180 



OTJIKOTO FOUNTAIN. 



After a day and a half travel we suddenly found ourselves 

 on the brink of Otjikoto, the most extraordinary chasm it 

 was ever my fortune to see. It is scooped, so to say, out of 

 the solid limestone rock, and, though on a thousand times 

 larger scale, not unlike the Etv-gryta one so commonly meets 

 in Scandinavia. The form of Otjikoto is cylindrical ; its di- 

 ameter upward of four hundred feet, and its depth, as we as- 

 certained by the lead-line, two hundred and fifteen — that is, 



OTJIKOTO FOUNTAIN. 



at the sides, for we had no means of plumbing the middle, 

 but had reason to believe the depth to be pretty uniform 

 throughout. To about thirty feet of the brink it is filled 

 with water.* 



* Shortly before reaching "Baboon Eountain" I should remark that, 

 at a place called Orujo, we saw a cavity of a similar shape, though on 

 an infinitely smaller scale. It consisted of a circular-shaped basin in 

 the limestone rock ninety feet in diameter by thirty in depth. As it 



