The Great Glacial Moraine of Permian Age in 

 South Africa. 



By Professor T. Rupert Jones, F.RS. 



It has often been pointed out that the mountains ranging along and 

 within the coast of the Cape Colony and Zululand, not only have a 

 general parallelism with that coast-line, but consist of parallel groups 

 of stratified formations of schist, sandstone, and conglomerate, with 

 some interruption of granite near the Cape itself, and with a vacant 

 space between Albany and Natal. The upstanding edges of these 

 bedded rocks westward from near the Cape pass in a curved line 

 northward to Naniaqualand. On the other side of the Cape they 

 continue into the Eastern Province until they are cut off by the 

 Indian Ocean, south of East London. Nevertheless, as they occur 

 again in the mainland south of, through, and beyond Natal, there has 

 evidently been a loss of the great eastern curve of the parallel ranges, 

 the extreme south-eastern angle of the bluntly triangular southern end 

 of the African continent having been removed by denudation and 

 erosion. 



One of the most important of these concentric stratified rocks is 

 the innermost band, known as the " Dwyka Conglomerate," probably 

 of Permian age. It ranges at about a hundred miles or more from 

 the sea in the country north of Cape Town ; and after bending eastward 

 at the Cape its distance from the coast is for the most part less than 

 a hundred miles, until it is cut off by the sea at Albany. When it 

 reasserts itself in Natal and Zululand it keeps parallel with, and at 

 no great distance from, the coast ; and, as in Albany and elsewhere, is 

 here represented by more than one band. 



Mr. A. G. Bain traced this peculiar rock-band from Albany to the 

 Cape (east to west, 450 miles), then on the curve to Toverberg, near 

 the junction of the Doom and Pataties rivers (50 miles), thence north 

 to Han tarn (350 miles). He also noticed two separate narrow masses 

 of this conglomerate to the south of its range, near the Cape, and 

 some parallel duplications, also on the south, in Albany. Thus Bain 

 knew it for about 800 miles in 185G. Since then its northern range 

 on the west side above Han tarn and eastward to Douglas (about 50 



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