THE CONICAL TOWER, ELLIPTICAL TEMPLE, GREAT ZIMBABWE

GREAT ZIMBABWE
MASHONALAND, RHODESIA

AN ACCOUNT OF TWO YEARS’ EXAMINATION
WORK IN 1902–4 ON BEHALF OF THE
GOVERNMENT OF RHODESIA

BY
R. N. HALL, F.R.G.S.
CO-AUTHOR WITH W. G. NEAL OF “THE ANCIENT RUINS OF RHODESIA”

WITH AN INTRODUCTION

BY
PROFESSOR A. H. KEANE, LL.D., F.R.G.S.

WITH TWO HUNDRED ILLUSTRATIONS, MAPS, AND PLANS

METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON

First Published in 1905

CONTENTS

LIST OF PLATES

LIST OF DIAGRAMS AND PLANS IN THE TEXT

THE LATE MR. THEODORE BENT, F.R.G.S.

EXPLORER OF GREAT ZIMBABWE IN 1891, AUTHOR OF “THE RUINED CITIES OF MASHONALAND”

THE VOLUME IS DEDICATED
TO THE MEMORY OF
THE LATE THEODORE BENT, F.R.G.S.
EXPLORER OF GREAT ZIMBABWE, 1891
AND AUTHOR OF
“THE RUINED CITIES OF MASHONALAND”

PREFACE[1]

IN preparing this detailed description of the ruins of Great Zimbabwe—the first given to the world in modern times—the author has aimed at permitting the actual ruins themselves to relate their own story of their forgotten past unweighted by any consideration of the many traditions, romances, and theories which—especially during the last decade—have been woven concerning these monuments.

The only apology offered for this apparently lengthy Preface is the mention of the fact that the operations at Great Zimbabwe were carried on for six months after the text of this volume had been sent to the publishers in England. The Preface, therefore, thus affords an opportunity of bringing down the results of these operations to a recent date.

RUINS’ AREA

The recent examination of the district surrounding the ruins now shows the Ruins’ Area to be far larger than either Mr. Theodore Bent (1891) or Sir John Willoughby (1892) supposed. Instead of the area being confined to 945 yds. by 840 yds., it is now known to be at least 2 miles by 1¼ miles, and even this larger limit is by no means final, as traces of walls and of walls buried several feet under the veld have been discovered, not only in Zimbabwe Valley, but in the secluded valleys and gorges and on the hillsides which lie a mile and even two miles beyond the extended area. Huge mounds, many hundred feet in circumference, with no traces of ruins, covered with large full-grown trees and with the remains on the surface of very old native huts, on being examined have been found to contain well-built ruins in which were unearthed small conical towers, gold ornaments, a few phalli, and in one instance a carved soapstone bird on a soapstone beam 4 ft. 8 in. high, which is more perfect and more ornate than any other soapstone bird on beam yet found at Zimbabwe. The examination of such spots and of all traces of walls which lie at the outer edge of the extended Ruins’ Area would, even with a large gang of labourers, occupy almost a lifetime.

Mr. Bent spoke of Zimbabwe as a “city,” and recent discoveries show the employment of this title to be fully justified, for not only is the Ruins’ Area vastly extended, but the formerly conjectured area can now be shown by recent excavations to have been much more crowded with buildings than could possibly have been seen in 1891. For instance, 2,300 ft. of passages have recently been discovered within the heart of the old Ruins’ Area buried some feet under the silted soil below the veld in spots where the siltation is rapid, the existence of which structures had been altogether unsuspected. In some instances the native paths, used by visitors inspecting the ruins, crossed these passages from 3 ft. to 5 ft. above the tops of the passage walls. The enormous quantity of débris, evidencing occupations in several periods, scattered over both the old and the extended area, is simply astonishing, and judging by the value of “finds” made during the recent work, it seems quite possible that further exploration would, in the intrinsic value of relics as relics, largely reimburse the expense of its continuance, while securing the opening up of fresh features of architecture and probably some definite clues as to the original builders of the numerous periods of occupation respectively; would bring an immense addition to scientific knowledge, while the more important ruins themselves, having been cleared of silted and imported soils and wall débris, are now ripe for the further examination for relics.

BURIAL-PLACES OF THE OLD COLONISTS

The secluded valleys, and also the caves in hills, for a distance of six miles, and in some cases as far as ten miles, from Zimbabwe have been systematically searched in the hope of discovering the burial place of the old gold-seekers. The neighbourhood of Zimbabwe contains several extensive ranges of granite hills each enclosing many secluded and Sinbad-like valleys and gorges, where natives state white men had never previously entered. Such spots on the whole of the Beroma Hills to the east of Zimbabwe, the south end of the Livouri Range to the west, the Bentberg Range to the south, and several hills in the Nini district, as well as several parts in the Motelekwe Valley, have been systematically searched without avail, though there are in certain of these secluded places traces of walls and artificially placed upright stones and other signs of human presence which require some explanation. The siltation of soil from the steep hillsides of many of these most romantically situated valleys has been very extensive. These searches could only be carried on after veld fires had swept the district of the rank grass which here grows to a height of 12 ft. Mr. Bent and other writers have shown that the old Arabians religiously preserved their dead, burying them in secluded spots at some considerable distance from any place of occupation. The writer is not without hope that these burial-places may yet be found. The population of Zimbabwe at several different periods must have been immense, and, judging by the remains found near some of the oldest types of ruins in other parts of the country where the amount of gold ornaments buried with each corpse ranged from 1 oz. to 72 oz., the discovery of such places in the Zimbabwe district would yield important results, especially as, for many reasons, Zimbabwe undoubtedly appears to have been the ancient metropolitan capital and the centre of gold-manufacturing industry of the original and later Arab gold miners, and the place so far has yielded the richest discoveries of gold in every form.

The writer is now perfectly assured that no burial-places of the original builders will be found under the interior of the Elliptical Temple or within 30 yds. of the exterior. Holes have been sunk at regular intervals within the temple and immediately outside the walls, and boring-rods have been systematically employed, and the position and lie of the formation rock ascertained throughout, so that sections and levels have been made of the soil and rock under the temple. All the results gained from each hole and boring are recorded. But beyond discovering buried foundations at the higher level, only virgin soil, never before disturbed, was gone through. French and German archæologists who visited Zimbabwe during the operations confirmed what British scientists have affirmed, that no burials of people of Semitic stock would be found within or near to any building so frequently in use as the great temple must have been. The severe restrictions with regard to cleanliness and sanitation, especially as to the dead, are among the most notable features of the old Semitic nations.

ABSENCE OF INSCRIPTIONS

No ancient writing has been discovered, though close attention has been paid to all stones and pottery likely to bear it, and notwithstanding that the interiors of some of the more ancient portions of the ruins have been cleared down to the old floors where, if any existed, they might reasonably have been expected to be found. Post-Koranic lettering was found on highly glazed pottery, also on glass, but all such specimens are of a fragmentary character; but experts such as Mr. Wallace Budge, the Head Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities at the British Museum, state that the glass and other “finds” of pottery are not older than the thirteenth or fourteenth century of this era. Other pottery thickly covered with dull-coloured glazes—mainly purples, greens, and browns—is thought to be somewhat older than that on which the lettering was found. Still, as such a very large portion of what may be considered as the more ancient of the ruins remains to be examined, it may yet be possible to unearth older specimens of Arab writing.

TWO PERIODS OF GOLD MANUFACTURE

Gold in a manufactured form is found on the lowest and original floors of the most ancient portions of the Zimbabwe ruins. In several ruins this was found as thickly strewn about the cement floors as nails in a carpenter’s shop. Gold ornaments discovered at this depth, in some instances from 3 ft. to 5 ft. below any known native floors, were always found in association with the oldest form of relics yet unearthed at Zimbabwe. Such gold articles are of most delicate make, and are doubtless of an antique character, and expert opinion recently obtained in England confirms this conclusion.

But there are other gold articles which are ruder in design and make, and these by no means are entitled to claim such antiquity. In fact, expert opinion declines to recognise them as being in any sense ancient; for instance, beaten gold of irregular shape showing the rough hammer marks of some very crude instrument, and with holes round the edges of such plates very rudely cut—or rather torn—and placed in imperfect rows altogether in a haphazard style. This form of gold plates is identical in every detail with the copper sheathing with which it is always found associated. The same remarks apply equally to the gold beads also found with this class of plates which betoken crude workmanship, as well as to the iron instruments decorated with small gold knobs.

With regard to the location of the later-period gold articles there is ample evidence that these are of very old native origin. Such ornaments are commonly met with on the floors of, or in close proximity to, the old native huts of the types of Nos. 2 and 3 (see Architecture, s.s. Native Huts found in Ruins, pp. 154, 155, post), and also in the cement huts with small radiating walls on levels several feet above any ancient floorings. In every instance such gold ornaments are found in association with articles of old native make—such as double iron gongs, copper sheathing, and copper assegai- and arrow-heads.

ELLIPTICAL TEMPLE

NORTH ENTRANCE

In 1902 the floor of the North Entrance to the temple was exposed to a depth of 5 ft. below the surface, as shown in Mr. Bent’s book (p. 106), while a flight of steps in perfect condition leading up to the entrance from the exterior was discovered at a depth of 9 ft. below the old surface. This entrance, showing a bold conception and admirable construction, is now considered as one of the principal show features at Zimbabwe. Further, it is the oldest form of entrance and steps as well as the finest of any yet discovered in Rhodesia. A quantity of gold was found on the floor and steps of this entrance, which were once covered with fine granite cement, also a few true phalli.

PARALLEL PASSAGE

This has been cleared throughout to a depth of at least 3 ft., and in one place 7 ft. Cement floors were exposed, and these were found to be divided into small catchment areas with a drain from each passing outwards through the main wall. Five additional drains were discovered in this passage. Here were found eight ornate phalli, a portion of a gold bangle, some beaten gold and gold tacks of microscopic size, and fragments of carved soapstone beams.

SACRED ENCLOSURE

This was cleared out to a depth of 4 ft. throughout its whole area, and a few phalli of unmistakable form were found, and old granite cement floors and steps were uncovered. Explorers and relic hunters had worked in this enclosure, and had double trenched it from end to end.

A remarkable discovery was made here of distinct traces of granite cement dadoes, 7 ft. high, round the interior faces of the walls of this enclosure. In some other enclosures the remains of dadoes can still be seen.

The small conical tower in this enclosure has during the last ten years been seriously damaged by the large trunk of a tree pushing over the summit of the cone. Photographs of this small tower taken in 1891 show that it was then almost intact.

PLATFORM AREA

This open area, lying to the west and north of the Conical Tower and the Platform, corresponds to the open areas immediately in front of the altars in old Grecian temples. This was Mr. Bent’s opinion, and possibly it answered at Zimbabwe a similar purpose of accommodating the worshippers. The area, some 120 ft. by 60 ft., has been cleared out of large trees, and of about 6 ft. of soil throughout, and floors—both cement and clay—were disclosed, also a fine circular structure of excellent granite cement, and ascended by two steps. On and close to this structure were found fragments, mainly bases, of carved soapstone beams of slender appearance, also some phalli and gold. This platform lies slightly off the north line between the Conical Tower and the Main North Entrance.

Some of the walls surrounding this area on the west and north sides, once considered to be ancient, can now be seen to cross over very old native clay huts and native copper and iron-smelting furnaces. The soil contained some phalli, which had been converted by the natives into amulets, also some Arabian glass—thirteenth and fourteenth centuries—Venetian beads, gold wire-work, beaten gold, gold scorifiers of native pottery, iron pincers, and fragments of carved soapstone bowls with geometric designs.

ENCLOSURES 6, 7, AND 10

Gold-smelting operations must have, at some late period, been extensively carried on in these enclosures, for on removing from each enclosure all débris and fallen stones to a depth of from 4 ft. to 7 ft., there were found burnishing stones of fine grain and still covered with gold, gold scorifiers with gold in the flux, cakes of gold, gold furnace slag, beaten gold, and gold dust.

At a still lower depth in No. 6 Enclosure a quantity of granite clay crucibles, showing gold richly, were met with, and these are undoubtedly of older type than the native pottery scorifiers, also some ingot moulds of soapstone of the double claw-hammer or St. Andrew’s cross pattern.

CENTRAL AREA

This area is only partially excavated, it being covered with old native-built walls which cross over bone and ash débris, old native huts, an iron furnace, and rich black mould in which the vegetable matter was still undecayed. Experimental holes and boring-rods showed that some very old foundations ran below the soil upon which the later and poorer walls are built. However, a key has now been found which will enable further excavations to be made within this area without injury to the upper walls.

SUMMIT OF MAIN EAST WALL

Along the summit of the east main wall, and only over the chevron pattern which faces east, have recently been discovered the traces of foundations of small circular towers, both on the inner and outer edges of the wall. These correspond in measurement and relative position to the small conical towers on the west wall of the Western Temple at the Acropolis Ruins, which is decorated with monoliths. Some of the best-known surveyors and practical builders in Rhodesia are prepared to certify as to the traces of these foundations. This is entirely a new discovery, as is also the fact that at one time the summit of the wall, only over the chevron pattern, bore beautifully rounded soapstone monoliths, the bases being found displaced under the ruck of loose blocks which runs along the centre of the summit of this part of the main wall. Some carved splinters of these monoliths were found at the bases of the wall. A collection of these “finds” has been sent to the Salisbury Museum.

PROBABLE AGES OF THE WALLS OF THE ELLIPTICAL TEMPLE

All the walls of the Elliptical Temple are not ancient; that is, not ancient in the sense applying to the suggested Sabæo-Arabian occupation of Rhodesia and also to that of the Solomonic gold period. The evidences pointing to this conclusion, and now for the first time available, are so obvious and general, and the ocular demonstration so positive, that one of the many popular myths concerning Great Zimbabwe must, even at the risk of committing a vandalism on cherished romantic theories and beliefs, go by the board. The writer prefers that the ruins should tell their own story, and this can now be read in the walls, in the débris heaps, and in the relics and their associated “finds” and locations.

The oldest walls of the temple for which great antiquity may be claimed are—the main east wall from north to south, the Conical Tower, the Platform, portions of the inner wall of the Parallel Passage (reconstructions are present here), and some adjoining walls, and some buried walls and foundations, and possibly some other walls on the south side, concerning which some doubt exists, as also the west wall of the West Passage, a well-built structure which once was extended at either extremity. As to the question of obviously much later walls, this is involved in the following section of this preface.

WEST WALL CONTROVERSY

The writer is fully convinced that the original west wall of the temple once extended outwards further west, and that the present west wall extending towards the south is of much more recent construction and is built on a shorter curve, also that most of the structures of the central and western portions of the building are also of much later construction, and this for many substantial reasons, some of which are here briefly stated:—

(a) The west wall is considered by all practical builders and architects to be far slighter, much inferior in construction, fuller of defects, and to contain to a greater extent ill-shaped stones than the main wall on the east side, while the foundations are at many points far more irregular, and the batter-back of the interior face of the west wall is less severe than is the case of the east side. Lengths of 25 ft. each of both walls have been examined and compared and photographed, and the number of defects of construction recorded. The number of false and “straight joints,” false and disappearing courses, and stones supported at their corners by granite chips, which the west wall contains, is roughly about forty odd to every one of such defects in the east wall, which is the architectural marvel for symmetry, grand proportion, true courses of most carefully selected and assorted blocks (some of which have been dressed with metal tools) of any other ancient architectural features at Zimbabwe. All this is an ocular demonstration, and is commented upon by the most casual visitor to these ruins. This, too, is very patent when seen from the summit of Zimbabwe Hill, the view looking down upon the temple revealing most obviously the different characters of the walls.

(b) In 1903 the writer cleared the soil away from the gap between the older and later walls, and found that they were widely different in construction; that the later and narrower wall approached the older and well-built and wider wall at an oblique angle; and that the end of the older wall is broken and not finished off as are other ends of ancient walls. In a trench made at a distance of twelve yards west of the gap, and on the curve the older wall, if continued, would have passed, a mass of buried masonry, which might have been a portion of the old wall, was disclosed.

(c) Dr. Hahn, the leading expert in South Africa in chemical metallurgy, analysed the soil underlying the foundation of the west wall, and pronounced it to be composed of disintegrated furnace slag and ashes containing gold and iron. The ground to the west of the west wall has always been the spot at which gold prospectors have washed the soil for gold, and here gold crucibles and scorifiers are to be found. This soil contains 73 per cent. of silica, and would make an excellent foundation for walls, and the west wall is built right along this bed of furnace slag, which is about 2 ft. in depth, many yards wide, and extends from north to south.

(d) At a few feet from the exterior of the west wall, and at a depth of four feet below the level of its foundation, and extending as shown in trenches and cross-cuts for at least thirty yards from north to south, is a floor of granite cement laid on the formation rock, hiding its irregularities and making a perfectly level surface. The full extent of this flooring has not yet been ascertained. For two feet between the level of this cement flooring and the furnace-slag soil under the foundations of the west wall is fine silted soil. Evidently the later wall was erected at a very considerable period subsequently to the laying of the cement flooring and after the siltation of the soil, and also after the gold-smelting operations had been extensively carried on for a long period.

(e) No single relic of any great antiquity has been found by any explorer or prospector in the western portion of the temple, while the eastern portion has yielded at depth great quantities of phalli and of every relic believed to be associated with the earliest occupiers.

The oldest “find” in the western half of the building is pronounced by Dr. Budge to be of a period dating from between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries of this era, and other “finds” relate to the same and later periods.

WRITER’S CONCLUSIONS

The writer is now and for the above and further considerations, and after two years’ residence within the ruins, perfectly convinced of the following:—

(1) That on the departure of the ancient builders and occupiers the temple became a ruin, and remained as such for some centuries, the west wall disappearing in the meantime (as explained later); (2) that some organised Arab people, possibly a split of the numerous Arab colonies and kingdoms which existed down the East African coast, possibly of the Magdoshu kingdom, who, according to De Barros, reached Sofala (1100 a.d.), exploited the gold mines, and formed a mixed population between the Arabs and natives, or possibly the Arabs of Quiloa, who secured as suzerain power Sofala and the kingdom of the Monomotapa (Rhodesia). One of these peoples is believed to be responsible for the ruins of Inyanga, which the writer after examining these remains does not consider to be ancient in the fullest sense of the term. One of these peoples are also believed to be responsible for making the “old workings,” the distinction between which and the “ancient workings” must always be kept in mind, a distinction which the late Mr. Telford Edwards always pointed out and insisted upon, and concerning which recent investigations prove him to have been correct; (3) that these Arabs made Zimbabwe their headquarters, to which the washed gold dust was brought to be converted into ingots for transport; (4) that these Arabs carried on extensive gold-smelting operations at the west end of the temple in the shelter of the massive walls, which would protect them against the prevailing winds and drifting rains; (5) that after carrying on these gold-smelting operations extensively and for a considerable period, they built a wall across the open space and upon their furnace-slag beds, possibly employing native labour (the Makalanga being notorious for their skill in wall building); and (6) that these Arabs also built several of the enclosures in the central and western parts of the temple to suit their special convenience, and altogether regardless of the buried foundations of the ancient builders.

DESTRUCTION OF THE ORIGINAL WEST WALL

It may be asked what caused the destruction of the original west wall. Its disappearance may be accounted for as follows. The south and west walls have for centuries borne the full brunt of all the torrential rain and storm water which rushes to these points from the Bentberg Kopjes, which lie close to the temple on the south side. This accounts for the great depth of silted soil which buries the old cement flooring. This must have washed the lower portions of the walls till the cement foundations decomposed and brought down the structure as it has done at other ruins at Zimbabwe. The writer at the commencement of his first rainy season at Zimbabwe found a large pool about 30 yds. in length, 15 yds. in breadth, and 2 ft. in depth up against the present west wall, towards which all surface water from the higher ground rushed unchanged. This had been going on every rainy season for many generations, with the result of forming large cavities under the foundations, and of keeping the wall in a constant drip with damp even at noontide, and of causing the spread of large moss over the walls, while shrubs and small trees grew out of the walls at some height from their base. Trenches and runs-off and banks soon cured this evil, and now the walls have changed from being black with damp to being grey with dryness. The moss has naturally flaked off, and the trees and shrubs in the walls are dead, owing to lack of moisture.

THE ACROPOLIS RUINS

WESTERN TEMPLE

Operations in this temple since the description of the earlier work was embodied in the text of this volume have been carried on to June, 1904. Soil to a depth of from 3 ft. to 5 ft. was removed from the whole of the eastern portion of this area. The excavations showed several layers of native clay floors one above another. The “finds” were those known to be of native origin, though not made by natives of to-day. The later or native period of gold manufacture was greatly in evidence, beaten gold, gold tacks, and gold wire being frequently met with in association with copper sheathing, copper assegai- and arrow-heads, the copper containing no alloy.

A trial hole sunk to a depth of 6 ft. below this cleared portion of the temple area, or 9 ft. below the surface as it appeared in 1903, showed in its sides the lines of several clay floors and the side of a Kafir clay hut, now quite decomposed and soft. At the bottom of the pit a rough pavement of closely-fitting stones of irregular shape and size was come upon, and the articles found were identical with those discovered at a higher level.

The clearing of the area also disclosed clay sides of huts with the remains of short walls of stone radiating from the sides of the huts. The wall which Mr. Bent considered might have been the “altar” was found to be the radiating wall of a similar hut built upon a higher level. These small radiating walls are a general feature of exceedingly old native huts found at several places at Zimbabwe.

A large circular platform of granite cement was also disclosed. This spot yielded beaten gold of native make.

A ZIMBABWE REVIVAL

The writer believes that between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, or slightly earlier, a great influx of people took place at Zimbabwe, and that the majority of the minor ruins in the Valley of Ruins were built about this period. This is shown by the number of walls built across exceedingly old débris heaps of native origin, by the “finds” of Arabian articles on their lowest floors, and by the fact that no relic of greater age than that period has been found. Two or three of the better-built minor ruins have the appearance of greater age, and some of the relics found in this class of ruins are of the oldest type. No one who had not spent considerable time at Zimbabwe could have any possible conception of the immense population present here at a period of but a few centuries ago. The remains of their stone walls are scattered thickly over the valleys and hillsides of Zimbabwe. The Makalanga state these are all Makalanga of generations long passed away. Some are constructions by indigenous peoples, and certainly they are not ancient, though largely built of stones quarried from the ancient ruins, and the “finds” are those of old native type, including Arab articles.

PRESERVATION OF RUINS

The thanks of all scientific circles, and of South Africans generally, are due to Sir W. H. Milton, Administrator of Rhodesia, whose great interest in the preservation of the ancient monuments in these territories is well known, and to whose direction is due the recent and timely preservation work at Great Zimbabwe. The author desires to express his personal indebtedness to Sir William Milton for the adequate arrangements made by him while engaged in his recent researches at the Great Zimbabwe.

PLAN OF ELLIPTICAL TEMPLE

The clearing of the Elliptical Temple and its vicinity has enabled Mr. Franklin White, m.e., Bulawayo, to prepare the latest and so far the most perfect plan of that building, and this he has kindly placed at the service of the author.

Indebtedness is also expressed to Professor A. H. Keane, ll.d. (author of The Gold of Ophir), for the contribution of the Introduction to this volume; to Mrs. Theodore Bent for generously permitting the use in this volume of illustrations from The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland; to Mr. Gray, Chief Veterinary Surgeon, Salisbury, Mr. H. S. Meilandt, Government Roads Inspector, Bulawayo, and Trooper Wenham, b.s.a.p., Victoria, for permission to reproduce certain photographs of the ruins, and also to the Directors of the British South Africa Company for permission to include the map of Rhodesia in this work.

Havilah Camp, Great Zimbabwe,
Rhodesia, S.A.
1st June, 1904.

INTRODUCTION
BY A. H. KEANE, LL.D.

AN archæological work of absorbing interest, such as the volume here presented to the reader, needs no introduction. Nor are the following remarks meant to be taken in that sense, but only as a sort of “missing link” in the chain of evidence between past and present, between the Arabian Himyarites and the Rhodesian monuments, the forging of which the author has entrusted to me. In The Ancient Ruins of Rhodesia, of which Great Zimbabwe is the inevitable outcome, Messrs. Hall and Neal did not discuss the problem of origins, speculation was distinctly eschewed, and although their personal views were, and are, in harmony with those of all competent observers, they made no dogmatic statement on the subject, leaving the main conclusion to be inferred from the great body of evidence which they patiently accumulated on the spot and embodied in their monumental work. In Great Zimbabwe, of which Mr. Hall is sole author, and the rich materials for which he has alone brought together, the same attitude of reserve is still maintained, perhaps even more severely, and therefore it is that he has now invited me to develop the argument by which, as he hopes and I believe, the wonderful prehistoric remains strewn over Southern Rhodesia, but centred chiefly in the Great Zimbabwe group, may be finally traced to their true source in South Arabia, Phœnicia, and Palestine.

In The Gold of Ophir, whence Brought and by Whom,[2] where several chapters are devoted to this subject, I inferred, on plausible grounds, that the Havilah of Scripture—“the whole land of Havilah where there is gold”—was the mineralised region between the Zambesi and the Limpopo, and that the ancient gold-workings of this region were first opened and the associated monuments erected by the South Arabian Himyarites, followed in the time of Solomon by the Jews and Phœnicians. I further endeavoured to show that all these Semitic treasure-seekers reached Havilah (the port of which was Tharshish, probably the present Sofala) through Madagascar, where they had settlements and maintained protracted commercial and social intercourse with the Malagasy natives; and lastly, that the produce of the mines was by them sent down to the coast and shipped at Tharshish for Ophir, the great Himyaritic emporium on the south coast of Arabia, whence it was distributed over the eastern world. It followed that the scriptural “gold of Ophir” did not mean the gold mined at Ophir, which was not, as hitherto supposed, an auriferous land, but a gold mart.[3] The expression meant the gold imported by the Jews and Phœnicians from Havilah (Rhodesia), viâ Tharshish, Ophir, and Ezion-geber in Idumæa, at the head of the Red Sea.

It is needless here to recapitulate in detail the arguments that I have advanced in support of this general thesis. But I should like to point out that if one or two of them have been invalidated by my critics, several have been greatly strengthened by the fresh evidence that has accumulated since the appearance of The Gold of Ophir.

Of course, incomparably the most important mass of fresh evidence is that which has been brought together by Mr. Hall himself during his two years’ researches amid the central group of ruins, and is now permanently embodied in Great Zimbabwe. Yet the work has in a sense been but begun; it has reached down only to the ancient flooring which has still to be explored; and we are assured by Sir John Willoughby, a most competent authority, that after two months’ exploring the wonderful Elliptical Temple with a large gang of labourers, two years will yet be needed to complete the surface work of that structure alone, without touching the old floors. Mr. Hall infers that three further years will be required for the Acropolis itself, besides the “Valley of Ruins,” with the groups of buildings extending in all directions for over a mile from the temple. A mere glance at some of the finely reproduced photographs creates a sense of awe and amazement at the huge size and solidity of the containing walls with their patiently interwoven chevron and other patterns, and at the vast extent of the ground covered by these great monuments of a forgotten past. Their erection must have taken many scores of years, one might say centuries, and their builders must consequently have dwelt for many generations in the land which they so diligently exploited for its underground treasures. Here and in all the other strictly mining districts they carried on their operations in the midst of hostile native populations, as is sufficiently evident from the strongholds crowning so many strategical heights, from the formidable ramparts and the immense strength of the outer walls, everywhere rounding off in long narrow passages leading to the inner enclosures.

Under such conditions it will naturally be asked, whence did the foreign intruders obtain their food supplies? The answer to this question is suggested in The Ancient Ruins, where it is pointed out (p. 208) that the auriferous reefs of the central Zimbabwe district, and generally of all the districts in immediate proximity to the fortified stations, show no traces of having ever been worked for the precious metal. “Possibly the reason for the ancients ignoring the gold-reefs of this district [Zimbabwe] lies in the fact that the country round about is exceedingly well suited for agricultural purposes, the soil being rich and water plentiful, and all vegetable growths prolific and profuse. The large population of ancients, together with the enormous gangs of slaves, would naturally consume a vast quantity of grain, and this necessity would create a large agricultural class, who, for their own safety and for the protection of their crops and fruits, would naturally carry on their operations within such an area as could be safeguarded by the fortresses of Zimbabwe.”

It might at first sight be supposed that the food supplies were drawn chiefly from the extensive agricultural settlements of the Inyanga territory, on the northern slopes of Mashonaland, which drain through the Ruenga and its numerous affluents to the right bank of the Zambesi. This Inyanga district may be roughly described, from the archæological point of view, as an area of old aqueducts, of old terraced slopes, and of old ruins of a less imposing type than the Zimbabwe remains. In a notice of The Ancient Ruins of Rhodesia contributed to the Geographical Journal for April, 1902, I first drew attention to the surprising analogy, or rather identity, between these terraces and those of the South Arabian uplands visited by General E. T. Haig in the eighties. So close is the parallelism that Haig’s description might almost change places with Mr. Telford Edwards’ account of the Inyanga works quoted in The Ancient Ruins, p. 353 sq., as thus:—

But Mr. Hall, who visited the Inyanga territory in May, 1904, now finds that the terraced slopes,[4] the so-called “slave-pits,” and the other remains, although “old,” are not “ancient.” That is to say, they date not from Himyaritic times, but probably from the eleventh or twelfth century of the new era, when parts of Rhodesia were reoccupied by large numbers of Moslem Arabs from Quiloa and their other settlements along the east coast. Hence, although the terraced slopes still form a connecting link between South Africa and South Arabia, the South Arabia here in question is that, not of pre-, but of post-Koranic times.

Of course, the ruined houses and ruined aqueducts are too much obliterated to supply any clear points of comparison. But their mere presence, and especially the vast extent of ground covered by them, will suffice to confirm Mr. Telford Edwards’ estimate of the vast numbers of civilised peoples who inhabited the rich Inyanga valleys in prehistoric times, and whom we may now call Sabæans, Minæans, and others Himyarites.

Were the houses still extant, we should expect to find them covered with the same decorative mural motives as are still seen both on the Zimbabwe monuments and on the public buildings of Sana, present capital of Arabia Felix. Manzoni, who visited this city three times between the years 1877 and 1880, figures a mansion six stories high, which is richly ornamented with two such motives—the chevron and the vertical block pattern—closely resembling those everywhere occurring on the more ancient Rhodesian walls. The chevron, which is seen both in single and double courses exactly as on the great walls of the Elliptical Temple, is absolutely identical, while the block design differs only in being quite vertical at Sana, whereas it is slightly tilted, or else two rows of blocks converge to produce the herring-bone pattern on the Rhodesian walls, as at Little Umnukwana and many other places. The reader will find Manzoni’s mansion reproduced in Mr. D. G. Hogarth’s The Penetration of Arabia, 1904, p. 198, and he will there notice that the various motives fill up all the space between two parallel horizontal lines, as is so often the case in Rhodesia.[5] Here, therefore, style, motive, general treatment, everything corresponds between the Rhodesian remains and the decorative fancies still flourishing in Sana, heir to the cultural traditions of the neighbouring Mariaba and of the other ancient Himyaritic capitals in South Arabia.

COIN OF BYBLOS, PHŒNICIA, SHEWING CONICAL TOWER

(FIG. I)

WOODEN BOWL WITH SIGNS OF ZODIAC FOUND NEAR ZIMBABWE

(FIG. 2)

In The Gold of Ophir frequent reference is made to the relations, social and commercial, established between Palestine and Madagascar certainly as early as the time of Solomon, and possibly even during the reign of his father David. On this point I might have spoken even more confidently, for I have since received a communication from M. Alfred Grandidier, by far the greatest living authority on all things Malagasy, who calls my attention to the evidence supplied in his monumental work, Histoire Physique, Naturelle et Politique de Madagascar (1901), of intercourse between the Jews and the natives of Madagascar and neighbouring islands even in pre-Solomonic days. Documents are quoted to show that the Comoros, stepping-stones between Madagascar and Rhodesia, were peopled in the reign of Solomon “by Arabs or rather by Idumæan Jews from the Red Sea,” and that the people of the great island preserve many Israelitish rites, usages, and traditions, cherish the memory of Adam, Abraham, Lot, Moses, Gideon, but have no knowledge of any of the prophets after the time of David, “which seems to show that the Jewish immigrants left their home at a very remote date, since if the exodus had been recent they could not have forgotten the great names posterior to the time of David.” Hence he concludes that “there is nothing surprising in the presence of an Idumæan colony in Madagascar, for we know that from the very earliest times the Arabs of Yemen had frequented the East African seaboard at least as far as Sofala.” These words lend further support to my identification of Tharshish with Sofala, and in a note it is added that “the Jews and Arabian Semites were not the only peoples who had formerly commercial relations with the inhabitants of the African seaboard. From time immemorial these southern waters were navigated by the fleets of the Egyptians, probably even of the Chaldeans, Babylonians, Assyrians, Phœnicians, Tyrians” (op. cit., p. 96). And again at p. 100: “From the earliest times the Indian Ocean was traversed by Chaldean, Egyptian, Jewish, Arab, Persian, Indian, and other vessels.”[6]

My statements regarding the long-standing relations of the Northern Semites with the peoples of Madagascar and South Africa as far as Sofala are thus fully supported by the greatest authority on the subject. But there are some minds so constituted that they seem incapable of accepting a new revelation. They can do nothing but stare super vias antiquas, and will strain every nerve to minimise the force of facts and arguments pointing at conclusions which run counter to their deep-rooted prejudices. I here reproduce the famous “Zimbabwe Zodiac” (Fig. 2.), which was found near Great Zimbabwe, and shows the twelve signs of the Zodiac carved round the rim, as described by the late Dr. Schlichter in the Geographical Journal for April, 1890. This specialist tells us that “the signs coincide in every respect with other finds which Bent and others have made in Zimbabwe. One of the pictures is an image of the sun analogous to the sun-pictures which Mauch and Bent found on the monoliths of Zimbabwe, and analogous also to finds in Asia Minor which belong to the Assyro-Babylonian period.” But a writer in the Guardian attempts to destroy the significance of this document by asserting that the Zodiac or its nomenclature is of Greek origin and consequently of no great age. Now the Hon. Emmeline M. Plunket has recently (1903) published a work on Ancient Calendars and Constellations, in which she maintains that the Babylonian Calendar, with its Zodiacal signs, dates from 6000 b.c., that is, about 8,000 years ago. It is true that this estimate is not clearly made out. But on the other hand, the reader may be assured that Miss Plunket does not hold by the “Greek” theory. Nor does F. Delitzsch, who reminds us that “when we distinguish twelve signs of the Zodiac and call them Ram, Bull, Twins, etc., in all this the Sumero-Babylonian culture is still a living influence down to the present day.”[7] Nor does Sayce, who points out that the Babylonian account of the Flood occurs in the eleventh book of the epic of Gisdhubar corresponding approximately with the eleventh sign of the Zodiac, at that time Aquarius, just as the fifth book records the death of a monstrous lion by Gisdhubar, answering to the Zodiacal Leo and so on. He further observes that “the Zodiacal signs had been marked out and named at that remote period (certainly before 2000 b.c.), when the sun was still in Taurus at the beginning of spring,”[8] and, let me add, when the Greeks had not yet been heard of, but when the great Gnomon, or Conical Tower, had possibly already been erected by the Semitic builders of Great Zimbabwe.

CYLINDER WITH ROSETTES FOUND IN PHŒNICIAN TEMPLE OF PAPHOS, IN CYPRUS

(FIG. 3)

SOAPSTONE CYLINDER, WITH ROSETTES FOUND NEAR ZIMBABWE

(FIG. 4)

That this and the numerous other conical towers still standing amid the crumbling ruins of Rhodesia are all cast in a Semitic mould will be at once seen by comparing them with the conical tower of a temple, figured on a medallion found at Byblos in Phœnicia and here reproduced (Fig. 1.). The comparison may also be extended to the two embossed cylinders—one from Great Zimbabwe, the other from the Temple of Paphos, in Cyprus, here also reproduced (Figs. 3 and 4) from Bent’s Ruined Cities, pp. 170, 171. These two objects, so strikingly similar in general design, reminded Bent of Herodian’s description of the sacred cone in the great Phœnician Temple of the Sun at Emessa, in Syria, which was adorned with certain “knobs or protuberances,” a pattern supposed by him to represent the sun, and common in phallic decorations, such as are constantly turning up with every shovelful of débris removed from the Zimbabwe Temple Enclosures.

But although thousands of stones have been washed and carefully examined for inscriptions, none have so far been discovered. As the inscription which stood originally above the gateway of Great Zimbabwe, as reported by the Arabs to the Portuguese pioneers early in the sixteenth century,[9] has since disappeared, there are no known written documents connecting these monuments with South Arabia or Phœnicia, except a few scratches on the rim of an earthenware vessel figured by Bent and by him supposed possibly to be of Himyaritic type.[10] As, on the other hand, South Arabia is covered with Himyaritic rock inscriptions, some of considerable length and hitherto reputed to be of great age, their absence from Rhodesia has naturally caused surprise. This negative argument has even by some of my critics been allowed to outweigh the overwhelming positive evidence derived from the monuments themselves, from the hundreds of old gold-workings already described or recorded, from the multitude of objects—phalli, birds, conic towers—which have been found in the ruins, and are, beyond all doubt, intimately associated with Semitic religious observances. But I think it may now be shown that this “negative argument” is no proof at all of non-Semitic origins, but, on the contrary, affords strong indirect evidence of the great antiquity of these Semitic remains in Rhodesia.

It is to be noticed, in the first place, that although the Phœnicians are believed to have migrated from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean about three millenniums before the New Era, no Phœnician inscriptions have yet been anywhere discovered in the Mediterranean lands older than about the seventh or the eighth century b.c. Before that time the Phœnicians, like the kindred Canaanites and Israelites, were rude, uncultured peoples, with no knowledge of letters, except, perhaps, of the hieroglyphs, cuneiforms, and other scripts of their Egyptian, Assyro-Babylonian, Hittite, and Cretan neighbours. Even the Moabite Stone, if it be genuine, is post-Solomonic, since its reputed “author” was the Moabite king, Mesha, contemporary of Jehoram of Israel and Jehoshaphat of Judah. How, then, could the unlettered Jews and Phœnicians of the time of David, Solomon, and Hiram leave any written records of themselves in Rhodesia? After that epoch the intercourse with South Africa was interrupted, because “Jehoshaphat made ships of Tharshish to go to Ophir for gold; but they went not; for the ships were broken at Ezion-geber” (1 Kings xxii. 48). And then the star of Jacob waned, and the scattering of the Ten Tribes of Israel was presently followed by the dire calamities that fell upon Judah, and put an end for ever to all further quest of treasure in the Austral seas.

“FUKO-YA-NEBANDGE,” THE MASHONALAND RELIC, DISCOVERED NEAR ZIMBABWE

(FIG. 5)

MODEL OF ELLIPTICAL TEMPLE, ZIMBABWE

(FIG. 6)

In the second place I find that Semitic students are gradually coming to the conclusion that the age of the South Arabian rock inscriptions has been greatly exaggerated, especially by Glaser, whose authority was at first naturally accepted almost without demur. The language is, no doubt, Himyaritic, that is to say, the oldest known form of Arabic. But that language survived for many centuries after the New Era in the Axumite empire, Abyssinia, where it is called Geez, and in Yemen till some time after the Mohammedan irruption, and is still current in the island of Sokotra, and in the Mahra district east of Hadramaut, where it is called Ehkili. Hence the language of the inscriptions is no test of their antiquity, though many afford intrinsic evidence that they date certainly from at least a few hundred years before the New Era. The subject is at present sub judice, and no more can be said until the full results are known of the extensive researches now in progress throughout Yemen. Here a large number of agents of the French Ministère de l’Instruction Publique have been at work since the year 1901, and thousands of impressions or rubbings have already (1903–4) been received in Paris. Some have even begun to appear in the Nouveaux Textes Yéménites, edited by M. Derenbourg, and several of the inscriptions are stated to be in a hitherto unknown alphabet quite different from that of the Himyaritic document which forms the frontispiece of the Gold of Ophir. Great revelations may therefore be pending; but, meanwhile, so much may, I think, be safely inferred, that the Himyarites who first arrived in Rhodesia, worked the mines, and built the monuments, some dating from apparently 2000 b.c., had little or no knowledge of letters, or at least had not yet begun to cover the rocks of their South Arabian homes with well-formed and carefully constructed inscriptions. Thus is also explained the absence of all such documents from their new homes in Rhodesia, where one may now almost venture to predict that none will ever be found. Nothing can be inferred from the vanished inscription over the Great Zimbabwe gateway, since the gold-workings appear to have been resumed for a time by the later (post-Mohammedan) Arabs, who were fond of decorating the façades of their mosques and other public buildings with the ornamental but relatively recent (eighth century) Cufic characters.

Mention should perhaps here be made of Professor Gustav Oppert’s Tharshish and Ophir (Berlin, 1903), in which the learned author claims to offer “a final solution” of the problem. But he leaves the question exactly as it stood over three decades ago, is still lost in the tangle of time-worn etymologies, and takes no notice at all of the revelations made by Messrs. Hall and Neal in the Ancient Ruins. The vast body of archæological evidence derived in recent years from the Rhodesian remains is thus completely ignored, and fresh light excluded from the only source whence it might have been drawn. On the other hand, Professor Oppert, rather than admit a Tharshish in the Indian Ocean, suggests that the Tharshish of Kings and Chronicles either means “the sea,” possibly the origin of the Greek word [Greek: thalatta] itself, or else was by the authors of those books foisted into the texts instead of Ophir. Hence where Tharshish occurs as the objective of Solomon’s gold expeditions we are to read Ophir, although the original Ophir is allowed to have been where I place it on the south coast of Arabia. Now the Greek word [Greek: thalatta] is Homeric, and when the Homeric poems were first sung there were no Greeks in the Indian Ocean. Hence, even if the wild etymology could be admitted, it would not serve, and this essay cannot be accepted as “a final solution of the old controversy.”[11] It is pleasant to be able to add that my solution has been accepted as final by some of Professor Oppert’s fellow-countrymen—the editor of the Coloniale Zeitung amongst others—who declares that “the problem seems now really solved.”[12]

Let me conclude with a question. Those who still reject my solution, who cast about for the gold of Ophir all over the Indian Ocean—Egypt, Arabia, Persia, India—anywhere except South Africa, what do they propose doing with the hundreds of old Rhodesian workings, which are known to have yielded at least £75,000,000 in their time, and with the stupendous Semitic monuments connected with these workings, of which Mr. Hall here presents the public with scores of photographic reproductions, drawn exclusively from the central Great Zimbabwe group? Where does India, the spoilt child of the etymologists, stand beside these remains, which betray such undoubted evidence of their South Arabian origin?

GREAT ZIMBABWE[13]

CHAPTER I
ARRIVAL AT GREAT ZIMBABWE

First Impressions—View from Acropolis Hill

ON the 21st May, 1902, I arrived at Victoria in Mashonaland, en route to the ruins of the Great Zimbabwe, which lie about seventeen miles south-east of the township. In 1891, when the late Mr. Theodore Bent visited Zimbabwe, he occupied exactly one week in covering the distance between Victoria and the ruins. Unfortunately for him and his party, he had been advised to follow the Moshagashi Valley, instead of taking the higher ground towards the west, and consequently he experienced great difficulty with his wagons in crossing spruits, rivers, and swamps, which are numerous in that direction.

There is now an excellent road to Zimbabwe, and the distance can be covered by a cyclist well within an hour and a half, while visitors driving can now arrive at Zimbabwe early in the morning and spend the whole day among the ruins and yet be in town in ample time for the evening meal. The distance by road is seventeen miles, and by a native path cutting across country it is reduced to fifteen miles.

Victoria is a town with barely one hundred white inhabitants. It is the centre of the largest and finest grain country of Southern Rhodesia, and the opening up of the gold, copper, and coal areas of the Sabi district will tend to increase its importance.

The Acting-Civil Commissioner, Mr. Lawlor, arranged for requisitions to be made for stores, plant, etc., required for the work at the ruins, and the Officer Commanding the British South Africa Police provided wagon and ten mules to transport stores out to Zimbabwe. The Native Commissioner, Mr. Alfred Drew, sent out M’Guti, a native police boy, to the chief Mogabe, who lives near the ruins and rules over a large tract of country and is practically independent, to find fifteen “boys” (afterwards increased to forty) to be at our camp at Zimbabwe at sun-up on Saturday. The work of collecting stores and plant filled up the rest of the day.

Early the following morning we loaded up the wagon and left for Great Zimbabwe, arriving at the main ruins at midday. The wagon was off-loaded, and in the shade of a large candelabra-shaped euphorbia tree we lunched, while the “boys” carried the stores up on to a low granite knoll, where were three spacious native huts, built for the Civil Commissioner, and occupied by Lord Milner in 1897. Of course, half the population of Mogabe’s kraal came down the kopje sides in black strings to watch all that took place, and a jabbering, laughing, noisy crowd they were. There was not a pair of trousers or a vest among the lot, and all were absolutely bare, save for their aprons. I liked their appearance better than that of the average Matabele, for they had better and more genial faces, and were not at all haughty and reserved.

The camp is within a few feet of the north side of No. 3 Ruins (see map), and faces the south side of Zimbabwe Hill, and the Acropolis Ruins are on the summit of a very precipitous cliff, 90 ft. high, forming part of the side of the hill, the ruins being 220 ft. directly above the camp. The camp of Mr. Theodore Bent, the archæologist, was a third of a mile to the south of our camp. Ours is the more convenient spot, as it is half-way between the two principal ruins, and close to its east side lies “The Valley of Ruins,” beside which the situation is far healthier.

“TO GREAT ZIMBABWE”

HAVILAH CAMP, GREAT ZIMBABWE

Leaving the “boys” to move the stores and plant from our outspan up to the huts, we started for a visit to the Elliptical Temple, which can be seen from the camp. My friends, Mr. Herbert Hayles, of Victoria, and Mr. J. R. A. Gell (cousin of Mr. Lyttelton Gell, one of the directors of the British South Africa Company), had accompanied me out to Zimbabwe to show me the lie of the Zimbabwe Reserve, and to protect me for the first night of my stay in the event of any visits from ancient ghosts.

Approaching the west entrance to the Elliptical Temple one is confronted by the following notice:—

“The public are warned that digging or prospecting for gold, whether alluvial or otherwise, or for curiosities and relics of any sort within the Zimbabwe Reserve, is strictly prohibited without special permission, and that any person or persons found so doing or in any way damaging any of the ruins or cutting or damaging any tree or trees within such Reserve will be prosecuted. And notice is also hereby given that nobody will be allowed to erect any habitation of any kind whatever within the Reserve without special permission. By Order.”[14]

But turning from this prosaic notice to the walls themselves, one saw that every stone of this stupendous and imposing structure had gained glories from the hands of Time, and yielded a magnificent subject for the painter’s brush. The walls were white with lichen, but on their surfaces were splashed art colourings of almost every possible shade—bright orange and red, lemon-black, sea-green, and pale delicate yellow—while drooping from the summits were heavy festoons of the pink-flowered “Zimbabwe creeper.” Over the fallen blocks spread sprays of passion flowers, convolvuli, and other delicate creepers, and clusters of St. John’s lilies and large scarlet gladioli rose stately above beds of rich vegetation. Here was one of Nature’s most perfect chromographs!

To describe this grand ruin in one chapter would be an utterly impossible task, and any statement of one’s first impressions on walking about the temple ’mid its massive Titanic walls must be altogether inadequate. At any rate, one experienced an overwhelming and oppressive sense of awe and reverence. One felt it impossible to speak loudly or to laugh. And yet the ancient builders were what is termed Pagan—Phallic worshippers with Baal and Astoroth among their divinities, but a people so skilled in Zodiacal, astronomical, and other sciences as to amaze and perplex the savants of to-day. Standing close by the Sacred Cone, near which, according to Colonel Conder, the Syro-Arabian archæologist, the altar was placed, one felt disinclined for conversation. Above on a bough was a large owl, with prominent ears and beautiful yellow eyes, who stared at our daring to trespass on the verge of mystery. At our feet lay innumerable cast-off skins of snakes. One thought of the poet Lowell’s Lost Angel, where, speaking of a man so deadening his conscience by constant refusals to listen to the appeals of his attendant good angel, he finds that the angel has at last left him alone. Then was the temple of his heart become desecrated, “the owl and snake inhabit there, the image of the God has gone!” The owl and snake inhabit the Temple of Zimbabwe, the altar of which is now broken down and desecrated, but the odious and unmistakable emblems of Nature Worship are still to be found by the score. Reverence of the hoary age of these buildings seizes one, for some accredited archæologists give the age of some of these ruins as anterior to the time of Moses. One wonders whether Professor Keane’s contention is correct, that Ancient Rhodesia was the Havilah of Genesis, especially when one thinks of the estimated £75,000,000 of gold believed to have been taken by the Ancients from the surface of the gold-reefs of this country before and during the Biblical-Ophir period.

But our stay within these massive walls was brief. The writer would have over two years in which to wander in their labyrinthine passages, and to examine their architectural features, and compare them with those of Rhodesian ruins elsewhere, but his friends must start back to Victoria before sunrise next day. On our way to the other important ruins—the Acropolis or Hill Fortress—we visited the grave of Major Alan Wilson and his party[15] who were killed on the Shangani during the flight of King Lo ’Bengula in 1893.

We climbed up the 230 feet to the Acropolis ruins, but our visit here also was brief. We clambered round the summits of the walls of the two temples, which have a score of monoliths still standing, more or less erect, and penetrated some of the most intricate passages. The feeling experienced here was one of intense wonder and bewilderment at the stupendous walls erected at such a height, walls which must have taken years to build, and all of granite blocks. The view from the summit is among the finest in Rhodesia. We watched the sunset glow fading on the white walls of the Elliptical Temple below, and then descended to prepare the huts for the night and arrange the stores in their proper quarters. Later, when the round moon one day off the full was shining, we sat outside the huts watching the effects shown on the western temple on the hill where the monoliths high up above us stood out against the greenish moonlit sky. At 4 a.m. the mules were inspanned in the wagon, and my friends took their departure, leaving me alone among ruins and natives.

As soon as the sun was fairly up, M’Guti, the native police boy, arrived from Mogabe’s kraal, followed by a crowd of “boys,” all most anxious for work. The majority were young men, and the total clothing of the crowd did not amount to three square yards of calico. They all squatted down in a semi-circle in front of the main hut while M’Guti delivered a long oration, but as he was wearing khaki regimentals and had his steel handcuffs (evidently a badge of authority) lying in front of him, the sustaining influence of office possessed him. Finally, all the details were settled, a roll was made up, and the names recorded.

Later, the Mogabe, Handisibishe, and his headmen arrived, and a long indaba took place, M’Guti interpreting. Mogabe recognised the likenesses of Mr. and Mrs. Bent, and that of the previous Mogabe—Chipfuno, his brother. Salt and tobacco sent Mogabe happy away, and next day a large gourd of doro (native beer) and some sweet potatoes arrived at the camp as a present.

The view from the summit of the Acropolis may be described as follows:—

South.—Towards the south and in the nearer distance, and 250 feet below in the valley, the venerable and lichened walls of the Elliptical Temple rise out of luxuriantly green vegetation. So much below the Acropolis cliffs is this temple that one sees over its broken north walls into the interior and on to the floors of some of the enclosures. The summit of the conical tower peeps out from among the giant fig-trees that flourish in the interior of the building. At this distance the white monoliths along the eastern wall, though clearly defined against the dark foliage, seem dwarfed. In almost the same line of view, but slightly eastwards and nearer, and on the north-east side of the temple, is the “Valley of Ruins,” full of enclosures, passages, entrances, and walls, which up to 1902 had remained practically unexplored by white men. Nearer still is the wagon-track passing Havilah Camp and winding eastwards towards the Mapaku Ruins (“Little Zimbabwe”) and the Motelekwe[16] River seven miles distant. A hundred yards east of the temple on an open granite space overlooking the Valley of Ruins is the site of the camp of Dr. Schlichter, who visited the Zimbabwe ruins in 1897. Immediately behind this spot and between it and the foot of the Bentberg (Motusa) is the veld land ploughed by Messrs. Posselt in 1888–9.

GREAT ZIMBABWE RESERVE

Still looking south and slightly eastwards of the temple is the Schlichter Gorge, down which the Mapudzi flows towards the south. At the southern end of the gorge is a succession of ranges of kopjes of fantastic shape descending into, and again rising from, the Mowishawasha Valley, and becoming lost in the blue distance. The Bentberg Kopje, which forms a dark background for the temple, shows its immense flanks of granite glacis and boulders. Here some fifty years ago was the chief local kraal of the Barotse, who had settlements among the Makalanga of this part of the country, and on the north-eastern side of the hill are still to be seen the remains of ancient walls, while a clump of castor-oil trees at the foot of the hill on this side marks the site of Theodore Bent’s camp (June and July, 1891).

Slightly to the west of the temple and almost immediately in front of it are No. 1 Ruins, the walls of which are crowned with aloes and euphorbias. Less than a hundred yards west of these ruins are the Ridge Ruins, on a bare granite ridge, on the east side of which was the camp of Sir John Willoughby, who excavated portions of the ruins (November and December, 1892). Fifty yards behind the Ridge Ruins is the Zimbabwe Spring, marked by a group of trees, where most excellent water can be obtained, even during the driest season. It was close to these trees that Messrs. Posselt had their camp in 1888–9. Nearer than Ridge Ruins is the little graveyard where is the granite tomb of Major Alan Wilson and his party. Just a few yards nearer is Havilah Camp, where one can just see the natives moving to and fro across the open spaces between the huts. Behind the Bentberg and further south is broken country, with Lumbo Rocks, one of the landmarks of the district, rising from the summit of a rugged hill like a column piled up against the sky, its lichen mantle showing brilliant red in the sunset. Here is the line of high ground which separates the plateau of Mashonaland from the lower valley of the Limpopo River, the incline in the contour being both steep and abrupt. This also divides the watershed of the Motelekwe from that of the Tokwe.[17] In this southern view are scattered many Makalanga kraals, several of which are perched up in almost inaccessible rocky eyries; also some romantic valleys, kloofs, and stretches of park-like land studded with patches of thick woods.

GENERAL PLAN
OF
ZIMBABWE RUINS
showing
the general position of each ruin

South-west.—Looking towards the south-west and in the near distance is the rising ground between the Bentberg and Rusivanga[18] kopjes, and the native path leading over it to Bingura’s kraal. At the foot of Rusivanga and 150 yards from Havilah Camp, and on a knoll on which is a large old tree, was for some time the camp of Adam Renders, known by the natives as Sa-adama, who rediscovered Zimbabwe in 1868, and who was here visited by Mr. George Philips, the ivory trader of the very early days, and by Dr. Karl Mauch, the latter of whom gave in 1871 the first information of the ruins for almost three hundred years. Here Renders traded extensively for ivory. Previously to Dr. Mauch’s visit Renders lived at Nini, eleven miles south-west of Zimbabwe.

Beyond the nearer ridge is a deep and wide valley on the near side of which is Bingura’s kraal, and from this valley the land rises towards the southern extremity of the Livouri Mountains some ten miles from Zimbabwe, and in the immediate distance, though much nearer the Livouri Range, is Providential Pass, through which the hunter, Mr. F. C. Selous, led the Pioneer Column in 1890. In the same line of view, but slightly nearer, is where Renders’ first station was located.

West.—Looking due west there are two kopjes—Rusivanga and Makuma—which close in the Zimbabwe Valley on that side at a third of a mile distance. Further west of the two kopjes is a wide undulating valley some six or eight miles wide which runs along the east side of the Livouri Mountains, and this is studded at intervals with low and bare granite kopjes. The kraal of the dynastic chief Cherimbila is at Rovali, at the southern extremity of the range. The highest point of the Livouri is Niande, a hill in the centre of this range with steep and almost inaccessible sides. Behind the Livouri Range is seen the high conical summit of the Cotopaxi Mountain, which forms one of the principal landmarks of this portion of Southern Mashonaland. Towards the south end of the Livouri Range is a large hill called Mowishawasha. Washa is always associated by the natives with power and authority. The natives never climb to the top of this hill without going through some form of devotion on their way up; also on passing close to the hill they will stop and clap hands. Natives will not state the actual reason. Probably an important Makalanga chief of some past times was buried there. Near to this hill is a smaller one known as Tchib-Fuko, which also has some native superstitions attached to it. It was in this district the wooden platter with the zodiacal signs was discovered by Mr. Edward Muller, also the pot “Fuko-ya-Nebandge.”

North-west.—To the north-west, and on the opposite side of the valley at the foot of Zimbabwe Hill, and beyond the Outer Defence Wall which encloses the Zimbabwe ruins on the west and north sides, is a low granite knoll called Pasosa, with outlying huts belonging to Mogabe’s kraal. A few yards behind the huts is a ruin (Pasosa, No. 1), with a second ruin (Pasosa, No. 2) 60 yards farther north. The country beyond in this direction is the valley land of the Moshagashi River, which is some six to eight miles broad, the horizon showing low hills, over which are the line of houses and trees of Victoria township, fifteen miles distant as the crow flies, and beyond again are the uplands of the range north of Victoria. The principal kraals in this direction are Baranzimba’s (two miles) and M’Tima’s (three and a half miles).

VIEW FROM ACROPOLIS SHEWING THE ELLIPTICAL TEMPLE IN THE VALLEY, ZIMBABWE

North.—In the north is the lower continuation of the Moshagashi Valley, at this point some eight miles broad. Here the granite formation of Zimbabwe terminates and the slate commences. The principal kraal, and by far the largest in this area, is that of Chinongu, which is four miles from Zimbabwe. Extending from N.N.W. to N.N.E. are the high and romantically shaped Besa Mountains, and at their eastern extremity can be seen in the blue distance the Lovugwe country.

North-east.—To the north-east, at a distance of eight miles and cutting the sky-line, is the range of the Inyuni Hills. Their sides are exceedingly steep and, being slate, their contours contrast pleasantly with those of the kopjes of the granite formation. In the nearer distance is Motuminshaba, a granite kopje four miles away, and farther east Tchivi, another granite kopje three miles distant. The land towards the east-north-east descends to the Motelekwe River, the valley of which can be seen with Arowi, a huge, isolated granite kopje rising twelve miles distant, on the far bank of the Motelekwe. In this area kraals are numerous.

East.—The Beroma Range (written by Bent as “Veroma”) fills in the whole of the background towards the east. These hills, which run north and south, appear to be fully four miles long. The most northerly point of this range is formed by a large rounded granite kopje called Sueba,[19] and between this hill and Chenga’s[20] kraal is the path leading over the nek to the Mapaku Ruins (“Little Zimbabwe”) eight miles distant. On the west side of Beroma is a line of lower hills forming its shoulders. The southern end of the Beroma Range is formed by the high rounded Mount Marsgi, with a series of cliffs on its west side, and at its base M’Tijeni’s kraal. Marsgi overlooks the Schlichter Gorge. This is the point from which our description started.

CHAPTER II
MYSTIC ZIMBABWE

Sunday Morning and Midnight in an Ancient Temple—Sunset on the Acropolis.

WANDERING about the Elliptical Temple at Zimbabwe on a Sunday morning one is faced at every turn with texts for innumerable “sermons in stones.” The hoary age of these massive walls is grandly and silently eloquent of a dead religion—a religion which was but the blind stretching forth of the hand of faith groping in the Dawn of Knowledge for the Deity and seeking the Unknown. Lowell urges that none should call any faith “vain” which in the evolution of religion has led mankind up to a higher level. The builders were “Pagans.” Granted, but the world four thousand years ago was in its infancy, and infancy is but a necessary prelude to development in any department of life and thought. The progressive stages of Old Testament faith demonstrate this fact most patently. We of the Christian Era, with our two thousand years of religious enlightenment, have yet to learn of the “many things I have to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.” The evolution of the Christian Ideal has not yet reached its final stage—it has still to be perfected. But the period of infancy in development should not be too hastily condemned as “vain.”

The spires that adorn our churches, the orientation of ecclesiastical buildings, the eastward position of the dead, the candles on the altars, and what is more, the idea conveyed by sacrificial offering, have their origin in the ancient faiths and world-wide litholatrous and solar ideas of the Semitic peoples, whether of Yemen or Phœnicia, who built their temples in every part of the then known world which came under their influence. In these, as in many more such instances, parallelisms become identities, but identities adapted by the Christian Church to convey in an old-world form a figure of a higher faith. The continuity between this old temple at Zimbabwe, Stonehenge, and the modern cathedral, is complete.

When one reviews the forms and practices, so far as they are known, of the Semitic builders of the Great Zimbabwe, what a flood of light shines in upon the history and worship of the Hebrews. The writings of the Prophets live afresh, and the mystic chapters of Job become full of pregnant meaning. A key is provided to the secret of Abraham offering his son, to Jacob’s pile of stones, to Jephthah’s vow, to the Syro-Phœnician woman’s conversation at the well, and to a hundred points of biblical lore which would otherwise barely attract attention, much less provoke interest. These old Semites—of whom the Hebrews were a younger branch—stinted not their worship, and knew the ecstasy of sacrifice. Their best beloved they gave—their dearest, in the belief that the gift which was offered without a pang was not prized by Deity. Bearing this in mind, the Old Testament is found to be replete with unfailing interest, charm, and point; it becomes, in fact, a marvellously new book even to the biblical student.

The builders of the temple at Zimbabwe have now, it is believed, slept through three millenniums, if not four, yet the religious faith of the Semitic family was so strong, so real, and so forceful, that its ramifications can be found in the faith of the Christian Church of to-day. Nor can this be wondered at. One has but to glance round these temple walls to read in granite blocks the fact that to the builders their religious faith was of primal importance. Here is clearly envisaged the fact that to them their religion was very real, so much so that were Europe devastated to-morrow, it could scarcely show in proportion to its other buildings such monuments to religious faith as can be seen in Rhodesia to-day. Their finest art, their best constructive skill, and the patient labour of long years, were lavished upon these buildings which thickly stud the country. Thoroughness and devotion are written large on the orientated, massive, and grandly sweeping walls of the Elliptical Temple at Great Zimbabwe. One cannot call their faith “vain” when one realises that it led them out from themselves towards something higher, while for them it must be remembered the True Light had not shined. Struggling though blindly to improve their relationship to Deity provided a no mean factor in the religious progress of the world.

While these ancient Semitic colonisers of Rhodesia have slept their many-centuried sleep, what epochs of the world’s history have come and gone, and what empires have risen and decayed! Ah! see that lichen-mantled granite block low down in the cyclopean wall. It has a little chip of stone under one corner as if to steady it. The ancient mason was a careful worker. The chip is still there to-day. One can move it with a finger. Was it there when Moses led the Hebrews towards the Promised Land, or there when young Joseph was sold as a slave into Egypt? Who shall say? Civilisations have come and gone, but the chip is there, and affords not merely an evidence of the careful mason, but a sermon on the brevity of life, the utter smallness of pomp and power, and the absolute absurdity of pride. Still the little granite chip has served its purpose for some four thousand years, and it may yet be there occupying its humble position at the end of the next millennium. The oldest fanes of Europe, whether of Greece or Rome, cannot so deeply move to awe-inspiring feeling as can the massive walls of the temple at Zimbabwe, for these old empires are believed to have been almost unborn when Zimbabwe was at its zenith. Thus the walls compel a listening to their sermons.

As one strays through the Sacred Enclosure, thoughts come:—What were the relative positions of magic and religion, especially in the complicated and closely observed Phallic worship of these ancients; whence the zodiacal, astronomical, and geometrical knowledge of the builders; what of the touch of tragedy in their exodus or departure; the exact meaning of the granite, slate, and carved soapstone monoliths on the summits of the walls; the origin of the occupiers; was Rhodesia the Havilah of Genesis; did it provide the Solomonic gold; of the close kinship of these successful ancient gold-seekers from Yemen or Tyre and Sidon to the Hebrews of Palestine; and of their intimate connection in origin, language, and neighbourhood which Holy Writ abundantly declares existed from the ninth chapter of Genesis until Paul preached in Phœnicia?

Gazing at the Sacred Tower, one thinks of the Tower of Siloam, and of the “high places” of Samaria, and of the times when even this form of worship became the state religion of Judah under Ahaziah; and sitting at the conjectured site of the ancient altar, where the writer has found in numbers the stone emblems of their faith, thoughts arise of the Bethel stones of the Hebrews, the Bethûl or “the dwelling-places of God” of the Phœnicians, and the Penuel or “Face of God” of the Midianites.

The Law of Moses adapts the rules and customs and ideas and forms of worship of far greater antiquity than the Mosaic times. So the new faith of every age borrows from the old, and the mighty processions of civilisations and faiths which have encircled this earth from very far back beyond the days of Abraham go on their even course.

But we must leave the temple and return to camp. There is still the great Zimbabwe owl sitting on his favourite bough near the “high place.” The six-foot python crawls in and out of the stones of the ancient altar. Brightly coloured lizards bask on the once consecrated walls. Blue jays, honey-birds, and doves here find a shelter. The trees, orchid-clad and lichen-festooned, throw a weird shadow over all. Possibly ancients are sleeping near.

As one passes out through the entrance into the full glare of an African noontide, one feels as if one had just returned from the far distant mystic past to modern life, for a naked Makalanga waits there with the message that Sunday lunch was cooked and waiting.

MIDNIGHT IN AN ANCIENT TEMPLE

It was the night of the full moon nearest to Midsummer Day in the Southern Hemisphere, and towards midnight the large population of Makalanga round Zimbabwe would be celebrating the feast of the full moon with dancing, singing, and doro drinking. This was evidently a special feast, for its advent had been the theme of conversation among our labourers for the past fortnight, and, unlike the other feasts, it was held simultaneously in each kraal, and not at different kraals in turn on alternate occasions.

At nine o’clock all was still and restful. There were no signs whatever of the forthcoming festivities. Passing through Baranazimba’s kraal, on the way to Havilah Camp at Zimbabwe, one found the population had retired to rest. At Mogabe’s kraal the only sign of active life was shown by the village dogs. The night was hot and close, and outside the huts natives were sleeping, each in his blanket. Arrived at Havilah Camp, one found a score of labourers, sublimely free from all anxieties, sleeping on the bare granite outside their huts, but so oppressive was the air that in their slumbers they had thrown off their blankets, and were lying in every conceivable posture, and snoring and talking in their sleep as if dancing and beer-drinking were matters that had not the slightest interest for them. The large full moon was yet some distance from its zenith, but the valleys were flooded with a greenish-grey mistiness, which lay over the high grass and ran up into the kloofs and gorges. The light made distant objects distinctly visible, throwing a mantle of romance over every clump, ridge, and kopje, while it was possible to read tolerably small print without the aid of artificial light.

CONICAL TOWER AND PLATFORM (LOOKING SOUTH), ELLIPTICAL TEMPLE, ZIMBABWE

THE BALCONY, EASTERN TEMPLE, ACROPOLIS

THE PARAPET IS BUILT UPON THE SUSPENDED BOULDER

For fully another hour the silence was unbroken. At last the desultory beating of a village drum at Mogabe’s kraal was heard. Later a drum was sounded at Chenga’s kraal, and another at Bingura’s kraal. The villagers were waking up for the feast. One of our labourers sat up, stretched himself and yawned, and commenced shaking his sleeping comrades. Within a few minutes Havilah Camp was all life. One native reached for his leggings of large nuts with dried kernels inside, others a horn, flute, piano, or harp, but all took two knobkerries, some having assegais. Those who possessed strings of wild-cat tails tied them round their waists. The early hours of evening had been devoted to greasing their bodies and limbs, and in the light of the moon their skins shone like burnished metal. Then began a general practising of dance steps, leapings, war-cries, and most hideous howlings. Meanwhile quite a dozen drums were being sounded up on Mogabe’s Kopje, and these were answered by similar numbers at Chenga’s and the other kraals. Horns were blown, parties of Makalanga, singing and shouting, were passing along the native tracks in front of our camp, each party going to its own kraal. Soon our labourers left in gangs for their respective villages and disappeared in the long mist-covered grass. Being all young men with a superabundant fund of spirits, they made a most fearful din in the course of their progress homewards. By this time the Zimbabwe kopjes resounded with singing, especially of girls’ singing, for the women-folk started the festivities with screams and yells, and the loud beatings in three-two time of innumerable drums. The great full moon was now fast approaching its zenith. Our camp, save for the watch-men, the kya (hut) boy, and the picaninni, once more became still and lifeless.

Theodore Bent saw in these new and full-moon feasts some connection with the cult of Nature Worship of the ancient Semites, who are believed to have built these ruins and to have mined for gold in Southern Rhodesia, as it is conjectured, some three thousand years ago. The women, who at this moment are dancing in the villages, have on their bare stomachs, worked into the skin, a “breast and furrow pattern,” identical to that found on many of the oldest of the prehistoric relics discovered in our ancient ruins, an undoubted emblem, Bent contended, of the ancient conception of Fertility. The men who will be dancing have worked in their skins, mainly in bands round their waists, the three radiating bars, similar in form to the Welsh bardic emblem of the Origin of Life. The articles they will wield in their dancing are carved with chevron pattern, one of the most ancient of all emblems of Fertility. But although the flesh decorations are now merely luck signs, neither man nor woman would on any account be without them. With these signs they say they will not be sick, will have plenty of wives and boys to work for them, and many girls on account of whom to receive lobola (marriage present to the father—practically purchase money). Anon, in the pauses of the dance, they will drink beer from pots with herring-bone pattern encircling the lips, a beer made of red millet, prepared, says Bent, in the same way and known by the same name as the beer prepared in Arabia to-day, where its methods of preparation and its name have been handed down from immemorial age.

But to-night will be the finest opportunity for the next twelve months of seeing the Elliptical Temple by moonlight. Sleep this hot, close night is impossible, especially with the sounds of noisy revelry proceeding simultaneously from all points of the compass. My native boy is disinclined to follow me to the temple, but after bargaining with him for an Isi-hle (present), he at last grudgingly consents. He mutters something about the place being bewitched, that there are many horrid things there, and alludes to the M’uali, the chief spirit of Makalanga awe and dread; but as within the two years’ residence at Zimbabwe I have only discovered two natives, and these elderly men, who would willingly go into any of the ruins, especially the temple, after darkness had settled down, I am not at all surprised at his reluctance to follow me there. However, he is mindful to take his stoutest knobkerries with him.

Looking back at the Acropolis Hill, and at its long line of precipice, one sees the ancient walls on the summit gleaming white in the moonlight, while the tall monoliths stand clear against the sky. In the passages on the hill one might almost expect on such a night to come face to face with Rider Haggard’s She at any corner, or to see her draped form issuing from one of the numerous caves which still pierce the cliffs. But we must turn our backs on the Acropolis Hill, and make for the Elliptical Temple, passing the little graveyard where the remains of Major Alan Wilson and his Shangani heroes rest in their granite tomb in the grove of euphorbia trees, whose branches cast black, sharp-cut shadows on the ground. Then across an open granite space, and up the long parallel passage on the east side of Ridge Ruins, out through its intricate southern entrance, and on to the level ground which runs up to the foot of the temple walls. The clumps of tall, old-world-looking aloes and euphorbia trees lining the walls of No. 1 Ruins on the left of our path appear strange even by daylight, but in the midnight radiance of the full moon they assume intensely weird and fantastic forms thoroughly in harmony with the outlines of the ancient buildings. The lonely grave of Thomas Bailey, an Australian gold prospector, lies close to the right-hand side of the path. He died in 1893 while searching for relics within the temple.

The temple walls covered with white lichen appear to have been whitewashed for centuries, and these gleam brightly with light in distinct contrast to the dark veld and bush from which they rise; and so white are they that at a fair distance one can see every course, block, and joint in their dry masonry. The broad bases of the walls in comparison with the widths of their summits—though a full-sized wagon and a team of sixteen oxen could stand upon the top of the more substantial portion of the walls—their sloping sides, and the utter absence of any feature of any style of architecture known in Western Europe, lend a strikingly Eastern appearance to the building, which is sufficient in itself to forcibly take one’s mind back some two or three thousand years. Meanwhile the noise of village drums, the blowing of horns, and the deep wild choruses of crowds of men, mingled with the voices of women and girls, were waxing louder and more incessant as midnight approached.

Standing in No. 5 Enclosure, just within the west entrance, the interior of the temple is seen to be full of light and shadow. But all is serenely calm and still as if possessed by the silence of the grave. The high, massive walls encircling the temple deaden to faintness the voices of the villagers. The close air, heavy with the scent of verbena wafted in from the veld, is oppressive in the extreme. An inexplicable sensation of trespassing in forbidden precincts possesses one. The native looks scared. Midnight visits to ruins are not his particular fancy.

Certainly the many visitors who travel hundreds, if not thousands, of miles to view these ruins, and who only see them by the glare of day, miss nine-tenths of the charm, fascination, and inspiration which the walls of the temple at Zimbabwe have in store for those who walk its courts in the stillness of the night when the midsummer moon is at the full. This is the time to see Zimbabwe aright, for Zimbabwe by day and Zimbabwe by night presents two entirely different aspects.

Trees throw gigantic shadows on the walls and darken the inner courts, and the floors are chequered by moonbeams shining through the foliage overhead. One somehow becomes possessed with the idea that these walls are peopled with the spirits of prehistoric age, who are moving, as of old, about the temple floors and passages, still performing their ancient priestly offices. The movement of every shadow against the walls suggests the passing from point to point of some three-millenniumed spectral form, too engrossed in its sacred avocations to heed the mortal presence of two strangers of the twentieth century after Christ. Would that these hoary-aged walls could speak and tell us of the scenes which took place here when the Great Zimbabwe was in all its glory! Assuredly a midnight hour spent in this ancient temple overwhelms one with most novel sensations, some slightly queer and shivery, others awe-inspiring and soul-stirring.

While still standing just inside the west entrance some thoughts suggest themselves. The ancients being Nature worshippers of one of the earliest cults, so says Bent, had sought in the erection of their temple to compel the concentration of thought on the heavens alone, for even the reduced heights of the summits of the walls, averaging from 22 ft. to 31 ft., shut off, except for gaps, all views of the surrounding landscape. Nothing is visible save the moon and a skyful of silent, glittering stars. The Pleiades, by the rising and setting of which the Makalanga mark their sowing and harvesting, are sinking towards the W.N.W. horizon, and Orion, which is prominent in the star-pictures of the natives, is following down in their wake. A large area of the sky is hidden by the bright radiance of the full moon. But such high massive walls enclosing the temple, and limiting the view to the sky alone, strike the mind of the stranger unread in the lore of ancient Semitic faiths as the purposed design of the ancient architects, especially so when it is recollected that some of the ancient floors are at a much lower level than the interiors as seen to-day. And just as Britishers in Rhodesia unconsciously turn their gaze at night towards the stars which lie low near the northern horizon, so in the contracted view afforded by the temple walls we can well imagine that during their midnight vigils the eyes of the ancient colonists from the north would, as naturally, frequently and lingeringly glance over the northern wall to gaze on stars known to them in their Homeland. It may be noted, too, that the ancients, as conjectured by Bent and other writers, do not appear to have been greatly interested in the alien stars of the Southern Hemisphere, for in all the ruins in Rhodesia, so far as discoveries have been made, there are no massive stone arcs surmounted with monoliths with mural decorations of old-world emblems of fertility on their outer faces, and with the raised platforms approached by steps, facing towards the south, for all such that are known are directed to some other point of the compass.

Small fragments of granite chips from ancient blocks lie about the floor, and these gleam like stars on the dark ground, and have light-haloes of their own. These suggest the splendid sight these ancient walls must have been when all the newly dressed granite blocks in the faces of the walls sparkled as they must once have done as the fragments gleamed in this glorious moonlight. The walls must have glittered like a fairy palace, as did the castle walls of lordly Camelot. To-day we approach the temple on the same level as the veld, the ground outside having been raised to this level by the silt of ages, but the recently discovered granite cement floors outside the building show that the ancients had to ascend some five feet or more to gain the threshold of the entrance. With such higher elevation for its walls, the temple, when freshly built, or perhaps for centuries afterwards, must have been on moonlit nights a most bewitching sight of splendour. But its glories to-night are those which it has gained from the hand of Time.

But on gaining the central area of the building the inexplicable sensations awakened by the weird and strange surroundings and past associations are intensified, and one’s nerves are forced to be more alive to anything unusual happening. Large bats and night-moths fly unpleasantly close to one’s face. Treading on a rotten stick, and the falling of large dry leaves which rattle on the stones below, make noises sufficient to cause one to turn round expecting the approach of some ancient spectre. A frog in some dark and dank corner startles one with a loud croak of “Work!” The hoot of an owl makes the native start. A low moaning, soughing wind now springing up sweeps round the temple and rustles in the upper branches of the trees.

The temple is now lovely in the extreme. The shadows on the walls are now in quick movement. Fireflies swing their tiny lamps over dark enclosures. The white radiance of the moonlight completely invests the conical tower, its intense whiteness being heightened by the large, thick, and dark-foliaged trees on either side. If but Time’s hour-glass were turned back for some long centuries’ space, what tales could not this tower unfold, what secrets of ancient faiths disclose!

One passes down the ancient stairs, lately uncovered, which lead into the Sacred Enclosure, and finds the long, deep-sunk Parallel Passage wrapt in sepulchral darkness, and realises the force of the dark lore of ancient priestcraft and of prayers muttered at midnight. It is pleasant to regain the interior of the temple, where broad streams of moonlight flood its surface. Seated on the east wall of No. 10 Enclosure, and immediately facing the conical tower, one has a good view all round the temple. Under the dark shades of walls and trees a hundred spectres might be lurking unseen. Amidst such surroundings a score of ancient scenes are pictured in one’s mind—the approaching priests with processional chant emerging through the north entrance from the Sacred Enclosure, the salutation to the emblems of the gods, the light of altar fire and torch reflected upon the walls and upon the sacred golden fillets bound round the brows of the priest, the incense-laden air, the subdued murmurings of the waiting crowd of worshippers, the invocations of the deity by priests who stand upon the high raised platform in front of the conical tower, the mystic rites, dark enchantments, and the pious orgies. The very air feels as if it were teeming with mystery and midnight loneliness. Here appear to rise “the thin throng of ghosts ... with beckoning hands and noiseless feet flitting from shade to shade.”

The rising wind now wafts into the ancient shrine the confused shouting, singing, tom-tom beating, and general clamour of the natives dancing in the villages on the hills around. The air has become decidedly cooler. One is glad to have visited the temple at this hour. It is one of the experiences of a lifetime.

THE ACROPOLIS AT SUNSET

In the soft sunlight of a glorious late afternoon, when calm broods over all and a profound solitude invests the immense panorama of valley, mountain, and sea of jagged kopje ranges as beheld from the summit of the Acropolis Hill some 300 ft. at least above the Zimbabwe Valley, one views a scene of indescribable loveliness. The sharp-cut ranges of hills, deep gorges flanked by cliffs, great crags of rock, and the long and broad Moshagashi Valley with its scattered kraals and patches of native plantations are all as silent as sleep.

The Acropolis itself is still. The long and labyrinthine passages give back no echoes. The temple courts are empty. The tall monoliths, like ghostly sentinels, point upwards to the sky, and the sunlight is fast fading on the ancient dentelle pattern at the Western Temple. These massive ruins, once teeming with a dense and busy population of Semitic colonists of prehistoric times, with their innumerable evidences of Phallic worship and extensive gold-smelting operations, are as quiet as the grave. The cry of a baboon, or scream of an eagle returning to its eyrie high up on the cliffs above the Eastern Temple, alone break the impressive silence enfolding one of the greatest archæological wonders of the Southern Hemisphere.

At this height and on a hill so isolated from its neighbours, and just at sunset when shadows are already gathering in the deep defiles in the cliffs upon its summit, an inexpressible sensation of intense loneliness and solitude asserts itself. No other human foot will tread these ancient approaches to the Acropolis till the sun has risen once again. There is no white man round about for miles, and the natives will not venture near the ruins after sunset. Two hours ago the herd was mindful to drive the goats from the high points on the face of the hill down into the valley. The natives will solemnly inform the stranger that as night approaches the spirits of their departed ancestors buried in the caves of the hill awaken, that the ruins are then bewitched. It may be easily understood that in minds made craven with centuries of slavery to a succession of invaders, and haunted, till the last decade, with constant dread of Swazi and Matabele raids, the standard of Makalanga valour is low indeed, and that at nights they shun these scenes of ancient life is not in the least surprising.

Ascending the hill through the sunless Rock Passage, the air is cool and draughty, but on emerging at the upper end one is faced by the rich blinding glow of the setting sun, and here the air is still warm. As we pass through the Western Enclosure and through the gap in the main west wall of the Western Temple, a view down the sheer drop of the hill into the valley below presents itself. The Elliptical Temple is just losing its last faint touches of the golden tint of sunset. The “Valley of Ruins” is already in shadow, and its chaos of walls looks now even more chaotic and bewildering than it did in the full light of day. Mogabe’s cattle wending their way up Makuma Kopje to the kraal for the night, the bleating of sheep and goats already penned, the far-away talk of women and girls returning from collecting firewood with their bundles on their heads, and the laughter of small parties of natives returning homewards from their plantations, all speak of departing day. The lofty lichened sides of Lumbo Rocks are still bright orange in the sunset, but the nearer side of the Bentberg has become dark and black in shadow, showing up the walls of the Elliptical Temple in the foreground with striking clearness. The long ravine of Schlichter Gorge is now blurred in grey distances, while the Motelekwe and Mowishawasha valleys have already lost the sun for some minutes. The kopjes cast the same backgammon-board-shaped shadows across the valleys just as they did three and four thousand years ago when the tired ancients watched the drawing-in of day.

But turning a glance round to the Western Temple, still at this height bathed in golden sheen, one sees only the ancient walls and passages silent and deserted. This area might have been a busy spot for the ancient occupiers at this hour of the day, for monoliths, decorative mural patterns, and conical towers are now all aglow with sunset brightness, and here at this time of day, as the shadow of the slanting granite beam fades on the dentelle pattern on the platform, they might have read as on a dial face, in light and shade, the progress of the season of the year. The call to prayers and the chanting of the evening hymn of the devout at sunset might at this same hour very many centuries ago have rung round the selfsame hallowed walls which look down sphinx-like and blankly upon the modern visitor.

It is easy to fashion a tale of ancient scenes in such a spot and ’mid such surroundings. Such a scene may have been—the parties of ancient worshippers approaching the temple up the Higher Parapet or by the sunken passage in the Platform Enclosure, or along the East Passage, filling the amphitheatre and watching the bringing of the sacred vessels possibly from the now dank and evil-smelling Platform Cave to some spot near the centre of the temple, perchance at the centre of the arc of the great curved wall, which is directed towards the setting sun; the disappearance of the priests through the Covered Passage and their reappearance on the Platform, which faces west and overlooks the interior of the temple, or listening to priestly orations, the announcement of the actual sunset to the worshippers. Possibly, too, the chief priest may have announced the commencement of the “Feast of the New Moon.”

At this moment the “boys” in Havilah Camp are yelling and dancing most frantically. Something unusual must have happened to cause the sudden outbreak of unearthly din. Right in the dazzling glow of the sun, and low down in the sky, and barely discernible by the eye of white men, is the slender silver scimitar of the young moon. A noisy night of beer-drinking, dancing and singing, and tom-tom beating will follow.

But the dank smell of decay has now usurped the place of the sweet-smelling incense of the ancient ritual. The monoliths still point upwards, but who to-day can explain their plan and purpose, or read the silent intimations their shadows were wont to convey?

The associations of the ruins of the Hill Fortress lie even more with the ancient military occupiers than with those of priests and worship. Traverses, buttresses, screen walls, intricate entrances, narrow and sunken passages, rampart walls, banquettes, parapets, and all other devices of a people conversant with military engineering and defence, are in great evidence all over the hill. These in their ingenuity, massive character, and persistent repetition at every point of vantage, baffle and astonish the best experts of modern military engineering science. The ancients were military strategists, and the Acropolis a stronghold, and its most prominent feature was defence.

At this sunset hour no companies of ancient soldiery descend from the fort (East Ruins), at the foot of the Ancient Ascent, to relieve guard and take up their night watches on the wall barriers. In the now dim and scanty twilight one can wander at will through the two hill temples, the residential quarters, and into the caves which once might have held the gold stores of this part of the country. There is no officer on duty to challenge one’s approach. The sentry recesses in the narrow passages and at the entrances appear singularly empty. Fate finally came to relieve guard many centuries past, eventually permitting some semi-civilised Abantu people, such as the Makalanga, or “People of the Sun,” to desecrate the ancient temple floors with their copper and iron furnaces and bone and ash débris heaps. But the lively bustling crowds of ancients and of mediæval Makalanga, who both in turn, and for very long periods, densely populated Zimbabwe Hill, are no more.

One passes along shoulder-wide and tortuous passages, where at every corner one might expect to come face to face with Rider Haggard’s She, and enters some enclosure whose sides are formed by the perpendicular flanks of cliffs and boulders, where the ancients fashioned their gold into beads, wire, plates, and ingots. The intricate entrance still guards the spot where gold crucibles, beaten gold, and gold burnishing tools of the ancient artificers have been found in profusion. There is now no sound of hammering the precious metal on the rounded dolorite anvils, nor reddish glow of light on the cliff sides, as when the furnace was uncovered for the removal of the heated crucibles. The prehistoric workshop is now desolate and damp, and a fitting spot for the loathsome, crawling creatures which inhabit its dark recesses.

But daylight is dying fast. Glancing down through the gaps in the outer walls are seen specks of firelight at near and remote kraals where the evening meal is being prepared, and round which the advent of the new moon will soon be celebrated. An adjoining cave with yawning depth and dense blackness does not now appear particularly inviting to the visitor, and yet here relic-seekers unanimously declare was where the ancients kept large stores of gold dust. The Eastern Temple is in semi-darkness, but as one crosses its floor one sees the hole from which some fifty phalli were taken, and the exact spots from which soapstone birds were removed. Here was the site, as Bent conjectured, of the ancient altar. In this temple, it is believed, the ancients celebrated their daybreak ritual, for the arc of the main wall decorated with dentelle pattern, and on which once stood some of the soapstone birds, faces the rising of the sun. Passing along Central Passage, which is perpetually in shadow owing to huge tall boulders on either side, but is now in deepest blackness, crossing Cleft Rock Enclosure, and descending the sunken passage to the outer face of the great west wall of the Western Temple, one arrives where a slight afterglow of the sunset still lingers over the brow of Rusivanga.

Again one enters into the deep shadow of a sunken and earth-smelling passage with high side walls, and so rapidly descends the north-west face of the hill, glad to emerge once more into the cool fresh air at a lower level of some 100 ft. High in the west is Venus, the evening star, shining brightly—Venus, or Almaq, “illuminating,” the goddess of the earlier star-worshipping Sabæans of Yemen, whose worship the best-qualified scientists believe was practised by the original builders of Zimbabwe. She complacently shines down upon her ruined shrines, and wonders doubtless why these natives should convert the sacred emblems of her worship into pipe-bowls for smoking hemp. The Pleiades have set, for the harvest time is almost over. Orion is sinking towards the western horizon as if with disgust at the land where mere Kafirs[21] call him “The little pig and two dogs.”

CHAPTER III
A DAY AT HAVILAH CAMP, ZIMBABWE

EARLY to bed, our Makalanga labourers are proportionately early to rise, and as soon as there is sufficient light to enable them to see they are up, stretching their limbs, waking the echoes of the valley with their noisy yawnings, which jar on the lilt of the dawn-anthems of the birds, and sit crouching round fires with their blankets over their shoulders.

The sun will soon be coming up behind the blue Beroma Range, just over the romantically shaped rocks at Chenga’s kraal. The peaks of the range are already edged with the fire of the coming light. At last a notched portion of the sun appears over the distant mountain heights. Now everything is coloured crimson. The granite cliffs and massive boulders, the tall grass, the ruined walls, even the mules outspanned in the valley in front of the camp, are all crimson. The usually dirty-coloured grass roofs of the huts are for some minutes most gorgeously beautified. For the only time in the day the dentelle pattern on the conical tower and on the eastern face of the Eastern Temple, the chevron pattern on the Elliptical Temple, and the huge herring-bone pattern on the ancient water gate, and certain of the slate and granite monoliths, are fully bathed in rich sunshine. Other ancient decorative patterns on the walls will have the full sun shining upon them only at midday, while others will only be fully sun-bathed as the sun is setting.

But at present everything is crimson. The wreaths of mist which lie over the tall grass filling the valleys, and which just before were blue, now connect kopje and kopje, making the Acropolis and other summits crimson isles rising from out a crimson sea. The only objects that decline to take on the prevailing tint are some old-world-looking trees with green, metallic leaves. Were the picture of Zimbabwe with this misty colouring resting over it reproduced on canvas the artist would at once be condemned as extravagant. But Nature has more than one colour on her palette. The crimson melts in a rich golden hue which succeeds it. The cliffs, grass hut-roofs, and mist-wreaths become golden. The mules are transformed to gold, and the battered old wagon looks for once quite respectable with its golden buck-sail. But the gold in its turn also fades, the mist-veils lift and melt away, and the land once more regains its wonted tawny, sun-bathed appearance so suggestive of lions.

Day has not yet had a fair chance to become commonplace, but in Havilah Camp life is beginning to stir. Three naked boys have gone to the spring for water, others collect wood, clean the pots, and draw rapoka meal and salt from the stores, while a tall pillar of bright blue smoke ascends in the still air from the boys’ fire. From our height can be seen a score of native villages, each with its column of blue smoke.

Two or three sit by the Isafuba game-holes, and of course disputations at once ensue. Others settle down to work of their own, such as grass-hat making, carving sticks with chevron patterns, drying tobacco leaves, crushing snuff, dressing skins, or performing the duties of barbers. The boys are most industrious when engaged upon their own work. Others are off to inspect their bird and game traps, of which they seem to have at least a hundred within a short distance from the camp, while the rest sit and watch whatever happens to be going on.

Down the side of Makuma Kopje, where Mogabe’s kraal is situated, come young men in twos and threes, some of them with musical instruments, such as Makalanga pianos, a flute, and a one-stringed harp with gourd attached to increase the sound, and of course all are singing. These on descending Makuma disappear in the ten-foot grass which fills the valley till they are near the camp. Other young men come from Chenga’s kraal in the opposite direction two miles away. These latter are the boys to work. Our best workmen come from Chenga’s, for Mogabe’s men have not been improved by tips and favours from visitors to the ruins; besides, belonging to the kraal of the paramount and dynastic chief, they deem themselves to be somewhat superior to all direction or reprimand by white men. Though Mogabe’s people know “how to be happy though Makalanga,” Chenga’s people seem to be even more genuinely contented with their environment.

By 7 a.m. the camp is in full life, and all the boys are present with at least a dozen brothers and followers. The trap-owners have returned with rats, small birds, and possibly a rock-rabbit. A boy is given a note to take to Victoria, seventeen miles distant. He places the letter and his pass in a cleft stick, holds it out in front of him, and is off. He will be back in camp an hour after sundown, perhaps bringing a load of 35 lbs. on his head. A thirty-four miles’ journey is preferred to a day’s work in the temple, so that there are always willing runners into Victoria. There are eggs, poultry, milk, honey, melons, pumpkins, rice, and sweet potatoes for sale or barter for salt, and these can always be obtained for half the original price asked for them.

Then there are burns to be dressed, quinine to be administered, or a lung-sick boy to be dosed. The “Parade State of the Malingering Brigade” is carefully kept down to the lowest possible limit. One is amazed at the way the boys bear their injuries. A severe wound which would put an ordinary European on the sick list is to them a mere trifle, and without flinching they will take a burning stick from the fire and rub it up and down inside a gaping flesh wound till the bleeding has ceased. Should any one of them meet with serious injury, the rest will laugh immensely as if it were a huge joke. In this respect they are very callous. Toothache, a cold, or a slight touch of fever renders them most pitiable objects. The soles of their feet resemble hides, and one or two large thorns which would completely lame a European is a matter almost too insignificant for them to notice. They think nothing of standing on hot burning embers while lighting their pipes at a fire. On cold nights they sleep near a fire and will roll into it, but they are such remarkably sound sleepers that it is not until the next morning they discover they have been burnt. How they manage to save their skins from thorn scratches is a mystery, for all day they are walking with naked bodies through bushes and thorn creepers. Yet their skins are beautifully smooth and glossy, and are always without the slightest scratch.

But the pots of rapoka meal under the euphorbia trees are now being stirred, and each pot has its circle of men to whom dyspepsia appears to be utterly unknown. Sometimes the boys bring a sack of dried locusts. Locusts are esteemed as a dainty, and make an occasional change in the menu, or possibly small red beans, or monkey-nuts, or toasted mealie cobs are feasted upon. While the meal is being devoured one could hardly imagine there was a native within a mile. The stillness of skoff-times (meal-times) in camp serves the purposes of a well-regulated chronometer. Teeth-cleaning is their first business of the day. On rising from sleep and after each meal this is religiously performed. Each takes a mouthful of water and rubs his teeth vigorously with a forefinger, using what water is still remaining in his mouth to wet the skin of face, neck, breast, and hands, squirting it out in doles as required. To hurry them back to work before their teeth had been cleaned would cause them to regard the Baba with looks of genuine horror.

At 7 a.m. the ganger, a man who has worked in the ruins for Bent, Willoughby, and Schlichter, comes to the hut door to report that the men are now ready to start work. Then follows the roll-call, each raising his hand and passing on one side to a separate group as his name is read out. A boy absent for two days on account of alleged sickness is reported to have gone to a distant kraal to attend a “beer dance” where he danced the whole night through. A fine is entered against him. Makalanga split on one another in a fashion which English schoolboys would never permit. Our fines are rarely enforced, but the mere entering them in the book has a most wholesome effect.

One feature in the roll-call generally strikes visitors as interesting, that is, the rhythmic sound of the names of the boys. To an Englishman these names would appear to be more suitable for girls than for men. In fact, all the names of the men are pretty, so pretty that it seems inappropriate to apply them to great fellows like some of our labourers. But like their ideally graceful and poetic gestures, while pronouncing each other’s names they unconsciously manage to throw into the pronunciation a delicate softness, rhythm of intonation, and charm of expression that are rather fascinating to the European listener. An Englishman totally unacquainted with the local language, and wrongly pronouncing the names, could not rob them of their poetry.

The roll completed, all set off in Indian file either to the Elliptical Temple or the Acropolis, singing in chorus in a Tyrolese style, one man giving the recitative, which is almost always of a purely extempore and local character. When once within the ruins, blankets are thrown off and the forty boys make, with a background of light-coloured, lichen-draped walls, a dark mass of humanity, for, save their insignificant aprons fastened with a bark string to their waists, and their necklaces of blue beads and amulets, and brass bangles on arm and leg, they are practically naked, and the sun shines on their glossy chocolate-tinted skins as on burnished metal. The Makalanga have exceedingly strong social instincts, and prefer to work together in one mass even in a small area. To separate them into small gangs would mean little or no work done.

On wet days, or for a few succeeding days, the work is confined to carrying out blocks, which have either fallen from the walls or been piled up by the long succession of archæologists and gold relic collectors who have worked within the ruins. These are carried held up high over their shoulders at arms’ length, or else on the tops of their heads, where natives carry anything from the size of a pill-box to a 40 lb. load. They never carry anything with arms downwards. In fine weather, leaf mould full of roots and seeds, and past excavators’ soil-heaps are removed outside in boxes, the narrow entrances precluding the general use of wheelbarrows. Relics would be lost in the wet and clayey soil were it removed in wet weather. All the boys work en masse, each picks up his box or block, and when all are loaded up they start in one unbroken line for the débris heap outside, singing choruses with recitatives all the way out and on their return. The boxes are carried on one shoulder, a knobkerrie being used as a lever over the other shoulder to hold up the back of the box. The procession of boxes seems interminable—“Milkmaid,” “Armour Beef,” “Lime Juice Cordial,” “Highland Whisky,” “Raisins,” “Coleman’s,” “Mazawattee,” supplemented by buckets, but above all by “Nectar Tea.” Each box has a branded notice uncomplimentary to ships’ boilers. But “Nectar” is the great triumph of Zimbabwe.

It is a huge box, carried on two short poles, with “Nectar Tea” emblazoned on its sides in blue and white. It courtsies and bobs its way to and fro in a most stately fashion, and after it has left the pile which is being removed, a great reduction in the débris remaining can be noticed. The boys have no particular affection for this omnibus. They are believed to bulala (knock about) this box on purpose to ruin it, for several times a day they will bring it with no sorrow on their faces with the information that the box is meningi gura (plenty sick), each time fatally gura, but a few nails cure it of its injuries. Long may “Nectar Tea,” in the interests of archæology, continue to courtesy and bob its way through the western portal of the Elliptical Temple.

CARRYING OUT DÉBRIS FROM ELLIPTICAL TEMPLE, ZIMBABWE

A NOONTIDE SHELTER. WEST ENTRANCE TO ELLIPTICAL TEMPLE

The boys when working well will in a day do about as much work as a quarter of the same number of English labourers. They are inclined to be industrious when the Baba is in sight, but they immediately drop down on their haunches with knees up the moment his back is turned. This is a moral certainty. Then singing ceases, for when working they are always singing. Any excuse for a passing diversion is immediately seized upon. On the shout of inyoga (snake) they drop their tools at once, seize their knobkerries and jump into the jungle heedless for the time being of thorns and creepers. In respect of snakes they are not cowards. Inside the bush a perfect pandemonium is going on which never ceases till either the snake, generally a python or a black mamba, has been slain or has escaped into some pile of ancient blocks.

Another day, after a brief absence from the temple, I found about forty women and girls from Mogabe’s kraal had arrived in the temple to watch their sons, brothers, and sweethearts at work. This they frequently do. The boys on this occasion, believing Baba to be further off than he really was, were chasing the dusky Cleopatras up and down the parallel passages, in and out of the enclosures, and dodging them round the base of the Sacred Cone. One burly Junoesque, bead-and-bangle-bedecked mother was having a most delirious and frantic ride round the temple courts in our only wheelbarrow, which is an iron one. As the barrow bumped along at full tilt against the stones it would each time shake her up terribly. The shrieking, screaming, and laughter of the girls and the yelling of the boys made the temple ring with a noise sufficient to make the priests of the ancient Phallic cult whirl in their graves with horror. But—Baba! and in thirty seconds the boys were all hard at work with most pious looks on their faces, and singing a well-known mission hymn. These great, fine-grown, frank-looking fellows, with their enviable ivories and provokingly pleasant smiles, are far worse than little children to manage. Their characters are perfectly riddled with frivolity, and their minds astonishingly mercurial. Every incident they notice is to them humorous, even the preservation work at the ruins is regarded by them as a sheer waste of time. Not one of them if he tried hard could keep silence for two minutes together. He must either talk, laugh, sing, whistle, or perform some absurd antic. Their utter guilelessness and naïve simplicity are in many respects both surprising and entertaining. To blame them before their fellows kills what little spirit they possess for work, while praise, even though barely merited, will cause them to redouble their efforts. To be in the slightest degree friendly or familiar with them is to completely destroy one’s influence over them; the granting them any favour is regarded by them as an undoubted sign of the donor’s weakness, and of the virtue of gratitude they are absolutely destitute.

One wonders at the dual character which each possesses. In some respects a Makalanga is more moral than many a European, while in others the depth of his immorality cannot be plumbed. In some matters they are as pure-minded as Adam and Eve in the Garden, and know not that they are naked. In their hands their women’s virtue is safe. But contact with the “educated native,” especially a Cape Kafir, before their minds are prepared to receive even the most elementary education, works on them untold mischief.

But the boys may be divided into two classes, one industrious and honest, the other lazy and thieving. These diverse characteristics appear to run in separate families. M’Komo stole Mrs. Theodore Bent’s honey. Three of his nephews in my employ stole meat, sugar, tobacco, or anything else in the kya (hut) they took a fancy to. Another nephew proved to be a veritable Iago in a moocha (a small leathern apron worn by men), and was always making mischief, not only among the boys, but also between the boys and the Baba. Of course these members of this family, notwithstanding its exalted connections, were warned off the camp, and are not allowed to be seen visiting it. Brothers of unsatisfactory boys are never taken on the works, but should there be any vacancy at the end of a month, and the supply of labour is greater than our demand, the places are offered to the brothers of trustworthy boys, and these always prove a great success.

But to return to the Temple. About eleven o’clock the kya boy arrives with half a dozen wee picaninnies carrying kettle, tea-pot, etc. The kya boy comes in for an amount of chaff from the gang. They call him a “Moccaranga shentilman,” because, for two hours in the morning and for the same time in the afternoon, he can lala (rest), seeing that he starts work at 5.30 a.m. and is not free till about 8 p.m. Further, he has perquisites in the shape of meat, tobacco, and tips from visitors, and also in a diluted form acts as a sort of baas (master). But the kya boy takes all the chaff in good part, and gives back quite as much as he receives. The picaninnies, armed with bows and arrows, indulge in target practice, and make it ruinous to stick up lunch biscuits at forty paces.

Probably Mogabe with his headmen will arrive to watch the boys working, and then I know what to expect. It is bound to come. After a long silence he remarks that he is glad to see the Baba. Another long silence, and then—“A Baba always gives presents to his children.” I assume a complete indifference to his remark. Mogabe is diplomatic, but his diplomacy is very thin. After a long pause he observes—“The Baba will make me a present of money.” I inform him I have none to give. Another long pause ensues, then, pointing to a hatchet, he remarks—“The Baba will give me this.” I explain that the hatchet is the property of the Chartered Company, and not mine to bestow. He fails to see the point of my statement, and bluntly says so. He pauses to consider what else he can ask for, and after a long cogitation says “Salt, Baba.” At last Mogabe is reasonable, and I instruct the kya boy to fetch him half a cup of salt. Mogabe is profuse in his thanks, and his speech is floreated with eulogies of the Baba.

Now my turn begins. Mogabe and the elders of his headmen have a sixty years’ knowledge of the ruins, and he is acquainted with everything that took place at Zimbabwe during the time of Chipfuno his brother, who was the previous Zimbabwe chief. Pointing to a gap in an obviously ancient wall which had been rudely filled in with blocks, I ask him who filled up the gap. After a long consultation with his headmen, he says that the Makalanga did it to keep in the cattle, for this part of the temple was used as a cattle kraal, and that was when Chipfuno was a young man. Another gap was filled up when Chipfuno was a young man. I then hand him over some pieces of pottery with geometrical patterns not at all crudely executed, which we have just unearthed, and ask him if the Makalanga made them. For ten minutes he and his headmen are closely examining the pottery, noting the quality of the clay, the correctness of the pattern, and the glaze on both sides. Yes, the Makalanga made it, but not the Makalanga who are now alive, nor their fathers’ fathers. The pottery was of Makalanga make, but meningi dara (very old). The assertion he emphasises by gesture, manifestly meaning a great age. Mogabe thus confirms the expert opinion of antiquarians that this class of pottery was made by the mediæval Makalanga. Mogabe comes to see us at every place we work at, and his opinion on “finds” belonging to recent generations of Makalanga may be taken, so old hands affirm, as perfectly reliable. The information so obtained is valuable both as to later walls and to articles found.

Sometimes the chiefs Baranazimba or Chenga arrive at the ruins, and an indaba (conference) as to “finds” and built-up entrances always takes place, but the weekly indaba with Mogabe always commences with the same old rigmarole. It is a sheer waste of time to discuss anything ancient with them, for since the new jail at Victoria has been built they all solemnly declare that the marungu[22] (white men) built the ruins for a “Tronk!” All their old poetic explanations as to the presence of the ruins, such as they were built “when stones were soft” or “when days were dark,” have now gone to the winds. The ruins were prisons!

But the kya boy has arrived with the salt, and Mogabe is happy. He wraps the salt up in the corner of his blanket, and is off to his kraal at once. When any marungu arrives in a Cape-cart at the camp Mogabe is down the side of his kopje a few minutes afterwards, and arrives there also. It is the same old story, only then the visitor is given his opportunity of demonstrating his liberality. “I am glad to see the Baba. A Baba always gives presents to his children.” Mogabe, like his fellows all over South Africa, is a born beggar, and yet he possesses seventy head of cattle, is rich in wives, grain, and labour, rules over a large area of country, receives a monthly allowance from the Government as chief, and a further allowance for warning unauthorised prospectors for ancient relics from the ruins.

Mogabe’s day has gone. Still, notwithstanding his true Kafir fawning nature, there is something about the aged chief one cannot help respecting. He is intelligent, and he looks it, and his face, if white, would be taken for that of an educated European, for, like most Makalanga, he has little or nothing negroid in his features. Before the advent of the Chartered Company he was constantly at war with his neighbours, sacking villages, kidnapping women and children, and generally murdering. His last fight was in November, 1892, when he engaged the Amangwa people, the battle taking place just outside the western wall of the Elliptical Temple. His own people seem to somewhat neglect him, except in some tribal arrangements and in affairs in which he represents the Native Department. Formerly it was the rule that he ate first and his people afterwards; now he comes into our camp at skoff-times and asks the boys for some of their rapoko, porridge, and if they should happen to be mindful of his presence they will pass him a handful, but sometimes he sits there unheeded. He has now sold, perhaps for a mere song, the famous necklace of Venetian beads which Bent failed to induce him to part with. But there is a look in his eyes that gives one the impression that the old man does not at all relish the benefits of civilisation, and that he is pining for a return of the good old days of blood-shedding.[23] Mogabe’s biography would be worth writing.

But Mogabe is in my good books, for he gave me permission to move some Makalanga graves made in certain of the passages on the Acropolis. Bent merely told Chipfuno that he was going to move the selfsame graves, and he at once withdrew all the labourers, and this not only caused Bent considerable difficulty, but he was not afterwards allowed to open the passages. Twelve years later Mogabe gives his consent on the understanding that he is given half a cup of salt, that the remains were to be properly re-interred, and that the boys who did the work should be allowed to go to their kraals to purify themselves. This purification is no mere excuse, but is an actual cleansing of those engaged in this particular undertaking. The boys informed me that until they had washed they could not eat, and that their fellows would keep away from them. The bones were not touched by hand, but were moved with two sticks. Once I picked up a solid copper bangle, which must have come, judging by the presence of scattered human bones, from some grave disturbed years previously by some excavator for relics. The boys were genuinely horrified when I touched it, but more so when I put it on my wrist. They said I must take it off at once and wash myself, and this horror at what I had done possessed them for several days and was a constant theme of conversation.

Tjiya! (cease work!) is sounded, and the boys take up the cry, and spring like chased buck helter-skelter through the western entrance into the hot, sultry atmosphere, singing, laughing, yelling, and caterwauling, just like boys let out of school. The relentlessly broiling heat and glare of noontide make one long for the beautifully cool shade of the huts.

Arrived at the camp, some of the boys lie at full length on the hot boulders and so take sun-baths, others resume their own carving or other work, some make music, or play with dollasses, or fence, while the majority gather round the various sets of game-holes and play isafuba, but there is a camp rule, found by experience to be necessary, that isafuba cannot be played until the cooks state that the pots have commenced to boil. So fascinating is this game that formerly we found the cooking operations often became neglected.

Isafuba is one of a group of games, the origin of which is explained on pages 79, 80 of The Ancient Ruins of Rhodesia. In our camp are several sets of game-holes; one set has four rows of sixteen holes each, and another two rows of twelve holes. This last is generally patronised by the picaninnies. Some of the isafuba games have different moves, numbers of holes and counters, and the games vary slightly in different districts.

From two to five players sit on each side. Each of the partners on either side appears to have an equal right of moving the counters. The two lines of holes near each set of partners is not intruded upon by the counters of the opponents, but opponents clutch up the counters of the opposite side when such counters have no counter either in the hole behind or in front, and this snatching up of counters is governed by rules which in some moves closely resemble those of chess, while double counters in a hole are as influential as kings in draughts.

Some of the moves strongly remind one of “fox and geese,” each side moving in turn, and later in the game, when the holes are full of counters, each side chases the other along parallel lines of holes to the end of the set. This chasing is a cause of great excitement, and is concluded in a perfect babel of shouting, each player as he moves a counter in the chase calling out in-da! and when the final hole is reached, ga!

Always while in camp there is a perpetual shouting of in-da! in-da! in-da! followed by the triumphant shout of ga! The subject of heated discussion during the game is as to the amount of cheating the other side has effected, and the tumult caused by the discussion of this topic, especially with an extraordinarily talkative people like the Makalangas, can only be but partially imagined. The perpetual in-da! in-da! in-da!—ga! trespasses into one’s dreamland. After a week of this never-ceasing in-da! the sets of holes were ordered to be removed to a more reasonable distance from the hut door; still, one cannot even now escape this perpetual and monotonous din. Yet in all their excited disputations they have never once got beyond mere words. The picaninnies sometimes join in at the larger sets, but a prompter always assists them.

It is the custom for the losers, and not the victors, to record the state of the series of games. This is done by placing large stones, one for each game lost, on the side where the losers sit. The losers invariably have to provide the stones. When all the large stones within arm’s reach have been used up as records and the losers have to get up to fetch a stone, there is general laughter in the camp, even from those who are not immediately watching the game. The stakes are for “sisspences,” or for doro (native beer), but both winners and losers share alike. Towards the end of a month, when wages are becoming due, the game causes increased excitement, and plenty of doro is brewed by speculative villagers to meet the probable demands of the boys.[24]

The two most pernicious vices of the Makalanga are their inveterate love of I’daha (wild hemp) smoking, and of doro drinking.

The former acts as opium, and incapacitates for work, dulls the intellect, destroys every atom of will-power, and tends, if persisted in, to shorten life. An I’daha smoker is readily known by the glazed look in his eyes, and by his miserable appearance. On our arrival here I’daha pipes were introduced into the camp, but they were very soon destroyed, and the smoking of I’daha is now an offence punishable by dismissal without mali (money). This rule has effected a great improvement in the general tone of the men and in their capacities for work. So injurious to brain and health is this vice that in some parts of South Africa I’daha smoking is prohibited under a penalty. One of the most distressing features of this practice is the painful fit of loud coughing which always follows the use of the pipe.

Doro, brewed from rapoko (a red millet), is drunk very extensively by the Makalanga in this district, seeing that this part of the country yields grain in such enormous quantities. But the natives do not regard doro as a mere beverage. At new and full moons, or at the rising or setting of the Pleiades, which determine the sowing and harvesting seasons, doro is provided by the native farmers in lieu of wages, and on these occasions it is drunk most extensively by people of all ages. The men delight in gulping it down in quantities with the avowed and deliberate intention of getting drunk as soon as possible. The state of stupefaction induced by doro is one of their most exquisite delights. On Saturday mornings the one topic of conversation of the gang is as to how much beer they will drink on I’zhuba Kuru (Sunday), how soon they will get drunk, and what they will do when they are drunk. On Mondays, in spite of their “large heads” and sodden appearance, discussions take place as to who were the most drunk. The one who lost most control of himself is considered a hero. In their opinion the man who was most intoxicated honours himself, and can afford to boast.

Even those who are in many other respects the most hopeful young men equally delight in getting absolutely intoxicated. The lads from eight years of age imbibe doro most copiously, while boys of twelve get as drunk as their seniors. The brains of the natives are so small that the doro acts upon them speedily, and two hours’ drinking will undo all the benefit of two years’ contact with civilisation. Then all their innate savage nature reasserts itself in every violent form, and their swaggering insolence, inspired by doro, is intolerable. But the evils of I’daha smoking and doro drinking are not of modern origin, but are ingrained in their blood and bone by many past centuries of devotion to these practices.

The rarefied air of these highlands conducts sound over long distances, and triangular conversations are constantly in progress between the villagers at Mogabe’s kraal, our boys at the camp, and those working on the Hill Ruins, though each point is at least a third of a mile distant from the others. These conversations are carried on without the slightest straining of the voice or even shouting, the secret apparently being the slight raising of the voice and speaking very distinctly and very slowly. From their vantage position on the hill the boys are always on the look-out for natives passing and repassing between the villages. While the passing natives are, as one would believe, outside the hearing limit a conversation with the boys has for some time been in progress. Our boys will give the usual salutation, and if this be replied to all well and good. But should it not be replied to, or not promptly, the boys will at once start in chorus to slang the passer-by and all his relatives, commencing with his mother. So long as the passer-by is within earshot, so long do these slanging matches continue. Each boy endeavours to cap each previous remark with something more pungent, and as he succeeds the rest cheer him. Natives state that the sound of their voices travels quickest and furthest in the early mornings.

THE CAMP MESSENGER, ZIMBABWE

LABOURERS AT THE ELLIPTICAL TEMPLE, ZIMBABWE

The visits of marungu to the ruins are highly interesting occasions for the natives. The news of any approaching arrival is shouted down from Mogabe’s kraal a third of a mile away, for from Mogabe’s Kopje there is a four miles’ view of the road from Victoria. Long before the Cape-cart or horsemen can enter our valley from over the ridge between Rusivanga and Mogabe’s kopjes it is known where we are working, how many visitors are arriving, the description of vehicle, and if there is a lady in the party. Arrivals always attract a score or more naked picaninnies, who accompany the conveyance from the ridge at the foot of the Rusivanga down to the camp. But such visits are infrequent, and three weeks or a month pass without a white man arriving at Zimbabwe, and when, after such intervals, they do arrive, their faces look strange because they are white, while the sound of the English language is strikingly odd. On some rare occasions as many as three camps of visitors have been fixed up on the outspan. A patrol of the British South Africa Police calls about once a month, and the troopers generally introduce themselves with some such salutation as “Well, still alive? Not murdered yet?”

Humorous incidents are not absent in the work of excavation in the ruins. For instance, after working for some hours in a trench near the Sacred Enclosure, and passing all soil over boards and through fingers in the search for relics, a common clay pipe of English make was found intact at a depth of over 3 ft. At another spot, after hours of careful but unrewarded work in a trench, at a similar depth a very late brand of soda-water bottle was found. Both these finds delighted the boys infinitely more than had they unearthed a cartload of phalli or other prehistoric relics of value. In some respects the boys are extremely practical. The question “aliquid novi ex Zimbabwe?” can in two senses be answered in the affirmative. Such modern articles found “at depth” afford only another proof that the soil in the interior of the temple, as stated elsewhere, has been turned over and over again by archæologists, and also by unauthorised prospectors, for ancient gold and other relics.

After tjiya, when the day’s work is done, there is still an hour or so of daylight left, and this is usually occupied in wandering among the kopjes or along sequestered valleys, keeping an eye open for fresh traces of the ancients, or in examining and measuring some one of the minor ruins which stud the valley, or in calling at a village to arrange for labour, or in looking out for buck and guinea-fowl for the pot.

Meanwhile the sun is setting in a gorgeous west, and the golden glow is already fading on the temple walls. Then come the shadows of night, and these settle down rapidly. By the time the hut is reached the kya boy has lit the candles, laid the table, and is ready with the skoff. The boys are sitting round their fire or finishing a game of isafuba in the semi-darkness. Their evening meal is being cooked. One of them has brought a gourd of doro, and another a pot of fat, in which each handful of porridge is dipped before being eaten.

Sitting on the stoep of the hut at this time of the day is a perfect rest. The air is agreeably cooled by a light breeze, which is laden with the scent of verbena. The night is calm and peaceful. Large bats fly swallow-wise, fire flies dart in all directions, glow-worms shine steadily in the grass, and birds, frogs, and insects join in mild choruses. The call of a boy in our camp to some companion up on Mogabe’s Kopje is repeated half a dozen times by the precipices of Zimbabwe Hill, where the echoes die out in a series of sharp raps. The large full moon rises serenely from behind the trees on Beroma Range, and bathes the country in delicate soft light, imparting a greenish-grey tint to the mist-veils which fill the gorges, throwing a deeper suggestion of mystery and awe over the wide expanse of bush where the lion holds his court.

The boys, having finished their meal, now indulge in post-prandial rhetoric, and dialectic ping-pong. The ruddy glow of the fire reddens the huts and shines on the naked bodies and limbs of the crowd, making them resemble polished ebony, while as their tall and well-proportioned figures with kingly walk pass and repass in the flickering lurid light they appear to resemble shades from across the Styx. Such a scene is at least Dantesque, and to many might seem weird. But the boys are as happy as their hearts can wish. Their joviality is irrepressible. Harmony from their instruments, rhythmic chants, peals of laughter, wild recitatives, constant talking, with perhaps a wrestling match and a war-dance executed in simulated form thrown in, fill up two hours, by the end of which they are all under their blankets, sleeping and snoring as only natives can.

“Porridge,” the kya boy’s under-study, and eight years old, has brought in the hut door, which also acts as drawing-board and stoep table, and has gone to the kitchen-hut, where he rolls himself up in his tiny blanket.

An occasional bark of a baboon or wolf, or yelp of jackal, or hoot of owl, is heard in addition to the usual nightjar and frog choruses. The sounds of the village drums, and of singing and dancing at Mogabe’s or Chenga’s kraal, where the full-moon feast is being celebrated, are wafted down to us. The night is perfectly lovely, but for Havilah Camp the day is past and over.

But the moon—itself a dead world—looks down upon the ruins of a dead city and on the graves of a forgotten race, as it has done ever since the stern policeman Fate ordered these ancients to “Pass on!”

CHAPTER IV
ZIMBABWE DISTRICT

Chipo-popo Falls—Frond Glen—Lumbo Rocks—“Morgenster” Mission—Wuwulu—Mojejèje, or Mystic Bar—Suku Dingle—Bingura’s Kraal—Motumi’s Kraal—Chipfuko Hill—Chipadzi’s Kraal

CHIPO-POPO[25] FALLS

THESE are about two miles and a half north-east of Zimbabwe, on the Motelekwe Road. The Chipo-popo, which is a perennial stream with its source on the south side of the Beroma Range, crosses the road and runs towards the Moshagashi River, which it joins four miles lower down. Immediately to the north of the drift (ford) the stream descends abruptly down granite ledges into a deep ravine, on the east side of which is Chipo-popo kraal. The falls are reached by leaving the road at thirty yards on the Zimbabwe side of the drift and going between some large boulders on the north side of the road. This is an interesting spot at any time, but especially so when rains have swollen the torrent. A path from Chipo-popo kraal leads to Oatlands Farm, four miles north-east of Zimbabwe, where Naidoo, an Indian, has an extensive market-garden. The walk to the falls and to Oatlands Farm is a very easy afternoon’s exercise.

FROND GLEN

This is a very pretty, secluded, and sheltered spot in a deep ravine about half a mile east of the South-East Ruins. A stream from the valley, which extends eastwards from the Elliptical Temple, passes through it in a south-easterly direction. On the banks of this ravine are to be found tree-ferns, palms, royal ferns (osmunda regalis), and maiden-hair ferns. The scenery and atmosphere of this glen are said to be somewhat similar to those of some tracts on the southern slopes of the Himalayas. To reach the glen one should leave the Motelekwe Road at three-quarters of a mile east of Havilah Camp, cross the small valley on the south to the South-East Ruins, and then go due east from the ruins, the land descending towards the glen.

LUMBO ROCKS

These strikingly picturesque cliffs, which form a prominent landmark for miles around, are a little over two miles south of the Elliptical Temple, and are approached by the native path leading from Zimbabwe to the Morgenster Mission. These granite crags rise perpendicularly for about a hundred feet from out of the summit of a rocky kopje, and form a rude square-sided column of precipice, which is divided into four portions by very narrow fissures, which run through it on all four sides from base to summit. Visitors should climb this hill and inspect the rocks. There are numerous granite boulders split into fantastic shapes all round this kopje. The headman, Lumbo, now has his kraal about a third of a mile to the west of these rocks. Chipadzi’s kraal lies one mile to the south-east of Lumbo Rocks, and half a mile nearer Zimbabwe, and on the west side of the path to the mission is the deserted kraal of Baranazimba, situate on a high rugged kopje among gigantic boulders which rendered the kraal most difficult of approach. This chief is a relative of Mogabe. His new kraal is on a kopje close to the Victoria-Zimbabwe Road about four miles from the ruins.

MORGENSTER (“MORNING STAR”) MISSION

One of the prettiest walks from Zimbabwe is to this mission station, which is barely three and a half miles distant in a south-south-westerly direction. The path passes between the Elliptical Temple and the Bentberg. About two miles along the path and close to the right-hand side is Baranazimba’s old kraal perched up high among the boulders of a kopje. The path then crosses a nek between Baranazimba’s and the Lumbo Rocks, and descends into a narrow valley and up a high ridge, on which, cutting the sky-line, is a tall and prominent Finger Rock, which is only a few hundred yards from the mission, which lies just over the ridge. Morgenster is on a much higher elevation than the Zimbabwe Valley. The walk is highly interesting to anyone fond of romantic scenery. Rugged kopjes, with cliff-boulders on which huge granite masses are most delicately poised, lie along the right-hand side of the path for a great part of the distance to Morgenster.

The mission was founded in 1891 by the Rev. A. A. Louw, of the Dutch Reformed Church, Dr. John Helm, the medical missionary, joining the station in 1894. Several other European missionaries are attached to the staff, and there are numerous outlying stations.

The mission settlement is ideally situated on the south face of a high ridge overlooking the Mowishawasha Valley on the south and the N’Djena Valley and Motelekwe River on the south-east. Its position is marked by clumps of tall blue gum-trees. The buildings comprise the residence of Mr. Louw, the houses of Dr. Helm and other missionaries, and a school-house. Morgenster is celebrated for its banana plantation, the number of its lemon trees, and its large irrigated gardens. The Mahobohobo trees are very numerous in the vicinity of the station.

The district in which the mission is situated is known to the natives as Amangwa, this being in former times the country of the once powerful tribe of Amangwa, who were driven away from the Zimbabwe district by the present local Makalanga on their arrival almost seventy years ago from the Sabi district. A kopje within a third of a mile on the east side of the mission was, until very recently, occupied by a local tribe of Makalanga, who built up rampart walls of unhewn stones to fortify the kopje against the attacks of the Matabele about 1893.

Morgenster is also celebrated for the immense panoramic view of the Motelekwe Valley, extending for at least forty miles, where the tumbling sea of rugged kopje summits fades into the blue distance. The view is so extensive, impressive, and grand that one can never tire beholding it. As far as the eye can reach the land can be seen descending towards the south. The nearest point of the Motelekwe River to the mission is four miles. There are a great many villages in the valley.

A peculiar interest attaches to this view of the Motelekwe Valley, for along it appears to have been the main route of the ancient gold-seekers from the coast to Zimbabwe, and so into the interior of the country. Along the Motelekwe is a chain of ruins (see Ancient Ruins of Rhodesia), of which the Mapaku Ruins, eight miles east-south-east of Zimbabwe, are the nearest. Some of these ruins are of major importance, and two at least are decorated with the chevron pattern, and occupy areas almost as large as the main ruins at Zimbabwe. This line of forts, or “blockhouses,” is extended along the Sabi River for a considerable distance into Portuguese territory. In viewing this valley from Morgenster, the thought that within sight lies one of the ancient roads to the coast, and that along it passed the gold- and ivory-laden caravans, makes the contemplation of the Motelekwe Valley one of absorbing interest.

The sharp-cut kopje with steep glacis sides, about a mile and a half south of the mission, is Rugutsi. This divides the scenery of the Motelekwe from that of the Mowishawasha Valley on the south. This also is a fine view, but not so extensive as that of the Motelekwe Valley. An absolutely bare, granite, balloon-shaped kopje lies to the west.

Two miles due south of the mission, in the Mowishawasha Valley, is a natural stronghold known as Wuwuli.

WUWULI

This village, which is two miles south of Morgenster, is situated in a deep and narrow ravine immediately west of the Rugutsi Kopje, which forms such a prominent feature in the landscape of the Mowishawasha Valley, as seen from the mission. Formerly this place was of considerable importance to the local Makalanga, for during the times of the Matabele raids the natives between this place and Zimbabwe took refuge in the very extensive caves which run under the north side of the ravine. A strong perennial stream flows through the caves. Here, in time of danger, women, cattle, and grain were hidden. When Mr. and Mrs. Bent visited this village, in 1891, the natives were opposed to their inspecting the caves, and they were only permitted to go a certain distance inside. Now that raidings have ceased the caves are deserted, save for bats, and we were permitted to view the caves without any demur on the part of the villagers.

The present chief is Bungu, a brother of the present dynastic chief Mogabe by another mother. The former Mogabe, Chipfuno, resided at this kraal as well as at Zimbabwe, and it was here he was shot in 1892.

When visiting this village we saw a man undergoing a cure by blood-letting. Incisions were made in the flesh of the leg, and horns of yearling cattle placed over them. The air was then sucked out of the horns through small holes in the top, and the holes were then stopped with wax. The horns clung to the flesh, owing to the vacuum which drew the blood. Bungu’s attention was drawn to an old iron-smelting furnace, on which was the usual female breast and furrow pattern. He said the natives did not smelt iron now because they could buy their garden hoes from the white men, and they were therefore saved the trouble of making them.

MOJEJÈJE, OR “MYSTIC BAR”

There are two of these mystic bars at Zimbabwe, one being on the Motelekwe Road, a quarter of a mile east from Havilah camp and opposite Middle Kopje (Chamananga), and the other about a mile from Zimbabwe, on the path to Bingura’s. The one on the Motelekwe Road is formed by a bar of aphite crossing a granite glacis, over which the road passes, but the one on Bingura’s Path is an arbitrary line drawn across a piece of granite, over which the path crosses. Each bar is at right angles to the path. At either end of each bar is a pile of stones, which show evident signs of having been hammered upon the bar for generations past. A native on a long journey, arriving at one of these bars, will take a stone from the pile on one side and with it tap the whole length of the bar, and lay the stone on the pile on the opposite side. Natives crossing the bar in passing between their kraals and their plantations, or going a short distance only, do not tap the bars. The idea in so tapping the bar is that by so doing the back is strengthened for the journey, and also that the man they are going to see may be at home, that the food will not be cooked till they arrive, and that their journey may be successful. There is no appeal to spirits or ancestors in performing this act.