As we proceeded down the valley the hills closed in and became higher; occasional rugged peaks stood up out of gentle wooded slopes; and if one had ignored the trivial detail of foliage, one might have imagined that we were plunging into a pretty Norwegian valley with a stream rushing down its midst.
NATIVE BOWL FROM THE MAZOE VALLEY
Presently we came upon a nest of native kraals, and alighted to inspect them. There are those who say that these people are the real Mashonas, who have given their name to the whole country. This I much doubt; at any rate they are very different from the Makalangas, with whom we had hitherto been entirely associated, and have been here only for a few years. When Mr. Selous first visited this valley on one of his hunting expeditions in 1883, he found it quite uninhabited, whereas now there are many villages, an apt illustration of the migratory tendencies of these [[287]]tribes. They are quite different in type to the Makalangas, and, I should say, distinctly inferior in physique. They build their huts differently, with long eaves coming right down to the ground. Their granaries are fatter and lower, and made of branches instead of mud, these two facts pointing distinctly to a tribal variation. They wear their hair in long strings over their face, one on each side of the nose, and the others hanging on their cheeks, giving them quite a sphinx-like appearance. These strings are adorned with beads and cowrie-shells, and must form the most uncomfortable style of coiffure that ever was invented. They have magnificent bowls of hand-made pottery, decorated with chevron patterns in red and black, which colours they obtain from hematite and plumbago; and on all advantageous spots near the villages are platforms raised on stakes for drying grain.
Undoubtedly this race, whoever they may be, have a northern origin, for they call beer Doorah or Doro, the same word used for the same material in Abyssinia and Nubia. This word is also used in ’Mtoko’s and Makoni’s country. Curiously enough, Edrisi, in his geography, when speaking of the Zindj inhabitants near Sofala, makes this statement: ‘Dowrah is very scarce amongst them,’ pointing to the Arabian origin of the word; whereas in Manicaland beer is called Wa-wa, and in Mashonaland, south of Fort Salisbury, it is called ’Mtwala, a word of Zulu origin.
Four miles beyond these villages the valley gets [[288]]very narrow and the scenery very fine; and the shades of evening found us comfortably located in the huts of Mr. Fleming, a gold prospector, at a distance of twenty-five miles from Fort Salisbury and in the vicinity of the ancient mines. Immediately opposite to us rose a fine rocky mountain in which are caves where the natives hide themselves and their cattle during Matabele raids. It was a lovely warm evening, and as we sat contemplating the scene and resting after the labours of the day, we felt the soothing influence upon us of scenery more congenial to our taste than any we had yet seen in Mashonaland.
The first set of old workings which we visited was only a few hundred yards from Mr. Fleming’s huts, and consisted of rows of vertical shafts, now filled up with rubbish, sunk along the edge of the auriferous reef, and presumably, from instances we saw later, communicating with one another by horizontal shafts below. We saw also several instances of sloping and horizontal shafts, all pointing to considerable engineering skill. It must have been ages since these shafts were worked, for they are all filled nearly to the surface with débris, and huge machabel-trees, the largest in the vicinity, are growing out of them. We then proceeded to visit some old workings about a mile and a half off on the hill slopes. One vertical shaft had been cleared out by Mr. Fleming’s workmen, and it was fifty-five feet deep. Down this we went with considerable difficulty, and saw for ourselves the ancient tool marks and the smaller horizontal shafts [[289]]which connected the various holes bored into the gold-bearing quartz.
I am told that near Hartley Hills some of these old workings go down even to a greater depth, and that one has been cleared out to the depth of eighty feet, proving incontestably that the ancient workers of these mines were not content with mere surface work, and followed the reef with the skill of a modern miner.
All about here the ground is honeycombed with old shafts of a similar nature, indicated now by small round depressions in straight lines along the reef where different shafts had been sunk; in fact, the output of gold in centuries long gone by must have been enormous.
Since the modern invasion of this gold-producing district a considerable amount of prospecting has been done, but of necessity time has not allowed of a thorough investigation of the country. Wherever the gold prospector has been, he finds instances of ancient working, and these old shafts extend all up the country wherever the gold-bearing quartz is to be found. There are ruins similar to those at Zimbabwe and the old workings in the Tati district. The old workings and ruins extend for miles and miles up the Mazoe Valley. Numerous old shafts are to be found at Hartley Hills, and on the ’Mswezwe River. Near Fort Victoria and in the immediate vicinity of Zimbabwe the prospectors have lately brought to light the same features; everywhere, in short, where the pioneer prospectors [[290]]have as yet penetrated overwhelming proof of the extent of the ancient industry is brought to light. Mr. E. A. Maund thus speaks of the old workings in the ’Mswezwe district:[1] ‘On all sides there was testimony of the enormous amount of work that had been done by the ancients for the production of gold. Here, as on the Mazoe and at Umtali, tens of thousands of slaves must have been at work taking out the softer parts of the casing of the reefs, and millions of tons have been overturned in their search for gold.’