 



The two writers above quoted, when speaking of the Barkly 

 deposit and mentioning the extraordinary abundance in it of the 

 typical palaeolithic implements, " all but a very few equally rolled 

 being practically reduced to pebbles," state, inter alia : " At 

 Barkly, between the bridge and the village, the upper terrace is well 

 exposed in the old diggings. It lies at the foot of a ridge of hills, 

 hence the talus element is predominant, though the river gravel is in 

 evidence throughout." 



They found, together- with the rolled bouchers, " a few sharp 

 implements which led them to conclude that that deposit consists of 

 two distinct series, the one probably older, the other perhaps con- 

 temporaneous with, perhaps newer than the deposits." Unfortu- 

 nately, these "sharp" implements are not figured, and it is thus 

 impossible to traverse this conclusion, but we possess a good many 

 pieces from Barkly and its near neighbourhood. I have also seen a 

 good many besides those we own,t and I would certainly not differ- 

 entiate respecting the contemporaneity of a " sharp " implement, 

 like Fig. 53, of PI. VIII., a sharply wedged tool. Fig. 56, or an obtuse 

 boucher like Figs. 57 or 58 of PI. IX. 



Mr. A. L. du Toit, of the Cape Colony Geological Survey, who 

 has surveyed this very district, was kind enough, at my request, 

 to investigate this deposit, and this is what he wrote to me, accom- 

 panying his remarks with the following diagram given on next page. 



" There are several old river-terraces in the neighbourhood of 

 Barkly, one immediately above the present river-bed, and a second 

 from 30 to 40 feet above it as recorded by Messrs. Johnson and 

 Young ; this higher terrace is indicated at A on the accompanying 

 Fig. At B there is a gap in the hills through which a loop of 



* The Stone Implements of South Africa, 1908. 



t In the Bloemfontein Museum are three specimens found 40 feet deep in the 

 old course of the Vaal Kiver. Two are of the usual worn boucher-type, 100- 

 115 mm. in length ; the third is a small circular chip 22 mm. at its greatest 

 length. 



