Page:The origin of continents and oceans - Wegener, tr. Skerl - 1924.djvu/193

system of faults which can be followed northwards through the Red Sea, the Gulf of Akaba, and the Jordan valley, up to the margin of the folds of the Taurus (Fig. 34). According to more recent work, these faults also continue southwards down to Cape Colony, being, however, best developed in East Africa.^[1] Neumayr-Uhlig^[2] describes them somewhat as follows:

Such a rift-valley 50 to 80 km. wide containing the R. Shire and Lake Nyassa stretches northwards from the estuary of the Zambesi and then turns to the north-west and loses itself. The parallel trough of Lake Tanganyika begins very close to it. Its magnitude is testified by the fact that the depth of the lake amounts to 1700 to 2700 m., and the elevation of the wall-like slope to 2000 to 2400 m., and even up to 3000 m. This rift-valley contains the river Russisi, and the lakes of Kiwu, Albert-Edward and Albert, in its northerly continuation. “The margins of the trough seem to be turned up just as if the fracture

1. Oskar Erich Meyer, “Die Brüche von Deutsch-Ostafrika,” Neues Jahrb. f. Min., Geol. und Paläont., Beil.-Bd. 38, pp. 805–881, 1915.
2. Neumayr-Uhlig, Erdgeschichte, 1, Allgem. Geol., 2. Aufl., pp. 1–367. Leipzig and Vienna, 1897.