November 30, 1905] 



NA TURE 



carry their classes beyond the matriculation examination 

 of the university, which thus serves as a general leaving 

 examination, and when their pupils have passed it there 

 is nothing for them to do, if they wish to prosecute their 

 studies further, but to go on to college, however young 

 and crude they may be. So long as the present university 

 system endures it is difficult to foresee any remedy for this. 

 The university does not demand of its candidates for the 

 higher examinations that they should have been trained 

 at a college, and were the schools to develop advanced 

 classes they would merely compete with the colleges in 

 teaching for the intermediate degree examination, the 

 standard of which would be still further lowered. What is 

 wanted is a system of secondary schools entirely indepen- 

 dent of any university, the pupils of which would not be 

 sent on to college until they had reached a decent maturity. 

 As things are, the whole educational system of the colony 

 is absolutely subject to the tyranny of external examin- 

 ations, and for this the university is chiefly responsible. 



So unsatisfactory a state of affairs cannot endure much 

 longer. The only radical cure for it is one which Mr. 

 Rhodes attempted to bring about years ago, the institution 

 •of a single teaching university in Cape Town. (The eastern 

 province is not yet sufficiently developed to support a 

 separate university, but in view of its great distance from 

 Cape Town the college at Grahamstown might perhaps 

 remain as an affiliated institution until it is strong enough 

 to stand alone.) Such a teaching university Mr. Rhodes 

 would have endowed, and even though, through local 

 jealousies, the chance of his munificence has been lost, his 

 plan remains the wisest and even the most economical. 

 The Government is remarkably liberal in the cause of 

 higher education. It pays, usually up to a limit of 200Z. 

 a year, half the salary of all professorships or lectureships 

 the institution of which it approves ; it pays half the 

 expenses of general maintenance, and issues loans in 

 aid of building schemes on very favourable terms. In the 

 case of colleges which confine themselves to work above 

 the standard of matriculation and have not less than 

 seventy-five matriculated students — i.e. at present in the 

 case of the South African and Victoria colleges — the grants 

 in aid of salaries may be increased up to a limit of 3501. 

 The public expenditure on behalf of higher education is 

 thus very considerable, but it is dissipated among several 

 centres, and the benefits accruing from it are necessarily 

 less than they would be were it directed to the support 

 of a single teaching university. 



Unfortunately, this ideal is even more unlikely of achieve- 

 ment now than it was in Mr. Rhodes's lifetime. Public 

 opinion remains inert, but the colleges have grown, and 

 it would be almost impossible, and probably undesirable, 

 to force them into reluctant amalgamation. Yet something 

 must be done. The country colleges would prefer probably 

 the conversion of the present university into a federal 

 system of constituent colleges, a policy which has, of 

 course, been tried elsewhere, but without much success. 

 In Cape Town, on the other hand, the feeling is growing 

 .that, even though other centres may stand aloof, the city 

 itself should do its best to realise Mr. Rhodes's purpose 

 by founding a teaching university. In the South African 

 •College it has the means of doing so, and when that 

 institution has completed its present scheme of develop- 

 ment its just claim to independence could not be refused. 

 Nothing could be more beneficial to the colony than such 

 a university in Cape Town with well staffed and well 

 equipped professional schools attached to it. Not only 

 would it raise the general standard of education, as no 

 merely examining body can, but it would draw together 

 and train together the best intellects among the youth of 

 the country, and would thus prove an invaluable factor in 

 the work of uniting the races. No doubt it is a costly 

 -scheme, and since the Government cannot concentrate its 

 support of higher education, but will have to continue to 

 assist some at any rate of the local colleges, a great part 

 of the burden must fall on private benefactors. But at the 

 Cape itself to arouse enthusiasm for a great ideal should 

 not be difficult, and it may even be hoped that among the 

 men of millions " who live at home at ease," and who are 

 at last beginning to appreciate the dessert of universities, 

 some may be found willing to assist a scheme which is 

 not the less deserving because it is South African. 



THE BATOKA GORGE OF THE ZAMBESI.' 



Y^ZHEN I undertook to examine the geological structure 

 of the country around the Victoria Falls on behalf 

 of the council of the British Association, it appeared to 

 me that there were two essential matters on which our 

 information was very inadequate. The first was with 

 respect to the origin of the falls themselves and the singular 

 gorge associated with them, and the second as to the 

 course of the great river for 70 or 80 miles below the 

 falls. The opinion of David Livingstone, stated fifty years 

 ago, that the gorge must have been formed by the sudden 

 opening of a zigzag crack in the earth's crust, had been 

 adopted without question by all subsequent travellers, 

 although hardly anything was known of the canon beyond 

 the immediate vicinity of the falls. 



Before I left England last June, however, a timely store 

 of new information was forthcoming that materially 

 lightened my task. In an able article on " The Physical 

 History of the Victoria Falls " (Geograph. Journ., 

 January), Mr. A. J. C. Molyneux, of Bulawayo, produced 

 strong evidence to prove that the majestic waterfall and 

 its concomitants have been slowly developed by the erosive 

 power of the Zambesi itself. With regard to the course 

 of the river below the falls, unpublished information was 

 most courteously placed at my disposal by the authorities 

 of the British South Africa Co., which showed that a dis- 

 tinguished officer of the company, Mr. F. W. Sykes, the 

 District Commissioner at Livingstone, had succeeded three 

 years ago in penetrating the hitherto unknown country 

 bordering its northern bank for some 40 miles to the east- 

 ward of the falls. The report on this journey prepared 

 by Mr. Sykes, and the beautiful photographs by which it 

 was illustrated, were sufficient in themselves to explain 

 the ruling features in the physiography of the district, and 

 incidentally afforded further testimony in favour of Mr. 

 Molyneux's conclusions. 



During my own examination of the district in July and 

 August last, I had the inestimable advantage of the 

 personal guidance of Mr. Sykes in my traverse of the 

 country on the northern side of the river from Victoria 

 Falls to Wankie's Drift. In this traverse we were accom- 

 panied by Colonel Frank Rhodes, 2 and for part of the 

 distance by Lieut. Burgin, in command of a detachment 

 of native police. The journey entailed a devious and some- 

 what arduous march of about 120 miles across an almost 

 trackless country, consisting mainly of rugged stony 

 ground covered with low trees. Wankie's Drift appears 

 to lie considerably to the eastward of the position assigned 

 to it on existing maps, its distance in an east-south-easterly 

 direction from Victoria Falls being probably not less than 

 75 miles as the crow flies. 



Our route was roughly parallel to the course of the 

 Zambesi, at first south-eastward for about 20 miles (in a 

 direct line), then toward east-north-east for a further 

 35 miles, until we crossed the Ungwesi or-Kalomo River, 

 and finally east-south-eastward for nearly 40 miles, to the 

 river-( rossing at Wankie's. The deep impassable chasms 

 into which all the tributary streams are precipitated as 

 they approach the Zambesi, and the extremely rugged 

 character of the much-dissected ground between them, for- 

 bade any passage along the brink of the main gorge except 

 for short distances, and our general line of march was 

 therefore taken beyond the heads of the side-chasms, often 

 many miles from the Zambesi itself. At four places, how- 

 ever, before reaching the Ungwesi, we struck southward 

 to the main river ; and at three of these we managed by 

 rough scrambling to descend into the bottom of the gorge. 

 Finding in these places that the ancient lavas of the 

 surrounding plateau — the " Batoka Basalts " of Molyneux 

 — were still, as at the Falls, the only rocks exposed in the 

 gorge, we decided, as time was pressing, to continue along 



1 Abstract of " Report on the Batoka Gorge of the Zambesi and the 

 Country between Victoria Falls and the Confluence of the Deka River," 

 brought before the Geological Section of the British Association at 

 Johannesburg on August 29, by G W. Lamplugh, F.R.S. 



- 'I he news, which reached me during the homeward voyage, of the 

 untimely death of Colonel Rhodes at Cape Town on Septemb.r 21 has 

 overshadowed the otherwi-e delightful memory of this journey. To have 

 known Colonel Rhodes, the most cheery of travelling companions, at all was 

 inevitably to hold him in affectionate regard. His deep and cultured 

 sjmp»thy in all that penained to the magnificent Falls, and his efforts to 

 mainiain their loveliness unimpaired, deserve the grateful remembrance of 

 all interested in Rhodesia. 



NO. 1 683, VOL. 73] 



