458 ORIGIN OF THE COAST LINE 



faults alike ; it is only along the few miles occupied by 

 the Umzamba series that a fault probably runs parallel 

 with the coast ; the fault which separates the Ernbotyi 

 series from the Table Mountain series at Waterfall 

 Bluff passes inland westwards between the Karroo beds 

 and the Table Mountain series of the Egossa Forest, 

 giving rise to a marked escarpment, while the Embotyi 

 series rests nearly flat on the inclined Karroo beds. An 

 important fact in connection with this question of the 

 origin of the coast is that along any line of section from 

 the Karroo to the coast the younger rocks lie inland and 

 the oldest crop out along the coast. The only excep- 

 tion to this generalisation is the occurrence of the various 

 Cretaceous series, filling old valleys or forming a mere 

 fringe. Had faults played an important part in the 

 shaping of the coast we should expect to find strips of 

 the Stormberg beds in the territories, or of the lower 

 members of the Karroo system in the west coast belt, 

 due to faulting since the crumpling of the folded belt, 

 but such structures have not been found. The Kar- 

 roo outlier in Worcester and Robertson is certainly due 

 to the process of mountain folding, and the country 

 south-west of it presents bold escarpments of the Table 

 Mountain series to the ocean, or the latter is bounded 

 by low-lying or hilly ground made of more ancient 

 rocks fronting such escarpments. 



Recently Prof. Penck 1 published a general account of 

 the coast line in relation to the structure of South 

 Africa and arrived at the conclusion that the land is a 



1 Der Drakensberg und der Quathlambabruch, Sitzungsb. d. Konigl. 

 Preuss. Akad. d. Wissenschaften, xi., 1908, p. 230. 



