uth. These river beds are
still called by the natives "_melapo_" in the south, but in the north
"_wadys_," both words meaning the same thing, "river beds in which no
water ever now flows." To feed these a vast number of gushing fountains
poured forth for ages a perennial supply. When the eye of the fountain
is seen it is an oval or oblong orifice, the lower portion distinctly
water worn, and there, by diminished size, showing that as ages elapsed
the smaller water supply had a manifestly lesser erosive power. In the
sides of the mountain Amhan, already mentioned, good specimens of these
water-worn orifices still exist, and are inhabited by swarms of bees,
whose hives are quite protected from robbers by the hardness of the
basaltic rocks. The points on which the streams of water fell are
hollowed by its action, and the space around which the water splashed is
covered by calcareous tufa, deposited there by the evaporation of the
sun.

Another good specimen of the ancient fountains is in a cave near
Kolobeng, called "_Lepelole_," a word by which the natives there
sometimes designate the sea. The wearing power of the primeval waters is
here easily traced in two branches--the upper or more ancient ending in
the characteristic oval orifice, in which I deposited a Father Mathew's
leaden temperance token: the lower branch is much the largest, as that
by which the greatest amount of water flowed for a much longer period
than the other. The cave Lepelole was believed to be haunted, and no one
dared to enter till I explored it as a relief from more serious labour.
The entrance is some eight or more feet high, and five or six wide, in
reddish grey sandstone rock, containing in its substance banks of well
rounded shingle. The whole range, with many of the adjacent hills on the
south, bear evidence of the scorching to which the contiguity of the
lava subjected them. In the hardening process the silica was sometimes
sweated out of this rock, and it exists now as pretty efflorescences of
well-shaped crystals. But not only does this range, which stands eight
or ten miles north of Kolobeng, exhibit the effects of igneous action,
it shows on its eastern slope the effects of flowing water, in a large
pot-hole called Loee, which has the reputation of having given exit to all
the animals in South Africa, and also to the first progenitors of the
whole Bechuana race. Their footsteps attest the truth of this belief. I
was profane enough to be s