56 Mr. Bain on Fossil Remains in South Africa. 



Passing on from Fort Beaufort, you find, at the entrance of the gorge of the Kat 

 river, a bed of greenstone about fifty feet thick, which rests conformably on the 

 stratified sandstone ; and this remark applies to all the masses of greenstone on 

 the south of the Winterberg mountain. On quitting the gorge you turn to the 

 north and arrive at the Winterberg new road, which follows the course of the 

 beautiful Blinkwater valley ; and in this valley you meet with another bed of green- 

 stone. It was near the Blinkwater Post that, while superintending the construction 

 of the road, I succeeded in extracting from the scarp of a steep hill of sandstone 

 the lower part of the pelvis, a fragment of the bony cuirass, the head armed with 

 sixty teeth, and other bones of a large reptile. 



On reaching the first elevated platform of the Winterberg region, another bed of 

 greenstone occurs. This sandstone region, though cold and bleak in winter, is 

 healthy and beautifully verdant, and produces corn and wine in considerable abun- 

 dance. In this, as in all other sandstone districts of the colony, the water is pure, 

 but the grass is sour ; whereas in those districts where argillaceous rocks prevail, 

 the water is brackish, but the grass is sweet. For this reason, the tracts where clay 

 predominates, are greatly preferred for breeding sheep and cattle. 



The road, as it ascends above this platform, passes to the west of the lofty and 

 serrated edge of the Didima, which forms the northern boundary of the Hottentot 

 settlement on the Kat river. Near the military station, called Post Retief, a trap dike 

 crosses the road ; and as you ascend higher, the dikes increase in number, and the 

 strata of sandstone become intermixed with greenstone. The dip has here dimi- 

 nished to 3°, and it goes on lessening towards the north. The base of the escarp- 

 ment of the peak of the Winterberg is covered with dense forests of timber. The 

 southern and eastern escarpments of the peak consist of a buff'-coloured, soft, stra- 

 tified sandstone, intermixed with basalt, greenstone and syenite. The summit of 

 the peak is a flat tabular mass of trap, about 6000 feet above the sea. 



To form a notion of the geological structure of the singular country which you 

 survey from this lofty eminence, and which forms part of a similar district of great 

 extent, you have to imagine a plain between 500 and 600 miles long from east 

 to west, and about 200 miles broad from north to south, and this plain elevated from 

 3000 to 4000 feet above the sea. Let there be superimposed on this plain, in some 

 parts long continuous ranges, in others detached table-topped mountains capped 

 with trap, these ranges and mountains rising to a further height of from 500 to 

 3000 feet. Let all the stratified rocks within this area be perfectly horizontal, and 

 be intersected with a network of trap dikes from eight inches to 100 yards broad, 

 and many of them more than fifty miles long. Such is the character of the 

 country which, at a variable distance from the sea-coast, extends from the Rogge- 

 veld, about \° east of Cape Town, to the Amatembu territory, 8° further to the 



