512 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1914. 
Nothing is more fallacious than the old doctrine that evaporation 
and precipitation of moisture constitute a perfect cycle without the 
possibility of loss. Asa matter of fact the earth is sucking up moisture 
like a sponge, and a vast quantity each day penetrates the surface to 
subterranean depths from which no natural cause releases it again and 
where it is apparently beyond the reach of man’s utmost ingenuity. 
The recent geological history of Waterberg in this respect is 
extremely interesting and convincing. ‘That in quite recent geological 
times the major portion of its surface was covered by a great lake is 
a thing beyond question. The barrier of waters to the north was a 
plateau of which a portion still remains in situ. A few of the original 
islands, now strangely formed lamboidal hills, with wave marks 
still visible on their rocks, stand like a row of sentinels in the low 
country just beyond the edge of the plateau. From the south great 
rivers deposited their shingle on the shores and bottom of the lake. 
Some upheaval destroyed all the eastern portion of this barrier, and 
the confined waters escaped northward and eastward to form new 
rivers when the first floods had subsided. The shingle mixed with 
the lake sand was buried under the products of this eruption, and 
after being subjected to immense pressure, the lapidescent stuff was 
by another cataclysm released and scattered over the entire district, 
where it is now known as Waterberg conglomerate. On the highest 
hills and in the lowest valleys you find it studded with highly polished 
lacustrine pebbles, as if yesterday they had been taken from the 
water. Only on uninjured fragments of the plateau which once 
formed the heights above the lake shore you find none of it, but on the 
slopes of this high country, just below the surface, one finds layers 
of beautiful lacustrine shells sometimes 2 or 3 feet in depth. Since 
that debacle the geological history of Waterberg has chiefly been one 
of rapid desiccation. Broad over its surface lies the writmg which 
he who runs may read. There was.a time within the memory of 
white men, when every kloof and donga was the bed of a perennial 
stream of crystal water and the district generally was so marshy and 
“vals” as often to render a passage by ox wagon a hazardous under- 
taking. In those times was its present name bestowed on the dis- 
trict—a name that to-day seems to have originated in the bitter irony 
of some disappointed voortrekker. 
Even within the last half-century Waterberg was, to dwellers on 
the high veld, synonymous with a sort of lotus land of fertility, 
literally overflowing with milk and honey. So plentiful were these 
two emblems and proofs of fruitfulness that the good wives of those 
times fattened their pigs on a mixture of expressed honey and “thick” 
milk. Fruit, wild and domestic, was proverbial for size and plenty. 
1 On the farm Rietfontein No. 1944 a layer of these beautiful shells, of all shapes, were found at 26 feet. 
