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 considerable variety of form, better adapted to the needs of man, and with these weapons were found huge stone mortars which had been used for crushing grain, and bear witness to the use of vegetable diet. We also meet with important ruins in the Transvaal. Some walls are still standing which are thirty feet high and ten thick, forming imperishable memorials of the past. They are built of huge blocks of granite piled up without cement. We know nothing of those who erected them; their name and history are alike effaced from the memory of man, and we know nothing either of their ancestors or of their descendants. In the Antipodes certain curious discoveries point to the existence of man in those remote and mysterious times, to which, for want of a better, we give in Europe the name of the Age of the Mammoth and the Reindeer; and everything points to the conclusion that man appeared in the different divisions of the earth about the same time. Probably the first appearance of our race in Australia was prior to the last convulsions of nature which gave to that continent its present configuration. “Scientific studies,” says M. Blanchard,40 “lead us to believe that at one period a vast continent rose from the Pacific Ocean, which continent was broken up, and to a great extent submerged, in convulsions of nature. New Zealand and the neighboring islands are relics of this great land.”