MICHAEL GRAVES-JOHNSTON — ^Bookseller — LONDON ^^\ THE EUINED CITIES OF MASHON ALAND BEING A RECORD OF EXCAVATION AND EXl'LOliATION IN ISOl J. THEODOI^E BENT, F.S.A. F.E.G.S. AUTHOR OK ■IIIK CYCr.AUKS, OK MKF. AMO.N(;S'l' IHK IXSUI.AIi GRKKK3 ' KTC. WITH A CHAPTER OX THE ORIENTATION AND MENSURATION OF THE TEMPLES BY R. M. W. SWAN NEW IMPRESSION LONGMANS, GEE EN, AND CO. ay PATERNOSTER ROW LONDON NEW YORK ANT) I50AIHAY 1902 All rierhts reserved BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE. First Edition, Qvo. November 1892 ; New and Cheaper Edition, ivith additional Appendix, croion Svo. Augitst 1893 ; Preprinted, with addi- tions, January 1895, January 1896. Reprinted March 1902. PEEPACB TO THE THIRD EDITION Since the appearance of the second edition of this book I have received many communications about the Mashonaland ruins, considerable additional work in excavation has been done, and many more ruins have come to light as the country has been opened out. Of this material I have set down the chief points of interest. Professor D. H. Muller. — Professor D. H. Mliller, of Vienna, the great Austrian authority on Southern Arabian archasology, wrote to me on the subject, and kindly drew my attention to passages in his work on the towers and castles of South Arabia which bore on the question, and from which I now quote. Marib, the Mariaba of Greek and Eoman geographers, was the capital of the old Sabsean kingdom of Southern Arabia, and celebrated more especially for its gigantic dam and irrigation system, the ruin of which was practically the ruin of the country. East-north-east of Marib, half an hour's ride brings one to the great viii MASHONALAND ruin called by the Arabs the Haram of Bilkis or the Queen of Sheba. It is an elliptical building with a circuit of 300 feet, and the plan given by the French traveller, M. Arnaud, shows a remarkable likeness to the great circular temple at Zimbabwe. Again, the long inscription on this building is in two rows, and runs round a fourth of its circum- ference ; this corresponds to the position of the two rows of chevron pattern which run round a fourth part of the temple at Zimbabwe. Furthermore, one half of the elliptical wall on the side of the inscrip- tion is well built and well preserved, whereas that on the opposite side is badly built and partly ruined. This is also the case in the Zimbabwe ruin, where all the care possible has been lavished on the side wiiere the pattern and the round tower are, and the other portion has been either more roughly finished or constructed later by inferior workmen. From the inscriptions on the building at Marib we learn that it was a temple dedicated to the goddess Almaqah. Professor Mllller writes as follows : — There is absolutely no doubt that the Haram of Bilkis is an old temple in which sacred inscriptions to the deities were set up on sty lag. The elliptically formed wall appears to have been always used in temple buildings ; also at Sirwah, the Almaqah temple, which is decidedly very much older than the Haram of Bilkis, was also built in an oval form. Also these temples, as the inscriptions show, were dedicated to Almaqah. Arabian archaeologists also identify Bilkis with Almaqah, and, therefore, make the temple of Almaqah into a female apartment (haram). PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION ix . From Hamdani, the Arabian geographer, we learn that lalmaqah was the star Yenus ; for the star Venus is called in the Himyaritic tongue lalmaqah or Almaq, ' illuminating,' and hence we see the curious connec- tion arising between the original female goddess of the earlier star-worshipping Sabseans and the later myth of the wonderful Queen Bilkis, who was sup- posed to have constructed these buildings. It seems to me highly probable that in the temple of Zimbabwe we have a Sabsean Almaqah temple ; the points of comparison are so very strong, and there is furthermore a strono" connection between the star- worshipping Sab^ans and the temple with its points orientated to the sun, and built on such definite mathematical principles. Professor Sayce called my attention to the fact that the elliptical form of temple and the construction on a system of curves is further paralleled by the curious temples at Malta, which all seemed to have been constructed on the same principle. Mr. W, St. Chad Boscawen's interesting communi- cation to the preface of the second edition receives confirmation from details concerning the worship of Sopt at Saft-el-Henneh, published by Herr Brugsch in the Proceedings of Biblical Archapology. Sopt, he tells us, was the feudal god of the Arabian nome, the nome of Sopt. At Saft-el-Henneh this god is described upon the monuments as ' Sopt the Spirit of the East, the Hawk, the Horus of the East ' (Naville's ' Goshen,' p. 10), and as also connected with Tum, the rising X MASHONALAND and setting sun (p. 13). M. Naville believes that this bird represents not the rising sun, but one of the planets, Venus, the morning star ; that is to say, that Sopt was the herald of the sun, not the sun itself. Herr Brugsch, however, believes that it was really the god of the zodiacal light, the previous and the after glow. If M. Naville's theory is correct, we have at once a strong connection between Almaqah, the Venus star of the Sabeeans, and the goddess wor- shipped at Marib and probably at Zimbabwe, and the hawk of Sopt, the feudal god of the Arabian nome, which was closely connected with the worship of Hathor, ' the queen of heaven and earth.' Sir John Willoughby conducted further excava- tions at Zimbabwe, which lasted over a period of five weeks. He brought to light a great number of miscellaneous articles, but unfortunately none of the finds are different from those which we discovered. He obtained a number of crucibles, phalli, and bits of excellent pottery, fragments of soapstone bowls. One ■object only may be of interest, which he thus describes : — This was a piece of cojoper about six inches in leng'th, a quarter of an inch wide, and an eighth of an inch thick, covered with a green substance (whether enamel, paint, or lacquer, I am unable to determine), and inlaid with one of the triangular Zimbabwe designs. It was buried some five feet below the surface, almost in contact with the east side of the wall itself. Sir John also found some very fine pieces of PKEFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION xi pottery which would not disgrace a classical period in Greece or Egypt. Furthermore, he made it abun- dantly clear that the buildings are of many different periods, for they show more recent walls superposed on older ones. Mr. E. W. M. Swan, who was with us on our expedition as cartographer and surveyor, has this year returned to Mashonaland, and has visited and taken the plans of no less than thirteen sets of ruins of minor importance, but of the same period as Zimbabwe, on his way up from the Limpopo river to Fort Victoria. The results of these investigations have been eminently satisfactory, and in every case confirming the theory of the construction of the great Zimbabwe temple. At the junction of the Lotsani river with the Limpopo he found two sets of ruins and several shapeless masses of stones, not far from a well-known spot where the Limpopo is fordable. Both of these are of the same workmanship as the Zimbabwe build- ings, though not quite so carefully constructed as the big temple ; the courses are regular, and the battering back of each successive course and the rounding of the ends of the walls are very cleverly done. The walls are built of the same kind of granite and with holes at the doorways for stakes as at Zimbabwe. But what is most important, Mr. -Swan ascertained that the length of the radius of the curves of which they are built is equal to the diameter of the Lundi temple or the circumference of the great round tower Xll MASHONALAND at Zimbabwe. He then proceeded to orientate the temple, and as the sun was nearly setting he sat on the centre of the arc, and was delighted to find that the sun descended nearly in a line with the main doorway ; and as it was only seventeen days past the winter solstice, on allowing for the difference in the sun's declination for that time, he found that a line from the centre of the arc through the middle of the doorway pointed exactly to the sun's centre when it set at the winter solstice. The orientation of the other ruin he found was also to the setting sun. ' This,' writes Mr. Swan, ' places our theories regard- ing orientation and geometrical construction beyond a doubt.' Continuing his journey northwards, Mr. Swan found two sets of ruins in the Lipokole hills, four near Semalali, and one actually 300 yards from the mess-room of the Bechuanaland Border Police at Macloutsie camp. Owing to stress of time Mr. Swan was not able to visit all the ruins that he heard of in this locality, but he was able to fix the radii of two curves at the Macloutsie ruin, and four curves at those near Semalali, and he found them all con- structed on the system used at Zimbabwe. The two ruins on the Lipokole hills he found to be fortresses only, and not built on the plan of the temples. The temples consist generally of two curves only, and are of half-moon shape, and seem never to have been complete enclosures ; they are all built of rough stone, for no good stone is obtainable, yet the curves PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION XIU are extremely well executed, and are generally true in their whole length to within one or two inches. Further up country, on the 'Msingwani river, Mr. Swan found seven sets of ruins, three of which were built during the best period of Zimbabwe work. He measured three of the curves here, and found them to agree precisely with the curve system used in the construction of the round temple at Zimbabwe, and all of them were laid off with wonderful accuracy. Another important piece of work done by Mr. Swan on his way up to Fort Victoria was to take accurate measurements of the small circular temple about 200 yards from the Lundi river. This we had visited on our way up ; but as we had not then formed any theory with regard to the construction of these buildings, we did not measure the building with sufficient accuracy to be quite sure of our data. AVith regard to this ruin, Mr. Swan writes : — One door is to the north and the other 128° and a fraction from it ; so that the line from the centre to the sun rising at mid-winter bisects the arc between the doorways. If one could measure the circumference of this arc with sufficient accuracy, we could deduce the obliquity of the ecliptic when 'die temple was built. I made an attempt, and arrived at about 2000 f..C. ; but really it is impossible to measure with sufficient accuracy to arrive at anything definite by this method, although from it we may get useful corroborative evidence. From this mass of fresh evidence as to the curves and orientation of the Mashonaland ruins we may Xiv MASHOA' ALAND safely consider that the builders of these mysterious structures were well versed in geometry, and studied carefully the heavens. Beyond this nothing, of course, can really be proved until an enormous amount of careful study has been devoted to the subject. It is, however, very valuable confirmatory evidence when taken with the other points, that the builders were of a Semitic race and of Arabian origin, and quite excludes the possibility of any negroid race halving had more to do with their construction than as the slaves of a race of higher cultivation ; for it is a well-accepted fact that the negroid brain never could be capable of taking the initiative in work of such intricate nature. Mr. Cecil Ehodes also had another excavation done outside the walls of the great circular ruin, and the soil carefully sifted. In it were discovered a large number of gold beads, gold in thin sheets, and 2^ ounces of small and beautifully made gold tacks ; also a fragment of wood about the tenth of an inch square, covered with a brown colouring matter and a gilt herring-bone pattern. Mr. Swan thus describes these finds : — Very many gold beads have been found; also leaf gold and wedge-shaped tacks of gold for fixing it on wood. Finely twisted gold wire and bits of gilt pottery, also some silver. The pottery is the most interesting ; it is very thin, only about one-fifteenth of an inch thick, and had been coated with some pigment, on which the gilt is laid. On the last fragment found the gilding is in waving lines, but on a former piece there is a herring-bone pattern. The work is PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION XV so fine that to see it easily one has to use a magnifying glass. The most remarkable point about the gold ornaments is the quantity in which they are found. Almost every panful of stuff taken from anywhere about the ruins will show some gold. Just at the fountain the ground is particularly rich. I have tested some of the things from Zimbabwe, and, in addition to gold, iind alloy of silver and copper, and gold and silver. One of the most interesting of the later finds in Mashonaland is a wooden platter found in a cave about 10 miles distant from Zimbabwe, a reproduc- tion of which forms the frontispiece to this edition. Mr. Noble, clerk of the Cape Houses of Parliament, to whom I am indebted for the photograph of this object, thus describes it : — In the centre of the dish, which is about 38 inches in circumference, there is carved the figure of a crocodile (which was probably regarded as a sacred animal) or an Egyptian turtle, and on the rim of the plate is a very primitive repre- sentation of the zodiacal characters, such as Aquarius, Pisces, Cancer, Sagittarius, Gemini, as well as Taurus and Scorpio. Besides these there occur the figures of the sun and moon, a group of three stars, a triangle, and four slabs with tri- angular punctures (two of them being in reversed positions), all carved in relief, and displaying the same rude style of art which marked the decorated bowl found by Mr. Bent in the temple at Zimbabwe. A portion of the rim of the plate has been eroded by insects, probably from resting on damp ground. Altogether, the relic presents to the eye an \:n- questionable specimen of rare archaism, which has been remarkably preserved through many centuries, probably dating back even before the Christian era. Previous obser- a Xvi MASHON ALAND vation and measurements of Zimbabwe, by Mr. R. Swan, established the presumption that the builders of it used astronomical methods and observed the zodiacal and other stars ; and this plate shows that the ancient people, whether Phoenician, Sab^an, or Mineans — all of Arabian origin — were familiar with the stellar grouping and signs said to have been first developed by the Chaldeans and dwellers in Mesopotamia. Another interesting find in connection with this early civilisation is a Eoman coin of the Emperor Antoninus Pius (a.d. 188); it was found in an ancient shaft near Umtali at a depth of 70 feet, and forms a valuable link in the chain of evidence as to the antiquity of the gold mines in Mashonaland. Concerning the more recent ruins discovered in Matabeleland, north of Buluwayo, we have not much definite detail to hand at present. Mr. Swan writes that he has seen photographs of them, and that * many of the ruins are of great size. One can clearl}^ see that in most cases the mason work is at least as good as that at Zimbabwe, and the decorations on the M^all are at least as well constructed and are more lavishly used. In one ruin you have the chevron, the herring-bone, and the chessboard patterns.' J. THEODORE BENT. IS Great CuMBETiiyANn Plack ; Oclobe}- 31, 1894. PEEFAGB TO THE SECOND EDITION In looking over this work for a second edition, I find little to add to the material as it appeared in the first, and next to nothing to alter. Sir John Willoughby has kindly supplied me with details con- cerning five weeks' excavation which he carried on the summer following the one which we spent there, the results of which, however, appear only to have produced additional specimens of the objects we found — namely, crucibles with traces of gold, frag- ments of decorated bowls, phalli, &c. — but no further object to assist us in unravelling the mystery of the primitive race which built the ruins. No one of the many reviewers of my work has criticised adversely my arch geological standpoint with regard to these South African remains : on the contrary, I continue to have letters on the subject from all sides which make me more than ever con- vinced that the authors of these ruins were a northern 2 XVlll MASHONALAND race coming from Arabia — a race which spread more extensively over the world than we have at present any conception of, a race closely akin to the Phoeni- cian and the Egyptian, strongly commercial, and eventually developing into the more civilised races of the ancient world. Professor D. H. Miiller, of Vienna, endorses our statements concerning the form and nature of the buildings themselves in his work ' Burgen und Schlosser ' (ii. 20), to which he kindly called my attention ; and Mr. W. St. Chad Boscawen has also favoured me with the following remarks on certain analogous points that have struck him during an archasological tour in Egypt this last winter : — The Hawks Gods over the Mines in Mashonaland. A curious parallel and possible explanation to the birds found in Mashonaland over the works at Zimbabwe seems to me to be afforded by the study of the mines and quarries of the ancient Egyptians. During my explorations in Egypt this winter I visited a large number of quarries, and was much struck by noticing that in those of an early period the Lawk nearly always occurs as a guardian emblem. Of this we have several examples. In the Wady Magharah, the mines of which were worked for copper and turquoisv^ by the ancient Egyptians of the period of the Third and Fourth Dynasties, especially by Senefru, Kufu, and Kephren, the figure of the hawk is found sculptured upon the rocks as the special emblem of the god of the mines. Another striking example of this connection of the hawk with the mines is afforded by a quarry worked PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION XIX for alabaster, which I visited in February of this year. The quarry is situated in the Gebel-Kiawleh, to the east of the Siut road. It is a large natural cave, which has been worked into a quarry yielding a rich yellow alabaster, such as was used for making vases and toilet vessels. Over the door were sculptured the cartouches of Teta, the first king of the Sixth Dynasty, but, as may be seen from the accompanying sketch, in the centre of the lintel was a panel on which is sculptured the figure of a hawh. This quarry was only worked during Sixth and Twelfth Dynasties, as in the interior were found inscriptions of Amen-em-hat II. and Usortesen III. A third example of this association of the hawk and the mines is afibrded by a quarry of the period of the Eighteenth Dynasty. In the mountains at the back of the plain of Tel- el- Amarna is a large limestone quarry. On one pillar of this great excavation extending far into the hill is sculptured the cartouche of Queen Tii. On another column we have the hawk and emblems of the goddess Hathor, W-j, to whom all mines were sacred. This seems to show that the hawk was the emblem of the goddess Hathor, to whom all mines were sacred, as we know from the inscription at Denderah, where the king says, ' I bestow upon thee the mountains, to produce for thee the stones to be a delight to see.' And it must be remembered that the region of Sinai was especially sacred to the goddess Hathor. This association of mines with Hathor especially explains the birds, as, according to Sinaitic in- scriptions, she was in this region particularly worshipped. Here were temples to her where she was worshipped as ' the sublime Hathor, queen of heaven and earth and the dark depths below ' ; and here she was also associated with the sparrow-hawk of Supt, ' the lord of the East.' This associa- tion with Sinai, and also with Arabia and Punt, which is attached to the goddess Hathor, and her connection with the XX MASHON ALAND mines in Egypt, seems to me to be most important in con- nection with the emblem of the hawk in the mines at Zimbabwe. According to the oldest traditions of the Egyptians there was a close association between Hathor, the goddess of Ta- Netu, ' the Holy Land,' and Punt. She was called the ' Queen and Ruler of Punt.' Now, Punt was the Somali coast, the Ophir of the Egyptians; but, at the same time, there was undoubtedly a close association between it and Arabia, and indeed, as Brugsch remarks, there is no need to limit it to Somali land, but to embrace in it the coasts of Yemen and Hydramaut. ' Here in these regions,' he says (' Hist. Eg.' p. 117), 'we ought to seek, as it appears to us, for those mysterious places which in the fore ages of all history the wonder-loving Cushite races, like swarms of locusts, left in passing from Arabia and across the sea to set foot on the rich and blessed Punt and the " Holy Land," and to continue their wanderings into the interior in a northerly and western direction. We may also bring this connection between Punt, Sinai, and Egypt more close in the time of the Eighteenth Dynasty, when we see on a rock-cut tablet at Sinai, in the Wady Magharah, the dual inscription of Hatsepsu and Thothmes III., who present their offerings to the " lord of the East, the sparrow-hawk Supt, and the heavenly Hathor." ' With all these facts before us there seems little doubt that the association between the hawks and the mines and miners is a very ancient one, and may be attributed to either ancient Egyptian, or rather, I think, to very ancient Arabian times; for, as we know from the inscriptions of Senefru, the builder of the Pyramid of Medum, the mines in Sinai were worked by ' foreigners,' who may have been Chaldeans or ancient Arabians. Another point which seems to me to throw some addi- tional light upon this subject, and again imply a possible PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION XXI Arabian connection, is the remarkable ingot mould discovered at Zimbabwe. The shape is exactly that of the curious ob- jects, possibly ingots of some kind, which are represented as being brought by the Amu in the tomb of Khemmhotep at Beni Hasan, an event which took place in the ninth year of the reign of King Usortesen II., of the Twelfth Dynasty. The shape is very interesting, as it has evidently been chosen for the purposes of being tied on to donkeys or carried by slaves. The curious phalli found at Zimbabwe may also resemble the same emblems found in large numbers near the Speos Artemidos, the shrine of Pasht, near to Beni Hasan, and may have been associated with the goddess Hathor. There are many other features which seem to me to bear out a distinctly Arabo-Egyptian theory as to the working of this ancient gold-field, and future study will no doubt bring these in greater prominence. ^ g^^ ^ Boscawen. Certain critics from South Africa have attacked my derivations of words. I admit that the subject is open to criticism ; almost anyone could state a derivation for such words as Zimbabwe, Makalanga, Mashona, and they would all have about the same degree of plausibility. Some people write and tell me that they are quite sure I am right ; others, again, write and tell me that they are quite sure I am wrong. Such being the case, I prefer to let the derivations stand as I originally put tliem until positive proof be brought before me, and for that I feel sure I shall have to wait a long time. J. THEODORE BENT 13 Great Cumberland Place : nr^-'y 21"). 180H. CONTENTS PART I ON TEE BO AD TO THE BUIN8 CHAP. tAOB I. The Joueney up by the Kalahari Desert Eoute . 3 II. First Impressions of Mashonaland 31 [II. Camp Life and Work at Zimbabwe . . . .60 PART II DEVOTED TO THE AltCHxEOLOGY OF THE EUINED CITIES rV. Description of the various Kuins 95 V. On the Orientation and Measurements of Zimbahwe EuiNs, BY E. M. W. Swan 141 VI. The Finds at the Great Zimbabwe Euins . . . 179 \T;I. The Geography and Ethnology of the Mashonaland Euins 223 XXIV MASHONALAND PART III EXPLOBATION JOUBNEYS IN MASHONALAND CHAP. PAGB VIII. Down to the Sabi Kiver and Matindela Ruins . 247 IX. Fort Salisbury and the Old Workings and Euins OF THE Mazoe Valley 279 X. Our Embassy to the Chief 'Mtoko 301 XI. The Ruined Cities in Mangwendi's, Chipunza's, and Makoni's Countries 336 XII. The Journey to the Coast ...... 861 APPENDICES A. Notes on the Geography and Meteorology of Mashona- LAND, BY E. M. W. Swan 889 B. List of Stations in Mashonaland Astronomically Ob- served, with Altitudes, by R. M. W. Swan . . . 898 C. Addenda to Chapter V., by R. M. W. Swan . , . 401 D. Progress in Mashonaland summarised from November 1891 TO May 1893 405 INDEX 413 ILLUSTRATIONS Cave about Ten Miles Fr Wooden Plattee found in • Zimbabwe Mk. Theodore Bent Making Thongs of Ox-hide .... Wooden Pillow , . . . . . Ancient Egyptian Pillow in the British Museum Wooden Dollasses or Divining Tablets . Bone Dollasses Gourds for Baling Water Wooden Mortar, Bowl, and Porridge Bowl Woman's Girdle, with Cartridge Cases, Skin-scrapers Medicine Phials attached Wooden Hair Comb, Chibi's Country .... Granary Decorated with Breast and Furrow PATTiaiN Wooden Pillow representing Human Form Iron Skin-scraper, and Needles in Cases Mrs. Theodore Bent .... Umgabe and his Indunas . . * . Hatchet ..... s . Carved Knives ...... Bone Ornaments . . . t • Wooden Snuff-boxes Boy beating Drum ..... from ontispiece . 3 . 19 . 36 . 37 . 38 . 39 . 40 . 41 ) . 44 , 45 . 40 . 47 . 48 . 61 . 67 . 70 . 71 . 72 . 74 . 77 XXVI MASHONALAND VJlQB Drum Decorated with ' Breast and Furrow ' Pattern, and Plain Drum 78 Playing the Piano 80 Makalanga Piano 81 Hut at Umgabe's Kraal with Euphorbia behind . . .89 At Cherumbila's Kraal 91 euin on the lundi elver 97 General View of Zimbabwe , . , . . . . 101 Main Entrance of Circular Euin at Zimbabwe . . . 106 Large Circular Euin, Zimbabwe ....... 107 Pattern on Large Circular Euin at Zimbabwe . . 109 Large Eound Tower in Circular Euin, Zimbabwe . .113 Eound Tower and Monolith Decoration on the Fortress AT Zimbabwe 123 Approach to the Acropolis 125 The Platform with Monoliths, etc., on the Fortress at Zimbabwe 127 Approach to the Fortress by the Cleft, Zimbabwe . . 133 Baobab Tree in Matindela Euins 136 Walled-up Entrance and Pattern on Matindela Euins . . 137 Map of Zimbabwe District 143 The two Towers 149 Coin of Byblos showing the Eound Tower .... 150 The Triple Walls at Zimbabwe 153 Within the Double Walls, Zimbabwe . » . . . 171 SoAPSTONE Bird on Pedestal 180 SoAPSTONE Birds on Pedestals 181 Front and Back of a Broken Soapstone Bird on Pedestal . 183 Bird on Pedestal 184 Bird on Pedestal from the Zodiac of Denderah . . . 185 Miniature Birds on Pedestals 187 Ornate Phallus, Zimbabwe ; and Phcenician Column in the Louvre 188 ILLUSTRATIONS XXVii PAGB Long Decorated Soapstonb Beam in two Pieces . . . 190 Decorated Soapstone Beams 191, 192 Collection of Strange Stones 193 Fragment of Bowl with Procession of Bulls . . , , 194 Fragment of Bowl with Hunting Scene ..... 195 Bowl with Zebras 196 Fragment of Soapstone Bowl with Procession . . . 197 Fragments of Soapstone Bowls with Ear of Corn and Lettering 198 Letters from Proto-Arabian Alphabet 199 Letters on a Eock in Bechuanaland, copied by Mr. A. A. Anderson 199 Soapstone Bowls 200, 201 Fragment of Bowl with Knobs 202 Soapstone Cylinder from Zimbabwe ...... 202 Object from Temple of Paphos, Cyprus 203 Glass Beads, Celadon Pottery, Persian Pottery, and Arabian Glass 205 Fragment of Bowl of Glazed Pottery 206 Fragments of Pottery 207 Top of Pottery Bowl, Pottkry Sow, and Wiiokls . 208, 209 Weapons 210 Iron Bells and Bronze Spear-head ... 211, 212 Battle-axes and Arrows 2] 8, 214 Gilt Spear-head 216 Tools 217 Ancient Spade , , . . . 218 Soapstone Ingot Mould, Zimbabwe 218 Ingot of Tin found in Falmouth Harbour , . . . 219 Soapstone Object ...,...,.. 219 Bevelled Edge of Gold-smelting Furnacb , , , . 220 X X V 1 ■ 1 MASHON ALAND PAOB Crdcibles for Smelting Gold found at Zimbabwe. » . 221 Fragments of Pottery Blow-pipes from Furnace . , . 222 Mbtzwandira , . . 249 Chief's Iron Sceptre, and Iron Razor . . . . . . 253 Rock near Makori Post Station 254 Knitted Bag . . t . 255 Larder Tree 256 Reed Snuff-boxes and Grease-holder . . .... 257 Decorated Hut Door . 259 Straw Hat 260 Decorated Heads ......... 262 Chief's Tomb 271 Interior of a Hut 274 Household Store for Grain, with Native Drawings . . 275 Native Drawings 276 Native Bowl from the jNIazoe Valley 286 Ruin in Mazoe Valley 293 Three Venetian Beads ; one Copper Bead ; three old White Venetian Beads ; Bone Whorl, Medicine Phials, and Bone Ornaments 297 Tattooed Women from Chibi's, Gambidji's, and Kunzi's Countries 804 Wooden Bowl from Musungaikwa's Kraal 305 Makalanga Iron Smelting Furnace 308 Goatskin Bellows and Blow-pipe for Ikon Smi'lting . . 309 Woman's Dress of Woven Bark Fibre ..... 310 Bracelets 313 Wooden Platter from Lutzi 316 Earring, Stud for the Lip, and Battle-axe . . . . 320 Powder-horn 321 A Collection of Combs ....,,,.. 322 Wooden Spoon. Lutzi 828 ILLUSTRATIONS xxix PAQB BcsHMAN Drawings nbab 'Mtoko's Kraal . . . 832, 333 Mangwbndi's Kraal 338 Bushman Drawings from Nyangbr Kock . . . . • 345 Chipunza's Kraal. ....,.» o . 349 Decorated Post ..,.«■• t • • SSS PART I ON THE ROAD TO THE RUINS 7 CHAPTER I THE JOURNEY UP BY THE KALAHARI DESERT ROUTE Ix a volume devoted to the ruined cities of Ma- shonaland I am loth to introduce remarks in narrative form relatingf 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 an- thropological 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 legiti- mately, I think, within the scope of our expedition. B 2 MR. THKODOKK liENT 4 ON THE ROAD TO THE RUINS 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 ex- pedition — namely, the Eoyal 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 un- dertaken a journey of such proportions; and to the oflicers of the Chartered Company, with whom we naturally came much in contact, I cannot tender thanks commensurate with their kindness ; to their assistance, especiall}'' 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 with- out 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 THE KALAHARI DESERT ROUTE 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. Eobert 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 Yryberg, in Bechuanaland, which place we left on March 6. An uninteresting and un- eventful ' 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 connnence 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 ON THE ROAD TO THE RUINS necessity be absorbed into the embryo empire which Mr. Cecil Ehodes 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 rail- way, its well-to-do settlements at Taungs, Vryberg, and Mafeking, and with its native chiefs confined within certain limits ; secondly, the British protec- torate to the north of this over such chiefs asBatuen, Pilan, Linchwe, and Sechele, extending vaguely to the west into the Kalahari Desert, and bounded by the Limpopo Eiver 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 Kinor Lobencjula 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 fre- quented ; 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 Bechuana- land with a few words. It differs little from any THE KALAHARI DESERT ROUTE I 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 25Z., 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 pro- cess 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 Eamatlabama Eiver, our progress was just one mile, in which distance our waggons had to be un- loaded 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 THE ROAD TO THE RUINS 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 thirt3''-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 onl}^ 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 Seclmana, 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 THE KALAHARI DESERT ROUTE 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 threat- ened 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 Becliuana- land, and presents a curious appearance on the summit of the hill. The hotla 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 ON THE ROAD TO THE RUINS 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 some- what 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 aban- doned. 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, THE KALAHARI DESERT ROUTE 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 mis- sionary, 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-Eaphaelite Italian pictures. Beneath a long hopje, 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 ON THE ROAD TO THE RUINS 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 repre- sents the pocket-handkerchief amongst the Kaflirs 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 picturesque- ness 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. THE KALAHARI DESERT ROUTE 13 A former chiefs heir was affianced young ; he died at the age of eight, before succeeding his father, and, according to custom, the next brother, Moshuhlla, 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, Moshuhlla, 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 o 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 tlie 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 ON THE ROAD TO THE RUINS 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 wil] necessarily become British property when Bechuana- land 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 diffi- dent in the extreme, always avoiding the haunts of the white, man, and always wandering hither and THE KALAHARI DESERT ROUTE 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 qiiaina, or crocodile. Their siboko, or tribal ob- ject of veneration, is the crocodile, which animal they will not kill or touch under any provocation whatso- ever. 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 corrup- tion of this name ? There have been worse corrup- tions perpetrated by Dutch and English pioneers in savage lands, and Ba-quainaland would have a deri- vation, 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 ON THE ROAD TO THE RUINS 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 Euro- pean-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, kaflir 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 THE KALAHARI DESERT ROUTE 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 rufiled 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 : thebushes 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 lurkiniif in theffrass is the ' grapple plant,' the Uarpagophytumprocumbens^ whose crablike claws tear the skin in a most pain- fully subtle way. The mimosas of many dilTerent 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 c 18 ON THE ROAD TO THE RUINS camel leopards, feed thereon. Why the Dutch should be so perverse in the naming of animals I never can discover ; to them the hysena 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. 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 THE KALAHARI DESERT ROUTE 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 inha- MAKING XHO-NGS OF OX-IIIDK bitants ^it stitching at tlieir caiOftses, or skin I'ugs, in splendid nudity. All maniici- of skins luuig 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 ON THE ROAD TO THE RUINS 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 instru- ment 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 ta 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 Sho- sliong, the larger trees, the cactus-like euphorbia, and the richer vegetation, after the long flat stretch of THE KALAHARI DESERT ROUTE 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 dis- cussed 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 plenti- ful and the soil exceedingly rich. Thus "was Sho- shong 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 ON THE ROAD TO THE RUINS 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 Mata- bele 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 dedi- cated 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 THE KALAHARI DESERT ROUTE 28 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 ri>ined 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 M^as, 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 in- tegrity 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 ad- vanced 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 repu- tation for honesty, but he is supposed to have inocu- lated 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 im- 24 ON THE ROAD TO THE RUINS plies 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 koi^je 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 Foto- foto, 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 occupa tion 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 THE KALAHARI DESERT ROUTE 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 3,000/. 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 ON THE ROAD TO THE RUINS duyher, a sort of roebuck ; and Khama's father, old Sikkome, would not so much as step on a duyker-skm. 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 him- self 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 pre- vious 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, alw ays using an interpreter. An instance of Khama's system of discipline came under our notice during our stay at Palapwe. At- tracted 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 THE KALAHARI DESERT ROUTE 27 nature peaceful and mild, a race with strong pastoral habits, who have hved 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 illus- trate 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 display- ing as they walk the airs and graces of self-conscious- ness. A httle further on you meet the women of the lower orders returning from the fields, with baskets 28 ON THE ROAD TO THE RUINS 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 lOiama 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 intelli- THE KALAHARI DESERT ROUTE 29 gence ; 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 un- scrupulous 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 diffi- culties 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 Eiver, 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 [Nymphwa stellafa). 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 ON THE EOAD TO THE RUINS 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 Elhama'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 terri- tories 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 Eiver, 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 CHAPTEE n FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF MASHONALAND 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 narra- tive. 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 inter- course with the natives, and as time went by a certain portion of the language found its M'ay into 32 ON THE ROAD TO THE RUINS 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 Eiver 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 nationa- lity they invariably call themselves Makalangas, in contradistinction to the Shangans, who inhabit the east side of the Sabi Eiver. 'You wiU find many Makalangas there,' 'A Makalanga is buried there,' and so on. The race is exceedingly nu- merous, and certain British and Dutch pioneers have given them various names, such as Banyai and Makalaka, 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 Eivers. I contend that all these people call themselves Makalangas, and that their land should by right be called Maka- langaland. In this theory, formed on the spot from inter- course with the natives, I was glad to find afterwards that I am ably supported b}^ 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 M(>r.aranga, which is the best FIRST IMPRESSIONS 83 and most polished of all Kaffir languages which I have seen in this Ethiopia.' Couto, another Portu- guese writer, bears testimony to the same point, and every one knows the tendency of the Portuguese to substitute r for /. Umtali is called by the Portuguese Umtare : ^ 'bianco' 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 para- mount tribe of the vast empire of Monomatapa,' and the best derivation that su^^ffi^ests itself is the initial Ma orBa, ' 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 power- ful Zulu hordes, with traditions of having once formed a part of a powerful tribe further north. Three centuries and a half a.^^flHK ^HE^ i ^H. 'J^^^^^^^l MRS. TllKOUOKK BKNT Cam'p lh^e and work at Zimbabwe 63 Our tent was our drawing-room ; and in addition to these places of shelter there were the photographic dark tent, five feet six square, the kitchen, and the white men's sleeping-room, cleverly constructed out of the sails of our waggons, with walls of grass. In the centre was an erection for our cocks and hens, but even from here the jackals occasionally contrived to steal one or two. Around the whole camp ran a skerm, or hedge, of grass, which latter adjunct gave a comfortable and concentrated feeling to it all. Outside our circle the native workmen erected for themselves three or four huts, into which they all huddled at night like so many sardines in a tin. Around us in every direction grew the tall, wavy grass of the veldt, rapidly approaching the time when it can be burnt. This time was one of imminent peril for our camp ; the flames, lashed to fury by the wind, approached within a few yards of us. Men with branches rushed hither and thither, beatinsf the advancing enemy with all their might ; our grass hedge was rapidly pulled down, and we trembled for the safety of our Indian terrace. Suddenly a spark caught the huts of the natives, and in a few moments chey were reduced to ashes, and the poor shivering occupants had to spend the night in a cave in the rocks behind. Luckily the strenuous efforts of our men were successful in keeping the flames from our camp, and we were thankful when this business was over. Instead of the tall, wavy grass, reeking with moisture when it rained and rottint? iu the heat of 64 ON THE ROAD TO THE RUINS the sun, we had now around us a black sea of ashes, re- calling the appearance of the vicinity of a coal mine ; but though less picturesque it was far more healthy, and during the last weeks of our stay at Zimbabwe the attacks of fever were less frequent and less severe. From Fort Victoria came over during our stay a whole host of visitors to see how we were getting on. Prospecting parties going northwards tarried at Fort Victoria for a rest, and came over to see the wondrous ruins of Zimbabwe. Englishmen, Dutchmen from the Transvaal, Germans, all sorts and conditions of men came to visit us, and as temporary custodians of the ruins we felt it our duty to personally conduct parties over them, thereby hearing all sorts and con- ditions of opinions as to the origin of the same. One of our friends told us that they reminded him forcibly of the Capitol of Eome ; another, of a religious turn of mind, saw in them an exact parallel to the old walls of Jerusalem ; and a Dutchman, after seeing over then^, told me that he was convinced that they must be just ' one tousand year old, and built in the reign of Queen Shabby.' The names of King Solomon and the Queen of Slieba were on everybody's lips, and have become so distasteful to us that we never expect to hear them again without an involuntary shudder. Thus our two months' stay at Zimbabwe can in no Avay be said to have been dull. We had our daily work from eicfht in the morninor till sundown, with an hour at midday for luncheon and repose. Out of the working days we lost nine from rain, a curious CAMP LIFE AND WORK AT ZIMBABWE 65 soaking misty rain which always came on with a high south-east wind, and always, oddly enough, with a rise in the barometer, very exceptional, we were told, at that season of the year. Over these days I would willingly draw a veil ; they were truly miser- able and alwuN'S resulted in fresli outbreaks of fever amongst us. With the exception of these nine days the weather was simply delicious, fresli, balmy, and sunny ; after sundown and our evening meal we would sit around our camp fire discussing our finds of the day and indulging in hopes for the morrow. Most of our white men were musical, and beguiled the monotony of the evening hours by a series of camp concerts, which made us intimately acquainted with all the latest music-hall ditties. Occasionally rations of Cape brandy, better known as dap, would be sent out to the B.S. A. men in our employ ; then the evening's fun became fast and furious, and on two occasions caused us no little anxiety. Luckily these rations were always consumed on the night of their arrival, and though the following morning revealed a headache or two, and an occasional attack of fever, we always rejoiced to see the bottles empty and to know that the orgy would not be repeated for perliaps a fortnight. Umgabe is the dyiiasllc name of the petty chief whose territor}^ includes the Zimbabwe ruins ; he i-ecognises the suzerainty of Chibi,but is to all intents and purposes a free ruler. He came the day after our arrival to visit us, and then we were intro- F 66 ON THE ROAD TO THE RUINS duced to the Makalaiiga custom of hand- clapping. The mysterious meaning attached to this hand-chipping I was afterwards able in a measure to fathom.^ On the arrival of a chief or grand induna the hand-clapping is a serious undertaking, and has to go on incessantly until the great man is seated and bids them stop. Umgabe was glad to see us, he said, and had no in- tention of interrupting our proposed work, provided only we agreed to one thing, and that was to leave his women alone. As for ourselves and our white men. we answered that he need have no fear, but as for our negro workmen we would not hold ourselves re- sponsible for them, but suggested that, as they would all be his subjects, he must see to them himself. Umgabe is a huge fat man, tall and dignified, though naked ; around his neck he has a string of large whiteVenetianbeads of considerable antiquity,brought doubtless to this country l)y Arabian traders in the Middle Ages ; in his hand he carries his iron sceptre, the badge of a chief, and his battle axe is lavishly decorated with brass wire. Amongst his men we saw many of varied types, some distinctly Arabian in fea- tures, and I am bound to say the Kaffir type amongst them was the exception and by no means the rule. Arched noses, thin lips, and a genei'aJly refined ty])e of countenance are not, as a rule, prcmiinent features amongst those of pure Kafilr blood, but they are com- mon enough around Zimbal)we. We made arrangements with Unigabn al)()ut our ' Chap. X. CAMP LIFE AND WORK AT ZIMBABWE 69 work, and collected together a team of thirty indivi- duals who were to do our digging, &c., for the wages of one blanket a month, which blankets cost 45. lOd. apiece at Fort Tuli, and probably half that in England. For this reward they were to work and also find them- selves in everything ; it is the present stipulated rate of wages in the country, but I do not expect it will remain so long. We had great difficulties with them at first. Spades and picks were new to nearly all of them ; they were idle ; they were afraid of us, and also of the chief on the hill. If it was cold they would sit crouched over small fires of wood, and appear numb and utterly incapable of work. Then they insisted on eating at the inconvenient hour of 10.30 a.m. food brought for them by their women, paste of millet meal and caterpillars ; and for every little extra duty they clamoured for a present, or d^ parsella, as they called it. These diffi- culties gradually disappeared. Some of them became excellent hands with pick and shovel ; they got accus- tomed to us and our hours, and worked with a will, and for a teaspoonful of beads they would do any amount of extra work. Their chief skill was dis- played in clearing. I almost despaired of getting rid of the thick jungle which filled the large circular ruin, so that it was almost impossible to stir in it. This they contrived to do for us in three or four days, hacking away at stout trees and branches with their absurd little hatchets, and obtaining the most satis- factory results. Also they were excellent at removing 70 ON THE ROAD TO THE RUINS piles of fallen stones, singing as they worked and urging one another on. Altogether we had no cause to complain of our workmen when confidence had been thoroughly established between us. Poor cowardly things that they are, anything like harsh- ness made them run away at once. Our cook, whose temper was exceedingly capricious, one da}' pursued his native kitchen boy with a hatchet, and he never could get a kitchen boy to stay with him after that ; they would poke their fun at him and rouse his ire exceedingly, but always at a respectful distance. From the many villages on the lieights around Zimbabwe came every day crowds of natives, l^ring- ing provisions for sale, and we held a regular market in our camp. By this means we got as many cocks and hens as we wanted, eggs, milk, lione}^ and sweet potatoes ; then they would bring us tomatoes, the largest I have ever seen, chillies, capers, rice, and monkey nuts. Some of these, I am told on excellent authority, are distinct pro- ducts of the Xew World, the seeds of HATCHET Avhich musthave originally 1 )een 1 )rought b}' Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish traders and given in exchange for the commodities of the country; now they form an integral part of tlie diet of th(^se people aiid prove to us liow the ends of the world were brought together long before our time. CAMP LIFE AND WORK AT ZIMBABWE 71 These daily markets were times of great excite- ment for us, for, besides giving us an insight into their ways and hfe, we found it an excellent time to acquire C'AltVKl) KNIVKS m I Hi for a few Ijeads tlieir native ornaments. Tn carving tlieir knives they are particularly ingenious. Tlu; sheath of these knives generally ends in a curious con- 72 ON THE ROAD TO THE RUINS ventional double foot ; the handle too seems intended to represent a head. Here again it would appear that they take the human form as a favourite basis for a design. Also their snuff-boxes are many and varied in form ; some are made of reeds decorated with ])lack geometrical patterns, some of hoUowed-out pieces of wood decorated with patterns and brass wire, also they have their grease-holders similarly deco- rated, all pointing to a high form of ingenuity. They were very glad to get good English powder from us ; but, nevertheless, before this advent of the white man they made a sort of gunpowder of their own, reddish in colour and not very powerful, speci- mens of which we acquired. The art must have been learnt from the Portuguese traders and passed up country from one village to another. From a species of cotton plant they produce a very fair equivalent for the genuine article, which they spin on spindles and make into long strings. When the natives found we cared for their ornaments they brought them in large quantities, and our camp was inuiidated with knives, snuff-boxes, bowls, pottery, and all manner of odd things. They were cunning too in their dealings, bringing one ])y one into camp small baskets full of meal and other commodities from a large store out- side, realising that in this way they got man}' more BONE ORNAMENTS CAMP LIFE AND WORK AT ZIMBABWE 73 beads and more stretches of limbo than if they brought it all at once. As for Umgabe himself, his chief kraal and residence was six miles away, and we saw but little of him after the first excitement of our arrival had worn off; but his brother Ikomo, the induna of the kraal on the hill behind the ruins, often came down to see us, and was a constant source of annoyance, seeing that his friendly visits had always some ulterior motive of getting something out of us. On one of these occasions my wife had collected a beautiful bowl of honey ; the rascal Ikomo first eyed it with covetousness and then plunged his hand into the very midst thereof, and enjoyed his fingers complacently for some time after, whilst she in disgust had to throw away the best part of her treasure. Frequently Ikomo would try to interrupt our work, and so frig-hten our black difTOfers from other villages that they ran away, and we had to collect a fresh team. On one occasion, whilst digging upon the fortress, we disturbed a large rock, which slipped. On it was perched one of their granaries, which promptly fell to pieces, and the contents were scat- tered far and wide. In vain we offered to pay for the damai^e done ; almost in no time we were surrounded hj a screaming crowd of angry men and women, with Ikomo at their head, brandishing assegais and otlier terrible weapons of war. For a moment the affair looked serious ; all our blacks fled in liaste, and we, a small band of white men surrounded by the foe, 74 ON THE ROAD TO TFTE RI^TNS At length we longer, and were doubtfnl what course to pursue. determined to stand their insults no seizing whatever was nearest — spade, pick, or shovel — we rushed at them, and forthwith Ikomo and his valiant men fled like sheep before us, clambering up rocks, chatterinsf and screaming like a casfeful of monkeys at the Zoo. Sir John Willoughby and one "WOODEN SNUKF-liOXKS' or two men from Fort Victoria chanced to come over that day to visit us, and on hearing of our adventure he summoned Ik(^mo to a palaver, and told liim that if such a thing happened again his kraal would be burnt to the ground and his ti-ibe driven from the hill ; and the result of this threat was that Ikomo troubled us no more. CAMP LIFE AND WORK AT ZIMBABWE 75 Ikomo's kraal occupies a lovely situation on Zimbabwe Hill, with huts nestling in cosy corners amongst the rocks, from the top of which lovely views can be obtained over the distant Bessa and Inyuni ranges on the one side, and over the Livouri range, and Providential Pass on the other, whilst to the south the view extends over a sea of rugged kopjes down into the Tokwe valley. From this point the strategical value of the hill is at once grasped, rising as it does sheer out of a well-watered plain, unassailable from all sides, the most command- ing position in all the country round. The village is festooned with charming creepers, bignonia and others, then in full flower ; rows of granaries decorate the summit, and in the midst are some of those quaint trees which they use as larders, hanging there- from the produce of their fields neatly tied up in long grass packages, which look like colossal German sausages growing from the branches. On one of the few flat spaces in the village is kept the village drum, or ' tom-tom,' constantly in use for dances. One day we found the women of the village hard at work enjoying themselves round this drum, dancing a sort of war dance of their own. It was a queer sight to see these women, with deep furrows on their naked stomachs, rushing to and fro, stooping, kneeling, shouting, brandishing battle axes and assegais, and going through all the pantomime of war, until at last one of these Amazons fell into hysterics, and the dance was over. On another occa- 76 ON THE ROAD TO THE RUINS sion, whilst visiting some ruins in a lovely dale about eight miles from Zimbabwe, we were treated to an- other sort of dance by the women of a neighbouring village. The chief feature in the performance was a grotesque one, and consisted of smacking their fur- rowed stomachs and long hanging breasts in measured cadence with the movements of their feet, so that the air resounded with the noise produced. As for the men, they are for ever dancing, either a beer drink, the new moon, or simple, unfeigned joviality being the motive power. Frequently on cold evenings our men would dance round the camp fire ; always the same indomba, or war dance ; round and round they went, shouting, capering, gesticulating. Now and again scouts would be sent out to recon- noitre, and would engage in fight with an imaginary foe, and return victorious to the circle. If one had not had personal experience of their cowardice, one might almost have been alarmed at their hostile attitudes. On pay-day, when our thirty workmen each received a blanket for their month's work, they treated us to a dance, each man wrapped in his new acquisition. Umgabe, with his sceptre and battle axe, conducted the proceedings ; it was a most energetic and ridicu- lous scene to witness, as the blankets whirled round in the air and the men shouted and yelled with joy. When all was over, each man measured his blanket with his neighbour, to see that he had not been cheated, and, gaily chattering, they wended their way to the village, with their blankets trailing CAMP LIFE AND WORK AT ZIMBABWE 77 behind tliem. The novelty of possessing a blanket was an intense joy to these savages. One tottering old .man was amonc^st our workmen, and seeini? his incapacity, I was about to discard him, but his longing for a blanket was so piteous — ' to sleep in a HOY 1!i;aiin(; dkum blanket once before lie died" — lliat he was allowed to continu(i and do wliat lie could lo earn one. Dancing is the one great dissipation of the ^NFaka- langa's life; he will keep it up for hours without tiring at their great beer-drinking feasts, al weddings — -nay, even at funerals. At these latter ceremonies 78 ON THE Rf)AD TO THE RUINS they will not allow a white man to be present, so that what they do is still a mystery ; but we heard repeatedl}' the incident festivities after a death had taken place — the shouting, the dancing, and the hideous din of the ' tom-tom.' One day a native DKUM DKCOKA'l'KJ) Wri'il ' lillKAST AND rriiUOW ' i'ATTKllN I'LAIX i)i;UM turned up at our camp with soiuf- curious carrot-like roots in his liand. On enquiry as to what he was goiTig to do with them he re])lied that he was going to a I'liiieral, and that they ch(^\V(^d I his r(x)l ^Uld spa!, it out — Jbi" it is poisonous — at these cercmonit^s. The natives call this root ainoLtnl. CAMP LIFE AND WORK At ZIMBABWE 79 In our work at Zimbabwe we unwittingly opened several of their ijraves amongst die old ruins. The corpse had been laid out on a reed mat — the mat, probably, on which he had slept during life. His bowl and his calabash were placed beside him. One of these graves had been made in a narrow passage in the ancient walls on the fortress. We were rather horrified at what we had done, especially as a man came to complain, and said that it was the grave of his brother, who had died a year before ; so we filled up the aperture and resisted the temptation to pro- ceed with our excavations at that spot. After that the old chief Ikoiiio, whenever we started a fresh place, came and told us a relation of his was buried there. This occurring so often, we began to suspect, and eventually proved, a fraud. So we set sentiment aside and took scientific research as our motto for the future. In the tomb of a chief it is customary to place a bowl of beer, wliich is constantly replenished for tlie refreshment of the spirit, for they are great believers in making themselves agreeable to the departed, and at the annual sacrificial feast in honour of tlie dead meat and beer are always allotted to the spirits of their a?u;estors. One da}^ as we were digging in a cave we came across the skeleton of a goat tied on to a mat with bark string; by its side was tJie carved knife, with portions of llu; goat's liair slill adhering to it. Here we had an obvious instance of sacrifice, a sacrifice 80 ON THE ROAD TO THE RUINS which takes place, I beheve, to avert some calamity — famine, war, or pestilence — which at the time threatens the communit}^ The natives were very reticent on the point, but visibly annoyed at our discovery. There is a ccood deal of music inherent in the l'LAYl.\(; TlIK I'lA.NO Makalanga. One man in each villaLj'e is recogniscMl as tlie bard. One of our workmen liad liis ])ian(), wliicli was constajifly at work. Tliese pianos ar(^. \ery interesting specimens of primitive musical arl ; they have thirty or more iron keys, arranged to scale, CAMP LIFE AND WORK AT ZIMRABWP] 81 fixed on to a piece of wood about half a foot square, which is decorated with carving behind. This in- strument they generally put into a gourd, with pieces of bone round the edge to increase the sound, which MAKALANCIA I'lAXO is decidedly melodious and recalls a spinel. One finds instruments of a similar nature amonjjst the natives north of the Zambesi. Specimens in the I )rit ish Museum of almost exactly the same const fiiction come fi-om Southern Egypt and the C^oiil!0, pointino- 82 ON THE ROAD TO THE RUINS to the common and northern origm of most of these African races. About Zimbabwe we found the natives playing a sort of Jew's harp, made out of a reed and string, giving forth a very faint and ineffective sound. Also they have their cymbals and their drums, which latter they play with elbow and fist in a most ener- getic manner. Anything, in fact, which makes a noise is pleasing to them. At their dances they tie to their persons small reeds or gourds filled with the seed of the Indian shot, w^hich rattle and add to the prevailing din. They are for ever singing the low, monotonous songs common to primitive races ; they encouracje one another with song when at work in the fields, or when out on a hunting expedition, and dearly did they love some small musical boxes M^hich we had with us. Music is certainly inherent in them, and one of our men was quite quick at picking up an air, and very angry if his comrades sang out of time or tune. When time permitted we made several little ex- cursions in the neio^hbourhood of Zimbabwe. One of these led us to the ruins which they call Little Zimbabwe, about eight miles off. Of all these ruins they have next to no legends, which surprised us greatly. One story, however, they tell, which ap- pears to have obtained universal credence amongst them — that long, long ago white men came and erected these buildings, but the Ijlack men poisoned the water and they all died. This story seems to CAMP LIFE AND WORK AT ZIMBABWE 83 have about as much value in it as the one told us by De Barros, that the natives of his day thought that they had been built by the Devil. About two miles from our camp there was a long flat granite rock, along which the path passed. On either side of this are two piles of stones, and a line is scratched on the rock between them. Our guides each took a stone, scratched them along the line, and deposited them on the heap opposite. On returning in the evening they did exactly the same thing, and we were told that it is a luck sign, which they do on undertaking a journey to ensure them from danger by the way. It was a very lovely ride, past huge granite boulders, and hills covered with dense foliage, beneath which the women of a village danced for us to the tune of their drum, forming one of the wildest, weirdest pictures we had ever seen. On another occasion we rode to a fortified rock, which had been long since abandoned ; but the rude stone walls had been constructed by a more recent race, and com- pared with certain ruined villages we afterwards saw in Mangwendi's country.^ On our homeward ride we turned aside to rest in a hut where we found natives busily employed in making beer, a process which they always carry out in the fields, where they have their stores, and in cooking locusts, which we tasted and thought not altogether unlike shrimps. Thus our time passed at Zimbabwe, actively and pleasantly, and when our second month of work was » Clmp. XI. 9 3 84 ON THE ROAD TO THE RUINS up, as we had much travelling before us m the country, we reluctantly decided on departure. We went up to take leave of the induna Ikomo at his kraal on the day before our departure. He was seated in front of his hut, eating his red-coloured sodza, made of millet meal, and locusts, allowing his head men, who sat around, to take occasional handfuls from his savoury platter. Conversation turned on his tribe. He told us how they had come to Zimbabwe about forty years ago, when he was only eighteen years of age, from the neighbourhood of the Sabi River, where they had lived for many years. No one was then living on Zimbabwe Hill, which was covered, as it is still in parts, with a dense jungle. No one knew anything about the ruins, neither did they seem to care. This is how all tra- dition is lost among them. The migrator}^ spirit of the people entirely precludes them from having any information of value to give concerning tlie place in which they may be located ; they seldom remain more than one generation in one place, and one place is to them only different from another inas- much as it affords them refuge from the Matabele and has soil around it which will produce their scanty crops. On leaving Zimbabwe and our worlv, we deter- mined on making a tentative trip of a few days, with horses and a donkey, to see how we could manage travelling in the wilds in this country without our waggon home. Moreover, we wished to pay a visit CAMP LIFE AND WORK AT ZIMBABWE 85 to Umgabe at his kraal, and to take his rival, Cherumbila, on the way back to Fort Victoria. One lovely morning — the 6th of August — we left our waggons, our cook, and our curios to find their way to Fort Victoria by themselves, and set off. The scenery southwards down the gorge was charm- ing, granite kopje after granite kopje carrying the eye far away into the blue hazy distance. The foliage was thick and shady, and as we halted at a stream to water our animals we plucked large fronds of Osmunda regalis and the tree fern. To our left we passed a huge split rock, just a square block of granite eighty feet high split into four parts, so that narrow paths lead from each side into the heart of it. It was one of the most extraordinary natural stone formations T have ever seen, and the natives call it Lumho. A relation of Umgabe's rules over a fantastic kraal, called Baramazimba, hard by this rock ; its huts are situated in such inaccessible corners that you wonder how the inhabitants ever get to them. Huge trees sheltered the entrance to this village, beneath which men were seated on the ground playing isafuba, the mysterious game of the Makalangas, with sixty holes in rows in the ground. Ten men can play at this game, and it consists in removing bits of pot- tery or stones from one hole to the other in an un- accounta])le manner. We watched it scores of times whilst in the country, and always gave it up as a bad job, deciding that it must be like draughts or chess, learnt by them from the former civilised race who 86 ON THE ROAD TO THE RUINS dwelt here. This game is played in different places with different numbers of holes — sometimes only thirty-two holes dug in the ground — always in rows of four. It has a close family relationship to the game called pullanriooly of India, played in a fish — the sisoo fish, made of wood — which opens like a chess-board, and has fourteen holes in two rows of seven, small beans being employed as counters. The same game hails also from Singapore and from the West Coast of Africa, where it is played with twelve holes and is called wary. In short, wherever Arabian influence has been felt this game in some form or other is always found, and forms for us another link in the chain of evidence connecting the Mashonaland ruins with an Arabian influence. The Makalangas are also far superior to other neighbouring Kaffir races in calculating, probably owing to the influence of this very game. At midday we reached Umgabe's kraal and found our host only just recovering from the effects of drink- ing too much beer, and he had a relapse in the course of the afternoon to celebrate our arrival. He allotted us two huts, which we proceeded to have cleaned out. My wife and I occupied one, delightfully situated beneath a spreading cork tree ; it was about twelve feet in diameter, and in the centre was the fireplace of cement with a raised seat by it on which the cook usually sits when stirring the pot. We spread our rugs Avliere it appeared most level ; but during the night, in spite of our candle, the rats CAMP LIFE AND WORK AT ZIMBABWE 87 careered about us to such an alarming extent that sleep was next to impossible, and we had ample time at our disposal for contemplating our abode. On one side was a raised place for the family jars, huge earthenware things covered with slabs of stone, containing meal, caterpillars, locusts, and other edibles. On the opposite side was a stable for the calves, which we were able to banish ; but we could not so easily control the cocks and hens which came in at all the holes, nor the rats which darted amongst the smoke- begrimed rafters when day dawned. These blackened rafters of the roof the Makalangas use as cupboards, sticking therein their pipes, their weapons, their medicine phials, their tools, and their pillows, and we soon found that this was the place to look for all manner of curios ; only the huts are so dark that it is impossible to see anything when there happen to be no holes in the walls. A low door three feet high is the only point for admitting light and air ; consequently the huts are not only dark but odoriferous. Besides the walls, the Makalangas construct a primitive sort of cupboard out of the spreading branch of a tree tied round with bark fibre ; this contains such things as they fear the rats may spoil. They are very ingenious in making things out of bark — long narrow bags for meal, hen coops in which to carry their poultry about, nets to keep the roofs on their granaries. Bark to them is one of the most useful natural products that they liave. Umgabe's kraal has as lovely a situation as can 88 ON THE ROAD TO THE RUINS well be imagined. It is situated in a glade, buried in trees and vegetation, so that until you are in it you hardly notice the spot. Huge granite mountains rise on either side, completely shutting it in ; a rush- ing stream runs through the glade, supplying the place with delicious water. Here is distinctly a spot where only man is vile ; and the great fat chief, seated on the top of a rock, sodden with beer, formed one of the vilest specimens of humanity I ever saw. The aforesaid stream in its course down the valley, just below the village, runs underneath a vast mass of granite rocks, which form a labyrinth of caves exceedingly difficult to approach. To facilitate the entry the inhabitants have made bridges of trees, and in times of danger from the Matabele they take refuge therein ; they take their cattle with them, and pull down the bridges. In the interior they always keep many granaries well filled with grain, in case of accidents. Old Umgabe was most unwilling for us to go in and learn his tribal secret ; however, nothing daunted, with the aid of candles we effected an entry, and a queer place it is. Granaries are perched in all sorts of crannies, traces of a late habitation exist all around, and the boiling stream is roaring in the crevices below. The flat rocks outside were just then covered with locusts drying in the sun ; millet meal and other domestic commodities were spread out too. The rest of that lovely afternoon we spent in wandering about in this paradise, admiring the dense CAMP LIFE AND WORK AT ZIMBABWE 89 foliage, the creepers, and the euphorbia which towered over the huts, and regretted when the pangs of hunger and the shades of evening obliged us to return to our HUa AT UMGAIiK's KUAAL WITH KUl'H()i;]!IA HKHIND huts to coox our frugal meal and pretend to go to bed. It was a iQig ride next day to Cherumbila's kraal, the bitter eneny and hereditary foe of our late host ; 90 ON THE ROAD TO THE RUINS we passed many villages and many streams on the way, and had a direful experience at one of the swamps which our path crossed just before reaching our destination. One of our horses disappeared in it, all but his head, another rolled entirely over in it, whilst we stood helpless on the bank and fearful of the result ; but at length we managed to drag the wretched animals out, and an hour before sundown we reached Cherumbila's stronghold. It is quite a different place from Umgabe's, and much larger, with huts running along the backbone of a high granite ridge. The principal kraal, where the chief lives, is fortified with palisades and rough walls, and is entered by a gateway formed of posts leaning against one another ; the huts are betcer, with decorated doors, and the people finer than those of Umgabe's tribe. Many of them have their heads cleanly shaved at the top, with a row of curious tufts of hair tied together and made to look like a lot of black plants sproutinp^ from their skulls. Cherumbila himself is a lithe, active man, a complete contrast to Umgabe; a man of actiuty both of mind and body, he is feared and respected by his men, and is consequently one of the stronf^est chiefs hereabouts, and raids upon his neighbours with great success. Years ago, when he was a boy, he told us, his tribe lived on the top of one of the highest mountains overlooking Providential Pass, when a Matabele raid, or i7npi, fell upon thmi and drove CAMP LIFE AND WORK AT ZIMBAB^\^<: 91 most of the inhabitants over a steep precipice to their death : the remnant that escaped came here and settled, and have now, under Cherumbila's rule, ofrown strong. The chief allotted us his own hut for our night's lodging. Nevertheless we had much the same experiences as on the previous night, which AT CHEKlMIilL.V's KKAAL made us vow that on our prospective trips to tlu^ Sabi and northwards we would take our tent and never again expose ourselves to the companiouslii]) of rats and othej" vermin in tlie native huts. 'I'lie ibllowiug day a lovely ride over the moun- tains, through dense for(,\sts and swarms of locuists, 92 ON THE ROAD TO THE RUINS which our black men eagerly collected, brought us back again to Fort Victoria and comparative civili- sation, where we made preparations for our more extended expeditions away from the road and our waggons, warned but not discouraged by our dis- comforts with Umgabe and Cherumbila. PART II DEVOTED TO THE ARCHEOLOGY OF THE RUINED CITIES CHAPTEE IV DESCRIPTION OF THE VARIOUS RUINS DuEiNG our stay in Mashonaland we visited and care- fully 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 remark- able — ancient, massive, mysterious, standing out in startling contrast to the primitive huts of the bar- barians 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 con- sequently 1 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 Sliaslii Eiver, which consisted of a wall pro- tecting a hill and formed ' of blocks of granite laid one upon another, without being fixed by cement of ^ny kind.' Also at Tati he saw another ruin, forming 96 THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE DISTRICT 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 in- serted 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 Eoyal Geographical Society's meeting, Novem- ber 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.' u DESCRIPllON OF THE VARIOUS RUINS 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 with- out 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 evidentl}' an octagonal tower.' Mr. Moilat, our political agent in Matabele- land, 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 Mata- beleland outspan near it, and the men assist at its demolition. There is another ruin of a similar character near where the Eiver Elibi flows into the Limpopo, and another further up the Mazoe Valley than the one we visited.^ 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 tlie gold which they extracted from the mines in the quartz reefs between the Zambesi and Limpopo liivers. * Vide Cliap. IX. H 3 100 THE AliCIIyEOLOGY OF THE DISTRICT 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, Irapakwe, and else- where, 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. The circular ruin erected on a low granite emi- nence 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 witli an inserted structure in which the courses are carried out with a carefulness similar to the walls of the rest of the buildinix. The interestinix features of this ruin are the patterns in three tiers beginning at a few feet from the northern entrance, the two lower ones con- sisthig of a lierring-bone pattern, formed by the stones being placed obliquely in contrar}* directions DESCRIPTION OF THE VARIOUS RUINS 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 Mashona- land 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 buildingfs 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 ques- tion 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 Ziml)abwe 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, wlio built their huts around it. The ruins of the Great Ziml)abwe (which name I have ap})r!('d to tliem to distinguish them from the numerous minor Zimbabwes scattered over the country) are situated in south latitude 20° 10' 30", 104 THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE DISTRICT and east longitude 31° 10' 10", on the high plateau of Mashonaland, 3,800 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 Eiver. They are built on granite, and of granite, quartz reefs being found at a distance of a few miles. 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 vege- tation ; 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 neighbour- hood 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 li(;lien, moss, nor creeper could thrive on them, PLAN or milHft AT MATINDCLA. A Winter 5o£«ac« lU «M}^n,(>rer,nul.,r rvA^'^ s- nr*w Y^r^ DESCRIPTION OF THE VARIOUS RUINS 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 Sabasau kingdom in Arabia, and at the Castle of Nakab al Hajar, also in that country.^ Its greatest length is 280 feet ; the wall at its highest point is tlnrty- 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 Ijegin to get slightly ir- regular, and the stones of unequal size, suggesting almost a diflerent 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 ]ia\^e been continued more in a northerly direction, and the * Kncijclop. Brit, 106 THE ARCHEOLOGY OF THE DISTRICT inferior wall to have been brought round to meet it. 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 MAIN ENTRANCE 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 con\'erge here from the centre of the building. The presence of this concrete in use for DESCRIPTION OF THE VARIOUS RUINS 109 flooring and steps in buildings constructed without mortar is interesting, showing that dry building was used not from necessity but from choice. 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 PATTERN- OX LARGE CIRCULAR KUIX AT -ZIMBABWE between these two, presumal:)ly merely a sally-port in the wall, the lintel of which had consisted of wooden beams, whicli had been burnt, and on their giving way the wall above had also fallen down. Of the outer wall of the circular buildincf the o most interesting portion is decidt^dly that to the south-east. A few courses l)elow the summit on the outside, from point A to point B on the })lan, runs the pattern, formed by two courses having tlie stones placed chevron-wise, neatly fitted in with smaller 110 THE ARCHEOLOGY OF TILE DISTRICT 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 mono- liths were inserted, most of which have fallen away ; but those still standing show that they were equi- distant. 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 DESCRIPTION OF THE VARIOUS RUINS 111 art it is without a parallel. The large blocks of cut stone used in Egyptian, Greek, and Eoman 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 irregu- larly, 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 neat- ness 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, pre- sumably originally intended to receive a wooden door; but at a later period all these entrances have been I 112 THE ARCHEOLOGY OF THE DISTRICT 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 neat- ness with which the blocking-up walls are executed is against this theory. At point y on the plan there is a remarkable in- stance 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 wliich a monolith had been stuck. This platform was coimected with the sacred enclosure by a flight of cement steps, and was presumably used for religious purposes. 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 foun- dations we were able to get very accurate measure- ments 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, aud its circumference again is equal to the diameter of the round buildiui^ on the Lundi Eiver. The battering of DESCRIPTION OF THE VARIOUS RUINS 115 the big tower is carried out with mathematical ac- curacy, 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 unfortu- nately, 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 care- fully replaced, we demonstrated to our satisfixction that it was solid. It was built on nothinfj but the soil of the place, and was erected over nothing ; the foundations go down for one foot below the fioor 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 sup- ported 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 THE ARCHv4:0L0GY OF THE DISTRICT made in other parts of the ruins of a phalhc nature {vide Chap. VI.), and I think a quotation from Mont- faucon's ' L'Antiquite Expliquee ' will give us the key- note 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, accord- ing to Euthymius Zygabenus. When the Saracens were converted to Christianity they were obliged to anathematise this stone, which formerly they wor- shipped.' 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 tem})le, which had no roof. Turning to Phoenician 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 vf ithin the tenqole precincts and shut off in an enclosure {vide illus- tration, p. 150). Similar work is also found in the round temples of the Cabiri, at Hadjar Kem in Malta, and the coustruction 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 UESCRIPTION OF THE VARIOUS RUINS 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 mono- liths, 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 Syria Dea,' 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 propylasa 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 dia- meter. 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 nt that time, who 118 THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE DISTRICT 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 excava- tions in this building ; we found but little depth of soil, very little debris, 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 betylce (^atruXta, bethels, i.e. sacred stones) in every country reached by Phoenician influence ' {vide Chap. VI.) Probably we shall be more cor- rect in considering it an even more remote Semitic influence, which continued in vosfue amonijst the Phoenicians until more recent times. Palgrave in his DESCRIPTION OF THE VARIOUS RUINS 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 . . e in fact, there is little difference between the stone wonder of Kaseem and that of Wiltshire ' (Stone- henge). 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 cir- cular 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 ex- cavated, 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 THE ARCHEOLOGY OF THE DISTIIICT 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 appli- ances 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 alono^ 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 DESCRIPTION OF THE VARIOUS RUINS 121 swept down on the more peaceful and effeminate descendants of the Monomatapa. Many were the miles we walked in every direc- tion, 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 niijrht have used — but our searches were always in vain. Kaffir re- mains 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 Mo- hammedans 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 tlie most likely spot to carry on our work, and our 122 THE ARCHEOLOGY OF THE DISTRICT 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 excava- tions 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 shad}^ 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 Ijelow. The laby- rinthine 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 DERCnTPTIOX OF THE VAUIorS IllJIXrt 12: causeway on the top was decorated on the outside edge by a succession of small round towers alternat- ingf 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 KOUND TOWEi; A.NJ) JIOXOLITH DKC'OUATIOX ()\ THK I'OKTUKSS produces one of lh(^ most pecuiiai' and uni(|U(' forms of decoration 1 ha\'e e^'cr seen. To open out tlic ap})roaclL to tliis forti'css town was a work of cousidcrahlc time and lal)our ; it will easily be seen l)y the plan how intricate it is, pro- tected at every turn with traverses and nml)iiscad(\s, 124 THE ARCHJiOLOGY OF THE UISTRICT 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 pass- age 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 pre- cipice 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 con- stant dread of attack, and lived like a garrison in the heart of an enemy's country. 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 tlie 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 super- incumbent weight. The steps on one side M^ere 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 AI'I'KOACH In I 1 1 K \( lldl'dl. DESCRIPTION OF THE VARIOUS RUINS 127 found at the angle of the approach. The httle plat- eau 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 TIIK l'rjATI'Y)l;M WITH ^:()N01,nil S, KTC, ON TIIK FOIlTItESS forms, to which I shall 1ia\-e again occasion (o refer in Chapter VI. The large semicircular space below this plat form was a dense jungle wlicii we started to woi-k upon it, consisting of ncttlf^s of cxti-aordiuary pi'ickiug powers and other ohnoxioiis planls, wliicli our 128 THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE DIRTRTCT 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 evi- dence to show that this had once been a most pro- minent 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 celebra- tions 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 be- fore 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 cham- bers. 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 DESCRIPTION OF THE VARIOUS RUINS 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 dis- turbed. 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 soap- stone 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 support- ing 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 mono- liths of slate firmly fixed into the cement floor and the stones beneath ; from this spot a slope led up to 130 THE AllCH^OLOGY OF THE DISTRICT the top of the rock, on which a terrace had been con- structed 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 dis- cuss in Chapter V. Adjoining the temple to the north is another semi- circular 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 DESCRIPTION OF THE VARIOUS RUINS 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 suc- ceeding generations of Kafiir 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 THE ARCHEOLOGY OF THE DISTRICT 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 thou- sand 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. 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 Al'PKOALil lu lllL I'OUTliESS liV THE CLKIT. ZlMiiAiiSS li DESCRIPTION OF THE VARIOUS RUINS 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 con- structing 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 buildiiig at Matindela encloses an area not far short of that enclosed by the large circu- lar building at the Great Zimbabwe ; it crowns a low sloping granite kopje a])out 150 feet in height. The place is full of huge baol)al) trees, two of which in their growth have pushed down and grown up in the walls themselves. There are those that tell us aljout the fabulous age of the baobab, attributing an age of 5,000 years to the larger- ones. The Director of 136 THE ARCHEOLOGY OF THE DISTRICT Kew Gardens, Mr. Thiselton Dyer, tells me that this is grossly exaggerated, and that a few centuries is prob- ably 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. liAOBAB TREE IN MATINDELA RUINS 'riie best built portion of the wall has the same aspect as that at the Great Ziml^abwe ; but the other side, corresponding to the worst built part of the Zimbabwe wall, has never been completed at Matin- dela ; 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 compara- DESCRIPTIOX OF THE VARIOUS RUINS 137 tively 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. The walls at Matindela are nowhere more than fifteen feet in height, nor are the courses nearly as regfular 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 WALLED-UP ENTRANCE AND PATTERN ON MATINDELA RUINS M^ere inserted in the walls for a more complex pur- pose 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 in- serted for forty feet on the outside, and finally is again 138 THE ARCHEOLOGY OF THE DISTRICT 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 con- struction 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 considera- tion 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 DESCRIPTION OF THE VARIOUS RUINS 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 w^alls 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 con- siderable 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 protect- ing wing of the temple-fortress. There are no traces of these circular foundations w^ithin 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 pai'allel to one another, about thirty feet long, with doorways and six circular foun- dations outside them. Tliere are also two depres- 140. THE ARCH^.DLOGY OF THE DISTRICT sions 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 circu- lar 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 CHAPTER V ON THE ORIENTATION AND MEASUREMENTS OF ZIMBABWE RUINS. BY R. M. W. SWAN. 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 asso- ciated together or merged in one, and it was common to many early peoples to think of the sun in conjunc- tion 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 vege- table world seemed to sleep, and that it only awoke to activity when the sun's rays had become more power- ful 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 THE ARCHEOLOGY OF THE DISTRICT would be at mid-summer, when the sun seemed most brilKant and his rays most energetic. Accordingly we find that at Zimbabwe means had been provided for ascertainimi 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 decora- tion 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 re- gulating 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 detines 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 MAP OF ZIMBABWE DISTRICT. Scale of Miles O ■/, Vz '/» 1 ZI^IBABWE RUINS 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 29-| days each cor- respond with the tropical year of 365J 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 revolu- tions of the moon, in addition to their sacred year measured in the temples by an apparent revolution of the sun among the stars. 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 sub- divided will generally be greater, and greater accuracy will be attained, because long shadows can more con- veniently 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 THE AECH.EOLOGY OF THE DISTRICT 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 architec- tural remains illustrate these literary allusions. Hesiod often speaks of the times of different agri- cultural 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 ZIMBABWE RUINS 147 temple and the time of the heliacal rising of the star towards which the axis of the temple was originally- directed. The MalaySj 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 Chald^a 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 tvhich 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 hemispliere. To this we shall refer ajjain. 148 THE ARCHEOLOGY OF THE DISTRICT What El Masoudi says of the temples of the Sab^ans 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 Mashona- land 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 door- ways ; 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 walls which are lightly shaded in the accom- panying 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 ex- terior courses laid with some regularity, are most ZIMBABWE RUINS 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 Scale of Feet _J_ A B shows present top of tower, c D shows outline of walls iis seen in illustration, Chap. VI. THE TWO TOWKRS 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 loetter- built and the worse-built portions of the outer wall do not unite near the great doorway, and the foundation 150 THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE DISTRICT 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 cha- racteristic 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 COIN OF BYBLOS SHOWING THE HOUND TOWER 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 re^jretted that we could recover no plan of the western side of the original outer wall, as ZiaiBABWE RUINS 151 it might have made clear to us the meaning of many of the features of the eastern wall. 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 dis- Tsover 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 further 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 ex- tremities 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 propor- tions of the two towers are curious, and seem to ofler an explanation of the plan of some other parts of 152 THE ARCHEOLOGY OF THE DISTRICT 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 Mashona- land. The diameter of the great tower at its base is 17 '17 feet or 10 cubits,^ 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 169^ 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 x 3-142 = 169-34. ^j^^ ^q-^, built partly circular enclosure to the north-west of the tower has a diameter of 54 feet, and this is equal to 17-17 X 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 107|^ feet. This is equal to twice 17-17 x 3-14. This length of 107-| feet is also the exact distance between the middle points of the two door- ' 17*17 feet is equal to 10 cubits of 20-62 inches: and as all parts of the building which we have been able to measure accurately, and all small articles whicli would probably be made on any scale of measure, apparently have been made in terms of a cubit of this length, it seems probable that this cubit was one of the standards of m;easure in use, * ZIMBABWE RUINS 155 ways 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, 169^ feet, but in our measurements there we hardly fixed a sufficient number of points in the line of tlie 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 con- sidered 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, how- ever, seem to belie this system of measurement. 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 84^ feet, which is equal to half of 17-17 X ST-i'-^. 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 X 314, 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 THE ARCHEOLOGY OF THE DISTRICT 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 x 3-14^. At Matindela the only regularly curved piece of w^all 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 107f feet radius = twice 17-17 x 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 x 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 ZIMBABWE RUINS 157 of the great tower and its radius equal to twice 17'17x3-14 on 10 7| feet, we find that it exactly fits the outhne 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 x 3-14 x 2 = 34-34 feet) will correspond to the outline of that tower. The towers when built were doubtless made com- plete 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 tJie 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 THE ARCIIyEOLOGY OF THE DISTRICT of the essential features of their originals. We can only say that the centre of one tower is distant 17 "IT 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 sub- tended 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 pro- bable 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 con- nection with their reason for changing the radius of the arc at this point. There is no evidence that any of the trigono- metrical 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 archi- ZIMBABWE RUINS 159 tecture of the temples is the ratio of diameter to circumference, and it may have had an occult signifi- cance 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 dis- covery 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, tliere 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 M 2 160 THE ARCH^]OLOGY OF THE DISTRICT 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 as- sociated with fertility in the mind of a solar wor- shipper. 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 Capri- cornus 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 sum- mer solstice, would bear East 25° South were the horizon level. But Mount Yaroma 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 ZIMBABWE RUINS 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 cere- monies 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 cere- monies 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 tlie wall at k would fall on it at the same time, thus marking with great accuracy the occurrence of the solstice. Mono- liths 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 1G2 THE ARCHEOLOGY OF THE DISTRICT 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 door- way, 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 terra- cotta 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 ZIMBABWE RUINS 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 sol- stice 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 overhan fringe the hi