SOUTHERN AFRICA. 
21 
for fuel to fuch a degree, that ferious apprehenfions have been 
entertained of fome deficiency fhortly happening in the fupply 
of this neceffary article. Under this idea the attention of the 
Englifli has been, for fome time paft, direded towards finding 
out a fubftitute for wood. The appearance of all the moun- 
tains in Southern Africa, being particularly favorable to the 
fuppofition that foffil coal might be found in the bowels of moft 
of thofe inferior hills connefted with, and interpofed betweeri 
them and the fea, His Excellency the Earl of Macartney, well 
knowing how valuable an acquifition fuch a difcovery would 
prove to the colony, dire<3:ed a fearch to be made. Boring 
rods were prepared, and men from the regiments, who had 
laboured in the collieries of England, were feleded to make the 
experiment. Wynberg^ a tongue of land projei^ing from the Table 
Mountain, was the fpot fixed on, and the rods were put 
down there through hard clay, pipe- clay, iron-ftone and fa.nd- 
ftone, in fucceffive ftrata, to the depth of twenty-three feet. 
The operation of boring was then difcontinued by the difcovery 
of actual coal coming out, as miners exprefs it, to day, along 
the banks of a deep rivulet flowing out of the Tygerberg, a 
hill that terminates the ifthmus to the eaflward. The ftratum 
of coaly matter appeared to lie nearly horizontal. Immediately 
above it was pipe-clay and white fand-ftone ; and it refted on a 
bed of indurated clay. It ran from ten inches to two feet in 
thicknefs ; differed in its nature in different parts : in fome 
places were dug out large ligneous blocks in v/hich the traces of 
the bark, knots and grain were difliindly vifible ; and in the 
very middle of thefe were imbedded pieces of iron pyrites, 
running through them in crooked veins, or lying in irregular 
lumps. 
