TRAVELS IN 
ground, a iiuiss of pure iron in a malleable state. Considered' 
as a great curiosity, it was carried from place to place, and 
is now in Cape Town. The mass was entirely amorphous ; 
exhibited no appearance of having ever been in a mine ; no 
matrix of any kind was adhering to it; nor in the cavities of 
its surface were any pebbles or .marks of crystallization. It 
was exceedingly tough, and the fracture more like that of 
lead than of iron. The weight of the mass might be about 
three hundred pounds. From a specimen of the same mass 
carried into England, some time ago by Colonel Prehn, it 
was supposed that this metal was to be met with in its native 
state at the Cape of Good Hope. Mineralogists, howevefy 
are still in doubt whether iron, though the most abundant of 
all metals, has yet been discovered in a native state ; and 
whether those masses that have been found in Siberia, in 
Senegal, and a few other places, were not the products of 
art, which, on some occasion, or by accident, had been buried 
in the ground. The mass in question exhibited evident marks 
of force having been used in order to flatten and to draw it 
out. It had probably been the thick part of a ship's anchor^ 
carried from the coast to the place where it was found by the 
Kaffers, and attempted by them to be reduced into smaller 
pieces. The missionary Vander Kemp observes, that near 
the mouth of the Keiskamma he saw an old anchor lying on 
the ground, which a Kaffer never passes without making a 
low reverence ; and the reason they assign is, that some 
years ago one of their people contrived, with great diffi- 
culty, to strike off a piece of the iron, but he died the 
next day, the evil spirit having killed him for his pre- 
sumption. 
