A RUGGED COUNTRY 150 



Now empty of the animal life that once roamed 

 over it, there was a great silence in this desert 

 country, a silence that has succeeded the deadly 

 trail of the Boer hunter from the Cape northwards 

 and then westwards till it found Angola. 



This coast belt appears to be of Tertiary 

 formation. For the first 20 miles and more from 

 the sea its surface consists of sand, and beds of 

 recent clay where once the rivers ran the whole 

 year round, and still bring alluvia from the hills 

 in flood-time, though otherwise seeking the sea 

 beneath the sand. Under sand and clay and 

 on the broken hillsides there are sedimentary 

 rocks of sand and limestone set with fossil sea 

 shells of all ages of the Tertiary period. 



Where the scrub commences is the region of the 

 Primary rocks, which run mainly at right angles 

 to the shore, as the sedimentary formations run 

 parallel to it. Here are dark rocks of basalt 

 and reddish ones of porphyry, rocks of gneiss and 

 schists and granite. Towering over the plain arc 

 great monoliths of granite and gneiss ; bare of all 

 vegetation, they are sometimes cupped in places, 

 providing water cisterns for the animals and 

 wandering tribes of the country. 



The rounded stones and the fossil sea shells 

 looked, to my inexperienced eyes, to confirm the 

 theory that this land had once been under the 

 sea, and the position of old landing pillars, now 

 far above high tidal mark, seemed to show that 

 the sea was still receding from the present shore. 



The movements of the earth of this part of 

 Africa, and the slcady drying up of the south- 



