Puesidknt's Addkkss — ^Skots. B and C. a") 



interest lie took in the work duriiii;- the whole fifteen years I spent in 

 Afriea. Often lie had to battle against much adverse influence to get 

 any geological work done. Dr. Atherstone's influence lives after him, 

 and the good work he did for South Africa in science, when there were 

 so few to fight on that side, entitles him to our lasting gratitude." 



In dealing with the title-subject of my address I find that I cannot 

 observe eitlier a chronological se(juence, noi- can T divide up mv matter 

 under persons or subjects. I have also to ask pardon for some latitude 

 in my interpretation of my title, as 1 shall include some material which 

 has l)een a\ailable to me, and which is too important historicallv to 

 pass over, although it does not strictly refer to the Grahamstown 

 pioneers. 



The first name on my list is that of staff"-surgeon Dr. Lawrence 

 Jamieson, who makes his fii-st appearance in the notes at my disposal 

 in 1828 on the arri\al of Dr. Atherstone in Grahamstown. To Dr. 

 Jamieson belongs the credit of ijiscovering the Kaiioo reptiles ; he 

 wrote a long account of the geology of the Eastern Province, which 

 appeared in the Grahamstown Journal for 1839. The account is not 

 now of much scientific value, although Dr. Jamieson seems to have 

 had a fairly good grasp of AN'erner's principles, and a knowledge of 

 mineralogy as expounded by Hausmann. There are a good many 

 observations of historic interest, but others were apparently imagi- 

 nary, and led to endless quests in after years ; there was especiall}' 

 the enormous trilobite which Dr. Jamieson described in a cave on the 

 Fish Ri\er, but it could never be found. Dr. Jamieson 's work, how- 

 ever, is important, as it stirred up people and led to their taking an 

 interest in rocks and minerals. A terrific newspaper war oiiginated 

 from Dr. Jamieson's writings, and at the time a controversy, " Geology 

 versus Theology," was waged with the greatest animation in Grahams- 

 town somewhat on the lines of the controversy which had been waged 

 at home on the same subject, and which had received so )nany malicious 

 fillips from the pen of Voltaire. 



In 182G (or, as Wilmot puts it, in 1828, but the former date is 

 the one in the published account in the Grahamstown Journal) 

 Andrew Geddes Bain and B. Biddulph, two Albany traders, set out 

 for the far north on an exploring expedition: they reached Letabaruba 

 near Kolobeng in Bechuanaland, but they had been pressed into the 

 service of King 8ibigho to fight against the dreaded Mantatees, who 

 were then threatening to advance south, and as a result the country 

 further north was closed to them. King Sibigho, however, had anklets 

 (>f virgin gold, which he had taken from a Mantatee chieftain, so that 

 the presence of the pi-ecious n\etal in what is now Rhodesia was first 

 made known by Bain. The account of the journey was originally read 

 before the " South African Institute " in Capetown, and a portion was 

 published in the organ of that society, the South A/ricau Quarterlij 

 Journal, which, however, became defunct before the rest was published, 

 sc) that the Grahamstown Journal account is the only complete one. 

 Besides discovering gold, Bain was shown the mountains where the 



