Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 27.djvu/710

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been before mentioned with regard to Schaap-Kraal Hoek, &c., with openings generally tending towards the south or south-east; the outer face of the mountains surrounding them is precipitous and abrupt, as is the case with those previously noticed. If these, under a cold and rigorous climate, were once filled with glaciers, then one is led to believe that the evidence adduced traces their course from the upper valleys of the Stormberg, lower and lower, from one level to another, until they joined at Buffel-Doorns Flat. Here this descending and united force appears first to have broken over the lower barrier at a (see section, fig. 16), or it may have made its exit at all three openings, until, either from greater pressure at the point b or some other cause, such as the more rapid wearing of the rocks, the debris was carried away to this lower level, until the further erosion of c, reducing the level of the drainage still lower, caused it to be diverted finally in that direction. That the level of the strata was at one time the same as that of the respective outlets is clearly proved by remains of them skirting different portions of the plain, looking like the remnants of so many raised beaches at the different levels d d.

If the outlets of these different basins were again filled up, the flats would form a series of large lakes, each many miles in extent. In fact they look, even now, more like a number of drained lake-basins than any thing else.

Another thing worthy of notice is, that all the channels of the rivers of this portion of the watershed of the Kei, such as the Klaas Smit's, the Zwart Kei, the Klip Plaats*, the Imvani, &c, cut through the different mountain-ranges at nearly right angles. Along the sides of these openings,

  • From the Klip Plaats Mr. Stow has sent

specimens, — No. 10, a coarse Dendrites, weathered out on the face of a hard ferruginous sandstone (like one sent by Dr. G. Grey : see Quart, Journ. Geol. Soc. No. 106, p. 50), and No. 11, a piece of fine-grained compact sandstone (quartz and felspar), with the cast of a vegetable stem. — T. R. J.