Page:Seven Years in South Africa v1.djvu/217

 earth, which thus forms a luxuriant bed for the roots of trees and shrubs, which tower up above, and become conspicuous upon the generally barren plain.

Where the fissures that radiate from the bottom of the funnels are sufficiently wide at the top, it is quite possible to descend perpendicularly for a short distance and to trace their course sometimes for several hundred yards. Many of them are full of water clear as crystal, and one that I saw subsequently, on my way back from my third journey on the Upper Molapo, was full to the depth of 140 feet, so that I might almost feel justified in describing it as a miniature lake.

Although I have not seen Herr Hübner’s Klippdachs-Schlucht,” I imagine it must be included in the category of these formations. I found, too, that many small streams in the district of the Vaal, the Harts River, the Molapo, and the Marico, as well as in that of the Upper Limpopo, had their origin in similar hollows in the rock, where the water could not immediately run off, but collected in the funnel until it forced its way through. At most of the farms near such streams we noticed how the supply of water issued from a marshy spot, perhaps a mile or so higher up, and how in the very midst of the springs there was frequently a cavity, perhaps fifty feet or more in depth, that had all the appearance of having been bored in the rock.

In every place of this character, even where the