"The Discovery Of Dr. Kirk Has Confirmed My Conclusion.
On the banks of
an affluent of the Zambesi, that gentleman collected certain bones,
apparently carried down in watery drifts from inland positions, which
remains have been so fossilized as to have all the appearance of
antiquity which fossils of a tertiary or older age usually present.
One
of these is a portion of the vertebral column and sacrum of a buffalo,
undistinguishable from that of the Cape buffalo; another is a fragment
of a crocodile, and another of a water-tortoise, both undistinguishable
from the forms of those animals now living. Together with these, Dr.
Kirk found numerous bones of antelopes and other animals, which, though
in a fossil condition, all belonged, as he assured me, to species now
living in South Africa.
"On the other hand, none of our explorers, including Mr. Bain, who has
diligently worked as a geologist, have detected in the interior any
limestones containing marine fossil remains, which would have proved
that South Africa had, like other regions, been depressed into oceanic
conditions, and re-elevated. On the contrary, in addition to old
granitic and other igneous rocks, all explorers find only either
innumerable undulations of sandstones, schistose, and quartzose rocks,
or such tufaceous and ferruginous deposits as would naturally occur in
countries long occupied by lakes and exuberant jungles, separated from
each other by sandy hills, scarcely any other calcareous rocks being
found except tufas formed by the deposition of landsprings. It is true
that there are marine tertiary formations on the coasts (around the Cape
Colony, near the mouth of the Zambesi opposite Mozambique, and again on
the coasts of Mombas opposite Zanzibar), and that these have been raised
up into low-coast ranges, followed by rocks of igneous origin.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 627 of 662
Words from 168928 to 169224
of 178435
