The labyrinthine nature of the buildings now before us baffles description. In one place is a narrow sloping gully, four feet across, ascending between two boulders, and protected, for no conceivable reason, by six alternate buttresses and a wall at the upper end, forming a zigzag passage narrowed in one place to ten inches. Walls of huge size shut off separate chambers. In all directions everything is tortuous; every inch of ground is protected with buttresses and traverses. Here too, as in the large circular building below, all the entrances are rounded off, and I imagine that here we have quite the oldest portion of the ruins, built at a time when defence was the main [[129]]object. When they were able to do so with safety, they next constructed the circular temple below, and as time went on they erected the more carelessly put together buildings around, which I have described.
The south-western end of this line of ruins was obviously a temple; it has been lately used as a cattle pen by the chief, but the soil has not been disturbed. On removing the soil we came across a level cement floor, supported on an elaborate system of under-walls filled up with large stones on which the cement floor rested, as was the case in the raised platform in the circular temple below. In the centre stood the altar, an angular structure of small granite blocks, which fell to pieces a short time after exposure to the air; when we removed the soil which had buried this altar, around it we found the phalli, the birds or soapstone pillars, and fragments of soapstone bowls, which I shall subsequently describe more in detail.
On a portion of the wall outside, as in the circular building below, ran a pattern—a dentelle pattern formed by placing the stones edgeways, with exactly the same aspect as the pattern below. To the north of the temple a steep ascent, constructed on supporting walls, led through the granite boulders to a hollow space walled in on one side, and protected by the rocks on the other three; a rounded buttress guarded the entrance, and in the centre stood two tall monoliths of slate firmly fixed into the cement floor and the stones beneath; from this spot a slope led up to [[130]]the top of the rock, on which a terrace had been constructed overlooking the temple and facing the rising sun. Another gully between two boulders, only wide enough for one man to pass at a time, led out of the temple to the side where the modern Kaffir village is. This had also been anciently strongly protected.
The temple was approached from the lower ridge above the precipice by a narrow passage between two high walls gently ascending to a flight of steps. This passage ended in a most curious architectural feature—namely, steps were formed leading to the temple on the one side, and apparently only for ornamentation on the other, by continuing the rounded courses of the outer wall so that they produced the effect of two miniature theatres facing one another, and proving almost more than any other point amongst the ruins the high pitch to which the ancient builders had brought their knowledge of keeping even courses in dry building. This point in the architecture proves the especial attention paid by the constructors to curves, and these curves would seem to have been constructed on the same principle as the curves in the large circular building which Mr. Swan will discuss in [Chapter V].
Adjoining the temple to the north is another semicircular building, the inner wall of which has six vertical rows, six feet high, let into the construction, as if for beams, with a ledge on the top, as if for a roof. We were unable to form any opinion as to the [[131]]use of this chamber, and though we emptied it of soil we found nothing in it.
Between two boulders to the north-west of the temple led a narrow passage, tortuously winding, with walls on either side wedged up against the boulders, and every conceivable hole in the rocks was walled up. This passage led to another open space protected on two sides by rocks and on two by walls. This space was also full of wall foundations; but, being open to the sun, it had been occupied and ransacked by the Kaffirs.
To the south of the temple a flight of steps led down to the gold-smelting furnaces and the caves, of which I shall speak more at length in connection with the finds. This corner of the building was the only one in which our excavations were successful, and I entirely attribute this fact to its chilly and shady position—a spot studiously avoided by the succeeding generations of Kaffir tribes for this reason. Below the temple at the bottom of the precipice we commenced work, with great hope of finding the other portions of the bowls, &c., which we had found above. Here there is an enormous mass of fallen stones from the buildings above, but amongst them we found surprisingly little of interest. Perhaps a thorough excavation of this slope would yield further results, as so many of our finds in the temple above are fragmentary, and the presumption is that the other portions were thrown over the precipice; but [[132]]this will be a gigantic work, entailing an enormous amount of labour and expenditure.
Such is the great fortress of Zimbabwe, the most mysterious and complex structure that it has ever been my fate to look upon. Vainly one tries to realise what it must have been like in the days before ruin fell upon it, with its tortuous and well-guarded approaches, its walls bristling with monoliths and round towers, its temple decorated with tall, weird-looking birds, its huge decorated bowls, and in the innermost recesses its busy gold-producing furnace. What was this life like? Why did the inhabitants so carefully guard themselves against attack? A thousand questions occur to one which one longs in vain to answer. The only parallel sensation that I have had was when viewing the long avenues of menhirs near Carnac, in Brittany, a sensation at once fascinating and vexatious, for one feels the utter hopelessness of knowing all one would wish on the subject. When taken alone this fortress is sufficiently a marvel; but when taken together with the large circular building below, the numerous ruins scattered around, the other ruins of a like nature at a distance, one cannot fail to recognise the vastness and power of this ancient race, their great constructive ingenuity and strategic skill.
APPROACH TO THE FORTRESS BY THE CLEFT. ZIMBABWE