Earthquakes at the Cape of Good Hope. 



from the wonderful accounts I had heard, yet was neverthe- 

 less remarkable and interesting. Near the Kraal I found rents 

 and fissures in the ground, one of which I followed for about 

 the extent of a mile. In some places they were more than an 

 inch wide, and in others much less. In many places I was 

 able to push into them, in a perpendicular direction, a switch 

 to its full length, of three or four feet. By the people 

 residing in the vicinity, I was informed, that they had 

 observed these fissures on the morning of the 5th December, 

 in some instances three and four inches wide, and that one 

 person had been able to push the whole length of an iron rod 

 used to fix curtains upon into them, and that others had been 

 able tc do the same with whip-handles of even ten feet in 

 length. 



The house at the Kraal in question, (the residence of a Mr 

 Bantjes,) I found to have suffered so much, that it was not 

 habitable, and consequently had been evacuated. In the walls 

 were numerous clefts ; by which they were rent completely 

 asunder, so that I could put a stick from one side to the other 

 in many places. The clefts extended from the top to the bot- 

 tom, and corresponded with fissures in the ground. 



At Blauweberg's Vallev, I found the sandy surface studded 

 with innumerable holes, resembling in shape, but in nothing 

 else, craters in miniature. These holes were from six inches, 

 to a foot and a half, and some even three feet in diameter, and 

 from four inches to a foot and a half deep ; of a circular form, 

 and the sides sloping to the centre. They were lined with a 

 crust of bluish clay, of about a quarter of an inch in thick- 

 ness, which had been baked by the sun, and according to its 

 nature had cracked and curled up in fragments, which 

 however adhered still to the sloping sides of the holes. I 

 reckoned seven of these holes, of different dimensions, in an 

 area, contained within a circle, which I drew around me with it 

 walking stick, and which might have been somewhat more 

 than ten feet in diameter. 



The appearance of the bluish baked clay, which had given 

 rise to the story of lava ! was easily accounted for, from the 

 rain (a great quantity of which had fallen in the preceding 

 season) having been prevented by the substrata from pene- 

 trating and sinking deep into the ground, so that under the 

 sandy surface, a considerable quantity of water had collected, 

 in which a portion of the substratum of clay had become 

 dissolved, and which had been forced up through the loose 

 sand, by the concussions which took place. 



The people at Blauweberg's Valley, stattd, that "they saw 

 jets of coloured water spout from these holes, to the height of 

 six feet, in the night of the 4th of December, at the time i 

 the shocks were felt." 



