IVote on lour Rock Engravings found in the 
Transvaal. 
By C. J. Swierstra, First Assistant. 
Through the courtesy of J. A. Neser, Esq., M.L.A., of 
Klerksdorp, the Museum came into possession of four rock- 
engravings found in the Klerksdorp District, Transvaal. 
These engravings represent the Eland, Gemsbuck, the Cape 
Ant-Eater and the Guinea Fowl, and are sculptured in one 
of our hardest rocks, viz., Crystaline Diabase. 
They are very good reproductions of the animals they 
represent, and one is struck by the perfectness with which 
most of the details have been sculptured out ; and although 
now they have weathered away almost to the same colour 
as the rest of the surface, they must have once, when just 
finished, been most conspicuous objects, presenting a beautiful 
slatish blue picture on the original weathered reddish grey 
surface of the rock. 
They have been lying in the veld, imbedded to a certain 
height in the soil, which is evident from the marks still left 
on the sides of the stones, showing that they formed a part 
of a boulder outcrop in the veld. 
These outcrops occur in many places in the Transvaal, 
even within a few miles of Pretoria, not far distant from an 
old Bushman Cave ; in the Transvaal the sculptures are, 
however, up to the present, only known from along the 
Vaal River, from Vereeniging downwards and from the Kierks- 
dorp District. 
None of these four engravings are worn away much, and 
in all of them the present colour of the designs attained by 
weathering is the same, viz., a fawnish grey colour. 
This, and the still sharply defined, deep pointing, would 
seem to indicate that they have been made at about the 
same time, and their perfect workmanship to their being made 
if not by one man, by people with equal artistic talent. 
The artist seems to have started by outlining the animal 
he wanted to represent by means of lines, produced by closely 
set punchings or pointings. This can plainly be seen from 
the picture of the Cape Ant-Eater (Orycteropus capensis) 
and the Guinea Fowl. 
5 
