The Geological Structure of Southern Rhodesia

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Abstract
I. I ntroductory . T he region popularly denominated ‘South Africa’ is usually considered as extending from the Gape to the Zambezi River, and the latter is also the dividing-line between Northern and Southern Rhodesia. The South African area is made up principally of sedimentary rocks, which include an unbroken stratigraphical sequence from the base of the Devonian up to the Jurassic System. Even at the Gape, however, inliers of older rocks are exposed, which cannot, as palæontological evidence is lacking, be ascribed with certainty to any particular period. These ‘Pre-Cape’ rocks become increasingly important as the Transvaal border is approached; and in the southern part of that province we find, developed along the denuded axis of a great anticline, those ancient strata of the ‘Transvaal System’ which include the gold-bearing ‘banket.’ These old rocks have been subdivided into a number of separate groups, each of great thickness and all probably of Archæan age. They still present a comparatively normal sedimentary facies however, and it is only in places, towards the north, that we find areas of crystalline schists, associated, as usual, with huge granite masses. In fact, it is only near the Rhodesian border that we enter upon that great region of metamorphic schists which appears to occupy most of the central portion of the African continent. So limited is the distribution of unaltered stratified rocks over the greater part of this area that Mr. J. A. Chalmers & Dr. F. H. Hatch, in publishing the first brief references to the geology

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