TERTIARY AND RECENT DEPOSITS 373 



clays, or quartzites, and standing at various heights up 

 to 1,200 feet or more above sea level. These remnants 

 can be seen in many parts of the country between the 

 Houwhoek Pass and Port Elizabeth ; as a rule the ma- 

 terial forming them resists the weather better than the 

 rock below, and they therefore appear as table-shaped 

 hills with steep slopes, or fringe the mountains as 

 terraces with more or less sharply scarped fronts. 

 Looking over the country from one of these hills the 

 conviction is borne in upon one that the now isolated 

 patches were once continuous, and that they formed 

 a gently undulating plain connected with the terrace 

 that is at places a conspicuous feature on the lower 

 slopes of the Langebergen. 



The terrace on the mountain-side north of Zuurbraak 

 is separated by the deep valley of the Buffeljagt's Eiver 

 from the gravel-capped plateau south of that place ; 

 the gravels are coarse and contain many pebbles and 

 boulders of Table Mountain sandstone that must have 

 come from the Langebergen, although the ground on 

 which they lie is now quite cut off from the mountains 

 by the deep valley. In this case the rocks underlying 

 the plateau are mainly Bokkeveld slates, but on the 

 west and east Uitenhage beds enter into its composition 

 without altering the character of the plateau, in spite 

 of the fact that the Uitenhage beds are more easily 

 eroded than the Bokkeveld. 



To the east of the Gouritz Eiver the road from Her- 

 bertsdale to Hagel Kraal lies on a terrace stretching far 

 to the south of the Langebergen, cut out of the Table 

 Mountain, Bokkeveld and Uitenhage beds, in different 



