MR. THEODORE BENT

In a volume devoted to the ruined cities of Mashonaland I am loth to introduce remarks in narrative form relating how we got to them and how we got away. Still, however, the incidents of our journeyings to and fro offer certain features which may be interesting from an anthropological point of view. The study of the natives and their customs occupied our leisure moments when not digging at Zimbabwe or travelling too fast, and a record of what we saw amongst them, comes legitimately, I think, within the scope of our expedition. [4]

For the absence of narrative of sport in these pages I feel it hardly necessary to apologise. So much has been done in this line by the colossal Nimrods who have visited South Africa that any trifling experiences we may have had in this direction are not worth the telling. My narrative is, therefore, entirely confined to the ruins and the people; on other South African subjects I do not pretend to speak with any authority whatsoever.

Three societies subscribed liberally to our expedition—namely, the Royal Geographical Society, the British Chartered Company of South Africa, and the British Association for the Advancement of Science—without which aid I could never have undertaken a journey of such proportions; and to the officers of the Chartered Company, with whom we naturally came much in contact, I cannot tender thanks commensurate with their kindness; to their assistance, especially in the latter part of our journey, when we had parted company with our waggons and our comforts, we owe the fact that we were able to penetrate into unexplored parts of the country without let or hindrance, and without more discomforts than naturally arise from incidents of travel.

Serious doubts as to the advisability of a lady undertaking such a journey were frequently brought before us at the outset; fortified, however, by previous experience in Persia, Asia Minor, and the Greek Islands, we hardly gave these doubts more than a passing thought, and the event proved that they were [5]wholly unnecessary. My wife was the only one of our party who escaped fever, never having a day’s illness during the whole year that we were away from home. She was able to take a good many photographs under circumstances of exceptional difficulty, and instead of being, as was prophesied, a burden to the expedition, she furthered its interests and contributed to its ultimate success in more ways than one.

Mr. Robert McNair Wilson Swan accompanied us in the capacity of cartographer; to him I owe not only the plans which illustrate this volume, but also much kindly assistance in all times of difficulty.

We three left England at the end of January 1891, and returned to it again at the end of January 1892, having accomplished a record rare in African travel, and of which we are justly proud—namely, that no root of bitterness sprang up amongst us.

We bought two waggons, thirty-six oxen, and heaps of tinned provisions at Kimberley. These we conveyed by train to Vryberg, in Bechuanaland, which place we left on March 6. An uninteresting and uneventful ‘trek’ of a week brought us to Mafeking, where we had to wait some time, owing to a deluge of rain, and from this point I propose to commence the narrative of my observations.

Bechuanaland is about as big as France, and a country which has been gradually coming under the sphere of British influence since Sir Charles Warren’s campaign, and which in a very few years must of [6]necessity be absorbed into the embryo empire which Mr. Cecil Rhodes hopes to build up from the Lakes to Cape Town. At present there are three degrees of intensity of British influence in Bechuanaland in proportion to the proximity to headquarters—firstly, the Crown colony to the south, with its railway, its well-to-do settlements at Taungs, Vryberg, and Mafeking, and with its native chiefs confined within certain limits; secondly, the British protectorate to the north of this over such chiefs as Batuen, Pilan, Linchwe, and Sechele, extending vaguely to the west into the Kalahari Desert, and bounded by the Limpopo River and the Dutchmen on the east; thirdly, the independent dominions of the native chief Khama, who rules over a vast territory to the north, and whose interests are entirely British, for with their assistance only can he hope to resist the attacks of his inveterate foe King Lobengula of Matabeleland.

Two roads through Bechuanaland to Mashonaland were open to us from Mafeking: the shorter one is by the river, which, after the rains, is muddy and fever-stricken; the other is longer and less frequented; it passes through a corner of the Kalahari Desert, and had the additional attraction of taking us through the capitals of all the principal chiefs: consequently, we unhesitatingly chose it, and it is this which I now propose to describe.

We may dismiss the Crown colony of Bechuanaland with a few words. It differs little from any [7]other such colony in South Africa, and the natives and their chiefs have little or no identity left to them. Even the once famous Montsoia, chief of the Ba-rolongs of Mafeking, has sunk into the lowest depths of servile submission; he receives a monthly pension of 25l., which said sum he always puts under his pillow and sleeps upon; he is avaricious in his old age, and dropsical, and surrounded by women who delight to wrap their swarthy frames in gaudy garments from Europe. He is nominally a Christian, and has been made an F.O.S., or Friend of Ally Sloper, and, as the latter title is more in accordance with his tastes, he points with pride to the diploma which hangs on the walls of his hut.

From Mafeking to Kanya, the capital of Batuen, chief of the Ba-Ngwatetse tribe, is about eighty miles. At first the road is treeless, until the area is reached where terminates the cutting down of timber for the support of the diamond mines at Kimberley, a process which has denuded all southern Bechuanaland of trees, and is gradually creeping north. The rains were not over when we started, and we found the road saturated with moisture; and in two days, near the Ramatlabama River, our progress was just one mile, in which distance our waggons had to be unloaded and dug out six times. But Bechuanaland dries quickly, and in a fortnight after this we had nothing to drink but concentrated mud, which made our tea and coffee so similar that it was impossible to tell the difference. [8]

On one occasion during our midday halt we had all our oxen inoculated with the virus of the lung sickness, for this fatal malady was then raging in Khama’s country. Our waggons were placed side by side, and with an ingenious contrivance of thongs our conductor and driver managed to fasten the plunging animals by the horns, whilst a string steeped in the virus was passed with a needle through their tails. Sometimes after this process the tails swell and fall off; and up country a tailless ox has a value peculiarly his own. It is always rather a sickly time for the poor beasts, but as we only lost two out of thirty-six from this disease we voted inoculation successful.

I think Kanya is the first place where one realises that one is in savage Africa. Though it is under British protection it is only nominally so, to prevent the Boers from appropriating it. Batuen, the chief, is still supreme, and, like his father, Gasetsive, he is greatly under missionary influence. He has stuck up a notice on the roadside at the entrance to the town in Sechuana, the language of the country, Dutch, and English, which runs as follows: ‘I, Batuen, chief of Ba-Ngwatetse, hereby give notice to my people, and all other people, that no waggons shall enter or leave Kanya on Sunday. Signed, September 28th, 1889.’ If any one transgresses this law Batuen takes an ox from each span, a transaction in which piety and profit go conveniently hand in hand.

Kanya is pleasantly situated amongst low hills [9]well clad with trees. It is a collection of huts divided into circular kraals hedged in with palisades, four to ten huts being contained in each enclosure. These are again contained in larger enclosures, forming separate communities, each governed by its hereditary sub-chief, with its kotla or parliament circle in its midst. On the summit of the hill many acres are covered with these huts, and there are also many in the valley below. Certain roughly-constructed walls run round the hill, erected when the Boers threatened an invasion; but now these little difficulties are past, and Batuen limits his warlike tendencies to quarrelling with his neighbours on the question of a border line, a subject which never entered their heads before the British influence came upon them.

All ordinary matters of government and justice are discussed in the large kotla before the chief’s own hut; but big questions, such as the border question, are discussed at large tribal gatherings in the open veldt. There was to be one of these gatherings of Batuen’s tribe near Kanya on the following Monday, and we regretted not being able to stop and witness so interesting a ceremony.

The town is quite one of the largest in Bechuanaland, and presents a curious appearance on the summit of the hill. The kotla is about 200 feet in diameter, with shady trees in it, beneath which the monarch sits to dispense justice. We passed an idle afternoon therein, watching with interest the women [10]of Batuen’s household, naked save for a skin loosely thrown around them, lying on rugs before the palace, and teaching the children to dance to the sound of their weird music, and making the air ring with their merry laughter. In one corner Batuen’s slaves were busy filling his granaries with maize just harvested. His soldiers paraded in front of his house, and kept their suspicious eyes upon us as we sat; many of them were quaintly dressed in red coats, which once had been worn by British troops, and soft hats with ostrich feathers in them, whilst their black legs were bare.

Ma-Batuen, the chief’s mother, received us somewhat coldly when we penetrated into her hut; she is the chief widow of old Gasetsive, Batuen’s father, a noted warrior in his day. The Sechuana tribes have very funny ideas about death, and never, if possible, let a man die inside his hut; if he does accidentally behave so indiscreetly they pull down the wall at the back to take the corpse out, as it must never go out by the ordinary door, and the hut is usually abandoned. Gasetsive died in his own house, so the wall had to be pulled down, and it has never been repaired, and is abandoned. Batuen built himself a new palace, with a hut for his chief wife on his right, and a hut for his mother on the left. His father’s funeral was a grand affair; all the tribe assembled to lament the loss of their warrior chief, and he was laid to rest in a lead coffin in the midst of his kotla. The superstitious of the tribe did not approve of the coffin, [11]and imagine that the soul may still be there making frantic efforts to escape.

All the Ba-Ngwatetse are soldiers, and belong to certain regiments or years. When a lot of the youths are initiated together into the tribal mysteries generally the son of a chief is amongst them, and he takes the command of the regiment. In the old ostrich-feather days Kanya was an important trading station, but now there is none of this, and inasmuch as it is off the main road north, it is not a place of much importance from a white man’s point of view, and boasts only of one storekeeper and one missionary, both men of great importance in the place.

After Kanya the character of the scenery alters, and you enter an undulating country thickly wooded, and studded here and there with red granite kopjes, or gigantic boulders set in rich green vegetation, looking for all the world like pre-Raphaelite Italian pictures. Beneath a long kopje, sixteen miles from Kanya, nestles Masoupa, the capital of a young chief, the son of Pilan, who was an important man in his day, and broke off from his own chief Linchwe, bringing his followers with him to settle in the Ba-Ngwatetse country as a sort of sub-chief with nominal independence; it is a conglomeration of bee-hive huts, many of them overgrown with gourds, difficult to distinguish from the mass of boulders around them. When we arrived at Masoupa a dance was going on—a native Sechuana dance—in consequence of the full moon and the rejoicings incident on an abundant [12]harvest. In the kotla some forty or more men had formed a circle, and were jumping round and round to the sound of music. Evidently it was an old war dance degenerated; the sugar-cane took the place of the assegai, many black legs were clothed in trousers, and many black shoulders now wore coats; but there are still left as relics of the past the ostrich feather in the hat, the fly whisk of horse, jackal, or other tail, the iron skin-scraper round the neck, which represents the pocket-handkerchief amongst the Kaffirs with which to remove perspiration; the flute with one or two holes, out of which each man seems to produce a different sound; and around the group of dancing men old women still circulate, as of yore, clapping their withered hands and encouraging festivity. It was a sight of considerable picturesqueness amid the bee-hive huts and tall overhanging rocks.

Masoupa was once the residence of a missionary, but the church is now abandoned and falling into ruins, because when asked to repair the edifice at their own expense the men of Masoupa waxed wroth, and replied irreverently that God might repair His own house; and one old man who received a blanket for his reward for attending divine service is reported to have remarked, when the dole was stopped, ‘No more blanket, no more hallelujah.’ I fear me the men of Masoupa are wedded to heathendom.

The accession of Pilan to the chiefdom of Masoupa is a curious instance of the Sechuana marriage laws. [13]A former chief’s heir was affianced young; he died at the age of eight, before succeeding his father, and, according to custom, the next brother, Moshulilla, married the woman; their son was Pilan, who, on coming of age, turned out his own father, being, as he said, the rightful heir of the boy of eight, for whom he, Moshulilla, the younger brother, had been instrumental in raising up seed. There is a distinct touch of Hebraic, probably Semitic, law in this, as there is in many another Sechuana custom.

The so-called purchase of a wife is curious enough in Bechuanaland. The intending husband brings with him the number of bullocks he thinks the girl is worth; wisely, he does not offer all his stock at once, leaving two or more, as the case may be, at a little distance, for he knows the father will haggle and ask for an equivalent for the girl’s keep during childhood, whereupon he will send for another bullock; then the mother will come forward and demand something for lactation and other maternal offices, and another bullock will have to be produced before the contract can be ratified. In reality this apparent purchase of the wife is not so barefaced a thing as it seems, for she is not a negotiable article and cannot again be sold; in case of divorce her value has to be paid back, and her children, if the purchase is not made, belong to her own family. Hence a woman who is not properly bought is in the condition of a slave, whereas her purchased sister has rights which assure her a social standing. [14]

From Pilan’s the northward road becomes hideous again, and may henceforward be said to be in the desert region of the Kalahari. This desert is not the waste of sand and rock we are accustomed to imagine a desert should be, but a vast undulating expanse of country covered with timber—the mimosa, or camel thorn, the mapani bush, and others which reach the water with their roots, though there are no ostensible water sources above ground.

The Kalahari is inhabited sparsely by a wild tribe known as the Ba-kalahari, of kindred origin to the bushmen, whom the Dutch term Vaal-pens, or ‘Fallow-paunches,’ to distinguish them from the darker races. Their great skill is in finding water, and in dry seasons they obtain it by suction through a reed inserted into the ground, the results being spat into a gourd and handed to the thirsty traveller to drink. Khama, Sechele, and Batuen divide this vast desert between them; how far west it goes is unknown; wild animals rapidly becoming extinct elsewhere abound therein. It is a vast limbo of uncertainty, which will necessarily become British property when Bechuanaland is definitely annexed; possibly with a system of artesian wells the water supply may be found adequate, and it may yet have a future before it when the rest of the world is filled to overflowing.

We saw a few of these children of the desert in our progress northwards; they are timid and diffident in the extreme, always avoiding the haunts of the white man, and always wandering hither and [15]thither where rain and water may be found. On their shoulders they carry a bark quiver filled with poisoned arrows to kill their game. They produce fire by dexterously rubbing two sticks together to make a spark. At nightfall they cut grass and branches to make a shelter from the wind; they eat snakes, tortoises, and roots which they dig up with sharp bits of wood, and the contents of their food bags is revolting to behold. They pay tribute in kind to the above-mentioned chiefs—skins, feathers, tusks, or the mahatla berries used for making beer—and if these things are not forthcoming they take a fine-grown boy and present him to the chief as his slave.

Sechele is the chief of the Ba-quaina, or children of the quaina, or crocodile. Their siboko, or tribal object of veneration, is the crocodile, which animal they will not kill or touch under any provocation whatsoever. The Ba-quaina are one of the most powerful of the Bechuanaland feud tribes, and it often occurred to me, Can the name Bechuanaland, for which nobody can give a satisfactory derivation, and of which the natives themselves are entirely ignorant, be a corruption of this name? There have been worse corruptions perpetrated by Dutch and English pioneers in savage lands, and Ba-quainaland would have a derivation, whereas Bechuanaland has none.

Sechele’s capital is on the hills above the river Molopolole, quite a flourishing place, or rather group of places, on a high hill, with a curious valley or [16]kloof beneath it, where the missionary settlement is by the river banks. Many villages of daub huts are scattered over the hills amongst the red boulders and green vegetation. In the largest, in quite a European-looking house, Sechele lives. Once this house was fitted up for him in European style; it contained a glass chandelier, a sideboard, a gazogene, and a table. In those days Sechele was a good man, and was led by his wife to church; but, alas! this good lady died, and her place was supplied by a rank heathen, who would have none of her predecessor’s innovations. Now Sechele is very old and very crippled, and he lies amid the wreck of all his European grandeur; chandelier, sideboard, gazogene, are all in ruins like himself, and he is as big a heathen and as big a sinner as ever wore a crown. So much for the influence of women over their husbands, even when they are black.

Sebele, the heir apparent, does all the executive work of the country now, and the old man is left at home to chew his sugar-cane and smoke his pipe. Around the villages and in the hollow below the native gardens or fields are very fertile; maize, kaffir corn, sugar-cane, grow here in abundance, and out of the tall reeds black women came running to look at us as we passed by, whose daily duty it is at this season of the year to act as scarecrows, and save their crops from the birds. Beneath the corn and mealies they grow gourds and beans, and thereby thoroughly exhaust the soil, which, after a season or [17]two, is left fallow for a while; and if the ground becomes too bad around a town they think nothing of moving their abodes elsewhere, a town being rarely established in one place for more than fifty years.

From Sechele’s town to Khama’s old capital, Shoshong, is a weary journey of over a hundred and thirty miles through the Kalahari Desert, and through that everlasting bush of mimosa thorn, which rose like impenetrable walls on either side of us. Along this road there is hardly any rising ground; hence it is impossible to see anything for more than a few yards around one, unless one is willing to brave the dangers of penetrating the bush, returning to the camp with tattered garments and ruffled temper, if return you can, for when only a few yards from camp it is quite possible to become hopelessly lost, and many are the stories of deaths and disappearances in this way, and of days of misery spent by travellers in this bush without food or shelter, unable to retrace their steps. The impenetrableness of this jungle in some places is almost unbelievable: the bushes of ‘wait-a-bit’ thorn are absolutely impossible to get through; every tree of every description about here seems armed by nature with its own defence, and lurking in the grass is the ‘grapple plant,’ the Harpagophytum procumbens, whose crablike claws tear the skin in a most painfully subtle way. The mimosas of many different species which form the bulk of the trees in this bush are also terribly thorny; the Dutch call them camel thorns, because the giraffes, or, as they call them, the [18]camel leopards, feed thereon. Why the Dutch should be so perverse in the naming of animals I never can discover; to them the hyæna is the wolf, the leopard is the tiger, the kori-bustard is the peacock, and many similar anomalies occur.

The botanist or the naturalist might here enjoy every hour of his day. The flowers are lovely, and animal life is here seen in many unaccustomed forms, there are the quaint, spire-like ant-hills tapering to pinnacles of fifteen feet in height; the clustered nests of the ‘family bird,’ where hundreds live together in a sort of exaggerated honeycomb; the huge yellow and black spiders, which weave their webs from tree to tree of material like the fresh silk of the silkworm, which, with the dew and the morning sun upon it, looks like a gauze curtain suspended in the air. There are, too, the deadly puff adders, the night adders, and things creeping innumerable, the green tree snake stealthily moving like a coil of fresh-cut grass; and wherever there is a rocky kopje you are sure to hear at nightfall the hideous screams of the baboons, coupled with the laugh of the jackal. But if you are not a naturalist these things pall upon you after the sensation has been oft repeated, and this was the case with us.

MAKING THONGS OF OX-HIDE

The monotony of the journey would now and again be relieved by a cattle station, where the servants of Sechele or Khama rear cattle for their chiefs; and these always occur in the proximity of water, which we hailed with delight, even if it was [19]only a muddy vley, or pond, trampled by the hoofs of many oxen. These cattle stations are generally large circular enclosures surrounded by a palisade, with a tree in the middle, beneath which the inhabitants sit stitching at their carosses, or skin rugs, in splendid nudity. All manner of skins hang around; hunks of meat in process of drying; hide thongs are fastened from branch to branch like spiders’ webs, which they stretch on the branches to make ‘reims’ [20]for waggon harness; consequently the air is not too fragrant, and the flies an insupportable nuisance.

One evening we reached one of these kraals after dark, and a weird and picturesque sight it was. Having penetrated through the outer hedge, where the cattle were housed for the night, we reached inner enclosures occupied by the families and their huts. They sat crouching over their fires, eating their evening meal of porridge, thrusting long sticks into the pot, and transferring the stiff paste to their mouths. In spite of the chilliness of the evening, they were naked, save for a loin-cloth and their charms and amulets. A man stood near, playing on an instrument like a bow with one string, with a gourd attached to bring out the sound. He played it with a bit of wood, and the strains were plaintive, if not sweet.

Another night we reached a pond called Selynia, famed all the country round, and a great point of rendezvous for hunters who are about to penetrate the desert. In this pond we intended to do great things in the washing line, and tarry a whole day for this purpose; but it was another disappointment to add to the many we had experienced on this road, for it was nothing but a muddy puddle trampled by oxen, from which we had difficulty in extracting enough liquid to fill our barrels. Needless to say, we did not stay for our proposed washing day, but hurried on.

It was a great relief to reach the hills of Shoshong, the larger trees, the cactus-like euphorbia, and the richer vegetation, after the long flat stretch of [21]waterless bush-covered desert, and we were just now within the tropic of Capricorn. The group of hills is considerable, reaching an elevation of about 800 feet, and with interesting views from the summits. In a deep ravine amongst these hills lie the ruins of the town of Shoshong, the quondam capital of the chief Khama and the Ba-mangwato tribe. It is an interesting illustration of the migratory spirit of the race. The question of moving had long been discussed by Khama and his head men, but the European traders and missionaries at Shoshong thought it would never take place. They built themselves houses and stores, and lived contentedly.

Suddenly, one day, now three years ago, without any prefatory warning, Khama gave orders for the move, and the exodus commenced on the following morning. The rich were exhorted to lend their waggons and their beasts of burden to the poor. Each man helped his neighbour, and, in two months, 15,000 individuals were located in their new home at Palapwe, about sixty miles away, where water is plentiful and the soil exceedingly rich. Thus was Shoshong abandoned. Scarcity of water was the immediate cause of the migration, for there was only one slender stream to water the whole community, and whole rows of women with their jars would stand for hours awaiting their turn to fill them from the source up the valley, which in the dry season barely trickled.

Everything was arranged by Khama in the most beautiful manner. He and his head men had been [22]over at Palapwe for some time, and had arranged the allotments, so that every one on his arrival went straight to the spot appointed, built his hut, and surrounded it with a palisade. Not a murmur or a dispute arose amongst them. In reality it was the knowledge of British support which enabled Khama to carry out this plan. Shoshong, in its rocky ravine, is admirably situated for protection from the Matabele raids. When a rumour of the enemy’s approach was received, the women and children were hurried off with provisions to the caves above the town, whilst Khama and his soldiers protected the entrance to the ravine. Palapwe, on the contrary, is open and indefensible, and would be at once exposed to the raids of Lobengula were it not for the camp of the Bechuanaland Border Police at Macloutsie, and the openly avowed support of Great Britain.

The desolate aspect of the ruined town, as seen to-day, is exceedingly odd. The compounds or enclosures are all thickly overgrown with the castor-oil plant. The huts have, in most cases, tumbled in; some show only walls, with the chequered and diaper patterns still on them so beloved by the inhabitants of Bechuanaland; others are mere skeleton huts, with only the framework left. The poles which shut in the cattle kraals have, in many instances, sprouted, and present the appearance of curious circular groves dedicated to some deity. The brick houses of European origin are the most lasting, the old stores and abodes of traders, but even these can now hardly be approached [23]by reason of the thick thorn bushes which, in so short a space of time, have grown up around them. Far up the ravine is the missionary’s house, itself a ruin overlooking the ruined town. Baboons, and owls, and vicious wasps now inhabit the rooms where Moffat lived and Livingstone stayed. There is not a vestige of human life now to be seen within miles of Shoshong, which was, three years ago, the capital of one of the most enlightened chiefs of South Africa.

I must say I looked forward with great interest to seeing a man with so wide a reputation for integrity and enlightenment as Khama has in South Africa. Somehow, one’s spirit of scepticism is on the alert on such occasions, especially when a negro is the case in point; and I candidly admit that I advanced towards Palapwe fully prepared to find the chief of the Ba-mangwato a rascal and a hypocrite, and that I left his capital, after a week’s stay there, one of his most fervent admirers.

Not only has Khama himself established his reputation for honesty, but he is supposed to have inoculated all his people with the same virtue. No one is supposed to steal in Khama’s country. He regulates the price of the goat you buy; and the milk vendor dare not ask more than the regulation price, nor can you get it for less. One evening, on our journey from Shoshong to Palapwe, we passed a loaded waggon by the roadside with no one to guard it save a dog; and surely, we thought, such confidence as this implies [24]a security for property rare enough in South Africa.

The aspect of Palapwe is very pleasant. Fine timber covers the hill slopes. A large grassy square, shaded by trees, and with a stream running through it, has been devoted to the outspanning of the many waggons which pass through here. There are as yet but few of those detestable corrugated-iron houses, for the Europeans have wisely elected to dwell in daub huts, like the natives. Scattered far and wide are the clusters of huts in their own enclosures, governed by their respective indunas.

High up on the hillside Khama has allotted the choicest spot of all to his spiritual and political adviser, Mr. Hepburn, the missionary. From here a lovely view extends over mountain and plain, over granite kopje and the meandering river-bed, far away into the blue distance and the Kalahari. Behind the mission house is a deep ravine, thick set with tropical vegetation, through which a stream runs, called Fotofoto, which at the head of the gorge leaps over steep rocks, and forms a lovely cascade of well-nigh a hundred feet; behind the ravine, on the rocky heights, baboons and other wild animals still linger, perturbed in mind, no doubt, at this recent occupation of their paradise.

Everything in Khama’s town is conducted with the rigour—one might almost say bigotry—of religious enthusiasm. The chief conducts in person native services, twice every Sunday, in his large round [25]kotla, at which he expects a large attendance. He stands beneath the traditional tree of justice, and the canopy of heaven, quite in a patriarchal style. He has a system of espionage by which he learns the names of those who do not keep Sunday properly, and he punishes them accordingly. He has already collected 3,000l. for a church which is to be built at Palapwe.

The two acts, however, which more than anything else display the power of the man, and perhaps his intolerance, are these. Firstly, he forbids all his subjects to make or drink beer. Any one who knows the love of a Kaffir for his porridge-like beer, and his occasional orgies, will realise what a power one man must have to stop this in a whole tribe. Even the missionaries have remonstrated with him on this point, representing the measure as too strong; but he replies, ‘Beer is the source of all quarrels and disputes. I will stop it.’ Secondly, he has put a stop altogether to the existence of witch doctors and their craft throughout all the Ba-mangwato—another instance of his force of will, when one considers that the national religion of the Sechuana is merely a belief in the existence of good and bad spirits which haunt them and act on their lives. All members of other neighbouring tribes are uncomfortable if they are not charmed by their witch doctor every two or three days.

Like the other Bechuana tribes, the Ba-mangwato have a totem which they once revered. Theirs is the [26]duyker, a sort of roebuck; and Khama’s father, old Sikkome, would not so much as step on a duyker-skin. Khama will now publicly eat a steak of that animal to encourage his men to shake off their belief. In manner the chief is essentially a gentleman, courteous and dignified. He rides a good deal, and prides himself on his stud. On one occasion he did what I doubt if every English gentleman would do. He sold a horse for a high price, which died a few days afterwards, whereupon Khama returned the purchase money, considering that the illness had been acquired previous to the purchase taking place. On his waggons he has painted in English, ‘Khama, Chief of the Ba-mangwato.’ They say he understands a great deal of our tongue, but he never trusts himself to speak it, always using an interpreter.

An instance of Khama’s system of discipline came under our notice during our stay at Palapwe. Attracted by the sound of bugles, I repaired very early one morning to the kotla, and there saw men in all sorts of quaint dresses, with arms, and spades, and picks, mustering to the number of about 200. On enquiry, I was told that it was a regiment which had misbehaved and displeased the chief in some way. The punishment he inflicted on them was this: that for a given period they were to assemble every day and go and work in the fields, opening out new land for the people. There is something Teutonic in Khama’s imperial discipline, but the Bechuana are made of different stuff to the Germans. They are by [27]nature peaceful and mild, a race with strong pastoral habits, who have lived for years in dread of Matabele raids; consequently their respect for a chief like Khama—who has actually on one occasion repulsed the foe, and who has established peace, prosperity, and justice in all his borders—is unbounded, and his word is law.

Khama pervades everything in his town. He is always on horseback, visiting the fields, the stores, and the outlying kraals. He has a word for every one; he calls every woman ‘my daughter,’ and every man ‘my son;’ he pats the little children on the head. He is a veritable father of his people, a curious and unaccountable outcrop of mental power and integrity amongst a degraded and powerless race. His early history and struggles with his father and brothers are thrilling in the extreme, and his later development extraordinary. Perhaps he may be said to be the only negro living whose biography would repay the writing.

The blending of two sets of ideas, the advance of the new and the remains of the old, are curiously conspicuous at Palapwe, and perhaps the women illustrate this better than the men. On your evening walk you may meet the leading black ladies of the place, parasol in hand, with hideous dresses of gaudy cottons, hats with flowers and feathers, and displaying as they walk the airs and graces of self-consciousness. A little further on you meet the women of the lower orders returning from the fields, with baskets [28]on their heads filled with green pumpkins, bright yellow mealy pods, and rods of sugar cane. A skin caross is thrown over their shoulders, and the rest of their mahogany-coloured bodies is nude, save for a leopard-skin loin-cloth, and armlets and necklaces of bright blue beads. Why is it that civilisation is permitted to destroy all that is picturesque? Surely we, of the nineteenth century, have much to answer for in this respect, and the missionaries who teach races, accustomed to nudity by heredity, that it is a good and proper thing to wear clothes are responsible for three evils—firstly, the appearance of lung diseases amongst them; secondly, the spread of vermin amongst them; and thirdly, the disappearance from amongst them of inherent and natural modesty.

It had been arranged that on our departure from Palapwe we should take twenty-five of Khama’s men to act as excavators at the ruins of Zimbabwe. One morning, at sunrise, when we were just rising from our waggons, and indulging in our matutinal yawns, Khama’s arrival was announced. The chief walked in front, dignified and smart, dressed in well-made boots, trousers with a correct seam down each side, an irreproachable coat, a billycock hat, and gloves. If Khama has a vice it is that of dress, and, curiously enough, this vice has developed more markedly in his son and heir, who is to all intents and purposes a black masher and nothing else. Khama is a neatly-made, active man of sixty, who might easily pass for twenty years younger; his face sparkles with intelligence; [29]he is, moreover, shrewd, and looks carefully after the interests of his people, who in days scarcely yet gone by have been wretchedly cheated by unscrupulous traders. Behind him, in a long line, walked the twenty-five men that he proposed to place at our disposal, strangely enough dressed in what might be termed the ‘transition style.’ Ostrich feathers adorned all their hats. One wore a short cutaway coat, which came down to the small of his back, and nothing else. Another considered himself sufficiently garbed with a waistcoat and a fly whisk. They formed a curious collection of humanity, and all twenty-five sat down in a row at a respectful distance, whilst we parleyed with the chief. Luckily for us our negotiations fell through owing to the difficulties of transport; and, on inspection, I must say I felt doubtful as to their capabilities. Away from the influence of their chief, and in a strange country, I feel sure they would have given us endless trouble.

We left Khama and his town with regret on our journey northwards. A few miles below Palapwe we crossed the Lotsani River, a series of semi-stagnant pools, even after the rainy season, many of which pools were gay just then with the lotus or blue water lily (Nymphæa stellata). The water percolates through the sand, which has almost silted it up, and a little further on we came across what they call a ‘sand river.’ Not a trace of water is to be seen in the sandy bed, but, on digging down a few feet, you come across it. [30]

The future colonisation and development of this part of Bechuanaland is dependent on the question of water, pure and simple. If artesian wells can be sunk, if water can be stored in reservoirs, something may be done; but, at present, even the few inhabitants of Khama’s country are continually plunged in misery from drought.

North of Palapwe we met but few inhabitants, and, after passing the camp of the Bechuanaland Border Police at Macloutsie, we entered what is known as the ‘debatable country,’ between the territories of Khama and Lobengula, and claimed by both. It is, at present, uninhabited and unproductive, flat and uninteresting, and continues as far as Fort Tuli, on the Shashi River, after crossing which we entered the country which comes under the direct influence of Lobengula, the vaguely defined territory which under the name of Mashonaland is now governed by the Chartered Company. [31]

We left Fort Tuli on May 9, 1891, and for the ensuing six months we sojourned in what is now called Mashonaland; of our doings therein and of our wanderings this volume purports to be the narrative. Besides our excavations and examinations into the ruins of a past civilisation, the treatment of which is necessarily dry and special, and, for the benefit of those who care not about such things, has been, as far as possible, confined within the limits of Part II., we had ample time for studying the race which now inhabits the country, inasmuch as we employed over fifty of them during our excavations at Zimbabwe, and during our subsequent wanderings we had them as bearers, and we were brought into intimate relationship with most of their chiefs. The Chartered Company throughout the whole of this period kept us supplied with interpreters of more or less intelligence, who greatly facilitated our intercourse with the natives, and as time went by a certain portion of the language found its way into [32]our own brains, which was an assistance to us in guiding conversations and checking romance.

All the people and tribes around Zimbabwe, down to the Sabi River and north to Fort Charter—and this is the most populous part of the whole country—call themselves by one name, though they are divided into many tribes, and that name is Makalanga. In answer to questions as to nationality they invariably call themselves Makalangas, in contradistinction to the Shangans, who inhabit the east side of the Sabi River. ‘You will find many Makalangas there,’ ‘A Makalanga is buried there,’ and so on. The race is exceedingly numerous, and certain British and Dutch pioneers have given them various names, such as Banyai and Makàlaka, which latter they imagine to be a Zulu term of reproach for a limited number of people who act as slaves and herdsmen for the Matabele down by the Shashi and Lundi Rivers. I contend that all these people call themselves Makalángas, and that their land should by right be called Makalangaland.

In this theory, formed on the spot from intercourse with the natives, I was glad to find afterwards that I am ably supported by the Portuguese writer Father dos Santos, to whom frequent allusion will be made in these pages. He says, ‘The Monomatapa and all his vassals are Mocarangas, a name which they have because they live in the land of Mocaranga, and talk the language called Mocaranga, which is the best [33]and most polished of all Kaffir languages which I have seen in this Ethiopia.’ Couto, another Portuguese writer, bears testimony to the same point, and every one knows the tendency of the Portuguese to substitute r for l. Umtali is called by the Portuguese Umtare;1 ‘blanco’ is ‘branco’ in Portuguese, and numerous similar instances could be adduced; hence with this small Portuguese variant the names are identical. Father Torrend, in his late work on this part of the country, states, ‘The Karanga certainly have been for centuries the paramount tribe of the vast empire of Monomatapa,’ and the best derivation that suggests itself is the initial Ma or Ba, ‘children,’ ka, ‘of,’ langa, ‘the sun.’ They are an Abantu race, akin to the Zulus, only a weaker branch whose day is over. Several tribes of Bakalanga came into Natal in 1720, forced down by the powerful Zulu hordes, with traditions of having once formed a part of a powerful tribe further north. Three centuries and a half ago, when the Portuguese first visited the country, they were then all-powerful in this country, and were ruled over by a chief with the dynastic name of Monomatapa, which community split up, like all Kaffir combinations do after a generation or so, into a hopeless state of disintegration.2 [34]Each petty chief still has his high-sounding dynastic name, like the Monomatapa or the Pharaoh of his day. Chibi, M’tegeza, M’toko, and countless lesser names are as hereditary as the chiefdoms themselves, and each chief, as he succeeds, drops his own identity and takes the tribal appellative. Such, briefly, is the political aspect of the country we are about to enter.

This is a strange, weird country to look upon, and after the flat monotony of Bechuanaland a perfect paradise. The granite hills are so oddly fantastic in their forms; the deep river-beds so richly luxuriant in their wealth of tropical vegetation; the great baobab trees, the elephants of the vegetable world, so antediluvian in their aspect. Here one would never be surprised to come across the roc’s egg of Sindbad or the golden valley of Rasselas; the dreams of the old Arabian story-tellers here seem to have a reality.

Our first real intercourse with the natives was at a lovely spot called Inyamanda, where we ‘outspanned’ on a small plain surrounded by domed granite kopjes, near the summit of one of which is a cluster of villages.

Here we unpacked our beads and our cloth, and commenced African trading in real earnest; what money we had we put away in our boxes, and never wanted it again during our stay in the country. The naked natives swarmed around us like flies, with grain, flour, sour milk, and honey, which commodities can be acquired for a few beads; but for a sheep [35]they wanted a blanket, for meat is scarce enough and valuable amongst this much-raided people. We lost an ox here by one of the many sicknesses fatal to cattle in this region, and the natives hovered round him like vultures till the breath was out of his body; they then fell on him and tore him limb from limb, and commenced their detestable orgy. As one watched them eat, one could imagine that it is not so many generations since they emerged from a state of cannibalism.

We found it a tough climb to the villages through the luxuriant verdure of cactus-like euphorbia, india-rubber tree, the castor-oil, and acacia with lovely red flowers. At an elevation of five hundred feet above our waggons were the mud huts of the people, and up here every night they drive their cattle into extraordinary rock stables for safety. Perched on the rocks are countless circular granaries, constructed of bright red mud and thatched with grass. One would think that a good storm of wind would blow them all away, so frail do they seem.

Rounding a corner of the hill we came across a second village, nestling amongst stupendous boulders, and ascending again a little higher we reached a third by means of a natural tunnel in the rock, fortified, despite its inaccessible position, with palisades.

The natives were somewhat shy of us, and fled to rocky eyries from whence to contemplate us, seated in rows in all sorts of uncomfortable angles, for all [36]the world like monkeys. They are utterly unaccustomed to postures of comfort, reclining at night-time on a grass mat on the hard ground, with their necks resting on a wooden pillow, curiously carved; they are accustomed to decorate their hair so fantastically with tufts ornamentally arranged and tied up with beads that they are afraid of destroying the effect, and hence these pillows.

WOODEN PILLOW

These pillows are many of them pretty objects, and decorated with curious patterns, the favourite one being the female breast, and resting on legs which had evidently been evolved out of the human form. [37]They bear a close and curious resemblance to the wooden head-rests used by the Egyptians in their tombs to support the head of the deceased, specimens of which are seen in the British Museum. They are common all over Africa, and elsewhere amongst savage tribes where special attention is paid to the decoration of the hair.

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN PILLOW IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM

A Makalanga is by nature vain, and particular about the appearance of his nudity; the ladies have fashions in beads and cloths, like our ladies at home, [38]and before visiting a fresh kraal our men used to love to polish themselves like mahogany, by chewing the monkey-nut and rubbing their skins with it, good-naturedly doing each other’s backs and inaccessible corners. Somehow they know what becomes them too, twisting tin ornaments, made from our meat tins, into their black hair. Just now they will have nothing but red beads with white eyes, which they thread into necklaces and various ornaments, and which look uncommonly well on their dark skins; and though it seems somewhat paradoxical to say so of naked savages, yet I consider no one has better taste in dress than they have until a hybrid civilisation is introduced amongst them.

WOODEN DOLLASSES OR DIVINING TABLETS

From many of the huts at Inyamanda were hanging [39]their dollasses—wooden charms, on which are drawn strange figures. Each family possesses a set of four tied together by a string. Of these four one always has a curious conventional form of a lizard carved on it; others have battle axes, diamond patterns, and so forth, invariably repeating themselves, and the purport of which I was never able to ascertain. They are common amongst all the Abantu races, and closely bound up with their occult belief in witchcraft; they are chiefly made of wood, but sometimes neat little ones of bone are found, a set of which I afterwards obtained.

BONE DOLLASSES

On the evening of the new moon they will seat themselves in a circle, and the village witch doctor will go round, tossing each man’s set of dollasses in the air, and by the way they turn up he will divine the fortune of the individual for the month that is to come.

GOURDS FOR BALING WATER

There are many odds and ends of interest scattered about a Makalanga village; there is the drum, from two to four feet in height, covered with zebra or other skin, platted baskets for straining beer, and [40]long-handled gourds, with queer diagonal patterns in black done upon them, which serve as ladles. Most of their domestic implements are made of wood—wooden pestles and wooden mortars for crushing grain, wooden spoons and wooden platters often decorated with pretty zigzag patterns. Natural objects, too, are largely used for personal ornaments. Anklets and necklaces are made out of mimosa pods; necklaces, really quite pretty to look upon, are constructed [41]out of chicken bones; birds’ claws and beaks, and the seeds of various plants, are constantly employed for the same purpose. Grass is neatly woven into chaplets, and a Makalanga is never satisfied unless he has a strange bird’s feather stuck jauntily in his woolly locks.

WOODEN MORTAR	WOODEN BOWL
	WOODEN PORRIDGE BOWL

Never shall I forget the view from the summit of Inyamanda Rock over the country ruled over by the chief Matipi; the horizon is cut by countless odd-peaked kopjes, some like spires, some like domes, grey and weird, rising out of rich vegetation, getting bluer and bluer in the far distance, and there is always something indescribably rich about the blueness of an African distance. As we descended we passed a wide-spreading tree hung with rich yellow maize pods drying in the sun. Here, too, the bright coral red flowers of the Erythrina kaffra were [42]just coming out. Richness of colour seemed to pervade everything.

It was immediately on crossing the Lundi River, the threshold of the country as it were, that we were introduced to the first of the long series of ancient ruins which formed the object of our quest. By diligent search amongst the gigantic remains at Zimbabwe we were able to repeople this country with a race highly civilised in far distant ages, a race far advanced in the art of building and decorating, a gold-seeking race who occupied it like a garrison in the midst of an enemy’s country. Surely Africa is a mysterious and awe-inspiring continent, and now in the very heart of it has been found work for the archæologist, almost the very last person who a short time ago would have thought of penetrating its vast interior. Quid novi ex Africa? will not be an obsolete phrase for many generations yet to come.

The Lundi River was the only one of the great rivers which flow through this portion of the country which gave us any real trouble. Our waggons had to be unloaded and our effects carried across in a boat, and the waggons dragged through the rushing stream by both teams of oxen; it was an exciting scene, and the place was crowded with people in the same condition as ourselves. On reaching the left bank we halted in a shady spot, and encamped for two days, in order to give our oxen rest and to study the ruin. It was a very charming spot, with fine rocky kopjes here and there, rich vegetation, and the dull [43]roar of the fine stream about fifty feet below us. From one of the kopjes we got a lovely view up the river, over the thickly wooded flats on either side and the Bufwa range of mountains beyond.

The country beyond the Lundi is thickly populated, with native villages perched on rocky heights, many of which we saw as we wended our slow way through the Naka pass. One hill is inhabited by a tribe of human beings, the next by a tribe of baboons, and I must say these aborigines of the country on the face of it seem more closely allied to one another than they are to the race of white men, who are now appropriating the territory of both. The natives, living as they do in their hill-set villages on the top of the granite kopjes, are nimble as goats, cowardly yet friendly to the white stranger. They are constantly engaged in intertribal wars, stealing each other’s women and cattle when opportunity occurs, and never dreaming of uniting against the common enemy, the Zulu, during whose periodical raids they perch themselves on the top of their inaccessible rocks, and look down complacently on the burning of their huts, the pillaging of their granaries, and the appropriation of their cattle. Under the thick jungle of trees by the roadside as we passed along we saw many acres under cultivation for the produce of sweet potatoes, beans, and the ground or monkey nut (Arachis). They make long neat furrows with their hoes beneath the trees, the shade of which is necessary for their crops. They are an essentially industrious race, far more so [44]than the Kaffirs of our South African colonies. Here the men work in the fields, leaving the women to make pots, build granaries, and carry water. In the Colony women are the chief agriculturists.

WOMAN’S GIRDLE, WITH CARTRIDGE CASES, SKIN-SCRAPERS, AND MEDICINE PHIALS ATTACHED

We spent a long and pleasant day within a few yards of another village called M’lala in Chibi’s country, also perched on a rocky eminence, where many objects of interest came before our notice.

WOODEN HAIR COMB, CHIBI’S COUNTRY

Here for the first time we saw the iron furnaces in [45]which the natives smelt the iron ore they obtain from the neighbouring mountains. This is a time-honoured industry in Mashonaland. Dos Santos alludes to it in his description, and so do Arab writers of the ninth and tenth centuries, as practised by the savages of their day.3 In Chibi’s country iron-smelting is a great industry. Here whole villages devote all their time and energies to it, tilling no land and keeping no cattle, but exchanging their iron-headed assegais, barbed arrow-heads, and field tools for grain and such domestic commodities as they may require. I am told also of villages which, after the same fashion, have a monopoly of pot-making. This industry is mostly carried on by the women, who deftly build up with clay, on round stands made for the purpose, large pots for domestic use, which they scrape smooth with large shells kept for this object, and then they give them a sort of black glaze with plumbago. In [46]exchange for one of these pots they get as much grain as it will hold.

GRANARY DECORATED WITH BREAST AND FURROW PATTERN

The native iron furnace is a curious object to look upon. It is made of clay, and is another instance of the design being taken from the human form, for it is made to represent a seated woman; the head is the chimney, decorated in some cases with eyes, nose, and mouth, resting on shoulders; the legs are stretched out and form the sides of the furnace, and to complete the picture they decorate the front with breasts and the tattoo decorations usually found on female stomachs.4 They heat the charcoal in the furnace by means of air pumped out of goat-skin bellows through clay blow-pipes fixed into the embers. It is a quaint sight to see them at work with all their commodities—pillows, knives, and assegais, fixed on to the reed walls which shut off the forge from the outer world.

WOODEN PILLOW REPRESENTING HUMAN FORM

At M’lala too we were first introduced to the women who have their stomachs decorated with many long lines, or cicatrices. Between thirty and forty of these lines ran across their stomachs, executed with [47]surprising regularity, and resembling the furrows on a ploughed field. In vain we tried to photograph and count them. On one occasion I succeeded in counting sixteen furrows, when the bashful female ran away, and I think I had done about half. This is the favourite pattern in Chibi’s country and with the neighbouring dependent tribes for female decoration, and they admire it so much that they put it also on their drums, on their granaries, and on their pillows, and, [48]as I have said, on their forges. ‘The breast and furrow’ pattern, one might technically term it, and I fancy it has to do with an occult idea of fertility.

IRON SKIN-SCRAPER

NEEDLES IN CASES

One of these oddly marked ladies was busily engaged in building a granary on a rock. She first lays a circular foundation of mud, into which she puts sticks. On to these she plasters mud until the funnel-shaped thing is about three feet high. A hole is left near the top for inserting and extracting the grain, and it is then thatched with grass; and it effectually keeps out the many rats and mice which swarm in these parts. The costume of these natives is extremely [49]limited. A man is content with two cat-skins, one in front and one behind, though the latter is not always de rigueur. The women wear leathern aprons and girdles, tied so tightly as almost to cut them in two, and made of several long strips of leather, like boot-laces fastened together. On to these they hang all the necessaries of their primitive life. At present old cartridge cases are the fashion for holding snuff, or decorated reeds, or wooden cases. Then they have a few decorated bone ornaments, evidently of a mystic character; a skin-scraper or two with which to perform their toilette, which articles are of the form and shape of the strigil known to us from classical times, and the ends of the boot-laces are elegantly finished off with brass or copper beads. The needle, too, is a feature seldom absent from the man’s neck and girdle, being a sharp-pointed bit of iron or brass with which they pierce the skins and fasten them together with threads of bark; these needles are fitted into a wooden case, which the more fanciful decorate with bands of brass wire.

At M’lala too we saw the blind witch-doctor of the village, dressed in all his savage toggery. Small gourds with seeds inside to rattle were tied to his calves. These are the fruit of the Oncoba spinosa. A buck’s horn with a chain was hung round his neck, with which he made a hideous noise. Odd chains of beads decorated his neck, made out of the pods of the Acacia litakunensis, and his arms and legs were a mass of brass bracelets and anklets; and [50]his hair resplendent with feathers completed the fantastic appearance of this poor blind man, who danced before us unceasingly, and made such hideous noises that we were obliged to give him some beads and ask him to stop.

The pass through which the road leads up from the river country to Fort Victoria is now called ‘Providential,’ by reason of the fact that the pioneer force of the Chartered Company did not know how to get over the range of hills rising to the north of the Tokwe River, until Mr. Selous chanced to hit on this gully between the mountains leading up to the higher plateau. Its scenery, to my mind, is distinctly overrated. It is green and luxuriant in tropical vegetation, with the bubbling stream Godobgwe running down it. The hills on either side are fairly fine, but it could be surpassed easily in Wales and Scotland, or even Yorkshire. In point of fact, the scenery of Mashonaland is nothing if not quaint. Providential Pass is distinctly commonplace, whereas the granite kopje scenery is the quaintest form of landscape I have ever seen.

Fort Victoria has no redeeming point of beauty about it whatsoever, being placed on a bare flat plateau, surrounded in the rainy season by swamps. Nearly everybody was down with fever when we got there; provisions were at famine prices—for example, seven shillings for a pound of bacon and the same price for a tin of jam—and the melancholy aspect of affairs was enhanced by the hundred and fifty saddles [51]placed in rows within the fort, which had once belonged to the hundred and fifty horses brought up by the pioneers, all of which had died of horse sickness.

The diseases to which quadrupeds are subject in this country are appalling. One man of our acquaintance brought up eighty-seven horses, of which eighty-six died before he got to Fort Victoria. The still mysterious disease called horse sickness is supposed to come from grazing in the early dew, but of this nobody is as yet sure; the poor animals die in a few hours of suffocation, and none but ‘salted horses,’ i.e. horses which have had the disease and recovered, are of any use up here. Our three horses were warranted salted, but this did not prevent one of them from having a recurrence of the disease, which gave us a horrible fright and caused us to expend a whole bottle of whisky on it, to which we fondly imagine it owes its life. Another horse also gave us a similar alarm. One morning its nose was terribly swollen, and the experienced professed to see signs of the sickness in its eye. Nevertheless nothing came of it, and in due course the swelling went down. On close enquiry we discovered that it had been foolishly tied for the night to a euphorbia tree, and had pricked its nose with the poisonous thorns.

As for oxen, the diseases they are subject to make one wonder that any of them ever get up country alive; besides the fatal lung sickness they suffer from what is called the ‘drunk sickness,’ a species of [52]staggers. When we reached Zimbabwe nearly all our oxen developed the mange and swollen legs, but recovered owing to the long rest. Besides these casualties they often die from eating poisonous grasses; also in some parts the unwholesome herbage, or ‘sour veldt,’ as it is known amongst the drivers, produces kidney diseases and other horrors amongst them.

All around Fort Victoria, they told us, the grass was sour, so we only remained there long enough to make our preparations for our excavations at Zimbabwe. Tools of all descriptions we had luckily brought with us from Fort Tuli, as there were none here when we arrived. In fact the dearth of everything struck us forcibly, but by this time doubtless all this will be remedied, for we were amongst the first waggons to come up after the rains, and now Fort Victoria, with the recent discovery of good gold reefs in its immediate vicinity, is bound to become an important place.

From Fort Victoria our real troubles of progression began. It is only fourteen miles from there to the great Zimbabwe ruins by the narrow Kaffir path, and active individuals have been known to go there and back in a day. It took us exactly seven days to traverse this distance with our waggons. The cutting down of trees, the skirting of swamps, the making of corduroy bridges, were amongst the hindrances which impeded our progress. For our men it was a perpetual time of toil; for us it was a week of excessive weariness. [53]

For two nights we were ‘outspanned’ by the edge of a deep ravine, at the bottom of which was a swampy stream. This had to be bridged with trees and a road made up and down the banks before our waggons could cross over it. A few hundred yards from this spot the river M’shagashi flowed, a considerable stream, which is within easy reach of Zimbabwe and eventually makes its way down to the Tokwe. On its banks we saw several crocodiles basking, and consequently resisted the temptation to bathe.

By diving into the forests and climbing hills we came across groups of natives who interested us. It was the season just then in which they frequent the forests—the ‘barking season,’ when they go forth to collect large quantities of the bark of certain trees, out of which they produce so much that is useful for their primitive lives. They weave textiles out of bark; they make bags and string out of bark; they make quivers for their arrows, beehives for their bees, and sometimes granaries, out of bark. The bark industry is second only to the iron-smelting amongst the Makalangas.

At the correct season of the year they go off in groups into the forests to collect bark, taking with them their wives and their children, carrying with them their assegais, and fine barbed arrows with which they shoot mice, a delicacy greatly beloved by them; they take with them also bags of mealies for food, and collect bags of caterpillars—brown hairy caterpillars three inches long, which at this season [54]of the year swarm on the trees. These they disembowel and eat in enormous quantities, and what they cannot eat on the expedition they dry in the sun and take home for future consumption. Their only method of making a fire is by rubbing two sticks dexterously together until a spark appears, with which they ignite some tinder carried in a little wooden box attached to their girdles. At night time they cut down branches from the trees, and make a shelter for themselves from the wind. It is curious to see a set of natives asleep, like sardines in a box, one black naked lump of humanity; if one turns or disturbs the harmony of the pie they all get up and swear at him and settle down again. One man is always told off to watch the fire to keep off wild beasts, and then when morning comes they pack their belongings, their treasures of bark, mice, and caterpillars, and start off along the narrow path in single file at a tremendous pace, silent for a while, and then bursting forth into song, looking for all the world like a procession of black caterpillars themselves.

These forests around Zimbabwe are lovely to wander in, with feathery festoons of lichen, like a fairy scene at a pantomime; outside the forests are long stretches of coarse grass, towering above our heads in many cases, and horrible to have to push through, especially after a fall of rain. They were then in seed, and looked just like our harvest fields at home, giving a golden tinge to the whole country. [55]

Fine trees perched on the summit of colossal ant-hills cast a pleasant shade around, and if by chance we were near a stream we had to be careful not to fall into game pits, deep narrow holes hidden by the long grass, which the natives dig in the ground and towards which they drive deer and antelope, so that they get their forelegs fixed in them and cannot get out.

All around Zimbabwe is far too well watered to be pleasant; long stretches of unhealthy swamps fill up the valleys; rivers and streams are plentiful, and the vegetation consequently rich. Owing to the surrounding swamps we had much fever in our camp during our two months’ stay; as we had our waggons with us we could not camp on very high ground, and suffered accordingly. This fever of the high veldt with plenty of food and plenty of quinine is by no means dangerous, only oft-recurring and very weakening. Of the fourteen cases we had under treatment none were really dangerously ill, and none seemed to suffer from bad effects afterwards when the fever had worn itself out. The real cause of so much mortality and misery amongst the pioneer force during their first wet season in the country was the want of nourishing food to give the fever patients and the want of proper medicine.

As for the natives themselves, I cannot help saying a few words in their favour, as it has been customary to abuse them and set their capabilities down as nought. During the time we were at Zimbabwe we [56]were constantly surrounded by them, and employed from fifty to sixty of them for our work, and the only thing we lost was half a bottle of whisky, which we did not set down to the natives, who as yet are happily ignorant of the potency of fire-water. Doubtless on the traversed roads and large centres, where they are brought into contact with traders and would-be civilisers of the race, these people become thieves and vagabonds; but in their primitive state the Makalangas are naturally honest, exceedingly courteous in manner, and cowardice appears to be their only vice, arising doubtless from the fact that for generations they have had to flee to their fastnesses before the raids of more powerful races. The Makalanga is above the ordinary Kaffir in intelligence. Contrary to the prognostications of our advisers, we found that some of them rapidly learnt their work, and were very careful excavators, never passing over a thing of value, which is more than can be said of all the white men in our employ. Some of them are decidedly handsome, and not at all like negroes except in skin; many of them have a distinctly Arab cast of countenance, and with their peculiar rows of tufts on the top of their heads looked en profil like the figures one sees on Egyptian tombs. There is certainly a Semite drop of blood in their veins; whence it comes will probably never be known, but it is marked both on their countenances and in their customs. In religion they are monotheists—that is to say, they believe in a supreme being called Muali, between [57]whom and them their ancestors, or mozimos, to whom they sacrifice, act as intercessors. They lay out food for their dead; they have a day of rest during the ploughing season, which they call Muali’s Day; they have dynastic names for their chiefs, like the Pharaohs of old; they sacrifice a goat to ward off pestilence and famine; circumcision is practised amongst some of them. We have also the pillows or head rests, the strigil, the iron sceptres of the chiefs, the iron industry, all with parallels from the north. Then, again, their musical instruments, their games, and their totems point distinctly to an Arabian influence, which has been handed down from generation to generation long after the Arabians have ceased to have any definite intercourse with the country. During the course of these pages numerous minor illustrations will from time to time appear which point in the same direction. It is a curious ethnological problem which it will be hard to unravel. All over the country sour milk is much drunk and called mast, as it is in the East, and in parts of this country beer is called dowra or doro, a term which has come from Abyssinia and Arabia, and the method of making it is the same. The corn is soaked in water and left till it sprouts a little; then it is spread in the sun to dry and mixed with unsprouted grain; then the women pound it in wooden mortars, and the malt obtained from this is boiled and left to stand in a pot for two days, and over night a little malt that has been kept for the purpose is thrown over the [58]liquid to excite fermentation. It will not keep at all, and is sometimes strong and intoxicating. Women are the great brewers in Mashonaland, and a good wife is valued according to her skill in this department.

This Kaffir beer is certainly an old-world drink. There are several classical allusions for what is termed ‘barley beer.’ Xenophon and the Ten Thousand one evening, on reaching an Armenian village in the mountains of Asia Minor, refreshed themselves with what he describes as ‘bowls of barley wine in which the grains are floating.’

The Egyptians too made beer after the same fashion, and used it also in sacrifices. Much that was known in the old world has travelled southwards through Nubia and Abyssinia, and is to be found still amongst the Kaffir races of to-day. Some of the words in common use amongst the Kaffirs in Mashonaland are very curious. Anything small, whether it be a child or to indicate that the price paid for anything is insufficient, they term piccanini; the word is universal, and points to intercourse with other continents. The term Morunko, or Molungo, universally applied to white men, is probably of Zulu origin, and has been connected—with what reason I know not—with Unkulunkulu, a term to denote the Supreme Being. At any rate it is distinctly a term of respect, and certainly has nothing to do with the Mashona language, in which Muali or Mali is used to denote God. [59]

Finally, at long last, after exactly three months to a day of ‘trekking’ in our ox waggons, the mighty ruins of Zimbabwe were reached on June 6, 1891, and we sat down in the wilderness to commence our operations, with the supreme delight of knowing that for two months our beds would not begin to shake and tumble us about before half our nights were over. [60]

During our stay in Mashonaland we visited and carefully examined the sites of many ruins, a minute description of which I propose to give in this chapter. As a feature in the country they are most remarkable—ancient, massive, mysterious, standing out in startling contrast to the primitive huts of the barbarians who dwell around them and the wilderness of nature. Of course it was impossible in one season, and in the present undeveloped state of the country, to visit them all; but from accounts given of others which we could not visit, and which consequently I shall only briefly allude to here, there is enough evidence to prove that they were all built by the same race, in the same style, and for the same purpose.

From Dr. Emil Holub’s work (‘Seven Years in South Africa’) we learn something about a ruin he saw on the Shashi River, which consisted of a wall protecting a hill and formed ‘of blocks of granite laid one upon another, without being fixed by cement of any kind.’ Also at Tati he saw another ruin, forming [96]a long line of protection for a hill, roughly put together on the inside, but on the outside, ‘probably with some view to symmetry and decoration, there had been inserted double rows of stones, hewn into a kind of tile, and placed obliquely one row at right angles to the other. Each enclosure had an entrance facing north.’ He concludes that the ruin was constructed to protect the gold, ‘numbers of pits fifty feet deep being found in the vicinity.’ This pattern, the construction, and the object undoubtedly connect these ruins with those which I shall presently describe.

Mr. G. Philips, an old hunter in these parts, said at the Royal Geographical Society’s meeting, November 24, 1890, of the Zimbabwe ruins, ‘They are exactly like others I have seen in the country—the same zigzag patterns and the mortarless walls of small hewn stones. When hunting in the mountains to the west of this I came on a regular line of these ruins, and one must have been a tremendously big place. There were three distinct gateways in the outer wall, which I suppose was at least thirty feet thick at the base, and one of those immense ironwood trees (hartekol), that would have taken hundreds of years to grow, had grown up through a crevice in the wall and rent it asunder.’ He also described another ruin north-west of Tati. ‘The walls are twelve to fifteen feet thick, and it is entered by a passage so arranged as to be commanded by archers from the interior, and it only admits of the passage of one at a time.’ [97]

RUIN ON THE LUNDI RIVER

[99]

Mr. E. A. Maund, in speaking of the ruins at Tati and on the Impakwe, says, ‘As I have said, these ruins are always found near gold workings; they are built in the same way of granite, hewn into small blocks somewhat bigger than a brick, and put together without mortar. In the base of both of these there is the same herring-bone course as at Zimbabwe, though nearer the base of the wall.… The remains on the Impakwe are similar in construction and are within fifty yards of the river; it was evidently an octagonal tower.’ Mr. Moffat, our political agent in Matabeleland, in speaking to me about this ruin, told me how it had been much demolished during his recollection, owing to the fact that all waggons going up to Matabeleland outspan near it, and the men assist at its demolition.

There is another ruin of a similar character near where the River Elibi flows into the Limpopo, and another further up the Mazoe Valley than the one we visited.1

I have alluded to these ruins, which I have not seen, to prove the great area over which they are spread, and I have little doubt that as the country gets opened out a great many more will be brought to light, proving the extensive population which once lived here as a garrison in a hostile country, for the sake of the gold which they extracted from the mines in the quartz reefs between the Zambesi and Limpopo Rivers. [100]

From personal experience I can speak of the ruins on the Lundi River; of those at and near Zimbabwe; of the chain of forts on the Sabi River, including Metemo, Matindela, Chilonga, and Chiburwe, and the fort in the Mazoe gold fields, all of which belong to the same period, and were built by the same race, and agree in character with those described by Messrs. Philips and Maund on the Tati, Impakwe, and elsewhere, and are quite distinct from the more modern structures in Mangwendi’s and Makoni’s countries, which we visited towards the end of our tour and which I shall describe in Chapter XI.

GENERAL VIEW OF ZIMBABWE

ACROPOLIS OUR CAMP CIRCULAR RUIN

The circular ruin erected on a low granite eminence of about five hundred yards from the Lundi River is of exceeding insignificance when compared with those of Zimbabwe and Matindela: it is only fifty-four feet in diameter, and the original wall was only five feet thick; the courses are very regular and neatly put together without mortar, and the stones, of granite, are of a uniform size, broken into blocks about twice the size of an ordinary brick. It had two entrances, one to the north and another to the south-east, the latter being carefully walled up with an inserted structure in which the courses are carried out with a carefulness similar to the walls of the rest of the building. The interesting features of this ruin are the patterns in three tiers beginning at a few feet from the northern entrance, the two lower ones consisting of a herring-bone pattern, formed by the stones being placed obliquely in contrary directions [103]in each tier, whilst the upper pattern is produced by regular gaps of two inches being left between the stones in two of the courses. Nearly facing the rising sun at the equinox is a curious bulge, about two feet deep, constructed in the wall. At this bulge the two lower rows of ornamentation terminate, but the upper one is carried on round it as far as the south-eastern entrance. There can be little doubt that these patterns, found on nearly all the Mashonaland ruins, were constructed for a purpose; they only go round a portion of the buildings; they have always the same aspect—namely, south-east—and one cannot dissociate these circular buildings and the patterns from some form of sun worship. ‘The circle is a sacred enclosure,’ says Major Conder in his ‘Heth and Moab,’ ‘without which the Arab still stands with his face to the rising sun.’ Into this question of solstitial orientation in connection with the ruins Mr. Swan will enter at length in the ensuing chapter.

The Lundi ruin had a cement floor, similar to those floors which we afterwards frequently came across in the Zimbabwe buildings; it would appear to have acted the double function of a fortress and a temple, guarding a population settled here on the river’s bank, who built their huts around it.

The ruins of the Great Zimbabwe (which name I have applied to them to distinguish them from the numerous minor Zimbabwes scattered over the country) are situated in south latitude 20° 16′ 30″, [104]and east longitude 31° 10′ 10″, on the high plateau of Mashonaland, 3,300 feet above the sea level, and form the capital of a long series of such ruins stretching up the whole length of the western side of the Sabi River. They are built on granite, and of granite, quartz reefs being found at a distance of a few miles.

PLAN OF RUINS AT MATINDELA.

Longmans Green & Co., London & New York F S Waller

• A. Winter Solstice
• B. Equinox
• C. Summer Solstice

PLAN OF CIRCULAR RUINS AT ZIMBABWE.

From A to B ornaments extend on outer wall

• D Tower 32 feet high
• E Raised Platform
• F Little Tower
• H Stairs
• I Wall here is 7 feet high above threshold and 4 feet below it
• M′ M″ Standing stones; M′ is 15 f^t, M″ 10 f^t 2 in
• P Centre of arc behind tower
• S Hole through wall 5″ square 4′ above base
• V Here are courses of green Chlorine Schist alternating with Granite.

Walls with more regular courses are colored darker

Figures on walls give height in feet above base

The prominent features of the Great Zimbabwe ruins, which cover a large area of ground, are, firstly, the large circular ruin with its round tower on the edge of a gentle slope on the plain below; secondly, the mass of ruins in the valley immediately beneath this; and thirdly, the intricate fortress on the granite hill above, acting as the acropolis of the ancient city. These we will now discuss in their order.

When we reached the Great Zimbabwe the circular ruin was on the inside a dense mass of tropical vegetation; creepers and monkey ropes hung in matted confusion to the tall trees, forming a jungle which it was almost impossible to penetrate, and added to the mazy labyrinth of walls a peculiar and almost awe-inspiring mystery.

It was the work of some days to clear this off with the aid of native workmen, whilst at the same time we proceeded with our excavations in the neighbourhood of the tower and other prominent portions of the building.

As for the walls themselves, they were nearly free from vegetation, for, owing to the absence of mortar, no lichen, moss, nor creeper could thrive on them, [105]and those few things which had penetrated into crevices were of a succulent character, which formed their branches to the shape of the interstices. To this fact is due the wonderful state of preservation in which these ruins are found.

What appeared at first sight to be a true circle eventually proved elliptical—a form of temple found at Marib, the ancient Saba and capital of the Sabæan kingdom in Arabia, and at the Castle of Nakab al Hajar, also in that country.2 Its greatest length is 280 feet; the wall at its highest point is thirty-five feet above the ground, and fifteen feet at the lowest; its greatest base thickness is sixteen feet two inches, and its thinnest point is about five feet. In the structure of the wall one very noticeable feature is that the portion to the south-east is very much better built, and is both thicker and higher: here the courses are marvellously true, as if built with a levelling line, and the stones, of granite hammered into shape, are exactly the same size, whereas on the north-west side and in some of the interior walls, which are marked in a lighter colour on the plan, the courses begin to get slightly irregular, and the stones of unequal size, suggesting almost a different period of workmanship; but then there is no point where the good definitely ends or the bad begins, except at a short gap on the northern side, where the good wall would seem to have been continued more in a northerly direction, and the [106]inferior wall to have been brought round to meet it.

MAIN ENTRANCE

There are three entrances to this circular building. The principal one, only three feet wide, faces the hill fortress and the north. It has an odd curvature in it, constructed evidently true north, whereas all the other entrances are straight. Below this entrance runs a very substantial substructure wall, and the little space immediately inside it was covered with a thick cement, made out of powdered granite, out of which steps had been formed leading down to the various passages which converge here from the centre of the building. The presence of this concrete in use for [109]flooring and steps in buildings constructed without mortar is interesting, showing that dry building was used not from necessity but from choice.

LARGE CIRCULAR RUIN. ZIMBABWE

The entrance to the north-west had been walled up, and we had to climb over a heap of stones to gain admittance until it was opened out. It is narrow and straight, and protected by two buttresses on the inside. The wall here is very inferior to what it is at the main entrance. There was also another entrance between these two, presumably merely a sally-port in the wall, the lintel of which had consisted of wooden beams, which had been burnt, and on their giving way the wall above had also fallen down.

PATTERN ON LARGE CIRCULAR RUIN AT ZIMBABWE

Of the outer wall of the circular building the most interesting portion is decidedly that to the south-east. A few courses below the summit on the outside, from point A to point B on the plan, runs the pattern, formed by two courses having the stones placed chevron-wise, neatly fitted in with smaller [110]stones receding a little, so as to make the pattern at a distance appear as if it stood out in relief, whereas it is really flush with the wall. This pattern coincides with the sacred enclosure inside, terminating at point B exactly where the enclosure terminates, and at the other end at point A about half-way down the narrow passage, forming thus an arc of one and a half right angle. Its connection with the sanctity of the place is obvious, and into its relation to the orientation of the temple Mr. Swan will enter fully in the ensuing chapter. Along this portion of the wall, and on this only, large monoliths were inserted, most of which have fallen away; but those still standing show that they were equidistant. Here too the top of the wall has been neatly paved with slabs of granite, and must have formed a broad promenade, presumably approached by steps from a point near the main entrance. Here one can still walk with ease, whereas on the inferior portion of the wall it is now scarcely possible to scramble.

The labyrinthine character of the interior will be best grasped by a glance at the plan. Entering from the northern portal, we at once plunge into its intricacies. The great and astounding feature is the long narrow passage leading direct from the main entrance to the sacred enclosure, so narrow in parts that two people cannot walk abreast, whilst on either side of you rise the stupendous walls, thirty feet in height, and built with such evenness of courses and symmetry that as a specimen of the dry builder’s [111]art it is without a parallel. The large blocks of cut stone used in Egyptian, Greek, and Roman masonry must have been comparatively easy to deal with as compared with these small stones of rough granite built in even courses in a circular wall of immense thickness and height. The idea at once suggests itself that the people who erected these walls had at one time been accustomed to build in bricks, and that in the absence of this material they had perfected a system of stone-building to represent as nearly as possible the appearance of brick; also another reason for the use of small stones may have been to enable them to construct the tower and curves with greater accuracy. The facings of the stones are all uniform, but most of them run back into the wall irregularly, acting in the same way as throughs in our dry-built walls at home in preserving the building from falling. In this narrow passage, at point S, is the remarkable hole, executed with perfect neatness through the thickest part of the wall, about the actual use of which I am able to give no definite theory. It could not have been used for drainage or defence; and in the fortress above there are two similar tunnels equally inexplicable.

The actual approaches to the sacred enclosure are most carefully defended with buttresses on either side, into which a form of portcullis has been fixed, with two grooves, one running down each side, presumably originally intended to receive a wooden door; but at a later period all these entrances have been [112]carefully walled up, for what purpose it is difficult to say. It naturally occurred to us that this had been done at a time of danger for protection, but the neatness with which the blocking-up walls are executed is against this theory.

At point V on the plan there is a remarkable instance of the two periods of building. Here, in front of the sacred enclosure, the wall was decorated with courses of black slate in the older and better wall, whereas they are omitted in the inferior continuation.

At point E there is a raised platform immediately in front of the large round tower, covered with a flooring of thick cement, supported by large stones loosely packed together, into which a monolith had been stuck. This platform was connected with the sacred enclosure by a flight of cement steps, and was presumably used for religious purposes.

LARGE ROUND TOWER IN CIRCULAR RUIN. ZIMBABWE

In dealing with the two remarkable round towers which stood in the sacred enclosure, one cannot lay too much stress on the symmetry of the courses and the accuracy with which they have been built. They stand in the centre of the sacred enclosure, which was floored with cement. By digging to their foundations we were able to get very accurate measurements of them, and found that the circumference of the smaller one corresponds exactly to the diameter of the big one, and the diameter of the big one is apparently equal to half its original height, and its circumference again is equal to the diameter of the round building on the Lundi River. The battering of [115]the big tower is carried out with mathematical accuracy, the slope of the curve being perfectly regular, and is produced by placing the superincumbent stones in a slightly receding position, so that with the aid of a monkey rope we were able to climb to the top. A few courses below the summit, which would seem to be very much in its original condition except on the south side, where Herr Mauch confesses to have pulled down the stones of several courses, runs a dentelle pattern, marked D on the plan, formed by placing the stones of one course edgeways. This pattern is the same as the lower one given in the illustration of Matindela ruins, p. 137; but unfortunately, owing to the demolition of the upper courses, it is impossible to define its extent. The tower would seem to have been thirty-five feet in height, and the summit to have been a level of about four feet in diameter. By digging below this tower, and pulling out stones from the sides, which we carefully replaced, we demonstrated to our satisfaction that it was solid. It was built on nothing but the soil of the place, and was erected over nothing; the foundations go down for one foot below the floor of cement which covered the enclosure, and it has been preserved to us simply by its solidity, its long through stones, and the way in which the stones have supported one another. We investigated the smaller tower very thoroughly, and found it also solid.

The religious purport of these towers would seem to be conclusively proved by the numerous finds we [116]made in other parts of the ruins of a phallic nature (vide Chap. VI.), and I think a quotation from Montfaucon’s ‘L’Antiquité Expliquée’ will give us the keynote of the worship. ‘The ancients assure us that all the Arabians worshipped a tower, which they called El Acara or Alquetila, which was built by their patriarch, Ishmael.’ ‘Maximus of Tyre says they honoured as a great god a great cut stone; this is apparently the same stone resembling Venus, according to Euthymius Zygabenus. When the Saracens were converted to Christianity they were obliged to anathematise this stone, which formerly they worshipped.’ This tower doubtless corresponded to the sacred tower of the Midianites, called Penuel, or the ‘Face of God,’ which Gideon destroyed (Judges viii. 7). Allusions to these towers are constant in the Bible, and the Arabian historian El Masoudi further tells us that this stone or tower was eight cubits high, and was placed in an angle of the temple, which had no roof. Turning to Phœnician temple construction, we have a good parallel to the ruins of the Great Zimbabwe at Byblos; as depicted on the coins, the tower or sacred cone is set up within the temple precincts and shut off in an enclosure (vide illustration, p. 150). Similar work is also found in the round temples of the Cabiri, at Hadjar Kem in Malta, and the construction of these buildings bears a remarkable resemblance to that of those at Zimbabwe, and the round towers, or nuraghs, found in Sardinia may possibly be of similar significance. MM. Perrot [117]and Chipiez, in their ‘History of Art in Sardinia,’ speak of these nuraghs as forts or temples, around which the primitive inhabitants of the island once lived. They are ‘truncated cones, built with stone blocks of different sizes, narrowing to the top. The stones are unhewn as a rule and laid on without mortar.’ Here too we have a parallel for our monoliths, menhirs of unhewn stone, and also for the phalli, specimens of which are found carved on stone (p. 57, figs. 49 and 50), and here too the intricate plan of the fortresses suggests at once a parallel to those at Zimbabwe; hence it would appear that the same influence was at work in Sardinia as in South Africa. In Lucian’s ‘De Syriâ Deâ,’ which we shall have occasion again to quote when discussing our finds in Chapter VI., we find a description of a temple at Hierapolis, in Mesopotamia, in the propylæa of which, he tells us (§ 16), ‘there stood two very large phalli, about thirty cubits high.’ Our tower at Zimbabwe stood apparently twenty cubits high and ten in diameter. He further says (§ 29), ‘These phalli are solid, for when a priest had to ascend he had to put a rope round himself and the phallus and walk up.’

Herr Mauch, in his account of Zimbabwe, alludes to a sacrifice which took place here amongst the natives in his day (1871). This ceremony seems to correspond very closely to the sacrifice celebrated elsewhere in this country to the spirits of their ancestors. It is pretty evident that another tribe of Kaffirs dwelt near Zimbabwe at that time, who [118]looked upon the circular building as sacred; whereas the present people do not seem to look upon it with any religious superstition, which will account for the growth of vegetable matter inside only during late years. This was further evidenced by our excavations in this building; we found but little depth of soil, very little débris, and indications of a Kaffir occupation of the place up to a very recent date, and no remains like those we afterwards discovered in the fortress.

The rest of the circular building, as the plan shows, is divided off into various smaller enclosures, and in one spot we imagine, by comparison with the temples on the hill, an altar stood; it is now only a heap of rubbish. There are also three remarkable monoliths erected in it, two near the north-western entrance and one behind the altar. They are about 11 feet in height—rough, unhewn blocks of granite, firmly buried in the ground. On the hill fortress, and also, as I have said, on the wall of the circular building, the quantity of monoliths is very marked, and stone-worship seems to have formed an integral feature in the ancient cult of this place. MM. Perrot and Chipiez write (vol. i. p. 58), ‘We find the worship of betylæ (βαιτύλια, bethels, i.e. sacred stones) in every country reached by Phœnician influence’ (vide Chap. VI). Probably we shall be more correct in considering it an even more remote Semitic influence, which continued in vogue amongst the Phœnicians until more recent times. Palgrave in his [119]Arabian travels also speaks of the many monoliths he saw in Lower Nejed: ‘Huge stones, like enormous boulders, placed endways perpendicularly on the soil. They were arranged in a curve, once forming part, it would appear, of a large circle.… That the object of these strange constructions was in some measure religious seems to me hardly doubtful … in fact, there is little difference between the stone wonder of Kaseem and that of Wiltshire’ (Stonehenge).

The valley between the lower circular ruin and the fortress on the hill is a mass of ruins. About a hundred yards from it, and connected by a wall, is a curious angular enclosure, divided into several chambers at different levels; it has three entrances, all of which are straight, like those at the Lundi and Matindela, and not rounded off like those in the circular ruin. The main entrance leads into two narrow passages: the one going to the left is protected by an ambuscade; the other, going to the right, ascends a slope, at the top of which evidently once stood two round towers, the bases of which we excavated, and near them we found several long pillars, presumably fallen monoliths. But here again the Kaffirs had been living until a recent date, and consequently we made no discoveries here. Outside this ruin we opened three kitchen middens, and came across one or two small articles of interest.

Sloping down from this ruin into the valley below a narrow passage conducts one through a perfect [120]labyrinth of ruins. Some of these, notably the large circular erection just outside the big temple, are of very inferior workmanship, and would appear to have been constructed at a much later period; whereas the wall surrounding a large space at the bottom of the valley is as good as the best part of the large circular building. We did not attempt any excavation amongst these, and if we had I expect the results would have been unsatisfactory. All the surface of them has been dug over and over again by generations of Kaffirs for their mealy fields. There is a great growth of brushwood, and probably a considerable depth of soil, which our limited appliances and inexperienced workmen would have found it hard to deal with.

Again and again these circular ruins repeat themselves, always, if possible, occupying a slightly raised ground for about a mile along a low ridge, acting, doubtless, the double purpose of temples and fortresses for separate communities, the inhabitants dwelling in beehive huts of mud around. This, to my mind, is the probable restoration of this ancient African settlement.

Down the valley to the north-west runs a long wall of irregular stones, roughly put together, for a mile or more—such a wall as Kaffirs would erect to-day to protect themselves from the advance of an enemy. This I do not connect with the more ancient and regularly built edifices, but it probably owes its erection to a period when Zulu hordes [121]swept down on the more peaceful and effeminate descendants of the Monomatapa.

Longmans Green & Co., London & New York

PLAN OF RUINS ON ZIMBABWE HILL

PLAN OF RUINS NEAR RIVER LUNDE

PLAN OF LITTLE ZIMBABWE RUINS

Many were the miles we walked in every direction, around and on the hill fortress, to the east, west, north, and south, intent on one object—namely, that of finding indications of a cemetery, which the ancient inhabitants of these ruins might have used—but our searches were always in vain. Kaffir remains we found in abundance, and a small cemetery of some twenty graves of rough stone piled over the bodies, about ten miles from Zimbabwe, also Kaffir, but nothing else. Consequently we came to the conclusion that the ancient inhabitants, who formed but a garrison in this country, were in the habit of removing their dead to some safer place. This plan seems to have a parallel in Arabia in antiquity, a notable instance of which is to be found on the Bahrein Islands, in the Persian Gulf, where acres and acres of mounds contain thousands of tombs, and no vestige of a town is to be found anywhere near them. The custom still prevails amongst the Mohammedans of Persia, who transport their dead to such places as Kerbela, Meshed, and Kum, to rest in the vicinity of some sacred shrine; and the absence of any burial place near Zimbabwe would seem to point to the same custom having prevailed here.

Having failed to bring to light any definite records of the past during the first fortnight of our work, we naturally cast our eyes around for the most likely spot to carry on our work, and our [122]choice fell on the south-western portion of the hill fortress. Here were certain indications which struck us as favourable, and furthermore it occurred to us that a spot situated on the shady side of the hill behind the great rock might possibly be free from Kaffir desecration; and the results of our excavations on this spot proved this to be the case, for here, and here only, did we come across relics of the past in our digging. In fact, the ancient builders seemed to have originally chosen the most shady spots for their buildings. Undoubtedly the oldest portions of the Zimbabwe ruins are those running along the sunless side of the hill fortress; on the other side, where now the Kaffir village is, we found hardly any trace of ancient structures. Our difficulty was to get the shivering Kaffirs to work there, for whenever our backs were turned they would hurry off to bask in the rays of their beloved sun.

I will now proceed to describe the hill fortress, approaching it from the valley below. The labyrinthine nature of this fortress will best be realised by a glance at the accompanying plan. The kopje itself is of great natural strength, being protected on one side by gigantic granite boulders, and on the south by a precipice from seventy to ninety feet in height, and on the only accessible side the ancient inhabitants constructed a wall of massive thickness, like those of the ruins below. This wall is thirteen feet thick on the summit, with a batter of one foot in six; it is thirty feet high in parts, and the flat [123]causeway on the top was decorated on the outside edge by a succession of small round towers alternating with tall monoliths; seven round towers in all we made out, about three feet in diameter, and several others had been destroyed by the fall of a portion of the wall. This system of round towers and monoliths produces one of the most peculiar and unique forms of decoration I have ever seen.

ROUND TOWER AND MONOLITH DECORATION ON THE FORTRESS

To open out the approach to this fortress town was a work of considerable time and labour; it will easily be seen by the plan how intricate it is, protected at every turn with traverses and ambuscades, [124]and there commences at the bottom of the precipice a flight of steps leading up the steep ascent. The architects availed themselves of a narrow slit in the granite boulder, up which the steps led, the passage being exceedingly narrow; then the path divided into two, one path turning abruptly to the right, and at the turning a pretty little bit of wall with the stones placed pointways for about a yard relieved the monotony and formed a sort of dentelle pattern; then it led along a narrow ledge over the precipice, and in spite of the impossibility of attack at such a point it was nevertheless protected by traverses even here. In fact, the redundancy of fortification all over this mountain, the useless repetition of walls over a precipice itself inaccessible, the care with which every hole in the boulders through which an arrow could pass is closed, prove that the occupants were in constant dread of attack, and lived like a garrison in the heart of an enemy’s country.

APPROACH TO THE ACROPOLIS

At the summit of the mountain are huge boulders about fifty feet high. Immediately below the highest is a curious little plateau which had been decorated by the ancient occupiers; it is approached by narrow passages and steps on either side, and a curious passage through the wall below, covered with huge beams of granite to support the superincumbent weight. The steps on one side were made of the same strong cement, and the wall to the left was decorated with the same design of stones, placed edgeways for six rows, that we had [127]found at the angle of the approach. The little plateau itself was adorned with huge monoliths and decorated pillars of soapstone, the patterns on which were chiefly of a geometric character, and one of which was eleven and a half feet in height. Here too we unearthed many stones of natural but curious forms, to which I shall have again occasion to refer in Chapter VI.

THE PLATFORM WITH MONOLITHS, ETC., ON THE FORTRESS

The large semicircular space below this platform was a dense jungle when we started to work upon it, consisting of nettles of extraordinary pricking powers and other obnoxious plants, which our [128]natives cleared away with marvellous dexterity. In the centre of this building stood an altar covered with a thick coating of cement, and several large blocks of cement were lying about. In a wall in this enclosure was another of those curious holes pierced through its thickness, and there was plenty of evidence to show that this had once been a most prominent point in the ancient structure, forming, as it does, by far the largest available level space on the fortress, and must probably have been used as an agora, where from the platform an assembled crowd could have been addressed, and for religious celebrations on a large scale. The view from it is extensive and magnificent over the Livouri and Bessa ranges, and situated, as it is, far above the level of the marshy ground below, it would be healthy and habitable during all seasons of the year.

The labyrinthine nature of the buildings now before us baffles description. In one place is a narrow sloping gully, four feet across, ascending between two boulders, and protected, for no conceivable reason, by six alternate buttresses and a wall at the upper end, forming a zigzag passage narrowed in one place to ten inches. Walls of huge size shut off separate chambers. In all directions everything is tortuous; every inch of ground is protected with buttresses and traverses. Here too, as in the large circular building below, all the entrances are rounded off, and I imagine that here we have quite the oldest portion of the ruins, built at a time when defence was the main [129]object. When they were able to do so with safety, they next constructed the circular temple below, and as time went on they erected the more carelessly put together buildings around, which I have described.

The south-western end of this line of ruins was obviously a temple; it has been lately used as a cattle pen by the chief, but the soil has not been disturbed. On removing the soil we came across a level cement floor, supported on an elaborate system of under-walls filled up with large stones on which the cement floor rested, as was the case in the raised platform in the circular temple below. In the centre stood the altar, an angular structure of small granite blocks, which fell to pieces a short time after exposure to the air; when we removed the soil which had buried this altar, around it we found the phalli, the birds or soapstone pillars, and fragments of soapstone bowls, which I shall subsequently describe more in detail.

On a portion of the wall outside, as in the circular building below, ran a pattern—a dentelle pattern formed by placing the stones edgeways, with exactly the same aspect as the pattern below. To the north of the temple a steep ascent, constructed on supporting walls, led through the granite boulders to a hollow space walled in on one side, and protected by the rocks on the other three; a rounded buttress guarded the entrance, and in the centre stood two tall monoliths of slate firmly fixed into the cement floor and the stones beneath; from this spot a slope led up to [130]the top of the rock, on which a terrace had been constructed overlooking the temple and facing the rising sun. Another gully between two boulders, only wide enough for one man to pass at a time, led out of the temple to the side where the modern Kaffir village is. This had also been anciently strongly protected.

The temple was approached from the lower ridge above the precipice by a narrow passage between two high walls gently ascending to a flight of steps. This passage ended in a most curious architectural feature—namely, steps were formed leading to the temple on the one side, and apparently only for ornamentation on the other, by continuing the rounded courses of the outer wall so that they produced the effect of two miniature theatres facing one another, and proving almost more than any other point amongst the ruins the high pitch to which the ancient builders had brought their knowledge of keeping even courses in dry building. This point in the architecture proves the especial attention paid by the constructors to curves, and these curves would seem to have been constructed on the same principle as the curves in the large circular building which Mr. Swan will discuss in Chapter V.

Adjoining the temple to the north is another semicircular building, the inner wall of which has six vertical rows, six feet high, let into the construction, as if for beams, with a ledge on the top, as if for a roof. We were unable to form any opinion as to the [131]use of this chamber, and though we emptied it of soil we found nothing in it.

Between two boulders to the north-west of the temple led a narrow passage, tortuously winding, with walls on either side wedged up against the boulders, and every conceivable hole in the rocks was walled up. This passage led to another open space protected on two sides by rocks and on two by walls. This space was also full of wall foundations; but, being open to the sun, it had been occupied and ransacked by the Kaffirs.

To the south of the temple a flight of steps led down to the gold-smelting furnaces and the caves, of which I shall speak more at length in connection with the finds. This corner of the building was the only one in which our excavations were successful, and I entirely attribute this fact to its chilly and shady position—a spot studiously avoided by the succeeding generations of Kaffir tribes for this reason. Below the temple at the bottom of the precipice we commenced work, with great hope of finding the other portions of the bowls, &c., which we had found above. Here there is an enormous mass of fallen stones from the buildings above, but amongst them we found surprisingly little of interest. Perhaps a thorough excavation of this slope would yield further results, as so many of our finds in the temple above are fragmentary, and the presumption is that the other portions were thrown over the precipice; but [132]this will be a gigantic work, entailing an enormous amount of labour and expenditure.

Such is the great fortress of Zimbabwe, the most mysterious and complex structure that it has ever been my fate to look upon. Vainly one tries to realise what it must have been like in the days before ruin fell upon it, with its tortuous and well-guarded approaches, its walls bristling with monoliths and round towers, its temple decorated with tall, weird-looking birds, its huge decorated bowls, and in the innermost recesses its busy gold-producing furnace. What was this life like? Why did the inhabitants so carefully guard themselves against attack? A thousand questions occur to one which one longs in vain to answer. The only parallel sensation that I have had was when viewing the long avenues of menhirs near Carnac, in Brittany, a sensation at once fascinating and vexatious, for one feels the utter hopelessness of knowing all one would wish on the subject. When taken alone this fortress is sufficiently a marvel; but when taken together with the large circular building below, the numerous ruins scattered around, the other ruins of a like nature at a distance, one cannot fail to recognise the vastness and power of this ancient race, their great constructive ingenuity and strategic skill.

APPROACH TO THE FORTRESS BY THE CLEFT. ZIMBABWE

About eight miles from Zimbabwe, standing alone in a fertile valley, there is another ruin which we visited, presumably of a later and inferior date, for the courses and stones are irregular and correspond to the later constructions at Zimbabwe. It too stands [135]on a flat granite rock, and its structure is equally intricate, as will be seen from the plan. The natives know it by the name of the Little Zimbabwe, but for purposes of investigation into the origin of the constructing race it affords us no special point of value, which is the case also with most of the other ruins which we visited, and nothing need be said about them except to point out their existence. These remarks refer to the ruins which we found at Metemo, Chilondillo, Chiburwe, and in the Mazoe valley, all of which were obviously erected as forts to protect a surrounding population. Some of them are of the best period of workmanship, notably those at Chiburwe and in the Mazoe valley; others are of inferior workmanship, with uneven courses and irregularly shaped blocks of granite, proving that, as we find the two periods side by side at the Great Zimbabwe, also we have them scattered over the country.

The great ruin at Matindela is second only in importance to the Great Zimbabwe itself, and merits a close description.

The circular building at Matindela encloses an area not far short of that enclosed by the large circular building at the Great Zimbabwe; it crowns a low sloping granite kopje about 150 feet in height. The place is full of huge baobab trees, two of which in their growth have pushed down and grown up in the walls themselves. There are those that tell us about the fabulous age of the baobab, attributing an age of 5,000 years to the larger ones. The Director of [136]Kew Gardens, Mr. Thiselton Dyer, tells me that this is grossly exaggerated, and that a few centuries is probably all that can be attributed to the very largest. Be this as it may, the baobabs have grown up and arrived at maturity long after the building of the Matindela ruins and their subsequent abandonment.

BAOBAB TREE IN MATINDELA RUINS

The best built portion of the wall has the same aspect as that at the Great Zimbabwe; but the other side, corresponding to the worst built part of the Zimbabwe wall, has never been completed at Matindela; the fact that the south-eastern side has been so strongly built and so much trouble has been spent on its decoration, and that the north side is comparatively [137]open and neglected, and that the hill is equally assailable from both sides, leads one naturally to infer that the idea of a temple is here more prominent than that of a fortress.

WALLED-UP ENTRANCE AND PATTERN ON MATINDELA RUINS

The walls at Matindela are nowhere more than fifteen feet in height, nor are the courses nearly as regular as those at the Great Zimbabwe; but the great feature of interest is here the arrangement of the patterns, which establish beyond a doubt that they were inserted in the walls for a more complex purpose than mere ornamentation. The arrangement of these patterns is as follows: First to the south-east comes the herring-bone pattern, running over the chief entrance as a lintel for six yards. Here it ends, and two feet below begins the dentelle pattern for the same distance; then the pattern stops altogether on the outside, but there are indications that it was continued on the inside instead. Then it is again inserted for forty feet on the outside, and finally is again [138]put on the inside for the remainder of its extent—namely, thirteen feet. Above the pattern and nearly over the principal entrance a curious loophole is still left standing, and the best portion of the wall has been battlemented, the outside portion being raised in front two or three feet higher than the back. The wall is eleven feet six inches at its thickest, and on the top of it we saw holes in which monoliths evidently once stood, as they did on the wall of the circular building at the Great Zimbabwe.

Another very marked feature at Matindela is that the doorways are all square, like those at the Lundi ruin, and not rounded off, as those at Zimbabwe, and then again all these doorways have been walled up in an uniform fashion, the courses corresponding exactly to those of the rest of the wall. In the original construction of the building certain spaces of seven feet had been left in the wall; two feet on either side had then been built up, thus leaving an entrance of three feet, which entrance in its turn had also been walled up. Here, as at the Great Zimbabwe, the theory at once occurred to me that these places had been walled up at a time of siege; but when one takes into consideration the care with which these apertures have been walled up, and the triple nature of the added wall, this theory seems untenable. The walling up of the pylons in certain Egyptian temples at Karnak, which Prof. Norman Lockyer brought before my notice, seems an apt parallel, though the reasons for so doing do not seem to my mind at present sufficiently [139]proved. It must also be borne in mind that the walling up of the principal entrance at Matindela must have taken place prior to the construction of the pattern which rests upon it.

The interior of this building, as will be seen from the plan, was divided up into chambers, as the other ruins at Zimbabwe, but the walls here are much straighter, and the circular system of construction seems to have been more or less abandoned. I take it that this ruin at Matindela was constructed by the same race at a period of decadence, when the old methods of building had fallen into desuetude.

Outside the walls of the temple or fortress we found many circular foundations, very regularly built of granite blocks, and varying in diameter from six to fifteen feet. They were built in groups at considerable intervals apart, and we counted over forty of them. Some of these circular foundations have a double circle, as if for a step; the probability is that they formed the foundations of stone huts like those found in the Marico district of the Transvaal, and were the homes of the ancient inhabitants under the protecting wing of the temple-fortress. There are no traces of these circular foundations within the walls of the enclosure, but all were found outside within a radius of two hundred yards. There are traces, too, of other buildings about half-way down the slope of the granite hills, two walls parallel to one another, about thirty feet long, with doorways and six circular foundations outside them. There are also two depressions [140]on the eastern side of the hill, now filled up with timber, which were probably the quarries from which the builders obtained the stone for their work.

About twelve miles to the north of Matindela, near a mountain called Chiburwe, on another low granite hill, we found another fort with similar circular foundations on the plain around it. This fort is about forty feet in diameter, and the walls are of the best period, with courses far more even than those of Matindela, and the stones of more uniform size and fitting more closely, corresponding to the best of the buildings at the Great Zimbabwe. Here, too, was another gigantic baobab tree, which had grown up in the wall and knocked it down; and here, too, the south-eastern portion of the wall is much better and thicker than the rest, which has in places either never existed or fallen down; but the destruction here was so complete that it was impossible to tell if there ever had been a pattern on it or not. [141]

The form of nature worship which was practised at Zimbabwe found one of its expressions in the worship of the sun, and we have evidence of this cult in some architectural features and decorations of the temples themselves, and in the many images of the solar disc which were found in the temples along with the other symbols of the worship of reproductive power. It was very natural that these two cults should be associated together or merged in one, and it was common to many early peoples to think of the sun in conjunction with moisture as the great creator of all vegetable fertility, for even the most casual observation would show them that in the dark days of winter the vegetable world seemed to sleep, and that it only awoke to activity when the sun’s rays had become more powerful and while the soil was still moistened by rain.

All religions have their times and seasons for special ceremonies of worship, and the appropriate time for the greatest of these festivals of solar worship [142]would be at mid-summer, when the sun seemed most brilliant and his rays most energetic. Accordingly we find that at Zimbabwe means had been provided for ascertaining the time of the summer solstice, and that the side of the temple which faced the rising sun at this period of the year was adorned with a decoration symbolical of fertility.

But the temples at Zimbabwe seem also to have served a more directly practical purpose than that of mere worship of the powers of nature, and while regulating the festivals held in honour of natural powers, to have provided the means of observing the passage of the seasons and of fixing the limits of a tropical year, and thus providing the elements of a calendar.

The duration of a day is clearly marked by an apparent revolution of the sun, and from the most remote antiquity a month has been equivalent to the length of a lunation; but there is no equally obvious astronomical phenomenon to enable the length of the year to be fixed; and although the difference between summer and winter is very apparent in most climates, there is nothing which very obviously defines the limits of these seasons, and the periods of spring and autumn are even less marked. But the dates of all festivals in solar worship would have some relation to the seasons; and, besides, the times for agricultural and many other operations would require to be fixed, and it would thus be doubly necessary to find means of marking the progress of the year. By most ancient peoples twelve lunations were considered to be equal [145]to a tropical year, but it was soon discovered that this was not so, for the several months did not long coincide with their appropriate seasons, and so the history of most ancient calendars tells of devices to make the twelve lunar months of 29½ days each correspond with the tropical year of 365¼ days. At Zimbabwe things seem to have been better arranged, unless there, too, as in ancient Egypt, they had their troublesome civil year measured by twelve revolutions of the moon, in addition to their sacred year measured in the temples by an apparent revolution of the sun among the stars.

MAP OF ZIMBABWE DISTRICT.

F. S. Weller

The simplest way of ascertaining the period of a tropical year is by observing the position of the sun relatively to the equator, or its declination, and this can conveniently be done either when the sun is on the horizon or on the meridian, but most easily with accuracy in the former way, as the angle to be subdivided will generally be greater, and greater accuracy will be attained, because long shadows can more conveniently be used in this way than in the other. Or the right ascension of the sun might also be observed; that is, its place among the stars, or its position in the zodiac. This can be found most readily by observing the heliacal rising of stars, or the meridian passage of stars when the sun is near the horizon. At Zimbabwe all of these methods seem to have been used, and to do so does not necessarily imply more astronomical knowledge than is possessed by the peasantry in any of the more secluded districts of [146]Europe, where watches are not much used, and where almanacks are not read, but where the people have the habit of telling the time of the day and of the year by the motions of the sun and of the stars; for to an agricultural people the change in position of the sun in summer and winter is as obvious as the seasons themselves, and the variation of the times of rising of the stars with the seasons can as little escape observation. Herodotus tells us that the Greeks used the gnomon to measure the length of shadows, and thus ascertain the position of the sun at midday, or its declination. The Chinese also used it at a very early period, and we have similar arrangements in some of our modern churches. Instances of the observation of the position of the sun on the horizon, except at Zimbabwe, are few and doubtful, although gnomons seem sometimes to have been used for this purpose; but ancient literature contains very many references to the observation of the heliacal risings of stars, and ancient architectural remains illustrate these literary allusions. Hesiod often speaks of the times of different agricultural operations having been fixed by the rising of stars, and Egyptian records tell us that the rising of Sirius was observed at the overflowing of the Nile; also it has recently been found that both Egyptian and Greek temples were generally built so that the rising of some star could be observed from their sanctuaries, and a coincidence has been traced between the date of the great festival proper to each [147]temple and the time of the heliacal rising of the star towards which the axis of the temple was originally directed. The Malays, at the beginning of this present century, had a tradition that their seed-time had in old days been very well fixed by the rising of the Pleiades, but that since they had become Mohammedans the festivals of their religion and its calendar did not so well regulate their seed-time as was done in old times. It has been found that means were provided by the ancient Egyptians for observing the meridian transits of stars; and did we possess detailed and carefully oriented plans of the temples of Chaldæa and Assyria, there is little doubt that we should find that the meridian had been observed there also.

Thus it is evident that the several means which were adopted at Zimbabwe for observing the motions of the heavenly bodies were used in other countries also, and in all cases they seem to have been used for regulating the time of celebration of religious festivals as well as the ordinary affairs of life. Forms of nature worship analogous to that practised at Zimbabwe seem often to have been accompanied in other countries by an observation of the heavenly bodies. It is also worthy of note that the stars which were observed at Zimbabwe seem all to have been northern ones, and the builders of these temples probably acquired the habit of observing these stars in the northern hemisphere. To this we shall refer again. [148]

What El Masoudi says of the temples of the Sabæans of Mesopotamia does not, of course, directly apply to the temples at Zimbabwe; but in the plans of those temples one is reminded of the multiform temples which he describes, and of the mysteries involved in some of their architectural features which he could not fathom, for in these temples of Mashonaland there are some curious evidences of design in plan. A glance at the plan of the great temple suggests that the architects had carelessly drawn a great ellipse on the ground and built round it, getting occasionally out of line and leaving occasional doorways; but when one realises the wonderfully careful nature of the masonry, and the great accuracy with which the comparatively rough stones have been laid in regular courses, and been forced to combine to produce regular forms, and when a careful plan of the whole building has been made, then it is seen that what were regarded as careless irregularities in construction are, in reality, carefully constructed architectural features, which doubtless had some religious significance to the worshippers, but whose meaning remains a mystery to us.

THE TWO TOWERS

A B shows present top of tower, C D shows outline of walls as seen in illustration, Chap. VI.

The walls which are lightly shaded in the accompanying plans are much inferior in construction to the more darkly shaded walls, for while the latter are built in most regular courses, and the stones are most carefully packed in the whole thickness of the walls, the former, though sometimes having the exterior courses laid with some regularity, are most [149]carelessly built in their interior, and the stones seem to have been laid in anyhow, and consequently there is a great difference in the durability of these walls; and while it would almost be possible to drive a cart along the top of the better-built part of the outer wall, one can only creep along the top of the worse-built portion while risking a fall. Besides, the better-built and the worse-built portions of the outer wall do not unite near the great doorway, and the foundation [150]of the well-built walls turns outward, as is shown in the plan. The worse-built walls of all the temples do not show any of the peculiarities of design so characteristic of the better walls, except in two instances, where they seem to be rough reconstructions of older walls. We may, therefore, assume that these poorer walls are not of the original period, and that they were built by a people who either did not practise solar worship or who did not do so under the original forms. We will, therefore, disregard the poor walls in studying the plans of the temples. It is much to be regretted that we could recover no plan of the western side of the original outer wall, as [151]it might have made clear to us the meaning of many of the features of the eastern wall.

COIN OF BYBLOS SHOWING THE ROUND TOWER

The most important feature in the interior of the temple is, of course, the great tower, which is a marvel of workmanship in rough material, and in the truth of its lines almost as wonderful as the column of a Greek temple. We could at first discover no reason for its being built in its peculiar position. It has not been placed with any reference to the points of the compass nor to the bearing of the sun at the equinoxes, and its position is only indirectly connected with the position of the sun at the solstices. But it is in the middle of the space marked off by the two inner doorways, and the more easterly of these two doorways is at the point where the sun would appear when rising at the summer solstice when regarded from the central altar, as will be shown farther on; and the other doorway is at the point where the decoration on the outer wall terminates, and that is at the part of the wall where the sun’s rays would be tangential to its curve when rising at the same solstice. The portion of the outer wall behind the above-mentioned sacred enclosure is built in the form of a circular arc with its two extremities at B and K, and its centre at P, and the tower stands midway between these points. Close to the great tower is the little one, and no reason for its position suggests itself; but the relative proportions of the two towers are curious, and seem to offer an explanation of the plan of some other parts of [152]the building—in fact, the diameter of the great tower seems to have represented the unit of measure in the construction of the curves of the outer walls and of all the regularly curved inner walls in the great temple, and in all the well-built temples in Mashonaland. The diameter of the great tower at its base is 17·17 feet or 10 cubits,1 and this is exactly equal to the circumference of the little tower. This ratio of circumference to diameter and the above measure of 10 cubits seem together to have determined either the length of the radius or diameter, or halves of these, of all the circular curves on which many of the walls are built. For instance, the radius of the curve behind the great tower is 169⅓ feet, and this is equal to the diameter of the great tower multiplied by the square of the ratio of circumference to diameter; or 17·17 × 3·14² = 169·34. The well-built partly circular enclosure to the north-west of the tower has a diameter of 54 feet, and this is equal to 17·17 × 3·14. The curve of the outer wall, from the eastern end of the sacred enclosure (at K) to A is circular, and has its centre at the altar, and its radius is 107⅘ feet. This is equal to twice 17·17 × 3·14. This length of 107⅘ feet is also the exact distance between the middle points of the two doorways [155]at either end of the sacred enclosure. The curve of the outer wall from A to the great doorway seems to have a similar radius to the arc behind the tower, namely, 169⅓ feet, but in our measurements there we hardly fixed a sufficient number of points in the line of the wall to make quite certain of this. The inner long wall is parallel to the outer one until it reaches the sacred enclosure, so it may be considered as combined with the outer wall for our present purpose. Besides these there are no well-built curved walls in the great temple, except the piece of wall near the monoliths at M, and it is too short to allow of the centre of its curve being laid down with certainty of accuracy. It does not, however, seem to belie this system of measurement.

THE TRIPLE WALLS AT ZIMBABWE

We need hardly expect to find the same measure always applying to the buildings on the hill, for the form of these buildings is often controlled by the nature of the ground. Still they do apply, and the diameter of the curve on which the wall of the eastern temple is built is 84½ feet, which is equal to half of 17·17 × 3·14². Of the two curved walls on the left hand when entering this temple from the south the diameter of the curve of one is equal to 17·17 × 3·14, and the radius of the other is 17·17 feet. The only other regularly curved wall on the hill is the western great wall with monoliths and round towers, and the diameter of the circle of which the curve of this wall forms a part is 254 feet, and this does not agree with our system of measure. [156]But this wall and its towers are not well built, and there is good reason to suppose that it is not the original wall, or that the outer portion of it is not original; and, in fact, we discovered the foundation of part of another parallel wall, as is partly shown in plan, six feet west of this wall. If this were the original wall, it would give a diameter of 266 feet for the circle, which is half of 17·17 × 3·14³.

At Matindela the only regularly curved piece of wall is that about the principal doorway, but it is so rough in its construction that one hesitates to deal with it, and we can only say that it seems to be built on a curve of 107⅘ feet radius = twice 17·17 × 3·14. The whole appearance of this wall and the slight inaccuracies in the orientation of the decorations which it carries, suggest that it is a more recent wall built roughly as a copy of an original wall on the same foundation.

The ruin at the Lundi River is circular in form and well built, and its diameter is fifty-four feet, which is equal to 17·17 × 3·14.

Of course all the above measurements refer to the outside of the walls at the base, as this is the way in which the tower itself was measured.

The same principle of measurement applies to the curves which determine the shape of the two towers themselves, and this explains why it is that the little tower tapers much more rapidly towards the top than does the great one. If we describe a circular curve with its centre on the same level as the base [157]of the great tower and its radius equal to twice 17·17 x 3·14 on 107⅘ feet, we find that it exactly fits the outline of the great tower as it is shown in our photographs. Also, a curve described in a similar way but with a radius equal to twice the diameter of the little tower multiplied by 3·14 (5·45 × 3·14 × 2 = 34·34 feet) will correspond to the outline of that tower.

The towers when built were doubtless made complete in their mathematical form and were carried up to a point as we see in a coin of Byblos, where we have a similar tower represented with curved outlines. Their heights as determined by these curves would be 42·3 and 13·5 feet respectively, and these numbers also bear the same relation to each other that the circumference of a circle does to its diameter.

We have no explanation to give of the position of the little tower relatively to the great one, but there probably was some meaning in it which might appear had we a plan of the original walls around the towers. It is very doubtful that these walls, which now mark off the sacred enclosure, are of the same period as the towers. They are shaded darkly in our plan because they are fairly well built; but although they are better built than most of the secondary walls, yet they are not equal in point of execution to the great outer wall and the towers, and their lines, too, are not so regular as those of the original walls generally are. It seems probable that they are rough copies of some old walls which had fallen, and are wanting in some [158]of the essential features of their originals. We can only say that the centre of one tower is distant 17·17 feet from the centre of the other, within a limit of error of two inches.

The angular height of both the towers measured from the centres of the curves which determine their forms is the same—namely 23° 1′.

None of the angular values of the arcs seem to have been of any special significance, except perhaps the angle at the altar in the great temple, which is subtended by the arc AK. The value of this angle is about 57°, and is equal to our modern unit of the circular measure of an angle, which is the angle at the centre of any circle that is subtended by an arc equal to the radius. It is hardly likely that it can have had this meaning to the builders of the temple, and the probable cause of the coincidence is that at A they meant to halve the angular distance between K and the doorway. Besides, the sun’s rays, when it rises at the summer solstice, do not fall directly on the part of the wall beyond A, and this probably had some connection with their reason for changing the radius of the arc at this point.

There is no evidence that any of the trigonometrical functions were known to the builders of Zimbabwe; not even the chord, which was probably the earliest recognised function of an angle, for the chords of the various arcs bear no simple relation to each other. The only interesting mathematical fact which seems to have been embodied in the architecture [159]of the temples is the ratio of diameter to circumference, and it may have had an occult significance in the peculiar form of nature worship which was practised there. We do not suppose that it was intended to symbolise anything of an astronomical nature, and it is extremely improbable that the builders of Zimbabwe had any notion of mathematical astronomy, for their astronomy was purely empirical, and amounted merely to an observation of the more obvious motions of the heavenly bodies. When the minds of men were first interested in geometry it would at once occur to them that there must be some constant ratio between the circumference of a circle and its diameter, and they would easily discover what this ratio was, and they may have considered this discovery so important and significant that they desired to express it in their architecture. Analogous instances of an embodiment of simple mathematical principles in architectural forms will occur to every one.

The centres of the arcs seem generally to have been important points, and altars were sometimes erected at them from which the culminations or meridian transits of stars could be observed, and on which sacrifices were probably offered to the sun when it was rising or setting at either of the solstices.

Around the outside of the wall of the great temple, between the points marked A and B on plan, there extend two bands of a kind of chevron pattern, formed, as will be seen from the illustrations, by placing stones on their edges. This pattern seems to have been [160]symbolical of fertility, and it extends along the part of the wall which receives directly the rays of the sun when rising at the summer solstice. It reminds one of the Egyptian hieroglyphic symbol for water, and of how naturally the idea of water would be associated with fertility in the mind of a solar worshipper. It also resembles the symbol for the zodiacal sign of Aquarius, and we might suppose that the temple was built when the sun was in this sign of the zodiac at the summer solstice, did such a supposition not carry us back to too remote a period. Besides, the sun is generally believed to have been in Capricornus at the December solstice at the period at which the zodiac was invented, and when its signs received their names.

One hundred and seven and four-fifths feet from A and the same distance from K and from B is the centre of the arc AK, and at this point is some ruined masonry which seems once to have formed an altar. Zimbabwe is in South latitude 20° 16′ 30″, and consequently the sun, when rising there at the summer solstice, would bear East 25° South were the horizon level. But Mount Varoma interposes itself between the temple and the rising sun at this time, so that the sun attains an altitude of 5° before its rays reach the temple. Then its amplitude will be more nearly 24°, and a line produced in this direction from the altar will pass across the doorway of the sacred enclosure, where the curve of the wall changes its radius, and, roughly speaking, through the middle [161]of the chevron pattern. The same line drawn in an opposite direction for seventy-three feet would fall on a tall monolith which we there found lying by its well-built foundation. Where the pattern ends at A and B the rays of the sun are nearly tangential to the wall, so that all parts of the wall, and those parts only, which receive the direct rays of the sun when rising at the summer solstice are decorated by this symbolical pattern.

The sun’s rays would not fall on the altar at this time, and it seems strange to have an altar devoted to solar worship under the shadow of a wall; but the same objection would apply to every part of the interior of the temple, and we can hardly suppose that the priests at Zimbabwe performed their ceremonies of worship outside of the temple, as some tribes of Arabs do with some stone circles at the present day, neither is there any sign of such ceremonies having been performed on the top of the broad wall. The monolith, seventy-three feet from the altar, was sufficiently tall to receive the rays of the sun when it rose over Mount Varoma, and the shadow of a monolith erected on the wall at K would fall on it at the same time, thus marking with great accuracy the occurrence of the solstice. Monoliths had been erected at intervals along the decorated part, and only on this part, of the wall, and these may have served to indicate other periods of the year in a similar way.

Near the top of the great tower, which at present [162]stands thirty-two feet high, there is a dentelle pattern, which may be described as a chevron pattern laid on its side, and which resembles a common Egyptian pattern. This extends partly round the tower, but it is impossible to determine its aspect with accuracy as so much of it has fallen away. It seems, however, to have faced the setting sun at the winter solstice.

At the temple at the east end of the fortress on the hill similar means are provided for observing the summer solstice. Only a small part of the decorated wall remains, the middle part, which was of great height, having fallen, so that we do not know how far the decoration may have extended towards the south. On the other side it terminates at the doorway, which is placed close to the high cliff which forms the northern side of the temple. We discovered the altar, with several phalli and many little terracotta images of the solar disc lying near it, and some among the stones of the altar. This altar is not at the centre of the arc, but is placed ten feet nearer the rising sun at the solstice, and its position seems to be due to the position of the break in the cliff, which is true north of the altar, so that the meridian can be observed through this passage from the altar in its actual position, and it could not have been observed from the altar were it placed at the centre of the arc. It was impossible to describe the arc with the altar as its centre owing to the position of some rocks which would have interfered with the building of the wall. At the summer solstice the sun [163]rises here on a level horizon and bears East 25° South, and a line drawn from the altar in this direction passes through the pattern, and continued for ten feet in the opposite direction it would fall on the centre of the arc.

The great curved wall at the western end of the fortress, which is surmounted by little round towers and erect monoliths, faces the setting sun at the winter solstice. If we suppose the altar was placed here, we have on an eminence marked A, fifty feet true north of the altar, a tall monolith which would enable the meridian transits of northern stars to be observed from the altar, and a line drawn from this altar towards the setting sun at the winter solstice would seem to have passed through the middle of the line of towers and monoliths. This great wall is not so well built as the walls at the eastern temple, and it seems probable that it is a restoration of an old wall which was originally parallel to this, and whose foundations we discovered as already mentioned. Possibly on the original wall the round towers and monoliths were aligned between the altar and the setting sun at certain definite periods of the year. At present they do not seem to mark any important periods, but the position of the setting sun at the summer solstice is well marked by a round tower on the wall overhanging the high cliff, and this is undoubtedly a wall of the best period.

At this western end of the fortress we have two instances of parts of walls which faced the setting [164]sun at the winter solstice being decorated by a dentelle pattern.

The disposition of the ornamental patterns on the little round ruin at the Lundi River is interesting. It faces the rising sun at the winter solstice, but the place had been inhabited by Kaffirs, and all vestige of an altar, if it ever existed, had been destroyed. The nature of the patterns here is different from that of those at Zimbabwe. The one near the top of the wall is composed of two rows of little squares alternating with blank spaces, and a little way below this are two rows of a herring-bone pattern. There is a curious rounded protuberance on the outside of the wall, and the herring-bone pattern stops at this point, but the other extends right round to the south-eastern doorway.

This temple is similar in many ways to the partly circular one north-west of the great tower at Zimbabwe. They have both the same diameter and they each have two doorways which are in somewhat similar positions, although the temple at the Lundi is oriented towards the rising sun at the winter solstice, and the other, if it ever had a pattern, would have had it facing the setting sun at this solstice.

The dentelle pattern on the great tower seems to have been oriented towards the setting sun at the winter solstice, and the centre of the partly circular temple at G is roughly in a line between the centre of the tower and the sun at this time. When the sun is rising at the summer solstice G will be behind the [165]tower and in the middle of its shadow, in a position analogous to that of the altar behind the arc AK. The direction of the wall at the north-eastern extremity of the arc of which G is the centre is towards the rising sun at the winter solstice, and its inner side points past the centre of the arc AK2 towards the point of the outer wall which is in a straight line between the altar and the sun when it rises at this solstice. The wall at the other extremity of the arc points to the rising sun at the other solstice.

It is perhaps worthy of remark that the centre of the great tower is distant the length of its own height (42·3 feet) from the solstitial line MK, while the centre of the little tower would be the same distance from a parallel solstitial line drawn from the south-eastern extremity of the arc of which G is the centre; and also that the centres of the great tower and the centres of the arcs AK and KB lie in one straight line.

At Matindela the general aspect of the decorated part of the building is towards the setting sun, but the masonry is so rough in its construction that we need expect little accuracy in orientation. The whole appearance of the place suggests that what exists at present is merely a rough rebuilding of an older structure. What remains of the internal arrangements of the building is very fragmentary, and we could find no trace of an altar. Over the doorway there is a herring-bone pattern facing the setting sun at the summer solstice, and adjoining this on its north [166]side there is a band of ornament of the dentelle kind with a similar aspect. Above this dentelle pattern there is a loophole in the wall which may have served to pass a ray of light from the setting sun to an altar at some festival. Farther along the wall there is another pattern facing the setting sun at the winter solstice, and on the inside of the wall yet another looking towards the rising sun at the summer solstice. The construction of the doorways at Matindela is remarkable. They have been originally made of considerable width, and then been narrowed very much by square masses of masonry which were built at both sides. The direction of the doorways also seems to have some meaning, for three of them look East 25° North, and four East 25° South, thus corresponding to the direction of the sun rising and setting at the solstices.

At the Mazoe Valley, and to the north-east of Matindela, near Mount Chiburwe, there are well-built ruins of the best period of this style of architecture, but, unfortunately, too little of them remains to allow us to understand their plans. They are both very small, and are not circular, like the Lundi River ruin, but their walls seem to have been built on a series of curves like the wall of the great temple. A very extraordinary thing regarding all the older ruins in Mashonaland is the way in which the stones which once composed the walls have disappeared. They have not been covered up by soil, and there is no trace of them in the surrounding country, and yet in [167]these two ruins not one-twentieth part of the stones remain, and all that do remain are in their original places in the walls.

When the western wall was rebuilt at the great temple at Zimbabwe there was apparently a want of stones, and the rebuilders were too lazy to procure more, so they probably shortened the wall by decreasing the size of the temple, and also economised stones by making the new wall much less thick.

The place marked A near the western end of Zimbabwe Hill is remarkable. It is a natural eminence, the height of which has been increased by building. To the south of it is a great mass of masonry which is pierced by several roofed passages, and over which a winding stairway leads from the eastern buildings to the eminence, while a similar staircase leads from the eminence towards the buildings lying northward. To the eastward of the eminence tower great granite boulders, the termination at this end of that line of boulders which caps the hill along its whole length, and which protects the fortress on the north side. At the highest point of the eminence is erected the great monolith before referred to, which seems to have marked the meridian for the altar at R. Close to this monolith stood another made of soapstone. We found its base in its place, and its other fragments, shown in the illustration, were all discovered near. This monolith was decorated with bands of the chevron pattern running halfway round, with images of the [168]sun and other geometrical patterns placed between the bands. It seems probable that it served as a gnomon, and that means had been provided for measuring the length of its shadow at midday. The foundation of the monolith is twenty-five feet higher than the site of the altar, and the monolith itself was ten feet long, so that we have a total height for its summit of thirty-five feet above the base of the altar, and it stood fifty feet true north of the altar. At Zimbabwe the altitude of the upper limb of the sun at midday, at the winter solstice, is about 46½°, so that the top of the monolith would then throw its shadow in the direction of the altar, and to within about seventeen feet of its centre. Probably some arrangement had been made near the altar for observing the length of its shadow; and were the shadow received on an inclined plane or staircase, as seems to have been done with the dial of Ahaz, mentioned in the Old Testament, it might be lengthened to any extent and its variations in length increased in magnitude; and so the change in declination of the sun could be observed with considerable accuracy. The sun is little more than three degrees south of Zimbabwe at midsummer, and it would be difficult to measure with accuracy the short shadows then cast, and we do not find anything to show that they had been observed, and the means provided in the two other temples for observing the position of the sun on the horizon would be much more effectual for fixing this solstice.

The positions of the doorways relatively to the [169]altars or the centres of the arcs is of interest; and we find that every important doorway in walls of the original period, with the exception of the south-eastern doorway in the temple at the Lundi, and the south-western one in the partly circular interior temple at Zimbabwe, is placed true north of the centre of an arc or of an altar, and the centre of every arc has had a doorway or some other means of marking out the meridian placed north of it. True north of the centre of the tower itself we have a doorway in the wall of the sacred enclosure, and although the wall in which this doorway is made was probably not built at the original period, yet there probably was a doorway in a similar position in the wall which it has replaced. The part of the great outer wall north of the tower seems also to have been marked, for about this point we found a great step constructed on its top about five feet high.

Above the temple at the east end of the fortress on the hill, a cliff rises perpendicularly for fifty feet, and poised on its top there stands a most remarkable great rock which may once have been an object of veneration to the worshippers in the temple beneath it. It forms one of the highest points on the hill. A line drawn true south from this rock and produced 680 yards would pass through the doorway in the great temple and fall on the altar in the centre of the decorated arc. Until this line suggested itself we were puzzled to account for the peculiar character of the doorway. It passes through a wall sixteen [170]feet thick, and is itself only three feet wide, and it does not pass through the wall at right angles, but cuts it somewhat obliquely, so that its axis is roughly parallel to the meridian line.

A line drawn true north from the centre of the arc at G will pass through the doorway of the small temple and the centre of the arc KB at P. This line points through the outer wall where the gap occurs, and it is probable that the opening which was made in the outer wall to allow of observation along this line, determined its fall at this point. This meridian line is thirty-six feet distant from the other from the centre of the arc AK, and it must have pointed to the same great stone. But if both these lines point to the middle of this stone, which is 680 yards distant, they will incline towards each other about one degree, and the time of the transit of a star over the stone observed by one line will differ four minutes from that observed by the other. This inaccuracy would be so obvious to the observers that we cannot suppose they would have worked in this way. The great stone measures nearly, if not quite, thirty-two feet across, and were the lines directed, not both to its centre, but one to either side, they would be parallel to each other and would both give the same time for a transit of a star. This would imply that stars were observed, not passing over the stone, but disappearing and reappearing behind it, and a star observed at the altar to disappear would at the same instant reappear to an observer at G and [173]P; or if the rock were less than thirty-two feet wide the star would reappear at G and P before it disappeared at the altar. We have thus a sort of double observation of the same meridian transit.

WITHIN THE DOUBLE WALLS. ZIMBABWE

If we admit that these meridian lines were used for the observation of stars in this way, and if we can determine what star or stars were observed, the time that has elapsed since they were observed admits of calculation. The apparent altitude of the middle of the stone as seen from the centres of the arcs is 7½°, and the latitude of Zimbabwe is 20° 16′ 30″, so that we want stars having a north polar distance of about 28°. Owing to the changing direction of the pole of the earth, which produces the phenomenon of the precession of the equinoxes, the declinations and right ascensions of all the stars are undergoing a slow but regular change; but there are no stars of the first magnitude which have had approximately this polar distance since any probable date of the foundation of Zimbabwe. Of stars of the second magnitude there are four, and of the third magnitude many more, which may have been used, and they would all serve for widely different periods. In order to enable us to select the proper star from this number we must have its right ascension, and this we may yet hope to get when we have the date of some important yearly festival at Zimbabwe, and the hour at which the star would be wanted on the meridian on the night of this festival.

There are two other places where the meridian [174]transits of stars have been watched at Zimbabwe, and in these cases it is still the same portion of the heavens which has been observed. The altar in the eastern temple in the fortress has been placed ten feet E.S.E. of the centre of the arc, in order to permit of the meridian being observed through the gap in the rock which formed the northern doorway. Here the line laid off is much shorter than that between the rock and the great temple, but still fairly accurate observations could be made. To the north of the centre of the arc of the great wall of the western temple there is, as we have already shown, a great monolith erected, and at one side of this the stars might be observed at their culminations. As seen from the altar this monolith would mark out an angular distance of 9° of the meridian.

It is remarkable that only stars of the northern hemisphere seem to have been observed at Zimbabwe, for in the great temple itself the culminations of southern stars could quite as easily have been observed as those of northern ones, and in the fortress all view of the northern sky is almost completely shut off by the cliffs and huge boulders which form its northern line of defence; yet every point from which northern stars could have been observed has been used for this purpose, and there is no temple there from which northern stars were not observed, while at the same time the openly displayed southern sky has been left unregarded. This, of course, points to a northern origin for the people, and suggests that before they [175]came to Zimbabwe they had acquired the habit of observing certain stars—a habit so strong that it led them to disregard the use of the southern constellations, though they must have known that they would equally well have served to regulate their calendar; it even seems to indicate that they attached ideas of veneration to certain stars, and rendered them worship. It seems a plausible supposition that while the great temple itself was devoted to solar and analogous forms of worship, the little circular, or partly circular, temples within its walls, of which we found one fairly well preserved and fragmentary remains of several others, were dedicated to the cult of particular stars.

There is no sign in the temples of any observation of anything external to the temples themselves, unless of the heavenly bodies; and no features of the surrounding country, such as prominent mountain-peaks or great isolated rocks, of which there are many striking instances near the temples, have had any regard at all paid to them. The outer walls, with the exception of the decoration towards the solstices, are featureless and blank, and the doorways, where one might expect ornament, are extremely narrow and entirely plain. When one is within the great temple one realises how fitting a place it is in which to observe the starry sky, for the high walls around exclude all view of the landscape, and the only objects which attract one’s attention are the heavenly bodies above one; and at night-time one feels how easily the [176]thoughts of a star-worshipper could be concentrated on their proper object.

It is incredible that such a style of architecture as we have described, and such a civilisation as it signifies, could have originated and developed in South Africa, for such a development would have required a very long time, and would have implied at least a long and peaceful settlement in the country; and although the builders of Zimbabwe may have long possessed the place, yet it is apparent that they never considered the country was their own. This is clear from the nature of their defences and the strength of their fortifications. Had they lived long enough in the land to alter or develop any of their arts independently of their mother country, they would have left a deeper mark on their surroundings than they have; besides, living as they must have lived, they could not have increased in civilisation, nor developed any of its arts, and we may assume that they had their architecture as well as their religion in common with their mother country. The balance of probabilities seems to be in favour of that country being South Arabia; and when it and Abyssinia, with which it was so long associated, are better known, we may find temples which are built of similar small stones and with similar mathematical and other peculiarities in their construction. Our information of these countries is meagre, but some of those buildings which are known in Yemen, which seem to combine temple and fortress in one, as on Zimbabwe Hill, [177]may have been built by the same race that constructed Zimbabwe; and the elliptic temples at Marib and Sirwah, and the one at Nakab al Hajar, with its north and south doorways seeming to indicate an observation of the meridian, may embody some of the mathematical principles illustrated by the ruins of Mashonaland.

When the original builders of Zimbabwe have been traced to their home, it will remain to discover who were their successors in Mashonaland that rebuilt the western wall of the great temple and some portions of other buildings, for this certainly was not done by any of the present negro races.

There is nothing to show that even these walls do not belong to a now far distant time; for although they would not long remain in this country, yet at Zimbabwe they might endure for an indefinite period, for there, in a clear atmosphere free from dust, and a tropical climate with its yearly torrential rains, no soil can accumulate among the stones to support vegetation which would destroy the walls. The few small plants which grow even on the oldest walls are of species which do not require much mineral matter for their growth, and whose roots are so soft that they mould themselves to the shape of the interstices in the walls, but do not press asunder the stones. Besides, the present inhabitants of the country do not use stone in any of their constructions, and never trouble themselves to remove stones from any existing walls, so that more stones have probably been disturbed [178]during the two years of British occupation of the country than the Kaffirs would disturb in as many centuries; and under the old conditions the walls might endure for an indefinite time.3 [179]

SOAPSTONE BIRD ON PEDESTAL

In this chapter I propose to discuss all the objects discovered during our excavations in the ruins as apart from the buildings themselves, and to analyse the light that they throw on the original constructors and their cult. All these objects were found, with a few minor exceptions, in the eastern temple on the fortress. As I have said, traces of a recent Kaffir habitation will account for the absence of objects in the lower buildings, but the upper ruin, sheltered from the sun and hidden by trees and lofty boulders, was a spot repugnant to the warmth-loving Kaffir, and to this fact we owe the preservation of so many objects of interest belonging to the ancient inhabitants. The most remarkable feature in connection with the finds is that everything of a decorative nature is made of a steatitic schist or soapstone. This stone is found in the country, and is still employed by natives farther south in making pipes for smoking dokha or hemp; it lends itself easily to the tool of the artist, and is very durable. [180]

SOAPSTONE BIRDS ON PEDESTALS. ZIMBABWE

FRONT AND BACK OF A BROKEN SOAPSTONE BIRD ON PEDESTAL

First, let us take the birds perched on tall soapstone columns, which, from the position in which we found most of them, would appear to have decorated the outer wall of the semicircular temple on the hill. These birds are all conventional in design. The tallest stood 5 feet 4 inches in height, the smallest about half a foot lower. We have six large ones and two small ones in all, and probably, from the number of soapstone pedestals with the tops broken off which we found in the temple, there were several more. Though they are all different in execution, they would appear to have been intended to represent the same bird; from the only one in which the beak1 is preserved to us intact, we undoubtedly recognise that they must have been intended to represent hawks or vultures. The thick neck and legs, the long talons and the nature of the plumage point more distinctly to the vulture; the decorations on some of them, namely, the dentelle pattern at the edge of the wings, the necklace with a brooch in front and continued [183]down the back, the raised rosette-shaped eyes, and the pattern down the back, point to a high degree of conventionality, evolved out of some sacred symbolism of which these birds were the embodiment, the nature of which symbolism it is now our object to arrive at. Two of the birds, similar in character, with straight legs and fan-shaped tails different from the others, are represented as perched on zones or cesti; two others have only indications of the cestus beneath their feet; a fifth, with nothing beneath its feet, has two circles carved under it and two on the wings2; a sixth is perched on a chevron pattern [184]similar to that which decorates the large circular temple; hence there is a sort of similarity of symbolism connecting them all.

BIRD ON PEDESTAL

We have now to look around for comparisons by which we may hope to identify the origin of our birds, and I have little doubt in stating that they are closely akin to the Assyrian Astarte or Venus, and represent the female element in creation. Similar [185]birds were sacred to Astarte amongst the Phœnicians and are often represented as perched on her shrines.

BIRD ON PEDESTAL FROM THE ZODIAC OF DENDERAH

Of the maternal aspect in which the ancient Egyptians held the vulture we have ample evidence. Horapollo tells us (I. 11) that the vulture was emblematic of ‘Urania, a year, a mother,’ whilst Ælian goes so far as to suppose that all vultures were females, to account for their character as emblems of maternity. The cesti and the circles point obviously to this, and these birds in connection with phallic worship are interesting as emblems, signifying incubation. Let us now consult Lucian, who in his work ‘De Syriâ Deâ’ describes a temple at Hierapolis, near the Euphrates, which, as we have seen, has much in common with these temples at Zimbabwe. In § 33, p. 479, he mentions a curious pediment, of no distinctive shape, called by the Assyrians ‘the symbol,’ on the top of which is perched a bird. Amongst some of Dr. Schliemann’s discoveries at Mycene, there are also images surmounted by birds which differ from the ξόανον in the ‘De Syriâ Deâ’ solely in the fact that they are not shapeless, but represent a nude female figure. The goddess of this shrine was evidently Astarte, and wore a cestus, ‘with which none but Urania is adorned.’3 [186]On a Phœnician coin found in Cyprus we have the dove on the betyle or pedestal as the central object.4 In Egyptian archæology we also come across the bird on the pedestal, more particularly in the curious zodiac of Denderah, where a bird perched on a pillar, and with the crown of Upper Egypt on its head, is, as Mr. Norman Lockyer tells me, used to indicate the commencement of the year; also from the Soudan we have a bird on a pedestal carved on some rude stone fragments now in the Ashmolean Museum. It is just possible that the birds at Zimbabwe had some solstitial meaning, but as their exact position on the temple walls is lost, it is impossible to speak on this point with anything like certainty. Also in the difficult question of early Arabian cult, which was closely bound up with that of Egypt, Assyria, and Phœnicia, we find the vulture as the totem of a Southern Arabian tribe at the time of the Himyaritic supremacy, and it was worshipped there as the god Nasr, and is mysteriously alluded to in Himyaritic inscriptions as ‘the vulture of the East and the vulture of the West,’ which also would seem to point to a solstitial use of the emblem.5

MINIATURE BIRDS ON PEDESTALS

The religious symbolism of these birds is further attested by our finding two tiny representations of the larger emblems; they, too, represented birds on pillars, the longest of which is only three and a half inches, and it is perched on the pillar more as the [187]bird is represented in the zodiac of Denderah. Evidently these things were used as amulets or votive offerings in the temple. Lucian alludes to the phalli used as amulets by the Greeks with a human figure on the end, and he connects them with the tower thirty cubits in height.

PHŒNICIAN COLUMN IN THE LOUVRE

ORNATE PHALLUS, ZIMBABWE

In the centre of the temple on the hill stood an altar, into the stones of which were inserted and also [188]scattered around a large number of soapstone objects representing the phallus either realistically or conventionally, but always with anatomical accuracy which unmistakably conveys their meaning, and proves in addition that circumcision was practised by this primitive race; ‘its origin both amongst the Egyptians and Ethiopians,’ says Herodotus, ii. 37, 104, ‘may be traced to the most remote antiquity.’ We have seen in the previous description of the tower the parallel to Lucian’s description of the phalli in the temple at Hierapolis. Here, in the upper temple, we found no less than thirty-eight miniature representations of the larger emblem; one is a highly ornate object, with apparently a representation of a winged sun on its side, or perchance the winged Egyptian vulture, suggesting a distinct Semitic influence. There is a small marble column in the Louvre, twenty-six inches in height, of Phœnician origin, with a winged symbol on the shaft like the one [189]before us; it is crowned by an ornament made of four petalled flowers. This winged globe is met with in many Phœnician objects, and MM. Perrot and Chipiez, in their work on Phœnicia, thus speak of it as ‘a sort of trade-mark by which we can recognise as Phœnician all such objects as bear it, whether they come from Etruria or Sardinia, from Africa or Syria.’ And of the stele in the Louvre the same authors say, ‘We may say that it is signed.’ A carefully executed rosette with seven petals forms the summit of our object found in the temple. Now the rosette is also another distinctly Phœnician symbol used by them to indicate the sun. We have the rosette on Phœnician sepulchral stelæ in the British Museum in conjunction with the half-moon to indicate the heavenly luminaries, and here at Zimbabwe we have this object surmounted by a rosette, rosettes carved on the decorated pillars, and the eyes of the birds, as before mentioned, are made in the form of rosettes. The fact of finding these objects all in close juxtaposition around the altar and in the vicinity of the birds on pillars is sufficient proof of the nature of the objects and their religious symbolism. Thus we have in both cases the larger emblems and their miniature representatives, the tower and the smaller phalli, the large birds and the tiny amulets, proving to us that the ancient inhabitants of the ruins worshipped a combination of the two deities, which together represented the creative powers of mankind.

LONG DECORATED SOAPSTONE BEAM IN TWO PIECES

A curious confirmation of this is found in the [190]pages of Herodotus, who tells us6: ‘The Arabians of all the gods only worshipped Dionysus, whom they called Ourotalt, and Urania;’ that is to say, they worshipped the two deities which, in the mind of the father of history, represented in themselves all that was known of the mysteries of creation, pointing to the very earliest period of Arabian cult, prior to the more refined religious development of the Sabæo-Himyaritic dynasty, when Sun-worship, veneration for the great luminary which regenerated all animal and vegetable life, superseded the grosser forms of nature-worship, to be itself somewhat superseded or rather incorporated in a worship of all the heavenly luminaries, [191]which developed as a knowledge of astronomy was acquired.

DECORATED SOAPSTONE BEAM

DECORATED SOAPSTONE BEAMS

COLLECTION OF STRANGE STONES

We have already discussed the round towers and the numerous monoliths which decorated the walls and other parts of the Zimbabwe ruins; excavation yielded further examples of the veneration for stones amongst the early inhabitants. One of these was a tall decorated soapstone pillar 11 feet 6 inches in height, which stood on the platform already alluded to, and acted as a centre to a group of monoliths; the base of this pillar we found in situ, the rest had been broken off and appropriated by a Kaffir to decorate a wall; it was worked with bands of geometric patterns around it, each different from the other and divided into compartments by circular patterns, one of which is the chevron pattern found on the circular [192]ruin below; it only runs round a portion of the pillar; and may possibly have been used to orient it towards the setting sun. Besides this tall pillar we found two fragments of other similar pillars decorated one with geometric patterns and the other with an extraordinary and entirely inexplicable decoration. On these pillars the rosette is frequently depicted, and it [193]would seem that they all came from the same place, namely, the platform decorated with monoliths. Here also we found several stones of a curious nature and entirely foreign to the place. Two of them are stones with even bands of an asbestiform substance, a serpentine with veins of chrysolite, the grooves being caused by the natural erosion of the fibrous [194]bands. Another stone is an irregular polygonal pillar-like object of coarse-grained basalt, the smooth faces of which are natural points, the whole being a portion of a rough column or prism. Another, again, is a fragment of schistose rock, apparently hornblendic; also we found several round blocks of diorite in this place. The collection here of so many strange geological fragments cannot be accidental, and points to a veneration of curious-shaped stones amongst the earlier inhabitants of the ruins, which were collected here on the platform, a spot which, I am convinced, will compare with the βαιτύλια or betyles of the Phœnicians, and of this stone cult we have ample evidence from Arabia. El Masoudi alludes to the ancient stone-worship of Arabia, and leads us to believe that at one time this gross fetichism formed a part of the natural religion of the Semitic races. Marinus of Tyre says they honoured as a god a great cut stone. Euthymius Zygabenus [195]further tells us that apparently ‘this stone was the head of Aphrodite, which the Ishmaelites formerly worshipped, and it is called Bakka Ismak;’ also, he adds, ‘they have certain stone statues erected in the centre of their houses, round which they danced till they fell from giddiness; but when the Saracens were converted to Christianity they were obliged to anathematise this stone, which formerly they worshipped.’7 Herr Kremer, in his account of the ancient cult of Arabia, makes frequent allusions to the stone-worship. In the town of Taif a great unformed stone block was worshipped, identical with the goddess which Herodotus calls Urania; and one must imagine that the Kaaba stone at Mecca resembles the black schistose block which we found at Zimbabwe; it is an exceedingly old-world worship, dating back to the most primitive ages of mankind.

FRAGMENT OF BOWL WITH PROCESSION OF BULLS

FRAGMENT OF BOWL WITH HUNTING SCENE

BOWL WITH ZEBRAS

FRAGMENT OF SOAPSTONE BOWL WITH PROCESSION

The next series of finds to be discussed are the numerous fragments [196]of decorated and plain soapstone bowls which we found, most of them deeply buried in the immediate vicinity of the temple on the fortress; and these bring us to consider more closely the artistic capacities of the race who originally inhabited these ruins. The work displayed in executing these bowls, the careful rounding of the edges, the exact execution of the circle, the fine pointed tool-marks, and the subjects they chose to depict, point to the race having been far advanced in artistic skill—a skill arrived at, doubtless, by commercial intercourse with the more civilised races of mankind. Seven of these bowls were of exactly the same size, and were 19·2 inches in diameter,8 which measurements we ascertained by taking the radii of the several fragments. The most elaborate of these fragments is a bowl which had depicted around its outer edge a hunting scene; it is very well worked, and bears in several points a remarkable similarity to objects of art produced by the Phœnicians. There is here, as we have in all Phœnician patterns, [197]the straight procession of animals, to break the continuity of which a little man is introduced shooting a zebra with one hand and holding in the other an animal by a leash. To fill up a vacant space, a bird is introduced flying, all of which points are characteristic of Phœnician work. Then the Phœnician workmen always had a great power of adaptability, taking their lessons in art from their immediate surroundings, which is noticeable all over the world, whether in Greece, Egypt, Africa, or Italy. Here we have the same characteristic, namely, a procession of native African animals treated in a Phœnician style—three zebras, two hippopotami, and the sportsman in the centre is obviously a Hottentot. The details in this bowl are carefully brought out, even the breath of the animals is depicted by three strokes at the mouth. There is also a fragment of another bowl with zebras on it similarly treated, though somewhat higher and coarser. The fragments of a large bowl, which had a procession of bulls [198]round it, is also Phœnician in character.9 The most noticeable feature in the treatment of these bulls is that the three pairs of horns we have preserved to us are all different.

FRAGMENT OF SOAPSTONE BOWL WITH EAR OF CORN

FRAGMENT WITH LETTERING ON IT

There are three fragments of three very large bowls, which are all of a special interest, and if the bowls could have been recovered intact they would have formed very valuable evidence. Search, however, as we would, we never found more of these bowls, and therefore must be content with what we have. The first of these represents on its side a small portion of what must have been a religious procession; of this we have only a hand holding a pot or censer containing an offering in it, and an arm of another figure with a portion of the back of the head with the hair drawn off it in folds. Representations of a similar nature are to be found in the religious functions of many Semitic races, and it is much to be regretted that we have not more of it for our study. [199]

LETTERS FROM PROTO-ARABIAN ALPHABET

LETTERS ON A ROCK IN BECHUANALAND, COPIED BY MR. A. A. ANDERSON

The second fragment has an elaborate design upon it, taken from the vegetable world, probably an ear of corn; it was evidently around the lip of the bowl and not at the side; it is a very good piece of workmanship, and of a soapstone of brighter green than that employed in the other articles. The third fragment is perhaps the most tantalising of all; it is a fragment of the lip of another large bowl which must have been more than two feet in diameter, and around which apparently an inscription ran. The lettering is provokingly fragmentary, but still there can be no doubt that it is an attempt at writing in some form: the straight line down the middle, the sloping lines on either side recall some system of tally, and the straightness of the lettering compares curiously with the [200]proto-Arabian type of lettering used in the earlier Sabæan inscriptions, specimens of which I here give, and also with some curious rock carvings found by Mr. A. A. Anderson in Bechuanaland. It was common in Phœnician and early Greek vases to have an inscription or dedication round the lip; vide, for example, a lebes in the British Museum from a temple at Naucratis with a dedication to Apollo on the rim, and used, like the one before us, in temple service. The circles on the birds also appear to have a line across, like the fourth letter given as illustrating the early Arabian alphabet.

SOAPSTONE BOWL WITH CORD PATTERN

FRAGMENT OF SOAPSTONE BOWL

PLAIN SOAPSTONE BOWL WITH HOLE

PLAIN SOAPSTONE BOWL

Of the other fragments of bowls we found, one has a well-executed cord pattern running round it, another a herring-bone pattern alternating with what [201]would appear to be a representation of the round tower; and besides these there are several fragments of what have been perfectly plain bowls, notably one large one, the diameter of which is outside 2 feet and inside 1 foot 8 inches. The edges of this bowl are very carefully bevelled and the bottom rounded, and [202]it is a very fine specimen of workmanship, the whole of which we were able to recover saving a portion of the bottom. Another plain bowl has a round hole pierced through its side, and another fragment is made of a reddish sort of soapstone with oxide of iron in it. The tool marks on these bowls point to very fine instruments having been used in carving [203]them. Altogether these bowls are amongst the most conspicuous of our finds, and the fact they all came from the proximity of the temple would undoubtedly seem to prove that they were used in temple service, broken by subsequent occupants of the ruins, and the fragments thrown outside.

FRAGMENT OF BOWL WITH KNOBS

SOAPSTONE CYLINDER FROM ZIMBABWE

OBJECT FROM TEMPLE OF PAPHOS. CYPRUS

The next find from Zimbabwe which we will discuss is the circular soapstone object with a hole in the centre, which at first is suggestive of a quern; but being of such friable material such could not have been the case. It is decorated round the side and on the top with rings of knobs, four on the side and four on the top; from the central hole a groove has been [204]cut to the side, and the whole is very well finished off. This thing is 2 feet 2 inches in circumference. We also found portions of a smaller bowl with the same knob pattern thereon. The use of this extraordinary soapstone find is very obscure. Mr. Hogarth calls my attention to the fact that in the excavations at Paphos, in Cyprus, they found a similar object, similarly decorated, which they put down as Phœnician. It is now in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge, and is a cylindrical object of coarse white marble six inches in diameter and about four and three-quarter inches high. It is studded with round projecting studs left in relief on the marble, resembling in general disposition those on our soapstone find, and there is no question about the similarity of the two objects. They remind one of Herodian’s description of the sacred cone in the great Phœnician temple of the sun at Emesa, in Syria (Herodian, bk. v. § 5), which was adorned with certain ‘knobs or protuberances,’ a pattern supposed by him to represent the sun, and common in phallic decorations.

In the vicinity of the temple we also came across some minor objects very near the surface, which did not do more than establish the world-wide commerce carried on at the Great Zimbabwe at a much more recent date, and still by the Arabians—namely, a few fragments of Celadon pottery from China, of Persian ware, an undoubted specimen of Arabian glass, and beads of doubtful provenance, though one of them may be considered as Egyptian of the [205]Ptolemaic period. Glass beads almost of precisely the same character—namely, black with white encircling lines—have come from ancient tombs at Thebes, in Bœotia, and are to be found in almost every collection of Egyptian curiosities.

GLASS BEADS, CELADON POTTERY, PERSIAN POTTERY, AND ARABIAN GLASS

The pottery objects must have been brought here by Arabian traders during the middle ages, probably when the Monomatapa chiefs ruled over this district and carried on trade with the Arabians for gold, as European traders do now with objects of bright appearance and beads. Similar fragments have been found by Sir John Kirk in the neighbourhood of Quiloa, where in mediæval times was a settlement of [206]Arabs who came from the Persian Gulf, forming an hereditary intercourse between the Arabs and the east coast of Africa until the Portuguese found them there and drove them away three centuries ago. It is impossible that a collection of things such as these could have been brought together by any but a highly commercial race during the middle ages, and the Arabians alone had this character at the time in question.

FRAGMENT OF BOWL OF GLAZED POTTERY

POTTERY LID	GLAZED POTTERY
	DECORATED FRAGMENT OF POTTERY

Considering the large quantity of soapstone fragments, bowls, and other things, the finds of pottery of a good period at Zimbabwe were not many. Noticeably one piece of pottery is exceedingly excellent, worthy of a good period of classic Greek ware. The pattern round it is evidently stamped on, being [207]done with such absolute accuracy. It is geometric, as all the patterns on the pottery are. It is not hand-made pottery, for on the back of it are distinct signs of a wheel. Then there are some black fragments with an excellent glaze and bevel, also fragments of pottery lids, and a pottery stopper, pointing to the fact that the old inhabitants of Zimbabwe had reached an advanced state of proficiency in ceramic art. Fragments of one pot with holes neatly bored round the neck remind one of water-coolers still found in the East. Besides the fragments of pots, we found an enormous number of small circular objects of pottery, which may have been used as spindle-whorls, though most of them show no signs of wear, and some of [208]them having rude decorations thereon. The only fragment which shows an attempt at the use of pottery for other than domestic purposes is a sow which we found in a kitchen midden just outside the large circular building on the plain, with two phalli near it. This animal compares well with the rude [209]attempts to depict animal life found in prehistoric excavations on the Mediterranean. Whether it has any religious significance or not is, of course, only conjecture, but it is curious that Ælian tells us that the Egyptians ‘sacrifice a sow to the moon once a year;’ and Herodotus says ‘the only deities to whom the Egyptians are permitted to offer a pig are the moon and Bacchus.’ All that the pottery proves to us is that the ancient inhabitants of Zimbabwe had reached a high state of excellence in the manufacture of it, corresponding to a state of ceramic art known only to the rest of the world in classical times.

TOP OF POTTERY BOWL

POTTERY WHORLS

POTTERY SOW

POTTERY WHORLS

WEAPONS

IRON BELL

Concerning the bronze and iron weapons and implements which we found at Zimbabwe it is very difficult to say anything definite. In the first place, [210]these ruins have been overrun for centuries by Kaffir races with a knowledge of iron-smelting, who would at once utilise fragments of iron which they found for their own purposes; secondly, the shapes and sizes of arrows and spear-heads correspond very closely to those in use amongst the natives now. As against this it must be said that there are many iron objects amongst [211]our finds which are quite unlike anything which ever came out of a Kaffir workshop, and the patterns of the assegai, or spear-head, and arrow are probably of great antiquity, handed down from generation to generation to the present day. Amongst the most curious of our iron finds at Zimbabwe certainly are the double iron bells, of which we found three in the neighbourhood of the temple on the fortress. Similar bells are found now on the Congo. There are some [212]in the British Museum, and also in the Geographical Society’s Museum at Lisbon, which came from San Salvador, on the Congo, and are called Chingongo, whereas amongst the present race inhabiting Mashonaland the knowledge of this bell does not exist, nor did it presumably exist in Dos Santos’ days, who [213]enumerates all the Kaffir instruments which he saw; and he would assuredly have mentioned these bells had they existed there in his days 300 years ago. We must, therefore, conclude that either these bells are ancient, and were used by the old inhabitants of these ruins, the traditional form of which has been continued amongst the negroes of the Congo, or that some northern race closely allied to the Congo races swept over this country at some time or another, and have left this trace of their occupation. The barbed bronze spear-head we found under a mass of fallen rock close to the entrance [214]to the fortress. This again finds a parallel in weapons which come from much farther north in Nubia, though its execution is finer than any of that class which has come before my notice. The shape of this weapon is exactly the same as that of the unbarbed spear-head, which has a coating of gold on it,10 and shows the same peculiarity of make as the assegai-heads still made by the natives—namely, the fluting which [215]runs down the centre being reversed on either side. Then there are the tools—chisels, an adze, pincers, spades, &c., which are quite unknown to the Kaffir races which now inhabit this country. Still it is possible that all these things may have been made during the time of the Monomatapa, who evidently had reached a higher pitch of civilisation than that existing to-day; so that I am inclined to set aside the iron implements as pertaining to a more recent occupation, though at the same time there is no actual reason for not assigning to them a remoter antiquity.

HALF OF AN IRON BELL

BRONZE SPEAR-HEAD

BATTLE-AXE AND ARROWS

BATTLE-AXE

The finds in the fortress of Zimbabwe which touch upon, perhaps, the most interesting topic of all are those which refer to the manufacture of gold. Close underneath the temple in the fortress stood a gold-smelting furnace made of very hard cement of powdered granite, with a chimney of the same material, and with neatly bevelled edges. Hard by, in a chasm between two boulders, lay all the rejected casings from which the gold-bearing quartz had been extracted by exposure to heat prior to the crushing, proving beyond a doubt that these mines, though not immediately on a gold reef, formed the capital of a gold-producing people who had chosen this hill fortress with its granite boulders for their capital owing to its peculiar strategic advantages. Gold reefs and old workings have been lately discovered about twelve miles from Zimbabwe, and it was from these that their auriferous quartz was doubtless obtained.

GILT SPEAR-HEAD

Near the above-mentioned furnace we found many [216]little crucibles, of a composition of clay, which had been used for smelting the gold, and in nearly all of them still exist small specks of gold adhering to the glaze formed by the heat of the process. Also we found several water-worn stones, which had been used as burnishers, which was evidenced by the quantity of gold still adhering to them; and in the adjoining cave we dug up an ingot mould of soapstone of a curious shape, corresponding almost exactly to an ingot of tin found in Falmouth Harbour, which is now in the Truro Museum, and a cast of which may be seen at the School of Mines in Jermyn Street. This ingot of tin was undoubtedly made by Phœnician workmen, for it bears a punch mark thereon like those usually employed by workmen of that period; and Sir Henry James, in his pamphlet describing it, draws attention to the statement of Diodorus, that in ancient Britain ingots of tin were made ἀστραγάλων ῥυθμοὺς, or of the shape of astragali or knuckle-bones; and the form of both the ingots is such that the astragalus may easily be used as a rough simile to describe them. Probably this shape of ingot was common in the ancient world, for Sir John Evans, K.C.B., has called my attention to an ingot mould somewhat similar in form, found in Dalmatia, and the Kaffirs far north of the Zambesi [218]now make ingots of iron of a shape which might easily be supposed to have been derived from the astragalus; but at the same time the finding of two ingots in two remote places where Phœnician influence has been proved to be so strong is very good presumptive evidence to establish the fact that the gold workers of ancient Zimbabwe worked for the Phœnician market. A small soapstone object with a hole in the centre would appear to have been a sort of tool used for beating gold.

TOOLS

TOOLS

ANCIENT SPADE

SOAPSTONE INGOT MOULD. ZIMBABWE

INGOT OF TIN FOUND IN FALMOUTH HARBOUR

SOAPSTONE OBJECT

BEVELLED EDGE OF GOLD-SMELTING FURNACE

An interesting parallel to the ancient gold workings in Mashonaland is to be found by studying the account of the ancient gold workings at the Egyptian gold mines in Wadi Allaga, also given us by Diodorus. There, too, the gold was extracted from the quartz by a process of crushing and washing, as we can see from [219]the process depicted in the paintings on the Egyptian tombs; and in any gold-producing quarter of Mashonaland, near old shafts and by the side of streams, innumerable crushing-stones are still to be seen, used anciently for a like purpose, when slave labour was employed. Diodorus tells us of the gangs of slaves employed, of the long dark shaft into which they descended, of which a countless number are scattered still over Mashonaland; and after describing the process of washing and crushing he concludes: ‘They then put the gold into earthen crucibles well closed with clay, and leave it in a furnace for five successive days and nights, after which it is suffered to cool. The crucibles are then opened, and nothing is found in them but the pure gold a little diminished in quantity.’ Hence it is obvious that the process employed by the ancient Egyptians for crushing, smelting, and forming into ingots was exactly the same as that employed by the ancient inhabitants of Zimbabwe; which fact, when [220]taken in conjunction with the vast amount of evidence of ancient cult, ancient construction, and ancient art, is, I think, conclusive that the gold-fields of Mashonaland formed one at least of the sources from which came the gold of Arabia, and that the forts and towns which ran up the whole length of this gold-producing country were made to protect their men engaged in this industry. The cumulative evidence is greatly in favour of the gold diggers being of Arabian origin, before the Sabæo-Himyaritic period in all probability, who did work for and were brought closely into contact with both Egypt and Phœnicia, penetrating to many countries unknown to the rest of the world. The Bible is full of allusions to the wealth of Arabia in gold and other things. Ezekiel tells us that the Sabæans were merchants in gold for the markets of Tyre. Aristeas [221]tells us that a large quantity of spices, precious stones, and gold was brought to Rome διὰ τῶν Ἀράβων, not from Arabia, but by the Arabians. The testimony of all travellers in Arabia is to the effect that little or no gold could have come from the Arabian peninsula itself; it is, therefore, almost certain that the country round Zimbabwe formed one at least of the spots from which the ‘Thesaurus Arabum’ came. Egyptian monuments also point to the wealth of the people of Punt, and the ingots of gold which they sent as tribute to Queen Hatasou. No one, of course, is prepared to say exactly where the kingdom of Punt was; the consensus of opinion is that it was Yemen, in the south of Arabia. But suppose it to be there, or suppose it to be on the coast of Africa, opposite Arabia, or even suppose it to be Zimbabwe itself, the question is the same: [222]where did they get the large supply of gold from, which they poured into Egypt and the then known world? In Mashonaland we seem to have a direct answer to this question. It would seem to be evident that a prehistoric race built the ruins in this country, a race like the mythical Pelasgi who inhabited the shores of Greece and Asia Minor, a race like the mythical inhabitants of Great Britain and France who built Stonehenge and Carnac, a race which continued in possession down to the earliest dawnings of history, which provided gold for the merchants of Phœnicia and Arabia, and which eventually became influenced by and perhaps absorbed in the more powerful and wealthier organisations of the Semite.

CRUCIBLES FOR SMELTING GOLD FOUND AT ZIMBABWE

FRAGMENTS OF POTTERY BLOW-PIPES FROM FURNACE

[223]