The drift is a remarkable stratum of clay, sand, gravel, and far-from-source boulders seemingly flung by some careless hand over the northern portions of Europe and North America. Some of this debris has been moulded into distinctive ridges (moraines), rounded hills (drumlins), and long sinuous ridges (eskers). Any theory of drift formation must account for these singular accumulations as well as an immense family of scratches, lake basins, and sundry gougings.
“Just as in the case of all other countries, the earliest pages in the Geological Record of South Africa are most fragmentary and utterly confusing; much remains to be done before even the outlines can be reconstructed. It must suffice to remark that at some extremely remote date, possibly more than 1000 million years ago, basic lavas—seemingly the earliest known of the rocks—were being poured out over several large sections of this country, in many places sub-aqueously—probably upon the ocean floor—that they were accompanied and followed by tuffs, slates, limestones, and the remarkable group of the banded ironstones, jaspilites, and cherts, and by quartzites, grits, and conglomerates.”