One often wondered along what part of the country on the south or east of Great Zimbabwe lay the ancient road from the coast to this old-world metropolitan centre. Several suggestions more or less possible have been made since the preoccupation days as to the ancient road. That the ruins at Mapaku (the caves), seven miles distant towards the south-east, formed one of the posting stations on such a road may be considered as highly probable. Visitors have generally favoured the conjecture that the road from Zimbabwe to Mapaku must have passed to the north of the Beroma Range, which, seen from Zimbabwe, from which it is two miles distant, forms a continuous granite rampart some 600 ft. high, four miles long, and about one and a half miles broad, stretching from north to south. This range appears to present a solid obstacle to any approach from Zimbabwe. A detour round its north end and along its eastern base as far as Mapaku would make the distance at least ten miles. Moreover, on this line the kopjes and valleys have recently been thoroughly searched for any traces of ancient occupation, and none have been found. This therefore shows that such suggested route, had it actually been the ancient road, would have been altogether undefended for ten miles in an awkward country where the valleys, gorges, kloofs, and boulders would have provided splendid vantage points for attacks on the gold- and ivory-laden convoys proceeding from Zimbabwe to the coast.
Schlichter Gorge, running south at the east end of Zimbabwe Valley, has also been suggested as the ancient approach to Zimbabwe. Certainly, viewed from the Acropolis, this would appear to be the only natural road, but the position of the gorge, as can be seen when visited, negatives the suggestion. The gorge at its southern end is practically impassable. It is filled up at several points with solid sections of cliff which have fallen into it from the steep sides on either hand, and though the Mapudzi stream finds its way under these obstructions, the traveller must climb the almost perpendicular sides some seventy to a hundred feet to descend again beyond the obstructions, and further on repeat the climbing to pass a further barrier. In this gorge and on the summit of its cliffs there are no traces of walls to defend the defile, while an enemy could easily destroy the convoy, for the pass forms a veritable military trap. The distance from Zimbabwe to Mapaku in this direction would be at least nine miles.
Thus these two conjectured routes may for many reasons be dismissed as impracticable. But there remain two other possible routes to be considered, and both of these pass over the Beroma Range. The first, the one traversed by Mr. Bent and by all visitors to Mapaku, keeps to the Motelekwe track past East Kopje (Mazanda) till opposite Chenga’s kraal, through which the path leads, and up the long trough-like valley on the Beroma Range, which depression is formed by the two parallel lines of the summits of the range. On the east line of summit are two depressions, and visitors are taken by the northern of these past Mandarali kraal, which is on the edge of the cliff facing east, then down the side of the range and along its base southwards to Molinije’s kraal at Mapaku. This line of route makes the distance a little over seven miles. The local natives say that this path from Zimbabwe to Mapaku is a very long one. On it a careful search has failed to discover any traces of ruins.
A well-defined line of route protected at several strategic points by ruins of buildings indicates, beyond doubt, the actual road of the ancients. This makes the distance barely six miles, which is the shortest to Mapaku, and along it runs a much-frequented native track, used by the numerous long string of “boys” coming up, between the harvest and the sowing, from the districts of the Lower Motelekwe and the eastern stretches of the Lundi and Limpopo rivers, to seek work in the gold district west of Victoria. The ruins protecting this route form a chain of forts, which occur at intervals of about one mile and a quarter. On the Zimbabwe-Mapaku section of this route there are the remains of five substantial and well-constructed ancient buildings. It is along this section and a further section of the chain of ruins extending from Zimbabwe to Majerri that the trip here described was taken.
At 3.30 a.m. the six boys to carry blankets, food, cooking utensils, survey and photographic apparatus, botanical case, insect bottles, rifle, and a few tools, were waiting ready to start for the Majerri Ruins in the Motelekwe district, some twenty miles south-east of Great Zimbabwe. The moon was almost at the full, but would set an hour before sunrise. This is the best time of day to start on a walking expedition, as one may then hope to break the back of the distance before the sun’s heat could be felt. Five boys took up their loads, each about 35 lbs., and our guide marched on ahead with the rifle. Our little party passed down the Motelekwe track till the East Ruins were reached. It was perfectly light and a greenish-grey mistiness invested the Valley of Ruins, the Acropolis, and the Elliptical Temple. Walking silently we passed through the ruins of the dead city to the point where the old road to the coast leaves Zimbabwe.
At East Ruins the track to the upper reaches of the Motelekwe, and to Arowi, rounds off at the foot of East Kopje towards the north-east. Our path took us slightly south of east. But the Beroma Range looked like a Titanic wall of granite cliff barring our passage in that direction. “Sheba’s Breasts” (Sueba, black; marsgi, a corruption of the word meaning bald-headed), a pair of bare and round-topped hills on the southern end of the summit of the range, stand clearly against the greenish sky, and above them the morning star is just appearing. Sueba is marked on all maps of Rhodesia as “Mount Sheba”; but the names “Sheba’s Breasts” and “Mount Sheba” are very modern indeed, dating back only to 1891. This pair of hills can very well be seen from the Tokwe, where the old Pioneer Road from the Lundi crosses that river. Evidently some member of the column familiar with Mr. Rider Haggard’s works, knowing that Great Zimbabwe lay just behind those hills, bestowed these names upon them, and so they have been known ever since.
Our path led down a slight valley from East Ruins to the Mapudzi stream, and here the Beroma was found not to be such an obstacle to our progress as was at first imagined, for on its west side is a broad defile leading up to the ledge of land a third way between the base and summit of the range, and at the top of the defile, and a hundred yards to the left, is a well-built ruin which guards the approach up the defile. Chenga’s Ruin, as it is called, occupies a position well chosen for defensive purpose, and presents several good architectural and constructive features. Here the coastward-bound convoy would first realise they had quite left Zimbabwe behind them, and would start to count the fifteen to twenty days of their tedious and, no doubt, highly dangerous journey to the sea, which should bear them in their gold-laden argosies homewards, either to the port of Eudaemon (the present Aden), or to the Moscha (“harbour”) of Ophir, metropolis of the ancient Sabæans, or else, if later, to Ezion-Geber, the Jewish and Phœnician port on the Red Sea during the reign of King Solomon.
Chenga’s Ruin is outside the Zimbabwe ruins’ area, and is the first posting station on the road to Sofala. In 1540 the Moslem Arab traders in gold and ivory informed the Portuguese that the journey from Sofala to Zimbabwe required from fifteen to twenty days (twelve to fifteen miles a day), so that the later Arabs must have travelled on foot taking native carriers. They too may have used as caravansaries the line of ancient forts that stretches from Zimbabwe towards Sofala along rivers whose valleys form the natural outlet to the coast for the populations of Southern Rhodesia, for they could thus find admirable protection at easy intervals for the night, or halt within the walls built, possibly, by their remote ancestors. So the ancients leaving Chenga’s Ruin might know they had at least fifteen days of tramping ahead of them, for no evidence of their employing oxen, horses or camels, or any wheeled vehicles, has come to light. The journey may have even been longer, owing to the delays of the slave gangs and carriers with their burdens of gold and ivory, and to the caution needed in passing through a land clearly shown by the protecting forts to have been hostile territory. The weary stretch of the Sabi Valley lay before them—Sabi, a name which students of Chicaranga and of other native languages state has no known derivation, and of which the natives emphatically affirm “It is but a name. It means nothing to us.” It has therefore been repeatedly conjectured that the name Sabi, Sabæ, or Saba has a connection with the river with which they must have been very well acquainted. From scriptural accounts we find that such duplication of names of places was a practice of the old Semitic peoples, as in Havilah, the local and pastoral country, and Havilah, the foreign and mineralised country, in a superlative sense the gold land, “and the gold of that land is good” (Genesis ii. 12). Instances, in fact, occur almost everywhere from the remotest time down to the founding of New South Wales, Nova Scotia, New York, and a hundred other well-known places.
Chenga’s Ruin was absolutely unknown to white men, as also were the Beroma Ruins, until quite recently. The local natives repeatedly denied the existence of any ruins on the Beroma Hills, and this denial on their part, so authorities on Makalanga customs say, is perfectly natural and to be expected, for all the ruins of this chain, like so many others throughout the country, have been used by the Makalanga up to the present day as burial-places, and being well aware of the clearing of the Zimbabwe ruins, they feared lest these other ruins, too, should be explored. But since they have learnt that in the work at Zimbabwe the graves have been respected, they appear to be less nervous, and as it is known for many miles round that substantial rewards will be paid for information as to other and fresh ruins, they sometimes volunteer their information and offer themselves as guides. Thus some nine additional ruins have now been discovered and inspected. But the three ruins on the Beroma Hills which at strategic points guard our path were found by the author on making a systematic search of all the hills in the district of Zimbabwe.
From the ledge on the west face of the Beroma Range on which Chenga’s Ruin is situated the ground rises gently towards a broad depression in the western crest of the range into a long valley, which runs from north to south and from end to end of the top of the hills. The path after passing through the farmstead of David (a native teacher) passes up the valley southwards for half a mile and then turns east at a sharp angle towards the most southerly of the two depressions on the eastern crest. Within a few hundred yards, on the right-hand side of the path where it turns east, and on a low, rocky knoll, is a second ruin—Beroma Ruin—which is well-built, and has a rather fine, rounded entrance. The southern half of this ruin is now reduced to a few piles of granite blocks. On the south-west side of this ruin is one of “Sheba’s Breasts,” Marsgi. On the south side of the path is Sueba, the other “Breast.” Half-way between Beroma Ruin and Sueba, and on the south side of the path, is a cluster of tall, pillar-like rocks, which look in the serene moonlight, and at a little distance, like a cathedral built of white stone. The natives call these rocks Rusinga. On the left-hand side of the path, on the ridge of the depression on the eastern line of summits, is a tall column of huge boulders, which, when seen from the south side, exactly resemble one of the soapstone birds on beams found by Mr. Bent at Zimbabwe.