of as of great antiquity in his day, have been found a great many
worked flints, such as knives and arrow-heads. We shall refer later
to the important monument of Mzora and the menhirs surrounding it,
the builders of which certainly belonged to a race that lived much
nearer our own day than did the inhabitants of the Cave of Hercules.

The south of Africa is not so well known as the north, and the
difficulty of making explorations is a great obstacle to progress. For
some centuries, however, polished stone hatchets from the extreme
south of the continent have been preserved in the museums of Leyden and
Copenhagen, under the name of THUNDERSTONES, or STONES OF GOD. A great
many are found in British South Africa, especially at Graham's Town
and Table Bay.[39] Gooch, after describing the physical configuration
of the Cape, says that stone implements are found in all the terraces
at whatever level of the Quaternary deposits. With these stone objects
were found a good many fragments of coarse hand-made pottery, that
had been merely baked in the sun, and was strengthened with good-sized
pieces of quartz. Similar peculiarities are noticed in ancient European
pottery. We shall have to refer again to these singular analogies,
one of the chief aims of this book being to bring them into notice.

In the torrid regions between the Vaal and the Zambezi rivers,
we find traces of a race of a civilization different from that of
the savages conquered by the English. At Natal the gradual progress
of these unknown people can be traced step by step. To the earliest
period of all belong nothing but roughly hewn flints, and no traces
of pottery have been found; then follow flint arrow-heads of more
distinct form, and here and there fragments of sun-dried pottery. Of
more recent date still are polished stone weapons and more finely
moulded pottery; whilst to the latest date of all belong weapons of