Bock- Engravings of Animals and the Human Figure. 407 



impenetrable rocks since the earliest designs were chased upon 

 them. . . . One of the oldest was that of an eland done on a larger 

 scale than any other representation of an animal found ; but since its 

 completion, a large fissure has been worn through the rock, upwards 

 of nine inches in breadth in its broadest part, and about eighteen inches 

 in depth." When one considers the extreme hardness of these 

 rocks, the great antiquity of these engravings would seem proved 

 by that statement, but I must add that on the testimony of Eev. 

 G. E. Westphal these same rocks, including the engraved ones, are 

 often split by the concussion of the terrific peals of thunder pre- 

 vailing there. 



On the other hand, ice-scratches occurring in the bed and on the 

 banks of the Vaal Eiver, exposed partly to the polishing efiect of the 

 huge periodical floods, or partly to the eolian agencies when the river 

 is low, are still perfectly distinct. Perfectly distinct also are the 

 aboriginals' sculptures engraved on the same rocks, and which, for 

 aught we know, may have been nearly contemporaneous with the 

 uncovering of these traces of glacial action, some of which, I am 

 informed, are not very much deeper than the intaglios themselves. 



These rock-engravings, however, are not found only on the banks 

 of rivers. As a matter of fact those occurring on the banks of the 

 Orange or Vaal are, so far as I know, often inferior in merit if com- 

 pared with those occurring in the Vryburg, Upington, or Prieska 

 Districts in the Cape Colony. The water-flow cannot in the case of 

 most of these have played the part of a destructive agent. Some 

 are found in solitary boulders on the veld ; others on small eminences 

 without any spring or water-flow in their neighbourhood, &c. At 

 no great distance from a place in the Vryburg District where many 

 of these images are found, is a depression which after the summer 

 rains becomes a very shallow "pan," or lake. Not only there, but 

 also at a long distance off, are strewn either on the surface, or at no 

 great depth, stone implements of a palaeolithic type, showing a great 

 resemblance to those found further south. Made of a volcanic rock 

 of perhaps as hard a structure as the amygdaloid rocks on which the 

 sculptures are found, these implements are as much polished by 

 eolian agencies as if they had been exposed for untold ages to the 

 turbulent, although in South Africa spasmodic, flow of river waters. 



I give in Plate VII. 3 figures of these implements. Figs. 1 and 2 

 are hand-picks ; Fig. 3 was probably used as a sling -stone, or for 

 hand- thro wing. The edges are too sharp to admit of its having 

 been used for trimming or detaching flakes. 



In other places where stone implements similar to those occur in 

 South Africa, there is nothing to suggest the presence of old river 



