﻿ARNELL. — On a Stone Epoch at the Cape of Good Hope. 159 



cutting at the road, where they are overlaid by four feet of black clay, place 

 this matter beyond dispute. No bone or any other material lias been found." 



The imperfect specimens which I now send for the Wellington Museum, 

 are only the remnants of a larger collection which was sent to Vienna. They 

 were found by me on the " Cape Flats," a low tract of land mainly covered 

 with drift-sand, averaging ten feet in depth, and lying between Table Bay and 

 False Bay, at the south-west angle of the Cape. The " arrow-field " is of con- 

 siderable area, many acres in extent. In fact, the chips and flakes ai'e found 

 wherever the dark red clay or gravel is exposed by denudation of the drift- 

 sand. The material of which they are made was, and still is, found on the 

 surface in the form of boulders, which accounts for the extent of the " field," 

 and the cores from which they were struck are to be met with everywhere. 

 Mr. Bowker, who is an ingenious person, has succeeded in manufacturing 

 flakes readily by striking the stones in a peculiar way. The finds on the Cape 

 Flats consisted principally of broken arrow and spear-heads, broken in the 

 manufacture, and of numerous "rubbers " and flakes, and an occasional saw. 

 The field had been pretty well gleaned by another before my introduction to 

 it. I was, however, fortunate in finding the remains of an earthenware pot 

 (only the second or third found of the kind) of which I also send you one 

 handle and some of the sherds. These remains lay at the base of a high sand- 

 drift, and had apparently been recently uncovered. It is difficult to believe 

 that these pots were contemporaneous with the stone flakes, but at the same 

 time they might be preserved for an indefinite period when covered iip with 

 dry sand. They resemble in form the utensils figured in the old books of 

 travels as used by the Hottentots. A thong of hide was passed through the 

 holes in the handles wherewith to carry them. Some years before I had seen 

 an extensive bed of potsherds exactly similar on the coast, about three hundred 

 miles to the eastward, underneath many feet of drift-sand, and concluded that 

 it was the site of an ancient Kaffir pot manufactory, that part of the country 

 having been formerly occupied by Kaffirs, but the composition of these pots is 

 of coarser material than that of the modern Kaffir pots. 



Happening to show some of these implements to a friend, who had been 

 many years before in Greece, " why," said he, " these ai-e the very same things 

 they pick up on the field of Marathon, and call Persian arrow-heads, but 1 

 never believed they coiild be that !" Shoi'tly afterwards I read what follows 

 in Mr. Gladstone's " Juventus Mundi," " There is no reason to believe that 

 there were any earlier occupants of the Greek or of the Italian Peninsula than 

 the group of tribes called Pelasgian. Neither of these countries presents us 

 with remains belonging to what is called the stone period of the human race, 

 when implements and utensils were made of that material, and the use of 

 metals was unknown." 



