But In
Penetrating Into The True Interior, The Traveller Takes A Final Leave Of
All Such Formations; And In Advancing To The Heart Of The Continent, He
Traverses A Vast Region Which, To All Appearance, Has Ever Been Under
Terrestrial And Lacustrine Conditions Only.
Judging, indeed, from all
the evidences as yet collected, the interior of South Africa has
remained in that condition since the period of the secondary rocks of
geologists!
Yet, whilst none of our countrymen found any evidences of
old marine remains, Captain Speke brought from one of the ridges which
lay between the coast and the lake Victoria N'yanza a fossil shell,
which, though larger in size, is undistinguishable from the Achatina
perdix now flourishing in South Africa. Again, whilst Bain found fossil
plants in his reptiliferous strata north of the Cape, and Livingstone
and Thornton discovered coal in sandstone, with fossil plants, like
those of our old coal of Europe and America, - yet both these mesozoic
and palaeozoic remains are terrestrial, and are not associated with
marine limestones, indicative of those oscillations of the land which
are so common in other countries.
"It is further to be observed, that the surface of this vast interior is
entirely exempt from the coarse superficial drift that encumbers so many
countries, as derived from lofty mountain-chains from which either
glaciers or great torrential streams have descended. In this respect, it
is also equally unlike those plains of Germany, Poland, and Northern
Russia, which were sea-bottoms when floating icebergs melted and dropped
the loads of stone which they were transporting from Scandinavia and
Lapland.
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