DECORATED HEADS
The next day brought us at a very early hour to the site of the Matindela ruins, which was to be our halting-place for a few days. The ruins certainly are fine, but far inferior to those of Zimbabwe; they are perched on the top of a bare granite rock about 150 feet high, a most admirable strategical position.[2] In the centre of them we pitched our tents for our welcome halt of three days, and made ourselves as comfortable as rain would permit, for it fell in torrents here even though it was the dry season. The [[263]]term ‘Matindela’ means ‘guinea-fowl,’ quantities of which birds are found around here, as indeed they are in most parts of this country.
We were now only twenty miles from the Sabi River, and the country around was almost deserted, ruined villages crowned most of the heights, and the deserted fields and devastation in every direction were lamentable to behold. There were evidences, too, of a fairly recent raid, in which the poor Makalangas had been driven out of their homes and probably carried into slavery. By common consent the two great Zulu chiefs, Lobengula and Gungunyana, whose embassy visited England last year, consider the Sabi as their respective boundary for marauding expeditions. On this occasion I believe Gungunyana and his Shangans were to blame, who, finding that Lobengula was cut off by the Chartered Company from this part of his district, had made bold to cross the Sabi and raid on the western side, bringing destruction into the Makalanga homes, which in former years had here been thought very secure, being, as they were, far from Lobengula and just out of Gungunyana’s recognised district.
The Makalangas have the greatest horror of the Shangans, who dwell across the Sabi, and do Gungunyana’s bidding. One day at Matindela we brought home a specimen of a curious fruit which hangs from the trees, eighteen inches to two feet long, like thick German sausages; it has beans inside, and we asked Mashah if it was good to eat: ‘No Makalangas eat [[264]]umvebe,’ as he called it, ‘only the Shangans and baboons.’
Whilst at Matindela we sampled several kinds of strange fruit: firstly the Kaffir orange, a kind of strychnia, which is a hard fruit with yellow pulp inside around seeds, and of which every traveller should beware of eating if not quite ripe—an error into which several of our party fell; it is apt to produce violent sickness under those conditions, and at best it is painfully astringent, causing horrible facial contortions when you eat it, as most of the fruits about here do. Amongst other things, they brought to our camp at Matindela large quantities of the delicious cucumbers, monkey-nuts, sweet potatoes, and a sweet fruit which you chew and spit out like sugar-cane, which they call matoko. From the gigantic trees around us, the far-famed baobab trees, we gathered the nuts with the refreshing cream of tartar pulp inside. The baobab is the great feature of Matindela Hill; there are a dozen of them on it, huge giants, which in their growth have knocked down large portions of the walls. Though probably these trees are not as old as report says, nevertheless their presence here proves that these ruins have been utterly abandoned for many centuries. It is another problem to prove how their thick roots find sustenance for so huge a vegetable growth, perched as they are on an almost soil-less granite rock. Doubtless these roots follow the fissures in the granite and obtain the required moisture from some considerable [[265]]distance. The effect, however, is exceedingly odd to see these colossal trees growing in no depth of soil on the top of a granite rock.
I had always been sceptical about the honey-bird until its virtues were properly proved to us when at Matindela. An insignificant little bird, with a significant chirp, led our men over rocks and through jungle till they actually found honey, so that we could no longer indulge in doubts as to this mysterious gift, which, like the water-finding divining rods, I will leave to others to explain.
Traces of recent life around Matindela were numerous: the valleys had all at one time been ploughed: ruined huts, constructed high up in the trees, had served as outlooks for the agriculturists, bark beehives were in the trees, but the villages were all blackened and burnt, the granaries knocked down and the inhabitants gone, no one knows where. Never during any camp of lengthened duration were we visited by so few natives as at Matindela. About here game is very plentiful; we sighted fresh elephant and giraffe ‘spoor,’ and we personally made the acquaintance of zebras, kudu, and other kinds of antelope. Across the valley below was an old and now disused stockade for catching game, and hunting-parties in this locality have been numerous. These parties are arranged by the Makalangas on a small or large scale; sometimes, when they have an elaborate system of stockades, they just drive the game towards a cul de sac or a narrow gap where [[266]]men are hidden in the grass; sometimes they have great parties forming two half-moons; one of these stations itself behind a kopje, whilst the other, with dogs and shouting, drives the game to them.
Their game laws give rise to frequent squabbles amongst the chiefs; it is generally understood that, if a man wounds a buck and another kills it, the wounder claims the carcass, but the killer is entitled to take whichever limb he wishes. There is a tribe near Zimbabwe who will not eat a buck unless it has had its throat cut, and so they endeavour first to wound it, and then proceed to cut its throat. For small buck, hares, &c., they make traps across the narrow paths with a beam which falls when the animal treads on the plank below, being fixed on the path between two sloping rows of stakes.
Our course from Matindela was north-east—not the most direct route to the Sabi, which is only about twenty miles due east, but we had nobody with us who knew the way, and we had to go to a village for a guide. After a ride of seven miles we reached a curious lofty mountain called Chiburwe, close on 1,000 feet above the plain; it is almost round, and its flanks are decorated with huge granite boulders rising out of euphorbia, baobabs, and rank tropical vegetation. On the side we first reached this mountain the vegetation was too dense to allow us to ascend, so we had to ride to the northern side and go up by a slippery slope of black granite, the ordinary approach used by the natives, whose bare feet cling readily to the rocks, [[267]]but which was horrible for feet encased in European boots. The summit is flat and grassy like a Brighton down, being covered with a soft small stagshorn moss, delightful to lie upon. This spot is the happy play-ground of two native villages, which are placed on either side of the mountain; here they are sublimely safe and free from the raids of their enemies, and Chiburwe forms a sort of Makalanga outpost in the direction of the Sabi. Amongst other names mentioned by Portuguese writers which are still retained in the locality we find Chiburga as a stronghold, where the Monomatapa’s wives were kept. I think it highly probable that this is the spot. On the summit we found several sets of holes for the Isafuba game, and the inhabitants we came across seemed more than usually timid. Our view was indescribably lovely, with Lutilo and the spots we knew well behind us, and the mysterious blue mountains of Manica before us.