424 Transactions of the South, African Philosophical Society. 



reached the amygdaloid, and everywhere the conditions were found 

 to be the same, though at Bushman's Pass district the aneroid 

 always recorded 6,700 ft., where they were first met, as against 

 6,500 ft. elsewhere. I was quite unprepared to find so great a mass 

 of volcanic rock, and equally surprised to see no disturbance of the 

 sandstone below. 



At the foot of the Tugela Falls the scenery is, in some respects, like 

 that of the Dolomites not far from Innichen in the Pusterthal, below 

 the Drei Schusterspitze. The peaks, buttresses, pinnacles, cliffs, 

 ruined towers and spires, and rich colouring of the rocks are grand 

 beyond description. The river canon that has to be traversed to 

 reach the foot of the falls is most interesting and beautiful, and 

 probably one of the unique things in South African scenery. 



The top is very disappointing — a dreary, forsaken wilderness of 

 rocky hills and desolate valleys gently sloping into Basutoland, 

 covered with grass, heather, bog, and rocks, while the distant view 

 into Basutoland is cut off by high hills and ridges. It is, in fact, a 

 volcanic plateau, carved into monotonous hills and valleys towards 

 Basutoland, all the peaks, cliffs and features being on the edge over- 

 looking Natal. 



Geologically, therefore, we are not entitled to speak of the 

 Drakensbergen asa " mountain chain," for in reality we have here 

 simply " mountains of denudation " on a huge scale, and their Natal 

 face is an enormous escarpment. 



At the Bushman's Pass end the plateau seems to be over four 

 miles wide, and though the Basuto ridges cut off the view further 

 west, one could see twenty miles along towards north and south, 

 and there, too, it is broad on top. People who have been on top of 

 Mont aux Sources, which is easily climbed from Witzie's Hoek, tell 

 me it is the same there. If it is all the same right along the 

 Griqualand frontier, then we have a plateau of about 200 miles long 

 by more than four miles broad, or about a thousand square miles of 

 lavas from 2,500 ft. to 4,500 ft. thick. The kaffir police say it is a 

 day's journey broad on the top, which would be about eighteen or 

 twenty miles ; they say it is three day's hard walking from the 

 nearest inhabited country on the Natal side to the Basutoland 

 inhabited valleys, the plateau above 9,000 ft. being quite desolate, 

 without any human habitation. 



Even on the top I saw nothing to indicate the former existence of 

 a crater, nor on the various ascents could I discover any ash or tun 

 beds, and probably, therefore, the whole of the amygdaloidal rock 

 originated in the form of great fissure eruptions. The only rock not 



