GRAVEYARD OF METEORITES

Taranaki Daily News, 13 July 1929, Page 15

GRAVEYARD OF METEORITES

VILLAGE IN SOUTH-WEST AFRICA. BTEWN WITH MASSES OF IRON. (By W. J. Luyten, Harvard College Observatory.) Whether it is due to the quality of the ground, or to eomething else —in California it would certainly be connected with the climate —it is a fact that Sojith-west Africa is unusually rich in meteorites, past as well as present. Not' only does it possess the largest known mass ot meteoric iron in the Grootfontein meteor, but also the whole region surrounding Gibeon seems to be peppered with them.

STORIES PROVED TO BE FALSE.

The little village of Gibeon, situated on the banks of the Fish River, was once famous on account of its possibility for diamonds. Right in the centre of the town, in front of the church, is a rich pipe of blueground and Kimberlite, simply covered with rubies but devoid of diamonds. A few miles outside the town, another, much large pipe of blueground has forced its way through the Fish River ehale, a very typical formation, named after this river by geologists. Unfortunately it' was found later that this blueground was too old, and could not contain diamonds, only rubies and baser stones. This in spite of the persistent stories that diamonds had been found in this neighbourhood. These stories, incidentally, were later proved to be false. One was due to a farmer who had been given four diamonds found by his Hottentot boys in the present Luderitzbucht fields, but who, not believing them, said they had been found on his own farm, thus hoping to cell his land at a good price. The other story concerned of famous diamond jealously guarded by a Hottentot woman and when, after years of trying, a prospector finally succeeded in laying his hands on it, .it proved to be a glass eye from a doll. FISH RIVER IS ERRATIC.

We went out to see the deep diamond hole, however, and to pick up some rubies and other interesting stones, only to get stuck in the sand of the Fish River, on our way back —the very same river we could not cross two days later because it was over one hundred yards wide and the water three feet deep. East of Gibeon, toward the Kalahari desert, lies the “kalkrand” that peculiar tableland formation that forms the link between the Fish River shale and the Kalahari limestone, a dry, arid waste land, yet full of artesian water. In appearance the formations of this kalkrand are not unsimilar to the sandstone of the Rocky Mountains in Utah, only less coloured. When one first' lays eyes on the valley of the meteorites, the Ka meelhaavei, one is immediately reminded of that famous valley of diamonds told of in the “Arabian Knights,” where Sinbad, having stuffed his pockets with diamonds, escaped by tying himself to a piece of meat, which was promptly carried upward by a huge eagle. In the Kameelhaarv' i we find the same barren waste as in the story, the same high mountains with almost vertical walls, surrounding them, though the eagles and diamonds are yet undiscovered.

GERMAN’S PAYALBE CONTRACT. It appears that during the German time a farmer, Peter van de Westhuizcn, having found some of these meteorites, made a contract with the Imperial Government whereby he was to supply them with all the meteors he found at the consideration of 80 shillings per hundred pounds. Since the finding of meteorites consisted merely in noticing large dark spots in the white limestone, and having them dug out by his Hottentot boys, old Peter must have had a nice time of it, especially since most of the meteors weighed in the neghbourJiood of 500 pounds or more. A large number of them was shipped away to various museums in Germany, while about twenty or thirty remaining ones have been used to form a rockery in the public gardens at Windhoek. They are quite safe there, since no one will easily • carry five hundred pounds of iron away on his back, and as they have probably been lying out in the open at Gibeon for thousands of years and have withstood erosion, one need not have fear that they might decay on the surface for the next ten thousand years. I PLENTY ARE LEFT. There are still plenty of meteors left at Kameelhaar, some already dug out,

others still in their tombs o p soft limestone. There is no fear, however, that this great natural graveyard of meteorites will be violently disturbed in the near future for already in the German time the Government declared them all to be Government property, and forbade their exportation or mutilation. In physical and chemical constitution the Gibeon meteorites appear to be different from that at Grootfontein. While the latter contains as much as 17 per cent, nickel, and is extremely tough, the former average around 7 to 8 per cent, nickle, can easily be sawed, and some are very brittle. It is more than probable, therefore, that they do not belong to the same fall. The whole collection at Gibeon, however, is in all probability due to a fall of one meteoric swarm, or perhaps to one great meteor that exploded shortly before striking the ground. One may well imagine what a magnificent spectacle this must have been, whether it came by day or by night, far surpassing any ordinary meteor shower. It might well have looked like a celestial bombardment, with these brilliant flashes of light darting across the sky, striking th<T ground, and exploding with a dull thud. MORE THAN ITS SHARE.

The whole of South Africa Seems to have had more than its share in the recent meteors. In 1922 a large meteorite must have fallen in the border region of the Cape Province and Natal, but this has as yet not been located. A "reat meteor passed over south west in March, 1927, when it was seen from Swakopmund, and the Portuguese border almost to Luderitzbucht and the southern part of the country. In each pla.ee it was so close that almost every observer thought he had seen it fall. It did, as a matter of fact, break windows in a number of localities. The most recent one was .seen on July 18, 1928, and its path was accurately computed to have followed a straight line from Prieska, near the border of south west and the Cape Province, to very near Port Elizabeth, where it is assumed to have fallen. Neither of the two last-mention-ed meteors has been found, but there are hopes that , this may Lappen in the near future.