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VEENEUK PAN. 
By a. W. Eogees, Sc.D., F.K.S.S.Af. 
(Bead July 20, 1910.) 
Verneuk Pan, which gets its name from the prevalence of mirage, is 
roughly 17 miles long and 6 wide ; the longer axis lies W.S.W.-E.N.E. 
Though both the Olifant's Vlei Eiver, which drains a large area in 
Carnarvon, and the smaller Hartog's Kloof Eiver cross the extreme east 
end of the pan, and probably supply the greater part of the water which 
occasionally floods its surface, the pan itself is not merely an expansion 
of their valleys, which are extremely ill-defined in this neighbourhood. 
The pan is drained across a narrow dyke of dolerite, which just projects 
through the sandy mud at its E.N.E. end. Several short valleys, the 
longest of which heads in the dolerite escarpment of Jan Louw's Kolk, 
15 miles south of the pan, may at times bring water to it, but these 
valleys are themselves chains of bare pan surfaces which probably retain 
all the rain-water except during the heaviest rains. 
The outline of Verneuk Pan cannot be accurately defined ; on the 
east, north and south-east there is an extremely gradual ascent to the 
veld outside the pan, so that one can walk 2 or 3 miles across the 
boundary without being able to decide where one leaves the pan itself. 
Towards Zwart Kop,''' a dolerite hill south of the middle of the pan, the 
limit is more clearly defined, as the ground rises more rapidly in that 
direction than elsewhere, though even there the strip of doubtful ground 
is some 500 yards wide. The west side of the pan I only saw from a 
distance of about 5 miles ; shales and a dolerite sheet form low hills 
towards which the ground rises rather rapidly. 
The pan floor is either a yellowish-grey, sandy mud, or crumbly dark 
shale and fibrous limestone ; it lies entirely within the middle portion of 
the Upper Dwyka shales, which have a very low southerly dip. The 
* It may be noted that the village of Zwart Kop, which is marked on most maps, does 
not exist in fact. In 1909 there was one hut, occupied by a Damara, on its site. 
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