SOUTHERN AFRICA. 327 
chambers, arches, colonnades, and Sionelienges, to tlic magni- 
tude of which, that on Salisbury Plain would appear but as a. 
cottage by the side of that city's great cathedral ; all of these 
so wasted, and corroded, and cavernous, the skeletons only of 
what they once were, struck the mind with the same kind of 
melancholy awe, that the contemplation of the remains of an- 
cient grandeur generally inspires. Seated in the midst of 
these antique ruins, my mind was in vain busied in trying to 
form some estimation of the measure of time that had passed 
away in effecting the general depression of the mountain, and 
equally vain was it to attempt a calculation, in how many 
ages yet unborn, the stupendous masses, of at least a thou- 
sand feet high, of solid rock, would dissolve, and " leave not 
" a rack behind/' 
I could be at no loss, however, to comprehend, whence 
proceeded the sandy plains that stretched along the western 
coast of this country, to a distance yet untravelled. This 
range of mountains alone, taken at two hundred miles in 
length, five miles in width, and the general depression at a 
hundred feet only, would have supplied materials to cover 
uniformly to the depth of three feet, a plain of thirty-three 
thousand square miles. A farther idea suggested itself, that 
all the sand of the sea shores probably owed its origin to the 
remains of worn-down mountains, scattered by the winds, and 
borne down by torrents into the " bosom of the deep," and 
thence thrown back upon its shores. This theory seems to be 
established by facts. In Africa the whole coast is sand, 
from the Cape of Good Hope to the Gulph of Benin, under 
the equinoxial hne, an extent through which it is more than 
