GENERAL VIEW OF ZIMBABWE

ACROPOLIS OUR CAMP CIRCULAR RUIN

The circular ruin erected on a low granite eminence of about five hundred yards from the Lundi River is of exceeding insignificance when compared with those of Zimbabwe and Matindela: it is only fifty-four feet in diameter, and the original wall was only five feet thick; the courses are very regular and neatly put together without mortar, and the stones, of granite, are of a uniform size, broken into blocks about twice the size of an ordinary brick. It had two entrances, one to the north and another to the south-east, the latter being carefully walled up with an inserted structure in which the courses are carried out with a carefulness similar to the walls of the rest of the building. The interesting features of this ruin are the patterns in three tiers beginning at a few feet from the northern entrance, the two lower ones consisting of a herring-bone pattern, formed by the stones being placed obliquely in contrary directions [[103]]in each tier, whilst the upper pattern is produced by regular gaps of two inches being left between the stones in two of the courses. Nearly facing the rising sun at the equinox is a curious bulge, about two feet deep, constructed in the wall. At this bulge the two lower rows of ornamentation terminate, but the upper one is carried on round it as far as the south-eastern entrance. There can be little doubt that these patterns, found on nearly all the Mashonaland ruins, were constructed for a purpose; they only go round a portion of the buildings; they have always the same aspect—namely, south-east—and one cannot dissociate these circular buildings and the patterns from some form of sun worship. ‘The circle is a sacred enclosure,’ says Major Conder in his ‘Heth and Moab,’ ‘without which the Arab still stands with his face to the rising sun.’ Into this question of solstitial orientation in connection with the ruins Mr. Swan will enter at length in the [ensuing chapter].

The Lundi ruin had a cement floor, similar to those floors which we afterwards frequently came across in the Zimbabwe buildings; it would appear to have acted the double function of a fortress and a temple, guarding a population settled here on the river’s bank, who built their huts around it.

The ruins of the Great Zimbabwe (which name I have applied to them to distinguish them from the numerous minor Zimbabwes scattered over the country) are situated in south latitude 20° 16′ 30″, [[104]]and east longitude 31° 10′ 10″, on the high plateau of Mashonaland, 3,300 feet above the sea level, and form the capital of a long series of such ruins stretching up the whole length of the western side of the Sabi River. They are built on granite, and of granite, quartz reefs being found at a distance of a few miles.

PLAN OF RUINS AT MATINDELA.

Longmans Green & Co., London & New York F S Waller