370 E. H. L. Sckwarz — Gold in Cape Colony. 



rushes off with great vehemence, but the covering of grass which 

 the hills possess retains a certain amount, which is in part returned 

 to the surface by springs. 



The Prince Albert Goldfields, on the other hand, lie out in the 

 very heart of the dry country, where droughts last eighteen months 

 and more ; where the rain comes with thunder-clouds, perhaps 

 a dozen times in good years during a twelvemonth, and then lasts 

 but an hour or so. The country is kopje veldt, that is, cut into 

 innumerable little hillocks of bare rock on which the scanty Karroo 

 bushes thrive. The roots of these woody plants penetrate into the 

 cracks in the shales and sandstones, and carry down soil with them 

 in the crevices, but there is no covering of soil on the surface. The 

 streams are very steep-graded, and even along the large rivers there 

 are very scanty patches of alluvial soil. Denudation is mostly 

 affected by changes of temperature, which reduces the rocks to small 

 fragments ; these are then further reduced by wind, which rolls them 

 about, and finally carries them away in small particles. The rains 

 are so tremendous, when they do fall, that the ground is covered with 

 a continuous sheet of water, hill and valley alike, but only for a few 

 minutes ; before the sun can come out again this mass of water 

 is tearing down the runnels into the main channels, and roaring its 

 way to the sea. 



The Millwood Area. 



The coast range of mountains west of this place can be stated 

 generally to consist of an S-shaped fold of Table Mountain Sand- 

 stone, the anticline occupying the north side and the syucline the 

 south. The northern limb of the anticline dips under Bokkeveld 

 Slate, containing fossils of an American type, belonging to the 

 Lower Devonian ; the syncline rests on pre-Cape rocks, Malmes- 

 bury Beds injected with granite, probably of very ancient age. 

 This fold is reduplicated in several places, and subsidiary folds 

 become added to the main syncline and anticline. At Mussel Bay 

 and George there is an immense boss of granite, against which the 

 folds are huddled on the north side, so that syncline and anticline are 

 pressed together, and all the strata dip south. The granite is 

 somewhat different from the main mass which exists in the south- 

 west of the Colony, as it is a white mica granite ; towards the eastern 

 end of the boss the rock has been sheared, and later injections of 

 tourmaline granite have filled in the spaces produced by the 

 movement. At the end of the granite there is a tract of slates, and 

 then another great mass of granite. The two bosses are connected 

 by a dyke which traverses the slates, which at one point suddenly 

 changes its strike from N.E. to E.N.E. The substance of the eastern 

 granite appears not to have been sheared like the end of the other 

 boss, and I am inclined to believe that this is not a true boss, anchored 

 to the basement granite of the south-western districts, but is an 

 immense lateral offshoot injected horizontally into the slates. The 

 crush which buckled up the mountains, coming fi'om the north, was 

 brought up against the main granite mass, but where this ended the 



