It can be noticed by anyone that the lower portions of the walls which once had dadoes have their block faces somewhat roughly built as compared with the upper portions of the walls. This appears to suggest that the original builders, in erecting the wall, had calculated upon certain portions of the faces being covered with dadoes. These rougher surfaces would provide a better hold for the cement than would the smoother faces of the walls above.
The cavities in the dry masonry of the main walls of the Elliptical Temple contain cooled air even at noontide, and this rushes out from between the courses with such a force as to make it impossible to light a match close to them, while it is a very easy matter to carry on a conversation through a wall 15 ft. thick and 32 ft. high.
To the original builders who, as is shown elsewhere, thoroughly understood and appreciated the art of sanitation, it is quite probable that these dadoes were considered necessary, especially as these dry masonry walls are the homes of snakes, lizards, and other unpleasant reptiles and creatures which probably were more abundant here three thousand years ago when, as competent scientists affirm, the climate was more humid. Whether for the exclusion of sound, for the securing of privacy, for the protection of their dwellings from reptiles, or to avoid the tearing by rough granite blocks in very narrow passages of such garments as they might have worn, or for the purpose of artistic effect—and these ancients practised several fine arts—the fact has recently been revealed that at any rate some of the ancient walls were once covered with these cement dadoes.[45]
BUILT-UP CREVICES
On the Acropolis Hill cliffs and boulders form such prominent features that these have often been employed as sides of enclosures. The ancients were in many instances at great pains to build up crevices and fissures in rocks, especially where these are in or near the enclosures. Even small crevices only a foot or so wide, and penetrating into the face of the cliffs and rocks for but two or three feet, the front being the only part giving access to such fissures, are carefully built up flush with the face of the rock. Some large perpendicular fissures in the cliffs have been so built up to an immense height. One fissure on the south side of the Rock Holes Path has been built up for 40 ft. above the ground. This fissure is from 1 ft. to 3 ft. wide. The effect caused by this column of blocks running up the face of the cliff is very strange. Some fissures are so narrow that very small blocks have been used. From some of such fissures the built-up courses have fallen away, leaving a few courses, here and there at different heights wedged in between the sides of the fissures, and occasionally one sees a single block wedged into a fissure at an immense height above any ruin. This building-up of crevices and fissures is to be found almost over the whole face of the hill where no ruins are now to be seen. If two boulders are near together, it may be taken as almost a moral certainty that on examining the boulders they will be found to be connected with a wall, even if the space be only a foot or two wide.
In a similar manner the holes under overhanging boulders have been neatly built up so as to effectually hide the hole. The natives have in two or three instances removed sufficient of the blocks to enable them to pass a corpse through, after which, with their peculiar style of building—column form—they have filled up the gaps with walling.
HOLES IN WALLS OTHER THAN DRAINS
This peculiar feature of ancient architecture is especially prominent at the Acropolis, also in East Ruins, and in almost all the ruins in the Valley of Ruins. There are holes, generally square, in the lower parts of the walls at two or three feet above any ancient floor. They are found only on the inside faces of walls, not one as yet having been discovered on the outer face. That they are intentionally made is a matter of ocular demonstration, for many have lintels either of large granite slabs or of slate beams. The blocks of the side framings are all built flush with each other. Their peculiarity is that they do not extend back into the wall for more than the length of a block, in one case of two blocks, and the internal packing blocks in the wall are seen inside. One such recess on the Acropolis shows traces of having once been lined with granite cement. The bottom portion of a similar recess in Upper Passage also has remains of cement lining. The largest recess is to be seen on the west side of a divisional wall in East Ruins. This is 3 ft. high and 1 ft. 10 in. wide. No such recess has so far been discovered in the Elliptical Temple, but at least fifty have been found elsewhere among the ruins.
BLIND STEPS AND PLATFORMS
In several enclosures in the principal ruins at Zimbabwe, but mainly at the Elliptical Temple, and in the angles formed by the meeting of side walls of the enclosures, are to be seen small raised platforms approached by two or three steps. These steps could not have led to higher positions than the small platforms, that is, they could not have been intended for mounting to the summit of the wall, for the bottom steps are at far too short a distance from the walls in comparison with their heights, besides which, the steps and platforms are perfect in themselves, and their summits, judging by the condition of the cement floor, terminated as is seen to-day. Nor are there any signs on the faces of the walls above such platforms of any steps, or that the blocks in the angles of the walls were at any time protected from the weather by any higher structure.