10 BECHUANALAND 



ranges, while the granite country is flat and usually 

 covered with a thick layer of sand. The trend of these 

 northern ranges coincides with the strike of the rocks. 

 The longest range is one made by the Lower Griqua 

 Town beds ; commencing in the Prieska Division as the 

 Doornbergen with a north-westerly trend they send a 

 branch northwards at Prieska which becomes the As- 

 bestos Mountains in Hay with a north-north-east course 

 for 125 miles; near Daniel's Kuil they bend round and 

 take a northerly course for some twenty miles, then 

 they trend north-north-west for more than sixty miles ; 

 beyond the valley of the Kuruman Kiver the range is 

 not a continuous feature, but low hills rising out of the 

 sand at intervals represent it, and they have a northerly 

 trend to beyond Heuning Vlei ; near Skelek they bend 

 round to north-east and east-north-east. This long 

 range is formed by the escarpment of the Griqua 

 Town beds facing the limestone plateau of the Kaap, 

 which lies to the east of it. Its sinuous course is typical 

 of all the structural lines in Cape Colony north of the 

 Karroo and east of the southern Kalahari, though the 

 analogous curves shown by the flatter-lying Black 

 Reef beds to the east are more accentuated, and those 

 shown by the highly folded Matsap beds (Langberg- 

 Korannaberg range) to the west are less so. The dip 

 of the beds and the frequency of folds increase west- 

 wards, and just as the line of outcrops of beds traversed 

 by a valley more nearly coincides with the strike the 

 higher the beds dip, so in the north of the Colony the 

 boundaries of the formations become less curved in the 

 area of the more highly inclined strata. 



