PART III

THE RUINED CITIES

OF

MASHONALAND

BEING A RECORD OF

EXCAVATION AND EXPLORATION IN 1891

BY

J. THEODORE BENT, F.S.A. F.R.G.S.

AUTHOR OF ‘THE CYCLADES, OR LIFE AMONGST THE INSULAR GREEKS’ ETC.

WITH A CHAPTER ON THE

ORIENTATION AND MENSURATION OF THE TEMPLES

BY R. M. W. SWAN

NEW EDITION

LONDON

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

AND NEW YORK: 15 EAST 16th STREET

1895

All rights reserved

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.

First Edition, 8vo. November 1892; New and Cheaper Edition,

with additional Appendix, crown 8vo. August 1893; Reprinted,

with additions, January 1895.

PREFACE 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. Müller.—Professor D. H. Müller, of Vienna, the great

Austrian authority on Southern Arabian archæology, 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 Roman geographers,

was the capital of the old Sabæan 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

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 circumference; 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 inscription 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 where 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 Müller 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

stylæ. 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 archæologists also

identify Bilkis with Almaqah, and, therefore, make the temple of

Almaqah into a female apartment (haram).

From Hamdani, the Arabian geographer, we learn that Ialmaqah was the

star Venus; for the star Venus is called in the Himyaritic tongue

Ialmaqah or Almaq, ‘illuminating,’ and hence we see the curious

connection arising between the original female goddess of the earlier

star-worshipping Sabæans and the later myth of the wonderful Queen

Bilkis, who was supposed to have constructed these buildings.

It seems to me highly probable that in the temple of Zimbabwe we have a

Sabæan Almaqah temple; the points of comparison are so very strong, and

there is furthermore a strong connection between the star-worshipping

Sabæans 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 communication 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 Archæology. 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 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 Sabæans, and the

goddess worshipped 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 excavations 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 copper about six inches in length, 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 pottery which would not

disgrace a classical period in Greece or Egypt. Furthermore, he made it

abundantly clear that the buildings are of many different periods, for

they show more recent walls superposed on older ones.

Mr. R. 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 buildings, 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 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 regarding

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 constructed 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 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.

With 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 the temple was built. I made an

attempt, and arrived at about 2000 B.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 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 having 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 Rhodes 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 2½

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 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,

find 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

reproduction 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 representation 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 triangular 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 unquestionable

specimen of rare archaism, which has been remarkably preserved

through many centuries, probably dating back even before the

Christian era. Previous observation 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

Phœnician, Sabæan, 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 Roman coin of the Emperor Antoninus Pius (A.D. 138); 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 clearly see that in most cases the

mason work is at least as good as that at Zimbabwe, and the decorations

on the wall 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

13 Great Cumberland Place:

October 31, 1894.

PREFACE 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 concerning 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, fragments 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

archæological 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 convinced that the authors of these ruins

were a northern 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 Phœnician and the Egyptian, strongly

commercial, and eventually developing into the more civilised races of

the ancient world.

Professor D. H. Müller, of Vienna, endorses our statements concerning

the form and nature of the buildings themselves in his work ‘Burgen und

Schlösser’ (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 archæological

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 hawk 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

turquoise 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 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 hawk.

This quarry was only worked during the 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 afforded 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, 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 inscriptions, 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 association with Sinai, and also with Arabia and Punt, which

is attached to the goddess Hathor, and her connection with the

mines in Egypt, seems to me to be most important in connection 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 additional light upon

this subject, and again imply a possible Arabian connection, is the

remarkable ingot mould discovered at Zimbabwe. The shape is exactly

that of the curious objects, 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.

W. St. C. 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 them 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:

May 26, 1893.

CONTENTS

PART I

ON THE ROAD TO THE RUINS

CHAP. PAGE

I. The Journey up by the Kalahari Desert Route 3

II. First Impressions of Mashonaland 31

III. Camp Life and Work at Zimbabwe 60

PART II

DEVOTED TO THE ARCHÆOLOGY OF THE RUINED CITIES

IV. Description of the various Ruins 95

V. On the Orientation and Measurements of Zimbabwe

Ruins, by R. M. W. Swan 141

VI. The Finds at the Great Zimbabwe Ruins 179

VII. The Geography and Ethnology of the Mashonaland Ruins 223

PART III

EXPLORATION JOURNEYS IN MASHONALAND

VIII. Down to the Sabi River and Matindela Ruins 247

IX. Fort Salisbury and the Old Workings and Ruins 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 361

APPENDICES

A. Notes on the Geography and Meteorology of Mashonaland,

by R. M. W. Swan 389

B. List of Stations in Mashonaland Astronomically

Observed, with Altitudes, by R. M. W. Swan 398

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

PAGE

Wooden Platter found in a Cave about Ten Miles

from Zimbabwe Frontispiece

Mr. Theodore Bent 3

Making Thongs of Ox-hide 19

Wooden Pillow 36

Ancient Egyptian Pillow in the British Museum 37

Wooden Dollasses or Divining Tablets 38

Bone Dollasses 39

Gourds for Baling Water 40

Wooden Mortar, Bowl, and Porridge Bowl 41

Woman’s Girdle, with Cartridge Cases, Skin-scrapers, and

Medicine Phials attached 44

Wooden Hair Comb, Chibi’s Country 45

Granary Decorated with Breast and Furrow Pattern 46

Wooden Pillow representing Human Form 47

Iron Skin-scraper, and Needles in Cases 48

Mrs. Theodore Bent 61

Umgabe and his Indunas 67

Hatchet 70

Carved Knives 71

Bone Ornaments 72

Wooden Snuff-boxes 74

Boy beating Drum 77

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

Ruin on the Lundi River 97

General View of Zimbabwe 101

Main Entrance of Circular Ruin at Zimbabwe 106

Large Circular Ruin, Zimbabwe 107

Pattern on Large Circular Ruin at Zimbabwe 109

Large Round Tower in Circular Ruin, Zimbabwe 113

Round 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 Ruins 136

Walled-up Entrance and Pattern on Matindela Ruins 137

Map of Zimbabwe District 143

The two Towers 149

Coin of Byblos showing the Round 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 Phœnician Column in the Louvre 188

Long Decorated Soapstone 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 Rock 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, Pottery Sow, and Whorls 208, 209

Weapons 210

Iron Bells and Bronze Spear-head 211, 212

Battle-axes and Arrows 213, 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 Furnace 220

Crucibles for Smelting Gold found at Zimbabwe 221

Fragments of Pottery Blow-pipes from Furnace 222

Metzwandira 249

Chief’s Iron Sceptre, and Iron Razor 253

Rock near Makori Post Station 254

Knitted Bag 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 Mazoe 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 304

Wooden Bowl from Musungaikwa’s Kraal 305

Makalanga Iron Smelting Furnace 308

Goatskin Bellows and Blow-pipe for Iron Smelting 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 328

Bushman Drawings near ’Mtoko’s Kraal 332, 333

Mangwendi’s Kraal 338

Bushman Drawings from Nyanger Rock 345

Chipunza’s Kraal 349

Decorated Post 358

PART I

ON THE ROAD TO THE RUINS

CHAPTER I

THE JOURNEY UP BY THE KALAHARI DESERT ROUTE

In a volume devoted to the ruined cities of Mashonaland I am loth to

introduce remarks in narrative form relating how we got to them and how

we got away. Still, however, the incidents of our journeyings to and

fro offer certain features which may be interesting from an

anthropological point of view. The study of the natives and their

customs occupied our leisure moments when not digging at Zimbabwe or

travelling too fast, and a record of what we saw amongst them, comes

legitimately, I think, within the scope of our expedition.

For the absence of narrative of sport in these pages I feel it hardly

necessary to apologise. So much has been done in this line by the

colossal Nimrods who have visited South Africa that any trifling

experiences we may have had in this direction are not worth the

telling. My narrative is, therefore, entirely confined to the ruins and

the people; on other South African subjects I do not pretend to speak

with any authority whatsoever.

Three societies subscribed liberally to our expedition—namely, the

Royal Geographical Society, the British Chartered Company of South

Africa, and the British Association for the Advancement of

Science—without which aid I could never have undertaken a journey of

such proportions; and to the officers of the Chartered Company, with

whom we naturally came much in contact, I cannot tender thanks

commensurate with their kindness; to their assistance, especially in

the latter part of our journey, when we had parted company with our

waggons and our comforts, we owe the fact that we were able to

penetrate into unexplored parts of the country without let or

hindrance, and without more discomforts than naturally arise from

incidents of travel.

Serious doubts as to the advisability of a lady undertaking such a

journey were frequently brought before us at the outset; fortified,

however, by previous experience in Persia, Asia Minor, and the Greek

Islands, we hardly gave these doubts more than a passing thought, and

the event proved that they were wholly unnecessary. My wife was the

only one of our party who escaped fever, never having a day’s illness

during the whole year that we were away from home. She was able to take

a good many photographs under circumstances of exceptional difficulty,

and instead of being, as was prophesied, a burden to the expedition,

she furthered its interests and contributed to its ultimate success in

more ways than one.

Mr. Robert McNair Wilson Swan accompanied us in the capacity of

cartographer; to him I owe not only the plans which illustrate this

volume, but also much kindly assistance in all times of difficulty.

We three left England at the end of January 1891, and returned to it

again at the end of January 1892, having accomplished a record rare in

African travel, and of which we are justly proud—namely, that no root

of bitterness sprang up amongst us.

We bought two waggons, thirty-six oxen, and heaps of tinned provisions

at Kimberley. These we conveyed by train to Vryberg, in Bechuanaland,

which place we left on March 6. An uninteresting and uneventful ‘trek’

of a week brought us to Mafeking, where we had to wait some time, owing

to a deluge of rain, and from this point I propose to commence the

narrative of my observations.

Bechuanaland is about as big as France, and a country which has been

gradually coming under the sphere of British influence since Sir

Charles Warren’s campaign, and which in a very few years must of

necessity be absorbed into the embryo empire which Mr. Cecil Rhodes

hopes to build up from the Lakes to Cape Town. At present there are

three degrees of intensity of British influence in Bechuanaland in

proportion to the proximity to headquarters—firstly, the Crown colony

to the south, with its railway, its well-to-do settlements at Taungs,

Vryberg, and Mafeking, and with its native chiefs confined within

certain limits; secondly, the British protectorate to the north of this

over such chiefs as Batuen, Pilan, Linchwe, and Sechele, extending

vaguely to the west into the Kalahari Desert, and bounded by the

Limpopo River and the Dutchmen on the east; thirdly, the independent

dominions of the native chief Khama, who rules over a vast territory to

the north, and whose interests are entirely British, for with their

assistance only can he hope to resist the attacks of his inveterate foe

King Lobengula of Matabeleland.

Two roads through Bechuanaland to Mashonaland were open to us from

Mafeking: the shorter one is by the river, which, after the rains, is

muddy and fever-stricken; the other is longer and less frequented; it

passes through a corner of the Kalahari Desert, and had the additional

attraction of taking us through the capitals of all the principal

chiefs: consequently, we unhesitatingly chose it, and it is this which

I now propose to describe.

We may dismiss the Crown colony of Bechuanaland with a few words. It

differs little from any other such colony in South Africa, and the

natives and their chiefs have little or no identity left to them. Even

the once famous Montsoia, chief of the Ba-rolongs of Mafeking, has sunk

into the lowest depths of servile submission; he receives a monthly

pension of 25l., which said sum he always puts under his pillow and

sleeps upon; he is avaricious in his old age, and dropsical, and

surrounded by women who delight to wrap their swarthy frames in gaudy

garments from Europe. He is nominally a Christian, and has been made an

F.O.S., or Friend of Ally Sloper, and, as the latter title is more in

accordance with his tastes, he points with pride to the diploma which

hangs on the walls of his hut.

From Mafeking to Kanya, the capital of Batuen, chief of the

Ba-Ngwatetse tribe, is about eighty miles. At first the road is

treeless, until the area is reached where terminates the cutting down

of timber for the support of the diamond mines at Kimberley, a process

which has denuded all southern Bechuanaland of trees, and is gradually

creeping north. The rains were not over when we started, and we found

the road saturated with moisture; and in two days, near the Ramatlabama

River, our progress was just one mile, in which distance our waggons

had to be unloaded and dug out six times. But Bechuanaland dries

quickly, and in a fortnight after this we had nothing to drink but

concentrated mud, which made our tea and coffee so similar that it was

impossible to tell the difference.

On one occasion during our midday halt we had all our oxen inoculated

with the virus of the lung sickness, for this fatal malady was then

raging in Khama’s country. Our waggons were placed side by side, and

with an ingenious contrivance of thongs our conductor and driver

managed to fasten the plunging animals by the horns, whilst a string

steeped in the virus was passed with a needle through their tails.

Sometimes after this process the tails swell and fall off; and up

country a tailless ox has a value peculiarly his own. It is always

rather a sickly time for the poor beasts, but as we only lost two out

of thirty-six from this disease we voted inoculation successful.

I think Kanya is the first place where one realises that one is in

savage Africa. Though it is under British protection it is only

nominally so, to prevent the Boers from appropriating it. Batuen, the

chief, is still supreme, and, like his father, Gasetsive, he is greatly

under missionary influence. He has stuck up a notice on the roadside at

the entrance to the town in Sechuana, the language of the country,

Dutch, and English, which runs as follows: ‘I, Batuen, chief of

Ba-Ngwatetse, hereby give notice to my people, and all other people,

that no waggons shall enter or leave Kanya on Sunday. Signed, September

28th, 1889.’ If any one transgresses this law Batuen takes an ox from

each span, a transaction in which piety and profit go conveniently hand

in hand.

Kanya is pleasantly situated amongst low hills well clad with trees. It

is a collection of huts divided into circular kraals hedged in with

palisades, four to ten huts being contained in each enclosure. These

are again contained in larger enclosures, forming separate communities,

each governed by its hereditary sub-chief, with its kotla or parliament

circle in its midst. On the summit of the hill many acres are covered

with these huts, and there are also many in the valley below. Certain

roughly-constructed walls run round the hill, erected when the Boers

threatened an invasion; but now these little difficulties are past, and

Batuen limits his warlike tendencies to quarrelling with his neighbours

on the question of a border line, a subject which never entered their

heads before the British influence came upon them.

All ordinary matters of government and justice are discussed in the

large kotla before the chief’s own hut; but big questions, such as the

border question, are discussed at large tribal gatherings in the open

veldt. There was to be one of these gatherings of Batuen’s tribe near

Kanya on the following Monday, and we regretted not being able to stop

and witness so interesting a ceremony.

The town is quite one of the largest in Bechuanaland, and presents a

curious appearance on the summit of the hill. The kotla is about 200

feet in diameter, with shady trees in it, beneath which the monarch

sits to dispense justice. We passed an idle afternoon therein, watching

with interest the women of Batuen’s household, naked save for a skin

loosely thrown around them, lying on rugs before the palace, and

teaching the children to dance to the sound of their weird music, and

making the air ring with their merry laughter. In one corner Batuen’s

slaves were busy filling his granaries with maize just harvested. His

soldiers paraded in front of his house, and kept their suspicious eyes

upon us as we sat; many of them were quaintly dressed in red coats,

which once had been worn by British troops, and soft hats with ostrich

feathers in them, whilst their black legs were bare.

Ma-Batuen, the chief’s mother, received us somewhat coldly when we

penetrated into her hut; she is the chief widow of old Gasetsive,

Batuen’s father, a noted warrior in his day. The Sechuana tribes have

very funny ideas about death, and never, if possible, let a man die

inside his hut; if he does accidentally behave so indiscreetly they

pull down the wall at the back to take the corpse out, as it must never

go out by the ordinary door, and the hut is usually abandoned.

Gasetsive died in his own house, so the wall had to be pulled down, and

it has never been repaired, and is abandoned. Batuen built himself a

new palace, with a hut for his chief wife on his right, and a hut for

his mother on the left. His father’s funeral was a grand affair; all

the tribe assembled to lament the loss of their warrior chief, and he

was laid to rest in a lead coffin in the midst of his kotla. The

superstitious of the tribe did not approve of the coffin, and imagine

that the soul may still be there making frantic efforts to escape.

All the Ba-Ngwatetse are soldiers, and belong to certain regiments or

years. When a lot of the youths are initiated together into the tribal

mysteries generally the son of a chief is amongst them, and he takes

the command of the regiment. In the old ostrich-feather days Kanya was

an important trading station, but now there is none of this, and

inasmuch as it is off the main road north, it is not a place of much

importance from a white man’s point of view, and boasts only of one

storekeeper and one missionary, both men of great importance in the

place.

After Kanya the character of the scenery alters, and you enter an

undulating country thickly wooded, and studded here and there with red

granite kopjes, or gigantic boulders set in rich green vegetation,

looking for all the world like pre-Raphaelite Italian pictures. Beneath

a long kopje, sixteen miles from Kanya, nestles Masoupa, the capital of

a young chief, the son of Pilan, who was an important man in his day,

and broke off from his own chief Linchwe, bringing his followers with

him to settle in the Ba-Ngwatetse country as a sort of sub-chief with

nominal independence; it is a conglomeration of bee-hive huts, many of

them overgrown with gourds, difficult to distinguish from the mass of

boulders around them. When we arrived at Masoupa a dance was going on—a

native Sechuana dance—in consequence of the full moon and the

rejoicings incident on an abundant harvest. In the kotla some forty or

more men had formed a circle, and were jumping round and round to the

sound of music. Evidently it was an old war dance degenerated; the

sugar-cane took the place of the assegai, many black legs were clothed

in trousers, and many black shoulders now wore coats; but there are

still left as relics of the past the ostrich feather in the hat, the

fly whisk of horse, jackal, or other tail, the iron skin-scraper round

the neck, which represents the pocket-handkerchief amongst the Kaffirs

with which to remove perspiration; the flute with one or two holes, out

of which each man seems to produce a different sound; and around the

group of dancing men old women still circulate, as of yore, clapping

their withered hands and encouraging festivity. It was a sight of

considerable picturesqueness amid the bee-hive huts and tall

overhanging rocks.

Masoupa was once the residence of a missionary, but the church is now

abandoned and falling into ruins, because when asked to repair the

edifice at their own expense the men of Masoupa waxed wroth, and

replied irreverently that God might repair His own house; and one old

man who received a blanket for his reward for attending divine service

is reported to have remarked, when the dole was stopped, ‘No more

blanket, no more hallelujah.’ I fear me the men of Masoupa are wedded

to heathendom.

The accession of Pilan to the chiefdom of Masoupa is a curious instance

of the Sechuana marriage laws. A former chief’s heir was affianced

young; he died at the age of eight, before succeeding his father, and,

according to custom, the next brother, Moshulilla, married the woman;

their son was Pilan, who, on coming of age, turned out his own father,

being, as he said, the rightful heir of the boy of eight, for whom he,

Moshulilla, the younger brother, had been instrumental in raising up

seed. There is a distinct touch of Hebraic, probably Semitic, law in

this, as there is in many another Sechuana custom.

The so-called purchase of a wife is curious enough in Bechuanaland. The

intending husband brings with him the number of bullocks he thinks the

girl is worth; wisely, he does not offer all his stock at once, leaving

two or more, as the case may be, at a little distance, for he knows the

father will haggle and ask for an equivalent for the girl’s keep during

childhood, whereupon he will send for another bullock; then the mother

will come forward and demand something for lactation and other maternal

offices, and another bullock will have to be produced before the

contract can be ratified. In reality this apparent purchase of the wife

is not so barefaced a thing as it seems, for she is not a negotiable

article and cannot again be sold; in case of divorce her value has to

be paid back, and her children, if the purchase is not made, belong to

her own family. Hence a woman who is not properly bought is in the

condition of a slave, whereas her purchased sister has rights which

assure her a social standing.

From Pilan’s the northward road becomes hideous again, and may

henceforward be said to be in the desert region of the Kalahari. This

desert is not the waste of sand and rock we are accustomed to imagine a

desert should be, but a vast undulating expanse of country covered with

timber—the mimosa, or camel thorn, the mapani bush, and others which

reach the water with their roots, though there are no ostensible water

sources above ground.

The Kalahari is inhabited sparsely by a wild tribe known as the

Ba-kalahari, of kindred origin to the bushmen, whom the Dutch term

Vaal-pens, or ‘Fallow-paunches,’ to distinguish them from the darker

races. Their great skill is in finding water, and in dry seasons they

obtain it by suction through a reed inserted into the ground, the

results being spat into a gourd and handed to the thirsty traveller to

drink. Khama, Sechele, and Batuen divide this vast desert between them;

how far west it goes is unknown; wild animals rapidly becoming extinct

elsewhere abound therein. It is a vast limbo of uncertainty, which will

necessarily become British property when Bechuanaland is definitely

annexed; possibly with a system of artesian wells the water supply may

be found adequate, and it may yet have a future before it when the rest

of the world is filled to overflowing.

We saw a few of these children of the desert in our progress

northwards; they are timid and diffident in the extreme, always

avoiding the haunts of the white man, and always wandering hither and

thither where rain and water may be found. On their shoulders they

carry a bark quiver filled with poisoned arrows to kill their game.

They produce fire by dexterously rubbing two sticks together to make a

spark. At nightfall they cut grass and branches to make a shelter from

the wind; they eat snakes, tortoises, and roots which they dig up with

sharp bits of wood, and the contents of their food bags is revolting to

behold. They pay tribute in kind to the above-mentioned chiefs—skins,

feathers, tusks, or the mahatla berries used for making beer—and if

these things are not forthcoming they take a fine-grown boy and present

him to the chief as his slave.

Sechele is the chief of the Ba-quaina, or children of the quaina, or

crocodile. Their siboko, or tribal object of veneration, is the

crocodile, which animal they will not kill or touch under any

provocation whatsoever. The Ba-quaina are one of the most powerful of

the Bechuanaland feud tribes, and it often occurred to me, Can the name

Bechuanaland, for which nobody can give a satisfactory derivation, and

of which the natives themselves are entirely ignorant, be a corruption

of this name? There have been worse corruptions perpetrated by Dutch

and English pioneers in savage lands, and Ba-quainaland would have a

derivation, whereas Bechuanaland has none.

Sechele’s capital is on the hills above the river Molopolole, quite a

flourishing place, or rather group of places, on a high hill, with a

curious valley or kloof beneath it, where the missionary settlement is

by the river banks. Many villages of daub huts are scattered over the

hills amongst the red boulders and green vegetation. In the largest, in

quite a European-looking house, Sechele lives. Once this house was

fitted up for him in European style; it contained a glass chandelier, a

sideboard, a gazogene, and a table. In those days Sechele was a good

man, and was led by his wife to church; but, alas! this good lady died,

and her place was supplied by a rank heathen, who would have none of

her predecessor’s innovations. Now Sechele is very old and very

crippled, and he lies amid the wreck of all his European grandeur;

chandelier, sideboard, gazogene, are all in ruins like himself, and he

is as big a heathen and as big a sinner as ever wore a crown. So much

for the influence of women over their husbands, even when they are

black.

Sebele, the heir apparent, does all the executive work of the country

now, and the old man is left at home to chew his sugar-cane and smoke

his pipe. Around the villages and in the hollow below the native

gardens or fields are very fertile; maize, kaffir corn, sugar-cane,

grow here in abundance, and out of the tall reeds black women came

running to look at us as we passed by, whose daily duty it is at this

season of the year to act as scarecrows, and save their crops from the

birds. Beneath the corn and mealies they grow gourds and beans, and

thereby thoroughly exhaust the soil, which, after a season or two, is

left fallow for a while; and if the ground becomes too bad around a

town they think nothing of moving their abodes elsewhere, a town being

rarely established in one place for more than fifty years.

From Sechele’s town to Khama’s old capital, Shoshong, is a weary

journey of over a hundred and thirty miles through the Kalahari Desert,

and through that everlasting bush of mimosa thorn, which rose like

impenetrable walls on either side of us. Along this road there is

hardly any rising ground; hence it is impossible to see anything for

more than a few yards around one, unless one is willing to brave the

dangers of penetrating the bush, returning to the camp with tattered

garments and ruffled temper, if return you can, for when only a few

yards from camp it is quite possible to become hopelessly lost, and

many are the stories of deaths and disappearances in this way, and of

days of misery spent by travellers in this bush without food or

shelter, unable to retrace their steps. The impenetrableness of this

jungle in some places is almost unbelievable: the bushes of

‘wait-a-bit’ thorn are absolutely impossible to get through; every tree

of every description about here seems armed by nature with its own

defence, and lurking in the grass is the ‘grapple plant,’ the

Harpagophytum procumbens, whose crablike claws tear the skin in a most

painfully subtle way. The mimosas of many different species which form

the bulk of the trees in this bush are also terribly thorny; the Dutch

call them camel thorns, because the giraffes, or, as they call them,

the camel leopards, feed thereon. Why the Dutch should be so perverse

in the naming of animals I never can discover; to them the hyæna is the

wolf, the leopard is the tiger, the kori-bustard is the peacock, and

many similar anomalies occur.

The botanist or the naturalist might here enjoy every hour of his day.

The flowers are lovely, and animal life is here seen in many

unaccustomed forms, there are the quaint, spire-like ant-hills tapering

to pinnacles of fifteen feet in height; the clustered nests of the

‘family bird,’ where hundreds live together in a sort of exaggerated

honeycomb; the huge yellow and black spiders, which weave their webs

from tree to tree of material like the fresh silk of the silkworm,

which, with the dew and the morning sun upon it, looks like a gauze

curtain suspended in the air. There are, too, the deadly puff adders,

the night adders, and things creeping innumerable, the green tree snake

stealthily moving like a coil of fresh-cut grass; and wherever there is

a rocky kopje you are sure to hear at nightfall the hideous screams of

the baboons, coupled with the laugh of the jackal. But if you are not a

naturalist these things pall upon you after the sensation has been oft

repeated, and this was the case with us.

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 only a muddy vley, or pond,

trampled by the hoofs of many oxen. These cattle stations are generally

large circular enclosures surrounded by a palisade, with a tree in the

middle, beneath which the inhabitants sit stitching at their carosses,

or skin rugs, in splendid nudity. All manner of skins hang around;

hunks of meat in process of drying; hide thongs are fastened from

branch to branch like spiders’ webs, which they stretch on the branches

to make ‘reims’ for waggon harness; consequently the air is not too

fragrant, and the flies an insupportable nuisance.

One evening we reached one of these kraals after dark, and a weird and

picturesque sight it was. Having penetrated through the outer hedge,

where the cattle were housed for the night, we reached inner enclosures

occupied by the families and their huts. They sat crouching over their

fires, eating their evening meal of porridge, thrusting long sticks

into the pot, and transferring the stiff paste to their mouths. In

spite of the chilliness of the evening, they were naked, save for a

loin-cloth and their charms and amulets. A man stood near, playing on

an instrument like a bow with one string, with a gourd attached to

bring out the sound. He played it with a bit of wood, and the strains

were plaintive, if not sweet.

Another night we reached a pond called Selynia, famed all the country

round, and a great point of rendezvous for hunters who are about to

penetrate the desert. In this pond we intended to do great things in

the washing line, and tarry a whole day for this purpose; but it was

another disappointment to add to the many we had experienced on this

road, for it was nothing but a muddy puddle trampled by oxen, from

which we had difficulty in extracting enough liquid to fill our

barrels. Needless to say, we did not stay for our proposed washing day,

but hurried on.

It was a great relief to reach the hills of Shoshong, the larger trees,

the cactus-like euphorbia, and the richer vegetation, after the long

flat stretch of waterless bush-covered desert, and we were just now

within the tropic of Capricorn. The group of hills is considerable,

reaching an elevation of about 800 feet, and with interesting views

from the summits. In a deep ravine amongst these hills lie the ruins of

the town of Shoshong, the quondam capital of the chief Khama and the

Ba-mangwato tribe. It is an interesting illustration of the migratory

spirit of the race. The question of moving had long been discussed by

Khama and his head men, but the European traders and missionaries at

Shoshong thought it would never take place. They built themselves

houses and stores, and lived contentedly.

Suddenly, one day, now three years ago, without any prefatory warning,

Khama gave orders for the move, and the exodus commenced on the

following morning. The rich were exhorted to lend their waggons and

their beasts of burden to the poor. Each man helped his neighbour, and,

in two months, 15,000 individuals were located in their new home at

Palapwe, about sixty miles away, where water is plentiful and the soil

exceedingly rich. Thus was Shoshong abandoned. Scarcity of water was

the immediate cause of the migration, for there was only one slender

stream to water the whole community, and whole rows of women with their

jars would stand for hours awaiting their turn to fill them from the

source up the valley, which in the dry season barely trickled.

Everything was arranged by Khama in the most beautiful manner. He and

his head men had been over at Palapwe for some time, and had arranged

the allotments, so that every one on his arrival went straight to the

spot appointed, built his hut, and surrounded it with a palisade. Not a

murmur or a dispute arose amongst them. In reality it was the knowledge

of British support which enabled Khama to carry out this plan.

Shoshong, in its rocky ravine, is admirably situated for protection

from the Matabele raids. When a rumour of the enemy’s approach was

received, the women and children were hurried off with provisions to

the caves above the town, whilst Khama and his soldiers protected the

entrance to the ravine. Palapwe, on the contrary, is open and

indefensible, and would be at once exposed to the raids of Lobengula

were it not for the camp of the Bechuanaland Border Police at

Macloutsie, and the openly avowed support of Great Britain.

The desolate aspect of the ruined town, as seen to-day, is exceedingly

odd. The compounds or enclosures are all thickly overgrown with the

castor-oil plant. The huts have, in most cases, tumbled in; some show

only walls, with the chequered and diaper patterns still on them so

beloved by the inhabitants of Bechuanaland; others are mere skeleton

huts, with only the framework left. The poles which shut in the cattle

kraals have, in many instances, sprouted, and present the appearance of

curious circular groves dedicated to some deity. The brick houses of

European origin are the most lasting, the old stores and abodes of

traders, but even these can now hardly be approached by reason of the

thick thorn bushes which, in so short a space of time, have grown up

around them. Far up the ravine is the missionary’s house, itself a ruin

overlooking the ruined town. Baboons, and owls, and vicious wasps now

inhabit the rooms where Moffat lived and Livingstone stayed. There is

not a vestige of human life now to be seen within miles of Shoshong,

which was, three years ago, the capital of one of the most enlightened

chiefs of South Africa.

I must say I looked forward with great interest to seeing a man with so

wide a reputation for integrity and enlightenment as Khama has in South

Africa. Somehow, one’s spirit of scepticism is on the alert on such

occasions, especially when a negro is the case in point; and I candidly

admit that I advanced towards Palapwe fully prepared to find the chief

of the Ba-mangwato a rascal and a hypocrite, and that I left his

capital, after a week’s stay there, one of his most fervent admirers.

Not only has Khama himself established his reputation for honesty, but

he is supposed to have inoculated all his people with the same virtue.

No one is supposed to steal in Khama’s country. He regulates the price

of the goat you buy; and the milk vendor dare not ask more than the

regulation price, nor can you get it for less. One evening, on our

journey from Shoshong to Palapwe, we passed a loaded waggon by the

roadside with no one to guard it save a dog; and surely, we thought,

such confidence as this implies a security for property rare enough in

South Africa.

The aspect of Palapwe is very pleasant. Fine timber covers the hill

slopes. A large grassy square, shaded by trees, and with a stream

running through it, has been devoted to the outspanning of the many

waggons which pass through here. There are as yet but few of those

detestable corrugated-iron houses, for the Europeans have wisely

elected to dwell in daub huts, like the natives. Scattered far and wide

are the clusters of huts in their own enclosures, governed by their

respective indunas.

High up on the hillside Khama has allotted the choicest spot of all to

his spiritual and political adviser, Mr. Hepburn, the missionary. From

here a lovely view extends over mountain and plain, over granite kopje

and the meandering river-bed, far away into the blue distance and the

Kalahari. Behind the mission house is a deep ravine, thick set with

tropical vegetation, through which a stream runs, called Fotofoto,

which at the head of the gorge leaps over steep rocks, and forms a

lovely cascade of well-nigh a hundred feet; behind the ravine, on the

rocky heights, baboons and other wild animals still linger, perturbed

in mind, no doubt, at this recent occupation of their paradise.

Everything in Khama’s town is conducted with the rigour—one might

almost say bigotry—of religious enthusiasm. The chief conducts in

person native services, twice every Sunday, in his large round kotla,

at which he expects a large attendance. He stands beneath the

traditional tree of justice, and the canopy of heaven, quite in a

patriarchal style. He has a system of espionage by which he learns the

names of those who do not keep Sunday properly, and he punishes them

accordingly. He has already collected 3,000l. for a church which is to

be built at Palapwe.

The two acts, however, which more than anything else display the power

of the man, and perhaps his intolerance, are these. Firstly, he forbids

all his subjects to make or drink beer. Any one who knows the love of a

Kaffir for his porridge-like beer, and his occasional orgies, will

realise what a power one man must have to stop this in a whole tribe.

Even the missionaries have remonstrated with him on this point,

representing the measure as too strong; but he replies, ‘Beer is the

source of all quarrels and disputes. I will stop it.’ Secondly, he has

put a stop altogether to the existence of witch doctors and their craft

throughout all the Ba-mangwato—another instance of his force of will,

when one considers that the national religion of the Sechuana is merely

a belief in the existence of good and bad spirits which haunt them and

act on their lives. All members of other neighbouring tribes are

uncomfortable if they are not charmed by their witch doctor every two

or three days.

Like the other Bechuana tribes, the Ba-mangwato have a totem which they

once revered. Theirs is the duyker, a sort of roebuck; and Khama’s

father, old Sikkome, would not so much as step on a duyker-skin. Khama

will now publicly eat a steak of that animal to encourage his men to

shake off their belief. In manner the chief is essentially a gentleman,

courteous and dignified. He rides a good deal, and prides himself on

his stud. On one occasion he did what I doubt if every English

gentleman would do. He sold a horse for a high price, which died a few

days afterwards, whereupon Khama returned the purchase money,

considering that the illness had been acquired previous to the purchase

taking place. On his waggons he has painted in English, ‘Khama, Chief

of the Ba-mangwato.’ They say he understands a great deal of our

tongue, but he never trusts himself to speak it, always using an

interpreter.

An instance of Khama’s system of discipline came under our notice

during our stay at Palapwe. Attracted by the sound of bugles, I

repaired very early one morning to the kotla, and there saw men in all

sorts of quaint dresses, with arms, and spades, and picks, mustering to

the number of about 200. On enquiry, I was told that it was a regiment

which had misbehaved and displeased the chief in some way. The

punishment he inflicted on them was this: that for a given period they

were to assemble every day and go and work in the fields, opening out

new land for the people. There is something Teutonic in Khama’s

imperial discipline, but the Bechuana are made of different stuff to

the Germans. They are by nature peaceful and mild, a race with strong

pastoral habits, who have lived for years in dread of Matabele raids;

consequently their respect for a chief like Khama—who has actually on

one occasion repulsed the foe, and who has established peace,

prosperity, and justice in all his borders—is unbounded, and his word

is law.

Khama pervades everything in his town. He is always on horseback,

visiting the fields, the stores, and the outlying kraals. He has a word

for every one; he calls every woman ‘my daughter,’ and every man ‘my

son;’ he pats the little children on the head. He is a veritable father

of his people, a curious and unaccountable outcrop of mental power and

integrity amongst a degraded and powerless race. His early history and

struggles with his father and brothers are thrilling in the extreme,

and his later development extraordinary. Perhaps he may be said to be

the only negro living whose biography would repay the writing.

The blending of two sets of ideas, the advance of the new and the

remains of the old, are curiously conspicuous at Palapwe, and perhaps

the women illustrate this better than the men. On your evening walk you

may meet the leading black ladies of the place, parasol in hand, with

hideous dresses of gaudy cottons, hats with flowers and feathers, and

displaying as they walk the airs and graces of self-consciousness. A

little further on you meet the women of the lower orders returning from

the fields, with baskets on their heads filled with green pumpkins,

bright yellow mealy pods, and rods of sugar cane. A skin caross is

thrown over their shoulders, and the rest of their mahogany-coloured

bodies is nude, save for a leopard-skin loin-cloth, and armlets and

necklaces of bright blue beads. Why is it that civilisation is

permitted to destroy all that is picturesque? Surely we, of the

nineteenth century, have much to answer for in this respect, and the

missionaries who teach races, accustomed to nudity by heredity, that it

is a good and proper thing to wear clothes are responsible for three

evils—firstly, the appearance of lung diseases amongst them; secondly,

the spread of vermin amongst them; and thirdly, the disappearance from

amongst them of inherent and natural modesty.

It had been arranged that on our departure from Palapwe we should take

twenty-five of Khama’s men to act as excavators at the ruins of

Zimbabwe. One morning, at sunrise, when we were just rising from our

waggons, and indulging in our matutinal yawns, Khama’s arrival was

announced. The chief walked in front, dignified and smart, dressed in

well-made boots, trousers with a correct seam down each side, an

irreproachable coat, a billycock hat, and gloves. If Khama has a vice

it is that of dress, and, curiously enough, this vice has developed

more markedly in his son and heir, who is to all intents and purposes a

black masher and nothing else. Khama is a neatly-made, active man of

sixty, who might easily pass for twenty years younger; his face

sparkles with intelligence; he is, moreover, shrewd, and looks

carefully after the interests of his people, who in days scarcely yet

gone by have been wretchedly cheated by unscrupulous traders. Behind

him, in a long line, walked the twenty-five men that he proposed to

place at our disposal, strangely enough dressed in what might be termed

the ‘transition style.’ Ostrich feathers adorned all their hats. One

wore a short cutaway coat, which came down to the small of his back,

and nothing else. Another considered himself sufficiently garbed with a

waistcoat and a fly whisk. They formed a curious collection of

humanity, and all twenty-five sat down in a row at a respectful

distance, whilst we parleyed with the chief. Luckily for us our

negotiations fell through owing to the difficulties of transport; and,

on inspection, I must say I felt doubtful as to their capabilities.

Away from the influence of their chief, and in a strange country, I

feel sure they would have given us endless trouble.

We left Khama and his town with regret on our journey northwards. A few

miles below Palapwe we crossed the Lotsani River, a series of

semi-stagnant pools, even after the rainy season, many of which pools

were gay just then with the lotus or blue water lily (Nymphæa

stellata). The water percolates through the sand, which has almost

silted it up, and a little further on we came across what they call a

‘sand river.’ Not a trace of water is to be seen in the sandy bed, but,

on digging down a few feet, you come across it.

The future colonisation and development of this part of Bechuanaland is

dependent on the question of water, pure and simple. If artesian wells

can be sunk, if water can be stored in reservoirs, something may be

done; but, at present, even the few inhabitants of Khama’s country are

continually plunged in misery from drought.

North of Palapwe we met but few inhabitants, and, after passing the

camp of the Bechuanaland Border Police at Macloutsie, we entered what

is known as the ‘debatable country,’ between the territories of Khama

and Lobengula, and claimed by both. It is, at present, uninhabited and

unproductive, flat and uninteresting, and continues as far as Fort

Tuli, on the Shashi River, after crossing which we entered the country

which comes under the direct influence of Lobengula, the vaguely

defined territory which under the name of Mashonaland is now governed

by the Chartered Company.

CHAPTER II

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 narrative. Besides our

excavations and examinations into the ruins of a past civilisation, the

treatment of which is necessarily dry and special, and, for the benefit

of those who care not about such things, has been, as far as possible,

confined within the limits of Part II., we had ample time for studying

the race which now inhabits the country, inasmuch as we employed over

fifty of them during our excavations at Zimbabwe, and during our

subsequent wanderings we had them as bearers, and we were brought into

intimate relationship with most of their chiefs. The Chartered Company

throughout the whole of this period kept us supplied with interpreters

of more or less intelligence, who greatly facilitated our intercourse

with the natives, and as time went by a certain portion of the language

found its way into our own brains, which was an assistance to us in

guiding conversations and checking romance.

All the people and tribes around Zimbabwe, down to the Sabi River and

north to Fort Charter—and this is the most populous part of the whole

country—call themselves by one name, though they are divided into many

tribes, and that name is Makalanga. In answer to questions as to

nationality they invariably call themselves Makalangas, in

contradistinction to the Shangans, who inhabit the east side of the

Sabi River. ‘You will find many Makalangas there,’ ‘A Makalanga is

buried there,’ and so on. The race is exceedingly numerous, and certain

British and Dutch pioneers have given them various names, such as

Banyai and Makàlaka, which latter they imagine to be a Zulu term of

reproach for a limited number of people who act as slaves and herdsmen

for the Matabele down by the Shashi and Lundi Rivers. I contend that

all these people call themselves Makalángas, and that their land should

by right be called Makalangaland.

In this theory, formed on the spot from intercourse with the natives, I

was glad to find afterwards that I am ably supported by the Portuguese

writer Father dos Santos, to whom frequent allusion will be made in

these pages. He says, ‘The Monomatapa and all his vassals are

Mocarangas, a name which they have because they live in the land of

Mocaranga, and talk the language called Mocaranga, which is the best

and most polished of all Kaffir languages which I have seen in this

Ethiopia.’ Couto, another Portuguese writer, bears testimony to the

same point, and every one knows the tendency of the Portuguese to

substitute r for l. Umtali is called by the Portuguese Umtare; [1]

‘blanco’ is ‘branco’ in Portuguese, and numerous similar instances

could be adduced; hence with this small Portuguese variant the names

are identical. Father Torrend, in his late work on this part of the

country, states, ‘The Karanga certainly have been for centuries the

paramount tribe of the vast empire of Monomatapa,’ and the best

derivation that suggests itself is the initial Ma or Ba, ‘children,’

ka, ‘of,’ langa, ‘the sun.’ They are an Abantu race, akin to the Zulus,

only a weaker branch whose day is over. Several tribes of Bakalanga

came into Natal in 1720, forced down by the powerful Zulu hordes, with

traditions of having once formed a part of a powerful tribe further

north. Three centuries and a half ago, when the Portuguese first

visited the country, they were then all-powerful in this country, and

were ruled over by a chief with the dynastic name of Monomatapa, which

community split up, like all Kaffir combinations do after a generation

or so, into a hopeless state of disintegration. [2] Each petty chief

still has his high-sounding dynastic name, like the Monomatapa or the

Pharaoh of his day. Chibi, M’tegeza, M’toko, and countless lesser names

are as hereditary as the chiefdoms themselves, and each chief, as he

succeeds, drops his own identity and takes the tribal appellative.

Such, briefly, is the political aspect of the country we are about to

enter.

This is a strange, weird country to look upon, and after the flat

monotony of Bechuanaland a perfect paradise. The granite hills are so

oddly fantastic in their forms; the deep river-beds so richly luxuriant

in their wealth of tropical vegetation; the great baobab trees, the

elephants of the vegetable world, so antediluvian in their aspect. Here

one would never be surprised to come across the roc’s egg of Sindbad or

the golden valley of Rasselas; the dreams of the old Arabian

story-tellers here seem to have a reality.

Our first real intercourse with the natives was at a lovely spot called

Inyamanda, where we ‘outspanned’ on a small plain surrounded by domed

granite kopjes, near the summit of one of which is a cluster of

villages.

Here we unpacked our beads and our cloth, and commenced African trading

in real earnest; what money we had we put away in our boxes, and never

wanted it again during our stay in the country. The naked natives

swarmed around us like flies, with grain, flour, sour milk, and honey,

which commodities can be acquired for a few beads; but for a sheep they

wanted a blanket, for meat is scarce enough and valuable amongst this

much-raided people. We lost an ox here by one of the many sicknesses

fatal to cattle in this region, and the natives hovered round him like

vultures till the breath was out of his body; they then fell on him and

tore him limb from limb, and commenced their detestable orgy. As one

watched them eat, one could imagine that it is not so many generations

since they emerged from a state of cannibalism.

We found it a tough climb to the villages through the luxuriant verdure

of cactus-like euphorbia, india-rubber tree, the castor-oil, and acacia

with lovely red flowers. At an elevation of five hundred feet above our

waggons were the mud huts of the people, and up here every night they

drive their cattle into extraordinary rock stables for safety. Perched

on the rocks are countless circular granaries, constructed of bright

red mud and thatched with grass. One would think that a good storm of

wind would blow them all away, so frail do they seem.

Rounding a corner of the hill we came across a second village, nestling

amongst stupendous boulders, and ascending again a little higher we

reached a third by means of a natural tunnel in the rock, fortified,

despite its inaccessible position, with palisades.

The natives were somewhat shy of us, and fled to rocky eyries from

whence to contemplate us, seated in rows in all sorts of uncomfortable

angles, for all the world like monkeys. They are utterly unaccustomed

to postures of comfort, reclining at night-time on a grass mat on the

hard ground, with their necks resting on a wooden pillow, curiously

carved; they are accustomed to decorate their hair so fantastically

with tufts ornamentally arranged and tied up with beads that they are

afraid of destroying the effect, and hence these pillows.

These pillows are many of them pretty objects, and decorated with

curious patterns, the favourite one being the female breast, and

resting on legs which had evidently been evolved out of the human form.

They bear a close and curious resemblance to the wooden head-rests used

by the Egyptians in their tombs to support the head of the deceased,

specimens of which are seen in the British Museum. They are common all

over Africa, and elsewhere amongst savage tribes where special

attention is paid to the decoration of the hair.

A Makalanga is by nature vain, and particular about the appearance of

his nudity; the ladies have fashions in beads and cloths, like our

ladies at home, and before visiting a fresh kraal our men used to love

to polish themselves like mahogany, by chewing the monkey-nut and

rubbing their skins with it, good-naturedly doing each other’s backs

and inaccessible corners. Somehow they know what becomes them too,

twisting tin ornaments, made from our meat tins, into their black hair.

Just now they will have nothing but red beads with white eyes, which

they thread into necklaces and various ornaments, and which look

uncommonly well on their dark skins; and though it seems somewhat

paradoxical to say so of naked savages, yet I consider no one has

better taste in dress than they have until a hybrid civilisation is

introduced amongst them.

From many of the huts at Inyamanda were hanging their dollasses—wooden

charms, on which are drawn strange figures. Each family possesses a set

of four tied together by a string. Of these four one always has a

curious conventional form of a lizard carved on it; others have battle

axes, diamond patterns, and so forth, invariably repeating themselves,

and the purport of which I was never able to ascertain. They are common

amongst all the Abantu races, and closely bound up with their occult

belief in witchcraft; they are chiefly made of wood, but sometimes neat

little ones of bone are found, a set of which I afterwards obtained.

On the evening of the new moon they will seat themselves in a circle,

and the village witch doctor will go round, tossing each man’s set of

dollasses in the air, and by the way they turn up he will divine the

fortune of the individual for the month that is to come.

There are many odds and ends of interest scattered about a Makalanga

village; there is the drum, from two to four feet in height, covered

with zebra or other skin, platted baskets for straining beer, and

long-handled gourds, with queer diagonal patterns in black done upon

them, which serve as ladles. Most of their domestic implements are made

of wood—wooden pestles and wooden mortars for crushing grain, wooden

spoons and wooden platters often decorated with pretty zigzag patterns.

Natural objects, too, are largely used for personal ornaments. Anklets

and necklaces are made out of mimosa pods; necklaces, really quite

pretty to look upon, are constructed out of chicken bones; birds’ claws

and beaks, and the seeds of various plants, are constantly employed for

the same purpose. Grass is neatly woven into chaplets, and a Makalanga

is never satisfied unless he has a strange bird’s feather stuck

jauntily in his woolly locks.

Never shall I forget the view from the summit of Inyamanda Rock over

the country ruled over by the chief Matipi; the horizon is cut by

countless odd-peaked kopjes, some like spires, some like domes, grey

and weird, rising out of rich vegetation, getting bluer and bluer in

the far distance, and there is always something indescribably rich

about the blueness of an African distance. As we descended we passed a

wide-spreading tree hung with rich yellow maize pods drying in the sun.

Here, too, the bright coral red flowers of the Erythrina kaffra were

just coming out. Richness of colour seemed to pervade everything.

It was immediately on crossing the Lundi River, the threshold of the

country as it were, that we were introduced to the first of the long

series of ancient ruins which formed the object of our quest. By

diligent search amongst the gigantic remains at Zimbabwe we were able

to repeople this country with a race highly civilised in far distant

ages, a race far advanced in the art of building and decorating, a

gold-seeking race who occupied it like a garrison in the midst of an

enemy’s country. Surely Africa is a mysterious and awe-inspiring

continent, and now in the very heart of it has been found work for the

archæologist, almost the very last person who a short time ago would

have thought of penetrating its vast interior. Quid novi ex Africa?

will not be an obsolete phrase for many generations yet to come.

The Lundi River was the only one of the great rivers which flow through

this portion of the country which gave us any real trouble. Our waggons

had to be unloaded and our effects carried across in a boat, and the

waggons dragged through the rushing stream by both teams of oxen; it

was an exciting scene, and the place was crowded with people in the

same condition as ourselves. On reaching the left bank we halted in a

shady spot, and encamped for two days, in order to give our oxen rest

and to study the ruin. It was a very charming spot, with fine rocky

kopjes here and there, rich vegetation, and the dull roar of the fine

stream about fifty feet below us. From one of the kopjes we got a

lovely view up the river, over the thickly wooded flats on either side

and the Bufwa range of mountains beyond.

The country beyond the Lundi is thickly populated, with native villages

perched on rocky heights, many of which we saw as we wended our slow

way through the Naka pass. One hill is inhabited by a tribe of human

beings, the next by a tribe of baboons, and I must say these aborigines

of the country on the face of it seem more closely allied to one

another than they are to the race of white men, who are now

appropriating the territory of both. The natives, living as they do in

their hill-set villages on the top of the granite kopjes, are nimble as

goats, cowardly yet friendly to the white stranger. They are constantly

engaged in intertribal wars, stealing each other’s women and cattle

when opportunity occurs, and never dreaming of uniting against the

common enemy, the Zulu, during whose periodical raids they perch

themselves on the top of their inaccessible rocks, and look down

complacently on the burning of their huts, the pillaging of their

granaries, and the appropriation of their cattle. Under the thick

jungle of trees by the roadside as we passed along we saw many acres

under cultivation for the produce of sweet potatoes, beans, and the

ground or monkey nut (Arachis). They make long neat furrows with their

hoes beneath the trees, the shade of which is necessary for their

crops. They are an essentially industrious race, far more so than the

Kaffirs of our South African colonies. Here the men work in the fields,

leaving the women to make pots, build granaries, and carry water. In

the Colony women are the chief agriculturists.

We spent a long and pleasant day within a few yards of another village

called M’lala in Chibi’s country, also perched on a rocky eminence,

where many objects of interest came before our notice.

Here for the first time we saw the iron furnaces in which the natives

smelt the iron ore they obtain from the neighbouring mountains. This is

a time-honoured industry in Mashonaland. Dos Santos alludes to it in

his description, and so do Arab writers of the ninth and tenth

centuries, as practised by the savages of their day. [3] In Chibi’s

country iron-smelting is a great industry. Here whole villages devote

all their time and energies to it, tilling no land and keeping no

cattle, but exchanging their iron-headed assegais, barbed arrow-heads,

and field tools for grain and such domestic commodities as they may

require. I am told also of villages which, after the same fashion, have

a monopoly of pot-making. This industry is mostly carried on by the

women, who deftly build up with clay, on round stands made for the

purpose, large pots for domestic use, which they scrape smooth with

large shells kept for this object, and then they give them a sort of

black glaze with plumbago. In exchange for one of these pots they get

as much grain as it will hold.

The native iron furnace is a curious object to look upon. It is made of

clay, and is another instance of the design being taken from the human

form, for it is made to represent a seated woman; the head is the

chimney, decorated in some cases with eyes, nose, and mouth, resting on

shoulders; the legs are stretched out and form the sides of the

furnace, and to complete the picture they decorate the front with

breasts and the tattoo decorations usually found on female stomachs.

[4] They heat the charcoal in the furnace by means of air pumped out of

goat-skin bellows through clay blow-pipes fixed into the embers. It is

a quaint sight to see them at work with all their commodities—pillows,

knives, and assegais, fixed on to the reed walls which shut off the

forge from the outer world.

At M’lala too we were first introduced to the women who have their

stomachs decorated with many long lines, or cicatrices. Between thirty

and forty of these lines ran across their stomachs, executed with

surprising regularity, and resembling the furrows on a ploughed field.

In vain we tried to photograph and count them. On one occasion I

succeeded in counting sixteen furrows, when the bashful female ran

away, and I think I had done about half. This is the favourite pattern

in Chibi’s country and with the neighbouring dependent tribes for

female decoration, and they admire it so much that they put it also on

their drums, on their granaries, and on their pillows, and, as I have

said, on their forges. ‘The breast and furrow’ pattern, one might

technically term it, and I fancy it has to do with an occult idea of

fertility.

One of these oddly marked ladies was busily engaged in building a

granary on a rock. She first lays a circular foundation of mud, into

which she puts sticks. On to these she plasters mud until the

funnel-shaped thing is about three feet high. A hole is left near the

top for inserting and extracting the grain, and it is then thatched

with grass; and it effectually keeps out the many rats and mice which

swarm in these parts. The costume of these natives is extremely

limited. A man is content with two cat-skins, one in front and one

behind, though the latter is not always de rigueur. The women wear

leathern aprons and girdles, tied so tightly as almost to cut them in

two, and made of several long strips of leather, like boot-laces

fastened together. On to these they hang all the necessaries of their

primitive life. At present old cartridge cases are the fashion for

holding snuff, or decorated reeds, or wooden cases. Then they have a

few decorated bone ornaments, evidently of a mystic character; a

skin-scraper or two with which to perform their toilette, which

articles are of the form and shape of the strigil known to us from

classical times, and the ends of the boot-laces are elegantly finished

off with brass or copper beads. The needle, too, is a feature seldom

absent from the man’s neck and girdle, being a sharp-pointed bit of

iron or brass with which they pierce the skins and fasten them together

with threads of bark; these needles are fitted into a wooden case,

which the more fanciful decorate with bands of brass wire.

At M’lala too we saw the blind witch-doctor of the village, dressed in

all his savage toggery. Small gourds with seeds inside to rattle were

tied to his calves. These are the fruit of the Oncoba spinosa. A buck’s

horn with a chain was hung round his neck, with which he made a hideous

noise. Odd chains of beads decorated his neck, made out of the pods of

the Acacia litakunensis, and his arms and legs were a mass of brass

bracelets and anklets; and his hair resplendent with feathers completed

the fantastic appearance of this poor blind man, who danced before us

unceasingly, and made such hideous noises that we were obliged to give

him some beads and ask him to stop.

The pass through which the road leads up from the river country to Fort

Victoria is now called ‘Providential,’ by reason of the fact that the

pioneer force of the Chartered Company did not know how to get over the

range of hills rising to the north of the Tokwe River, until Mr. Selous

chanced to hit on this gully between the mountains leading up to the

higher plateau. Its scenery, to my mind, is distinctly overrated. It is

green and luxuriant in tropical vegetation, with the bubbling stream

Godobgwe running down it. The hills on either side are fairly fine, but

it could be surpassed easily in Wales and Scotland, or even Yorkshire.

In point of fact, the scenery of Mashonaland is nothing if not quaint.

Providential Pass is distinctly commonplace, whereas the granite kopje

scenery is the quaintest form of landscape I have ever seen.

Fort Victoria has no redeeming point of beauty about it whatsoever,

being placed on a bare flat plateau, surrounded in the rainy season by

swamps. Nearly everybody was down with fever when we got there;

provisions were at famine prices—for example, seven shillings for a

pound of bacon and the same price for a tin of jam—and the melancholy

aspect of affairs was enhanced by the hundred and fifty saddles placed

in rows within the fort, which had once belonged to the hundred and

fifty horses brought up by the pioneers, all of which had died of horse

sickness.

The diseases to which quadrupeds are subject in this country are

appalling. One man of our acquaintance brought up eighty-seven horses,

of which eighty-six died before he got to Fort Victoria. The still

mysterious disease called horse sickness is supposed to come from

grazing in the early dew, but of this nobody is as yet sure; the poor

animals die in a few hours of suffocation, and none but ‘salted

horses,’ i.e. horses which have had the disease and recovered, are of

any use up here. Our three horses were warranted salted, but this did

not prevent one of them from having a recurrence of the disease, which

gave us a horrible fright and caused us to expend a whole bottle of

whisky on it, to which we fondly imagine it owes its life. Another

horse also gave us a similar alarm. One morning its nose was terribly

swollen, and the experienced professed to see signs of the sickness in

its eye. Nevertheless nothing came of it, and in due course the

swelling went down. On close enquiry we discovered that it had been

foolishly tied for the night to a euphorbia tree, and had pricked its

nose with the poisonous thorns.

As for oxen, the diseases they are subject to make one wonder that any

of them ever get up country alive; besides the fatal lung sickness they

suffer from what is called the ‘drunk sickness,’ a species of staggers.

When we reached Zimbabwe nearly all our oxen developed the mange and

swollen legs, but recovered owing to the long rest. Besides these

casualties they often die from eating poisonous grasses; also in some

parts the unwholesome herbage, or ‘sour veldt,’ as it is known amongst

the drivers, produces kidney diseases and other horrors amongst them.

All around Fort Victoria, they told us, the grass was sour, so we only

remained there long enough to make our preparations for our excavations

at Zimbabwe. Tools of all descriptions we had luckily brought with us

from Fort Tuli, as there were none here when we arrived. In fact the

dearth of everything struck us forcibly, but by this time doubtless all

this will be remedied, for we were amongst the first waggons to come up

after the rains, and now Fort Victoria, with the recent discovery of

good gold reefs in its immediate vicinity, is bound to become an

important place.

From Fort Victoria our real troubles of progression began. It is only

fourteen miles from there to the great Zimbabwe ruins by the narrow

Kaffir path, and active individuals have been known to go there and

back in a day. It took us exactly seven days to traverse this distance

with our waggons. The cutting down of trees, the skirting of swamps,

the making of corduroy bridges, were amongst the hindrances which

impeded our progress. For our men it was a perpetual time of toil; for

us it was a week of excessive weariness.

For two nights we were ‘outspanned’ by the edge of a deep ravine, at

the bottom of which was a swampy stream. This had to be bridged with

trees and a road made up and down the banks before our waggons could

cross over it. A few hundred yards from this spot the river M’shagashi

flowed, a considerable stream, which is within easy reach of Zimbabwe

and eventually makes its way down to the Tokwe. On its banks we saw

several crocodiles basking, and consequently resisted the temptation to

bathe.

By diving into the forests and climbing hills we came across groups of

natives who interested us. It was the season just then in which they

frequent the forests—the ‘barking season,’ when they go forth to

collect large quantities of the bark of certain trees, out of which

they produce so much that is useful for their primitive lives. They

weave textiles out of bark; they make bags and string out of bark; they

make quivers for their arrows, beehives for their bees, and sometimes

granaries, out of bark. The bark industry is second only to the

iron-smelting amongst the Makalangas.

At the correct season of the year they go off in groups into the

forests to collect bark, taking with them their wives and their

children, carrying with them their assegais, and fine barbed arrows

with which they shoot mice, a delicacy greatly beloved by them; they

take with them also bags of mealies for food, and collect bags of

caterpillars—brown hairy caterpillars three inches long, which at this

season of the year swarm on the trees. These they disembowel and eat in

enormous quantities, and what they cannot eat on the expedition they

dry in the sun and take home for future consumption. Their only method

of making a fire is by rubbing two sticks dexterously together until a

spark appears, with which they ignite some tinder carried in a little

wooden box attached to their girdles. At night time they cut down

branches from the trees, and make a shelter for themselves from the

wind. It is curious to see a set of natives asleep, like sardines in a

box, one black naked lump of humanity; if one turns or disturbs the

harmony of the pie they all get up and swear at him and settle down

again. One man is always told off to watch the fire to keep off wild

beasts, and then when morning comes they pack their belongings, their

treasures of bark, mice, and caterpillars, and start off along the

narrow path in single file at a tremendous pace, silent for a while,

and then bursting forth into song, looking for all the world like a

procession of black caterpillars themselves.

These forests around Zimbabwe are lovely to wander in, with feathery

festoons of lichen, like a fairy scene at a pantomime; outside the

forests are long stretches of coarse grass, towering above our heads in

many cases, and horrible to have to push through, especially after a

fall of rain. They were then in seed, and looked just like our harvest

fields at home, giving a golden tinge to the whole country.

Fine trees perched on the summit of colossal ant-hills cast a pleasant

shade around, and if by chance we were near a stream we had to be

careful not to fall into game pits, deep narrow holes hidden by the

long grass, which the natives dig in the ground and towards which they

drive deer and antelope, so that they get their forelegs fixed in them

and cannot get out.

All around Zimbabwe is far too well watered to be pleasant; long

stretches of unhealthy swamps fill up the valleys; rivers and streams

are plentiful, and the vegetation consequently rich. Owing to the

surrounding swamps we had much fever in our camp during our two months’

stay; as we had our waggons with us we could not camp on very high

ground, and suffered accordingly. This fever of the high veldt with

plenty of food and plenty of quinine is by no means dangerous, only

oft-recurring and very weakening. Of the fourteen cases we had under

treatment none were really dangerously ill, and none seemed to suffer

from bad effects afterwards when the fever had worn itself out. The

real cause of so much mortality and misery amongst the pioneer force

during their first wet season in the country was the want of nourishing

food to give the fever patients and the want of proper medicine.

As for the natives themselves, I cannot help saying a few words in

their favour, as it has been customary to abuse them and set their

capabilities down as nought. During the time we were at Zimbabwe we

were constantly surrounded by them, and employed from fifty to sixty of

them for our work, and the only thing we lost was half a bottle of

whisky, which we did not set down to the natives, who as yet are

happily ignorant of the potency of fire-water. Doubtless on the

traversed roads and large centres, where they are brought into contact

with traders and would-be civilisers of the race, these people become

thieves and vagabonds; but in their primitive state the Makalangas are

naturally honest, exceedingly courteous in manner, and cowardice

appears to be their only vice, arising doubtless from the fact that for

generations they have had to flee to their fastnesses before the raids

of more powerful races. The Makalanga is above the ordinary Kaffir in

intelligence. Contrary to the prognostications of our advisers, we

found that some of them rapidly learnt their work, and were very

careful excavators, never passing over a thing of value, which is more

than can be said of all the white men in our employ. Some of them are

decidedly handsome, and not at all like negroes except in skin; many of

them have a distinctly Arab cast of countenance, and with their

peculiar rows of tufts on the top of their heads looked en profil like

the figures one sees on Egyptian tombs. There is certainly a Semite

drop of blood in their veins; whence it comes will probably never be

known, but it is marked both on their countenances and in their

customs. In religion they are monotheists—that is to say, they believe

in a supreme being called Muali, between whom and them their ancestors,

or mozimos, to whom they sacrifice, act as intercessors. They lay out

food for their dead; they have a day of rest during the ploughing

season, which they call Muali’s Day; they have dynastic names for their

chiefs, like the Pharaohs of old; they sacrifice a goat to ward off

pestilence and famine; circumcision is practised amongst some of them.

We have also the pillows or head rests, the strigil, the iron sceptres

of the chiefs, the iron industry, all with parallels from the north.

Then, again, their musical instruments, their games, and their totems

point distinctly to an Arabian influence, which has been handed down

from generation to generation long after the Arabians have ceased to

have any definite intercourse with the country. During the course of

these pages numerous minor illustrations will from time to time appear

which point in the same direction. It is a curious ethnological problem

which it will be hard to unravel. All over the country sour milk is

much drunk and called mast, as it is in the East, and in parts of this

country beer is called dowra or doro, a term which has come from

Abyssinia and Arabia, and the method of making it is the same. The corn

is soaked in water and left till it sprouts a little; then it is spread

in the sun to dry and mixed with unsprouted grain; then the women pound

it in wooden mortars, and the malt obtained from this is boiled and

left to stand in a pot for two days, and over night a little malt that

has been kept for the purpose is thrown over the liquid to excite

fermentation. It will not keep at all, and is sometimes strong and

intoxicating. Women are the great brewers in Mashonaland, and a good

wife is valued according to her skill in this department.

This Kaffir beer is certainly an old-world drink. There are several

classical allusions for what is termed ‘barley beer.’ Xenophon and the

Ten Thousand one evening, on reaching an Armenian village in the

mountains of Asia Minor, refreshed themselves with what he describes as

‘bowls of barley wine in which the grains are floating.’

The Egyptians too made beer after the same fashion, and used it also in

sacrifices. Much that was known in the old world has travelled

southwards through Nubia and Abyssinia, and is to be found still

amongst the Kaffir races of to-day. Some of the words in common use

amongst the Kaffirs in Mashonaland are very curious. Anything small,

whether it be a child or to indicate that the price paid for anything

is insufficient, they term piccanini; the word is universal, and points

to intercourse with other continents. The term Morunko, or Molungo,

universally applied to white men, is probably of Zulu origin, and has

been connected—with what reason I know not—with Unkulunkulu, a term to

denote the Supreme Being. At any rate it is distinctly a term of

respect, and certainly has nothing to do with the Mashona language, in

which Muali or Mali is used to denote God.

Finally, at long last, after exactly three months to a day of

‘trekking’ in our ox waggons, the mighty ruins of Zimbabwe were reached

on June 6, 1891, and we sat down in the wilderness to commence our

operations, with the supreme delight of knowing that for two months our

beds would not begin to shake and tumble us about before half our

nights were over.

CHAPTER III

CAMP LIFE AND WORK AT ZIMBABWE

Our camp was pitched on slightly rising ground about 200 yards from the

large circular ruin at Zimbabwe, and was for the space of two months a

busy centre of life and work in the midst of the wilderness. There were

our two waggons, in which we slept; hard by was erected what our men

called an Indian terrace, a construction of grass and sticks in which

we ate, and which my wife decorated with the flowers gathered around

us—the brilliant red spokes of the flowering aloes, which grew in

magnificent fiery clusters all over the rocks, the yellow everlasting

(Helipterum incanum), which grew in profusion in a neighbouring swamp,

wreaths of the pink bignonia, festoons of which decorated the ruins and

the neighbouring kraal. Besides these she had the red flowers of the

Indian shot (Canna indica), which was found in abundance on the hill

fortress, fronds of the Osmunda regalis and tree fern, the white silky

flowers of the sugar tree (Protea mellifera), and many others at her

disposal, a wealth of floral decoration which no conservatory at home

could supply.

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, beating 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

they 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 rotting in the

heat of the sun, we had now around us a black sea of ashes, recalling

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 conditions of opinions

as to the origin of the same. One of our friends told us that they

reminded him forcibly of the Capitol of Rome; 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 them, 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

Sheba 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 way be said to have

been dull. We had our daily work from eight in the morning till

sundown, with an hour at midday for luncheon and repose. Out of the

working days we lost nine from rain, a curious 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 miserable and always resulted in fresh outbreaks of fever

amongst us. With the exception of these nine days the weather was

simply delicious, fresh, 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 dop, 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 perhaps a fortnight.

Umgabe is the dynastic name of the petty chief whose territory includes

the Zimbabwe ruins; he recognises 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 introduced to the Makalanga

custom of hand-clapping. The mysterious meaning attached to this

hand-clapping I was afterwards able in a measure to fathom. [5] 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

intention 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 responsible 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 white Venetian beads of considerable

antiquity, brought doubtless to this country by 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

features, 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

generally refined type of countenance are not, as a rule, prominent

features amongst those of pure Kaffir blood, but they are common enough

around Zimbabwe.

We made arrangements with Umgabe about our work, and collected together

a team of thirty individuals who were to do our digging, &c., for the

wages of one blanket a month, which blankets cost 4s. 10d. apiece at

Fort Tuli, and probably half that in England. For this reward they were

to work and also find themselves 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 a parsella, as they called it. These difficulties gradually

disappeared. Some of them became excellent hands with pick and shovel;

they got accustomed 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 displayed 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

satisfactory results. Also they were excellent at removing 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 harshness made them run away at once. Our cook,

whose temper was exceedingly capricious, one day 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 heights around Zimbabwe came every day

crowds of natives, bringing 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, honey, 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 products of the New World, the seeds of which must have

originally been brought by Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish traders and

given in exchange for the commodities of the country; now they form an

integral part of the diet of these people and prove to us how the ends

of the world were brought together long before our time.

These daily markets were times of great excitement for us, for, besides

giving us an insight into their ways and life, we found it an excellent

time to acquire for a few beads their native ornaments. In carving

their knives they are particularly ingenious. The sheath of these

knives generally ends in a curious conventional 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 black geometrical patterns, some of hollowed-out

pieces of wood decorated with patterns and brass wire, also they have

their grease-holders similarly decorated, 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,

specimens 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 inundated with

knives, snuff-boxes, bowls, pottery, and all manner of odd things. They

were cunning too in their dealings, bringing one by one into camp small

baskets full of meal and other commodities from a large store outside,

realising that in this way they got many more 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 frighten our

black diggers 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 scattered far and wide. In vain we offered to pay for the damage

done; almost in no time we were surrounded by a screaming crowd of

angry men and women, with Ikomo at their head, brandishing assegais and

other terrible weapons of war. For a moment the affair looked serious;

all our blacks fled in haste, and we, a small band of white men

surrounded by the foe, were doubtful what course to pursue. At length

we determined to stand their insults no longer, and 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, chattering and screaming like a cageful of monkeys at the Zoo.

Sir John Willoughby and one or two men from Fort Victoria chanced to

come over that day to visit us, and on hearing of our adventure he

summoned Ikomo to a palaver, and told him that if such a thing happened

again his kraal would be burnt to the ground and his tribe driven from

the hill; and the result of this threat was that Ikomo troubled us no

more.

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 commanding

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 therefrom 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 occasion, whilst visiting some ruins in a lovely dale about

eight miles from Zimbabwe, we were treated to another 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

furrowed 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

reconnoitre, 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 ridiculous 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 behind them. The novelty of possessing a blanket was an

intense joy to these savages. One tottering old man was amongst our

workmen, and seeing his incapacity, I was about to discard him, but his

longing for a blanket was so piteous—‘to sleep in a blanket once before

he died’—that he was allowed to continue and do what he could to earn

one.

Dancing is the one great dissipation of the Makalanga’s life; he will

keep it up for hours without tiring at their great beer-drinking

feasts, at weddings—nay, even at funerals. At these latter ceremonies

they will not allow a white man to be present, so that what they do is

still a mystery; but we heard repeatedly 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 turned up at our camp with some

curious carrot-like roots in his hand. On enquiry as to what he was

going to do with them he replied that he was going to a funeral, and

that they chewed this root and spat it out—for it is poisonous—at these

ceremonies. The natives call this root amouni.

In our work at Zimbabwe we unwittingly opened several of their graves

amongst the 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

proceed with our excavations at that spot. After that the old chief

Ikomo, 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, which

is constantly replenished for the 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 the dead meat and beer are

always allotted to the spirits of their ancestors.

One day 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 the carved

knife, with portions of the goat’s hair still adhering to it. Here we

had an obvious instance of sacrifice, a sacrifice which takes place, I

believe, to avert some calamity—famine, war, or pestilence—which at the

time threatens the community. The natives were very reticent on the

point, but visibly annoyed at our discovery.

There is a good deal of music inherent in the Makalanga. One man in

each village is recognised as the bard. One of our workmen had his

piano, which was constantly at work. These pianos are very interesting

specimens of primitive musical art; they have thirty or more iron keys,

arranged to scale, fixed on to a piece of wood about half a foot

square, which is decorated with carving behind. This instrument they

generally put into a gourd, with pieces of bone round the edge to

increase the sound, which is decidedly melodious and recalls a spinet.

One finds instruments of a similar nature amongst the natives north of

the Zambesi. Specimens in the British Museum of almost exactly the same

construction come from Southern Egypt and the Congo, pointing to the

common and northern origin 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 energetic 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, which rattle and add to the prevailing din. They are for ever

singing the low, monotonous songs common to primitive races; they

encourage 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 which 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 excursions in the

neighbourhood 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 appears to have obtained universal credence

amongst them—that long, long ago white men came and erected these

buildings, but the black men poisoned the water and they all died. This

story seems to 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 compared with certain ruined villages we

afterwards saw in Mangwendi’s country. [6] 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 up, as we had much travelling before us in 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

tradition is lost among them. The migratory spirit of the people

entirely precludes them from having any information of value to give

concerning the 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 inasmuch as it affords them refuge from the

Matabele and has soil around it which will produce their scanty crops.

On leaving Zimbabwe and our work, we determined 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 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 charming, 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 I have ever seen, and the

natives call it Lumbo. 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 pottery or

stones from one hole to the other in an unaccountable 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 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 pullangooly 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 drinking 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 where it appeared most

level; but during the night, in spite of our candle, the rats 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 have.

Umgabe’s kraal has as lovely a situation as can 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 rushing 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 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 huts to cook our

frugal meal and pretend to go to bed.

It was a long ride next day to Cherumbila’s kraal, the bitter enemy and

hereditary foe of our late host; 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 better, 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 sprouting from

their skulls.

Cherumbila himself is a lithe, active man, a complete contrast to

Umgabe; a man of activity both of mind and body, he is feared and

respected by his men, and is consequently one of the strongest 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 impi, fell upon them and drove 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, grown 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 made us vow

that on our prospective trips to the Sabi and northwards we would take

our tent and never again expose ourselves to the companionship of rats

and other vermin in the native huts.

The following day a lovely ride over the mountains, through dense

forests and swarms of locusts, which our black men eagerly collected,

brought us back again to Fort Victoria and comparative civilisation,

where we made preparations for our more extended expeditions away from

the road and our waggons, warned but not discouraged by our discomforts

with Umgabe and Cherumbila.

PART II

DEVOTED TO THE ARCHÆOLOGY OF THE RUINED CITIES

CHAPTER IV

DESCRIPTION OF THE VARIOUS RUINS

During our stay in Mashonaland we visited and carefully examined the

sites of many ruins, a minute description of which I propose to give in

this chapter. As a feature in the country they are most

remarkable—ancient, massive, mysterious, standing out in startling

contrast to the primitive huts of the barbarians who dwell around them

and the wilderness of nature. Of course it was impossible in one

season, and in the present undeveloped state of the country, to visit

them all; but from accounts given of others which we could not visit,

and which consequently I shall only briefly allude to here, there is

enough evidence to prove that they were all built by the same race, in

the same style, and for the same purpose.

From Dr. Emil Holub’s work (‘Seven Years in South Africa’) we learn

something about a ruin he saw on the Shashi River, which consisted of a

wall protecting a hill and formed ‘of blocks of granite laid one upon

another, without being fixed by cement of any kind.’ Also at Tati he

saw another ruin, forming a long line of protection for a hill, roughly

put together on the inside, but on the outside, ‘probably with some

view to symmetry and decoration, there had been inserted double rows of

stones, hewn into a kind of tile, and placed obliquely one row at right

angles to the other. Each enclosure had an entrance facing north.’ He

concludes that the ruin was constructed to protect the gold, ‘numbers

of pits fifty feet deep being found in the vicinity.’ This pattern, the

construction, and the object undoubtedly connect these ruins with those

which I shall presently describe.

Mr. G. Philips, an old hunter in these parts, said at the Royal

Geographical Society’s meeting, November 24, 1890, of the Zimbabwe

ruins, ‘They are exactly like others I have seen in the country—the

same zigzag patterns and the mortarless walls of small hewn stones.

When hunting in the mountains to the west of this I came on a regular

line of these ruins, and one must have been a tremendously big place.

There were three distinct gateways in the outer wall, which I suppose

was at least thirty feet thick at the base, and one of those immense

ironwood trees (hartekol), that would have taken hundreds of years to

grow, had grown up through a crevice in the wall and rent it asunder.’

He also described another ruin north-west of Tati. ‘The walls are

twelve to fifteen feet thick, and it is entered by a passage so

arranged as to be commanded by archers from the interior, and it only

admits of the passage of one at a time.’

Mr. E. A. Maund, in speaking of the ruins at Tati and on the Impakwe,

says, ‘As I have said, these ruins are always found near gold workings;

they are built in the same way of granite, hewn into small blocks

somewhat bigger than a brick, and put together without mortar. In the

base of both of these there is the same herring-bone course as at

Zimbabwe, though nearer the base of the wall.... The remains on the

Impakwe are similar in construction and are within fifty yards of the

river; it was evidently an octagonal tower.’ Mr. Moffat, our political

agent in Matabeleland, in speaking to me about this ruin, told me how

it had been much demolished during his recollection, owing to the fact

that all waggons going up to Matabeleland outspan near it, and the men

assist at its demolition.

There is another ruin of a similar character near where the River Elibi

flows into the Limpopo, and another further up the Mazoe Valley than

the one we visited. [7]

I have alluded to these ruins, which I have not seen, to prove the

great area over which they are spread, and I have little doubt that as

the country gets opened out a great many more will be brought to light,

proving the extensive population which once lived here as a garrison in

a hostile country, for the sake of the gold which they extracted from

the mines in the quartz reefs between the Zambesi and Limpopo Rivers.

From personal experience I can speak of the ruins on the Lundi River;

of those at and near Zimbabwe; of the chain of forts on the Sabi River,

including Metemo, Matindela, Chilonga, and Chiburwe, and the fort in

the Mazoe gold fields, all of which belong to the same period, and were

built by the same race, and agree in character with those described by

Messrs. Philips and Maund on the Tati, Impakwe, and elsewhere, and are

quite distinct from the more modern structures in Mangwendi’s and

Makoni’s countries, which we visited towards the end of our tour and

which I shall describe in Chapter XI.

The circular ruin erected on a low granite eminence of about five

hundred yards from the Lundi River is of exceeding insignificance when

compared with those of Zimbabwe and Matindela: it is only fifty-four

feet in diameter, and the original wall was only five feet thick; the

courses are very regular and neatly put together without mortar, and

the stones, of granite, are of a uniform size, broken into blocks about

twice the size of an ordinary brick. It had two entrances, one to the

north and another to the south-east, the latter being carefully walled

up with an inserted structure in which the courses are carried out with

a carefulness similar to the walls of the rest of the building. The

interesting features of this ruin are the patterns in three tiers

beginning at a few feet from the northern entrance, the two lower ones

consisting of a herring-bone pattern, formed by the stones being placed

obliquely in contrary directions in each tier, whilst the upper pattern

is produced by regular gaps of two inches being left between the stones

in two of the courses. Nearly facing the rising sun at the equinox is a

curious bulge, about two feet deep, constructed in the wall. At this

bulge the two lower rows of ornamentation terminate, but the upper one

is carried on round it as far as the south-eastern entrance. There can

be little doubt that these patterns, found on nearly all the

Mashonaland ruins, were constructed for a purpose; they only go round a

portion of the buildings; they have always the same aspect—namely,

south-east—and one cannot dissociate these circular buildings and the

patterns from some form of sun worship. ‘The circle is a sacred

enclosure,’ says Major Conder in his ‘Heth and Moab,’ ‘without which

the Arab still stands with his face to the rising sun.’ Into this

question of solstitial orientation in connection with the ruins Mr.

Swan will enter at length in the ensuing chapter.

The Lundi ruin had a cement floor, similar to those floors which we

afterwards frequently came across in the Zimbabwe buildings; it would

appear to have acted the double function of a fortress and a temple,

guarding a population settled here on the river’s bank, who built their

huts around it.

The ruins of the Great Zimbabwe (which name I have applied to them to

distinguish them from the numerous minor Zimbabwes scattered over the

country) are situated in south latitude 20° 16′ 30″, and east longitude

31° 10′ 10″, on the high plateau of Mashonaland, 3,300 feet above the

sea level, and form the capital of a long series of such ruins

stretching up the whole length of the western side of the Sabi River.

They are built on granite, and of granite, quartz reefs being found at

a distance of a few miles.

The prominent features of the Great Zimbabwe ruins, which cover a large

area of ground, are, firstly, the large circular ruin with its round

tower on the edge of a gentle slope on the plain below; secondly, the

mass of ruins in the valley immediately beneath this; and thirdly, the

intricate fortress on the granite hill above, acting as the acropolis

of the ancient city. These we will now discuss in their order.

When we reached the Great Zimbabwe the circular ruin was on the inside

a dense mass of tropical vegetation; creepers and monkey ropes hung in

matted confusion to the tall trees, forming a jungle which it was

almost impossible to penetrate, and added to the mazy labyrinth of

walls a peculiar and almost awe-inspiring mystery.

It was the work of some days to clear this off with the aid of native

workmen, whilst at the same time we proceeded with our excavations in

the neighbourhood of the tower and other prominent portions of the

building.

As for the walls themselves, they were nearly free from vegetation,

for, owing to the absence of mortar, no lichen, moss, nor creeper could

thrive on them, and those few things which had penetrated into crevices

were of a succulent character, which formed their branches to the shape

of the interstices. To this fact is due the wonderful state of

preservation in which these ruins are found.

What appeared at first sight to be a true circle eventually proved

elliptical—a form of temple found at Marib, the ancient Saba and

capital of the Sabæan kingdom in Arabia, and at the Castle of Nakab al

Hajar, also in that country. [8] Its greatest length is 280 feet; the

wall at its highest point is thirty-five feet above the ground, and

fifteen feet at the lowest; its greatest base thickness is sixteen feet

two inches, and its thinnest point is about five feet. In the structure

of the wall one very noticeable feature is that the portion to the

south-east is very much better built, and is both thicker and higher:

here the courses are marvellously true, as if built with a levelling

line, and the stones, of granite hammered into shape, are exactly the

same size, whereas on the north-west side and in some of the interior

walls, which are marked in a lighter colour on the plan, the courses

begin to get slightly irregular, and the stones of unequal size,

suggesting almost a different period of workmanship; but then there is

no point where the good definitely ends or the bad begins, except at a

short gap on the northern side, where the good wall would seem to have

been continued more in a northerly direction, and the 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

other entrances are straight. Below this entrance runs a very

substantial substructure wall, and the little space immediately inside

it was covered with a thick cement, made out of powdered granite, out

of which steps had been formed leading down to the various passages

which converge here from the centre of the building. The presence of

this concrete in use for 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 between these two, presumably merely a

sally-port in the wall, the lintel of which had consisted of wooden

beams, which had been burnt, and on their giving way the wall above had

also fallen down.

Of the outer wall of the circular building the most interesting portion

is decidedly that to the south-east. A few courses below the summit on

the outside, from point A to point B on the plan, runs the pattern,

formed by two courses having the stones placed chevron-wise, neatly

fitted in with smaller stones receding a little, so as to make the

pattern at a distance appear as if it stood out in relief, whereas it

is really flush with the wall. This pattern coincides with the sacred

enclosure inside, terminating at point B exactly where the enclosure

terminates, and at the other end at point A about half-way down the

narrow passage, forming thus an arc of one and a half right angle. Its

connection with the sanctity of the place is obvious, and into its

relation to the orientation of the temple Mr. Swan will enter fully in

the ensuing chapter. Along this portion of the wall, and on this only,

large monoliths were inserted, most of which have fallen away; but

those still standing show that they were equidistant. Here too the top

of the wall has been neatly paved with slabs of granite, and must have

formed a broad promenade, presumably approached by steps from a point

near the main entrance. Here one can still walk with ease, whereas on

the inferior portion of the wall it is now scarcely possible to

scramble.

The labyrinthine character of the interior will be best grasped by a

glance at the plan. Entering from the northern portal, we at once

plunge into its intricacies. The great and astounding feature is the

long narrow passage leading direct from the main entrance to the sacred

enclosure, so narrow in parts that two people cannot walk abreast,

whilst on either side of you rise the stupendous walls, thirty feet in

height, and built with such evenness of courses and symmetry that as a

specimen of the dry builder’s art it is without a parallel. The large

blocks of cut stone used in Egyptian, Greek, and Roman masonry must

have been comparatively easy to deal with as compared with these small

stones of rough granite built in even courses in a circular wall of

immense thickness and height. The idea at once suggests itself that the

people who erected these walls had at one time been accustomed to build

in bricks, and that in the absence of this material they had perfected

a system of stone-building to represent as nearly as possible the

appearance of brick; also another reason for the use of small stones

may have been to enable them to construct the tower and curves with

greater accuracy. The facings of the stones are all uniform, but most

of them run back into the wall irregularly, acting in the same way as

throughs in our dry-built walls at home in preserving the building from

falling. In this narrow passage, at point S, is the remarkable hole,

executed with perfect neatness through the thickest part of the wall,

about the actual use of which I am able to give no definite theory. It

could not have been used for drainage or defence; and in the fortress

above there are two similar tunnels equally inexplicable.

The actual approaches to the sacred enclosure are most carefully

defended with buttresses on either side, into which a form of

portcullis has been fixed, with two grooves, one running down each

side, presumably originally intended to receive a wooden door; but at a

later period all these entrances have been carefully walled up, for

what purpose it is difficult to say. It naturally occurred to us that

this had been done at a time of danger for protection, but the neatness

with which the blocking-up walls are executed is against this theory.

At point V on the plan there is a remarkable instance of the two

periods of building. Here, in front of the sacred enclosure, the wall

was decorated with courses of black slate in the older and better wall,

whereas they are omitted in the inferior continuation.

At point E there is a raised platform immediately in front of the large

round tower, covered with a flooring of thick cement, supported by

large stones loosely packed together, into which a monolith had been

stuck. This platform was connected with the sacred enclosure by a

flight of cement steps, and was presumably used for religious purposes.

In dealing with the two remarkable round towers which stood in the

sacred enclosure, one cannot lay too much stress on the symmetry of the

courses and the accuracy with which they have been built. They stand in

the centre of the sacred enclosure, which was floored with cement. By

digging to their foundations we were able to get very accurate

measurements of them, and found that the circumference of the smaller

one corresponds exactly to the diameter of the big one, and the

diameter of the big one is apparently equal to half its original

height, and its circumference again is equal to the diameter of the

round building on the Lundi River. The battering of the big tower is

carried out with mathematical accuracy, the slope of the curve being

perfectly regular, and is produced by placing the superincumbent stones

in a slightly receding position, so that with the aid of a monkey rope

we were able to climb to the top. A few courses below the summit, which

would seem to be very much in its original condition except on the

south side, where Herr Mauch confesses to have pulled down the stones

of several courses, runs a dentelle pattern, marked D on the plan,

formed by placing the stones of one course edgeways. This pattern is

the same as the lower one given in the illustration of Matindela ruins,

p. 137; but unfortunately, owing to the demolition of the upper

courses, it is impossible to define its extent. The tower would seem to

have been thirty-five feet in height, and the summit to have been a

level of about four feet in diameter. By digging below this tower, and

pulling out stones from the sides, which we carefully replaced, we

demonstrated to our satisfaction that it was solid. It was built on

nothing but the soil of the place, and was erected over nothing; the

foundations go down for one foot below the floor of cement which

covered the enclosure, and it has been preserved to us simply by its

solidity, its long through stones, and the way in which the stones have

supported one another. We investigated the smaller tower very

thoroughly, and found it also solid.

The religious purport of these towers would seem to be conclusively

proved by the numerous finds we made in other parts of the ruins of a

phallic nature (vide Chap. VI.), and I think a quotation from

Montfaucon’s ‘L’Antiquité Expliquée’ will give us the keynote of the

worship. ‘The ancients assure us that all the Arabians worshipped a

tower, which they called El Acara or Alquetila, which was built by

their patriarch, Ishmael.’ ‘Maximus of Tyre says they honoured as a

great god a great cut stone; this is apparently the same stone

resembling Venus, according to Euthymius Zygabenus. When the Saracens

were converted to Christianity they were obliged to anathematise this

stone, which formerly they worshipped.’ This tower doubtless

corresponded to the sacred tower of the Midianites, called Penuel, or

the ‘Face of God,’ which Gideon destroyed (Judges viii. 7). Allusions

to these towers are constant in the Bible, and the Arabian historian El

Masoudi further tells us that this stone or tower was eight cubits

high, and was placed in an angle of the temple, which had no roof.

Turning to Phœnician temple construction, we have a good parallel to

the ruins of the Great Zimbabwe at Byblos; as depicted on the coins,

the tower or sacred cone is set up within the temple precincts and shut

off in an enclosure (vide illustration, p. 150). Similar work is also

found in the round temples of the Cabiri, at Hadjar Kem in Malta, and

the construction of these buildings bears a remarkable resemblance to

that of those at Zimbabwe, and the round towers, or nuraghs, found in

Sardinia may possibly be of similar significance. MM. Perrot and

Chipiez, in their ‘History of Art in Sardinia,’ speak of these nuraghs

as forts or temples, around which the primitive inhabitants of the

island once lived. They are ‘truncated cones, built with stone blocks

of different sizes, narrowing to the top. The stones are unhewn as a

rule and laid on without mortar.’ Here too we have a parallel for our

monoliths, menhirs of unhewn stone, and also for the phalli, specimens

of which are found carved on stone (p. 57, figs. 49 and 50), and here

too the intricate plan of the fortresses suggests at once a parallel to

those at Zimbabwe; hence it would appear that the same influence was at

work in Sardinia as in South Africa. In Lucian’s ‘De Syriâ Deâ,’ which

we shall have occasion again to quote when discussing our finds in

Chapter VI., we find a description of a temple at Hierapolis, in

Mesopotamia, in the propylæa of which, he tells us (§ 16), ‘there stood

two very large phalli, about thirty cubits high.’ Our tower at Zimbabwe

stood apparently twenty cubits high and ten in diameter. He further

says (§ 29), ‘These phalli are solid, for when a priest had to ascend

he had to put a rope round himself and the phallus and walk up.’

Herr Mauch, in his account of Zimbabwe, alludes to a sacrifice which

took place here amongst the natives in his day (1871). This ceremony

seems to correspond very closely to the sacrifice celebrated elsewhere

in this country to the spirits of their ancestors. It is pretty evident

that another tribe of Kaffirs dwelt near Zimbabwe at that time, who

looked upon the circular building as sacred; whereas the present people

do not seem to look upon it with any religious superstition, which will

account for the growth of vegetable matter inside only during late

years. This was further evidenced by our excavations in this building;

we found but little depth of soil, very little débris, and indications

of a Kaffir occupation of the place up to a very recent date, and no

remains like those we afterwards discovered in the fortress.

The rest of the circular building, as the plan shows, is divided off

into various smaller enclosures, and in one spot we imagine, by

comparison with the temples on the hill, an altar stood; it is now only

a heap of rubbish. There are also three remarkable monoliths erected in

it, two near the north-western entrance and one behind the altar. They

are about 11 feet in height—rough, unhewn blocks of granite, firmly

buried in the ground. On the hill fortress, and also, as I have said,

on the wall of the circular building, the quantity of monoliths is very

marked, and stone-worship seems to have formed an integral feature in

the ancient cult of this place. MM. Perrot and Chipiez write (vol. i.

p. 58), ‘We find the worship of betylæ (βαιτύλια, bethels, i.e. sacred

stones) in every country reached by Phœnician influence’ (vide Chap.

VI). Probably we shall be more correct in considering it an even more

remote Semitic influence, which continued in vogue amongst the

Phœnicians until more recent times. Palgrave in his Arabian travels

also speaks of the many monoliths he saw in Lower Nejed: ‘Huge stones,

like enormous boulders, placed endways perpendicularly on the soil.

They were arranged in a curve, once forming part, it would appear, of a

large circle.... That the object of these strange constructions was in

some measure religious seems to me hardly doubtful ... in fact, there

is little difference between the stone wonder of Kaseem and that of

Wiltshire’ (Stonehenge).

The valley between the lower circular ruin and the fortress on the hill

is a mass of ruins. About a hundred yards from it, and connected by a

wall, is a curious angular enclosure, divided into several chambers at

different levels; it has three entrances, all of which are straight,

like those at the Lundi and Matindela, and not rounded off like those

in the circular ruin. The main entrance leads into two narrow passages:

the one going to the left is protected by an ambuscade; the other,

going to the right, ascends a slope, at the top of which evidently once

stood two round towers, the bases of which we excavated, and near them

we found several long pillars, presumably fallen monoliths. But here

again the Kaffirs had been living until a recent date, and consequently

we made no discoveries here. Outside this ruin we opened three kitchen

middens, and came across one or two small articles of interest.

Sloping down from this ruin into the valley below a narrow passage

conducts one through a perfect labyrinth of ruins. Some of these,

notably the large circular erection just outside the big temple, are of

very inferior workmanship, and would appear to have been constructed at

a much later period; whereas the wall surrounding a large space at the

bottom of the valley is as good as the best part of the large circular

building. We did not attempt any excavation amongst these, and if we

had I expect the results would have been unsatisfactory. All the

surface of them has been dug over and over again by generations of

Kaffirs for their mealy fields. There is a great growth of brushwood,

and probably a considerable depth of soil, which our limited appliances

and inexperienced workmen would have found it hard to deal with.

Again and again these circular ruins repeat themselves, always, if

possible, occupying a slightly raised ground for about a mile along a

low ridge, acting, doubtless, the double purpose of temples and

fortresses for separate communities, the inhabitants dwelling in

beehive huts of mud around. This, to my mind, is the probable

restoration of this ancient African settlement.

Down the valley to the north-west runs a long wall of irregular stones,

roughly put together, for a mile or more—such a wall as Kaffirs would

erect to-day to protect themselves from the advance of an enemy. This I

do not connect with the more ancient and regularly built edifices, but

it probably owes its erection to a period when Zulu hordes swept down

on the more peaceful and effeminate descendants of the Monomatapa.

Many were the miles we walked in every direction, around and on the

hill fortress, to the east, west, north, and south, intent on one

object—namely, that of finding indications of a cemetery, which the

ancient inhabitants of these ruins might have used—but our searches

were always in vain. Kaffir remains we found in abundance, and a small

cemetery of some twenty graves of rough stone piled over the bodies,

about ten miles from Zimbabwe, also Kaffir, but nothing else.

Consequently we came to the conclusion that the ancient inhabitants,

who formed but a garrison in this country, were in the habit of

removing their dead to some safer place. This plan seems to have a

parallel in Arabia in antiquity, a notable instance of which is to be

found on the Bahrein Islands, in the Persian Gulf, where acres and

acres of mounds contain thousands of tombs, and no vestige of a town is

to be found anywhere near them. The custom still prevails amongst the

Mohammedans of Persia, who transport their dead to such places as

Kerbela, Meshed, and Kum, to rest in the vicinity of some sacred

shrine; and the absence of any burial place near Zimbabwe would seem to

point to the same custom having prevailed here.

Having failed to bring to light any definite records of the past during

the first fortnight of our work, we naturally cast our eyes around for

the most likely spot to carry on our work, and our choice fell on the

south-western portion of the hill fortress. Here were certain

indications which struck us as favourable, and furthermore it occurred

to us that a spot situated on the shady side of the hill behind the

great rock might possibly be free from Kaffir desecration; and the

results of our excavations on this spot proved this to be the case, for

here, and here only, did we come across relics of the past in our

digging. In fact, the ancient builders seemed to have originally chosen

the most shady spots for their buildings. Undoubtedly the oldest

portions of the Zimbabwe ruins are those running along the sunless side

of the hill fortress; on the other side, where now the Kaffir village

is, we found hardly any trace of ancient structures. Our difficulty was

to get the shivering Kaffirs to work there, for whenever our backs were

turned they would hurry off to bask in the rays of their beloved sun.

I will now proceed to describe the hill fortress, approaching it from

the valley below. The labyrinthine nature of this fortress will best be

realised by a glance at the accompanying plan. The kopje itself is of

great natural strength, being protected on one side by gigantic granite

boulders, and on the south by a precipice from seventy to ninety feet

in height, and on the only accessible side the ancient inhabitants

constructed a wall of massive thickness, like those of the ruins below.

This wall is thirteen feet thick on the summit, with a batter of one

foot in six; it is thirty feet high in parts, and the flat causeway on

the top was decorated on the outside edge by a succession of small

round towers alternating with tall monoliths; seven round towers in all

we made out, about three feet in diameter, and several others had been

destroyed by the fall of a portion of the wall. This system of round

towers and monoliths produces one of the most peculiar and unique forms

of decoration I have ever seen.

To open out the approach to this fortress town was a work of

considerable time and labour; it will easily be seen by the plan how

intricate it is, protected at every turn with traverses and ambuscades,

and there commences at the bottom of the precipice a flight of steps

leading up the steep ascent. The architects availed themselves of a

narrow slit in the granite boulder, up which the steps led, the passage

being exceedingly narrow; then the path divided into two, one path

turning abruptly to the right, and at the turning a pretty little bit

of wall with the stones placed pointways for about a yard relieved the

monotony and formed a sort of dentelle pattern; then it led along a

narrow ledge over the precipice, and in spite of the impossibility of

attack at such a point it was nevertheless protected by traverses even

here. In fact, the redundancy of fortification all over this mountain,

the useless repetition of walls over a precipice itself inaccessible,

the care with which every hole in the boulders through which an arrow

could pass is closed, prove that the occupants were in constant dread

of attack, and lived like a garrison in the heart of an enemy’s

country.

At the summit of the mountain are huge boulders about fifty feet high.

Immediately below the highest is a curious little plateau which had

been decorated by the ancient occupiers; it is approached by narrow

passages and steps on either side, and a curious passage through the

wall below, covered with huge beams of granite to support the

superincumbent weight. The steps on one side were made of the same

strong cement, and the wall to the left was decorated with the same

design of stones, placed edgeways for six rows, that we had found at

the angle of the approach. The little plateau itself was adorned with

huge monoliths and decorated pillars of soapstone, the patterns on

which were chiefly of a geometric character, and one of which was

eleven and a half feet in height. Here too we unearthed many stones of

natural but curious forms, to which I shall have again occasion to

refer in Chapter VI.

The large semicircular space below this platform was a dense jungle

when we started to work upon it, consisting of nettles of extraordinary

pricking powers and other obnoxious plants, which our natives cleared

away with marvellous dexterity. In the centre of this building stood an

altar covered with a thick coating of cement, and several large blocks

of cement were lying about. In a wall in this enclosure was another of

those curious holes pierced through its thickness, and there was plenty

of evidence to show that this had once been a most prominent point in

the ancient structure, forming, as it does, by far the largest

available level space on the fortress, and must probably have been used

as an agora, where from the platform an assembled crowd could have been

addressed, and for religious celebrations on a large scale. The view

from it is extensive and magnificent over the Livouri and Bessa ranges,

and situated, as it is, far above the level of the marshy ground below,

it would be healthy and habitable during all seasons of the year.

The labyrinthine nature of the buildings now before us baffles

description. In one place is a narrow sloping gully, four feet across,

ascending between two boulders, and protected, for no conceivable

reason, by six alternate buttresses and a wall at the upper end,

forming a zigzag passage narrowed in one place to ten inches. Walls of

huge size shut off separate chambers. In all directions everything is

tortuous; every inch of ground is protected with buttresses and

traverses. Here too, as in the large circular building below, all the

entrances are rounded off, and I imagine that here we have quite the

oldest portion of the ruins, built at a time when defence was the main

object. When they were able to do so with safety, they next constructed

the circular temple below, and as time went on they erected the more

carelessly put together buildings around, which I have described.

The south-western end of this line of ruins was obviously a temple; it

has been lately used as a cattle pen by the chief, but the soil has not

been disturbed. On removing the soil we came across a level cement

floor, supported on an elaborate system of under-walls filled up with

large stones on which the cement floor rested, as was the case in the

raised platform in the circular temple below. In the centre stood the

altar, an angular structure of small granite blocks, which fell to

pieces a short time after exposure to the air; when we removed the soil

which had buried this altar, around it we found the phalli, the birds

or soapstone pillars, and fragments of soapstone bowls, which I shall

subsequently describe more in detail.

On a portion of the wall outside, as in the circular building below,

ran a pattern—a dentelle pattern formed by placing the stones edgeways,

with exactly the same aspect as the pattern below. To the north of the

temple a steep ascent, constructed on supporting walls, led through the

granite boulders to a hollow space walled in on one side, and protected

by the rocks on the other three; a rounded buttress guarded the

entrance, and in the centre stood two tall monoliths of slate firmly

fixed into the cement floor and the stones beneath; from this spot a

slope led up to the top of the rock, on which a terrace had been

constructed overlooking the temple and facing the rising sun. Another

gully between two boulders, only wide enough for one man to pass at a

time, led out of the temple to the side where the modern Kaffir village

is. This had also been anciently strongly protected.

The temple was approached from the lower ridge above the precipice by a

narrow passage between two high walls gently ascending to a flight of

steps. This passage ended in a most curious architectural

feature—namely, steps were formed leading to the temple on the one

side, and apparently only for ornamentation on the other, by continuing

the rounded courses of the outer wall so that they produced the effect

of two miniature theatres facing one another, and proving almost more

than any other point amongst the ruins the high pitch to which the

ancient builders had brought their knowledge of keeping even courses in

dry building. This point in the architecture proves the especial

attention paid by the constructors to curves, and these curves would

seem to have been constructed on the same principle as the curves in

the large circular building which Mr. Swan will discuss in Chapter V.

Adjoining the temple to the north is another semicircular building, the

inner wall of which has six vertical rows, six feet high, let into the

construction, as if for beams, with a ledge on the top, as if for a

roof. We were unable to form any opinion as to the use of this chamber,

and though we emptied it of soil we found nothing in it.

Between two boulders to the north-west of the temple led a narrow

passage, tortuously winding, with walls on either side wedged up

against the boulders, and every conceivable hole in the rocks was

walled up. This passage led to another open space protected on two

sides by rocks and on two by walls. This space was also full of wall

foundations; but, being open to the sun, it had been occupied and

ransacked by the Kaffirs.

To the south of the temple a flight of steps led down to the

gold-smelting furnaces and the caves, of which I shall speak more at

length in connection with the finds. This corner of the building was

the only one in which our excavations were successful, and I entirely

attribute this fact to its chilly and shady position—a spot studiously

avoided by the succeeding generations of Kaffir tribes for this reason.

Below the temple at the bottom of the precipice we commenced work, with

great hope of finding the other portions of the bowls, &c., which we

had found above. Here there is an enormous mass of fallen stones from

the buildings above, but amongst them we found surprisingly little of

interest. Perhaps a thorough excavation of this slope would yield

further results, as so many of our finds in the temple above are

fragmentary, and the presumption is that the other portions were thrown

over the precipice; but this will be a gigantic work, entailing an

enormous amount of labour and expenditure.

Such is the great fortress of Zimbabwe, the most mysterious and complex

structure that it has ever been my fate to look upon. Vainly one tries

to realise what it must have been like in the days before ruin fell

upon it, with its tortuous and well-guarded approaches, its walls

bristling with monoliths and round towers, its temple decorated with

tall, weird-looking birds, its huge decorated bowls, and in the

innermost recesses its busy gold-producing furnace. What was this life

like? Why did the inhabitants so carefully guard themselves against

attack? A thousand questions occur to one which one longs in vain to

answer. The only parallel sensation that I have had was when viewing

the long avenues of menhirs near Carnac, in Brittany, a sensation at

once fascinating and vexatious, for one feels the utter hopelessness of

knowing all one would wish on the subject. When taken alone this

fortress is sufficiently a marvel; but when taken together with the

large circular building below, the numerous ruins scattered around, the

other ruins of a like nature at a distance, one cannot fail to

recognise the vastness and power of this ancient race, their great

constructive ingenuity and strategic skill.

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 on a flat granite

rock, and its structure is equally intricate, as will be seen from the

plan. The natives know it by the name of the Little Zimbabwe, but for

purposes of investigation into the origin of the constructing race it

affords us no special point of value, which is the case also with most

of the other ruins which we visited, and nothing need be said about

them except to point out their existence. These remarks refer to the

ruins which we found at Metemo, Chilondillo, Chiburwe, and in the Mazoe

valley, all of which were obviously erected as forts to protect a

surrounding population. Some of them are of the best period of

workmanship, notably those at Chiburwe and in the Mazoe valley; others

are of inferior workmanship, with uneven courses and irregularly shaped

blocks of granite, proving that, as we find the two periods side by

side at the Great Zimbabwe, also we have them scattered over the

country.

The great ruin at Matindela is second only in importance to the Great

Zimbabwe itself, and merits a close description.

The circular building at Matindela encloses an area not far short of

that enclosed by the large circular building at the Great Zimbabwe; it

crowns a low sloping granite kopje about 150 feet in height. The place

is full of huge baobab trees, two of which in their growth have pushed

down and grown up in the walls themselves. There are those that tell us

about the fabulous age of the baobab, attributing an age of 5,000 years

to the larger ones. The Director of Kew Gardens, Mr. Thiselton Dyer,

tells me that this is grossly exaggerated, and that a few centuries is

probably all that can be attributed to the very largest. Be this as it

may, the baobabs have grown up and arrived at maturity long after the

building of the Matindela ruins and their subsequent abandonment.

The best built portion of the wall has the same aspect as that at the

Great Zimbabwe; but the other side, corresponding to the worst built

part of the Zimbabwe wall, has never been completed at Matindela; the

fact that the south-eastern side has been so strongly built and so much

trouble has been spent on its decoration, and that the north side is

comparatively 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 regular as those at the Great Zimbabwe;

but the great feature of interest is here the arrangement of the

patterns, which establish beyond a doubt that they were inserted in the

walls for a more complex purpose than mere ornamentation. The

arrangement of these patterns is as follows: First to the south-east

comes the herring-bone pattern, running over the chief entrance as a

lintel for six yards. Here it ends, and two feet below begins the

dentelle pattern for the same distance; then the pattern stops

altogether on the outside, but there are indications that it was

continued on the inside instead. Then it is again inserted for forty

feet on the outside, and finally is again put on the inside for the

remainder of its extent—namely, thirteen feet. Above the pattern and

nearly over the principal entrance a curious loophole is still left

standing, and the best portion of the wall has been battlemented, the

outside portion being raised in front two or three feet higher than the

back. The wall is eleven feet six inches at its thickest, and on the

top of it we saw holes in which monoliths evidently once stood, as they

did on the wall of the circular building at the Great Zimbabwe.

Another very marked feature at Matindela is that the doorways are all

square, like those at the Lundi ruin, and not rounded off, as those at

Zimbabwe, and then again all these doorways have been walled up in an

uniform fashion, the courses corresponding exactly to those of the rest

of the wall. In the original construction of the building certain

spaces of seven feet had been left in the wall; two feet on either side

had then been built up, thus leaving an entrance of three feet, which

entrance in its turn had also been walled up. Here, as at the Great

Zimbabwe, the theory at once occurred to me that these places had been

walled up at a time of siege; but when one takes into consideration the

care with which these apertures have been walled up, and the triple

nature of the added wall, this theory seems untenable. The walling up

of the pylons in certain Egyptian temples at Karnak, which Prof. Norman

Lockyer brought before my notice, seems an apt parallel, though the

reasons for so doing do not seem to my mind at present sufficiently

proved. It must also be borne in mind that the walling up of the

principal entrance at Matindela must have taken place prior to the

construction of the pattern which rests upon it.

The interior of this building, as will be seen from the plan, was

divided up into chambers, as the other ruins at Zimbabwe, but the walls

here are much straighter, and the circular system of construction seems

to have been more or less abandoned. I take it that this ruin at

Matindela was constructed by the same race at a period of decadence,

when the old methods of building had fallen into desuetude.

Outside the walls of the temple or fortress we found many circular

foundations, very regularly built of granite blocks, and varying in

diameter from six to fifteen feet. They were built in groups at

considerable intervals apart, and we counted over forty of them. Some

of these circular foundations have a double circle, as if for a step;

the probability is that they formed the foundations of stone huts like

those found in the Marico district of the Transvaal, and were the homes

of the ancient inhabitants under the protecting wing of the

temple-fortress. There are no traces of these circular foundations

within the walls of the enclosure, but all were found outside within a

radius of two hundred yards. There are traces, too, of other buildings

about half-way down the slope of the granite hills, two walls parallel

to one another, about thirty feet long, with doorways and six circular

foundations outside them. There are also two depressions on the eastern

side of the hill, now filled up with timber, which were probably the

quarries from which the builders obtained the stone for their work.

About twelve miles to the north of Matindela, near a mountain called

Chiburwe, on another low granite hill, we found another fort with

similar circular foundations on the plain around it. This fort is about

forty feet in diameter, and the walls are of the best period, with

courses far more even than those of Matindela, and the stones of more

uniform size and fitting more closely, corresponding to the best of the

buildings at the Great Zimbabwe. Here, too, was another gigantic baobab

tree, which had grown up in the wall and knocked it down; and here,

too, the south-eastern portion of the wall is much better and thicker

than the rest, which has in places either never existed or fallen down;

but the destruction here was so complete that it was impossible to tell

if there ever had been a pattern on it or not.

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

associated together or merged in one, and it was common to many early

peoples to think of the sun in conjunction with moisture as the great

creator of all vegetable fertility, for even the most casual

observation would show them that in the dark days of winter the

vegetable world seemed to sleep, and that it only awoke to activity

when the sun’s rays had become more powerful and while the soil was

still moistened by rain.

All religions have their times and seasons for special ceremonies of

worship, and the appropriate time for the greatest of these festivals

of solar worship would be at mid-summer, when the sun seemed most

brilliant and his rays most energetic. Accordingly we find that at

Zimbabwe means had been provided for ascertaining the time of the

summer solstice, and that the side of the temple which faced the rising

sun at this period of the year was adorned with a decoration symbolical

of fertility.

But the temples at Zimbabwe seem also to have served a more directly

practical purpose than that of mere worship of the powers of nature,

and while regulating the festivals held in honour of natural powers, to

have provided the means of observing the passage of the seasons and of

fixing the limits of a tropical year, and thus providing the elements

of a calendar.

The duration of a day is clearly marked by an apparent revolution of

the sun, and from the most remote antiquity a month has been equivalent

to the length of a lunation; but there is no equally obvious

astronomical phenomenon to enable the length of the year to be fixed;

and although the difference between summer and winter is very apparent

in most climates, there is nothing which very obviously defines the

limits of these seasons, and the periods of spring and autumn are even

less marked. But the dates of all festivals in solar worship would have

some relation to the seasons; and, besides, the times for agricultural

and many other operations would require to be fixed, and it would thus

be doubly necessary to find means of marking the progress of the year.

By most ancient peoples twelve lunations were considered to be equal to

a tropical year, but it was soon discovered that this was not so, for

the several months did not long coincide with their appropriate

seasons, and so the history of most ancient calendars tells of devices

to make the twelve lunar months of 29½ days each correspond with the

tropical year of 365¼ days. At Zimbabwe things seem to have been better

arranged, unless there, too, as in ancient Egypt, they had their

troublesome civil year measured by twelve revolutions of the moon, in

addition to their sacred year measured in the temples by an apparent

revolution of the sun among the stars.

The simplest way of ascertaining the period of a tropical year is by

observing the position of the sun relatively to the equator, or its

declination, and this can conveniently be done either when the sun is

on the horizon or on the meridian, but most easily with accuracy in the

former way, as the angle to be subdivided will generally be greater,

and greater accuracy will be attained, because long shadows can more

conveniently be used in this way than in the other. Or the right

ascension of the sun might also be observed; that is, its place among

the stars, or its position in the zodiac. This can be found most

readily by observing the heliacal rising of stars, or the meridian

passage of stars when the sun is near the horizon. At Zimbabwe all of

these methods seem to have been used, and to do so does not necessarily

imply more astronomical knowledge than is possessed by the peasantry in

any of the more secluded districts of Europe, where watches are not

much used, and where almanacks are not read, but where the people have

the habit of telling the time of the day and of the year by the motions

of the sun and of the stars; for to an agricultural people the change

in position of the sun in summer and winter is as obvious as the

seasons themselves, and the variation of the times of rising of the

stars with the seasons can as little escape observation. Herodotus

tells us that the Greeks used the gnomon to measure the length of

shadows, and thus ascertain the position of the sun at midday, or its

declination. The Chinese also used it at a very early period, and we

have similar arrangements in some of our modern churches. Instances of

the observation of the position of the sun on the horizon, except at

Zimbabwe, are few and doubtful, although gnomons seem sometimes to have

been used for this purpose; but ancient literature contains very many

references to the observation of the heliacal risings of stars, and

ancient architectural remains illustrate these literary allusions.

Hesiod often speaks of the times of different agricultural operations

having been fixed by the rising of stars, and Egyptian records tell us

that the rising of Sirius was observed at the overflowing of the Nile;

also it has recently been found that both Egyptian and Greek temples

were generally built so that the rising of some star could be observed

from their sanctuaries, and a coincidence has been traced between the

date of the great festival proper to each temple and the time of the

heliacal rising of the star towards which the axis of the temple was

originally directed. The Malays, at the beginning of this present

century, had a tradition that their seed-time had in old days been very

well fixed by the rising of the Pleiades, but that since they had

become Mohammedans the festivals of their religion and its calendar did

not so well regulate their seed-time as was done in old times. It has

been found that means were provided by the ancient Egyptians for

observing the meridian transits of stars; and did we possess detailed

and carefully oriented plans of the temples of Chaldæa and Assyria,

there is little doubt that we should find that the meridian had been

observed there also.

Thus it is evident that the several means which were adopted at

Zimbabwe for observing the motions of the heavenly bodies were used in

other countries also, and in all cases they seem to have been used for

regulating the time of celebration of religious festivals as well as

the ordinary affairs of life. Forms of nature worship analogous to that

practised at Zimbabwe seem often to have been accompanied in other

countries by an observation of the heavenly bodies. It is also worthy

of note that the stars which were observed at Zimbabwe seem all to have

been northern ones, and the builders of these temples probably acquired

the habit of observing these stars in the northern hemisphere. To this

we shall refer again.

What El Masoudi says of the temples of the Sabæans of Mesopotamia does

not, of course, directly apply to the temples at Zimbabwe; but in the

plans of those temples one is reminded of the multiform temples which

he describes, and of the mysteries involved in some of their

architectural features which he could not fathom, for in these temples

of Mashonaland there are some curious evidences of design in plan. A

glance at the plan of the great temple suggests that the architects had

carelessly drawn a great ellipse on the ground and built round it,

getting occasionally out of line and leaving occasional doorways; but

when one realises the wonderfully careful nature of the masonry, and

the great accuracy with which the comparatively rough stones have been

laid in regular courses, and been forced to combine to produce regular

forms, and when a careful plan of the whole building has been made,

then it is seen that what were regarded as careless irregularities in

construction are, in reality, carefully constructed architectural

features, which doubtless had some religious significance to the

worshippers, but whose meaning remains a mystery to us.

The walls which are lightly shaded in the accompanying plans are much

inferior in construction to the more darkly shaded walls, for while the

latter are built in most regular courses, and the stones are most

carefully packed in the whole thickness of the walls, the former,

though sometimes having the exterior courses laid with some regularity,

are most carelessly built in their interior, and the stones seem to

have been laid in anyhow, and consequently there is a great difference

in the durability of these walls; and while it would almost be possible

to drive a cart along the top of the better-built part of the outer

wall, one can only creep along the top of the worse-built portion while

risking a fall. Besides, the better-built and the worse-built portions

of the outer wall do not unite near the great doorway, and the

foundation of the well-built walls turns outward, as is shown in the

plan. The worse-built walls of all the temples do not show any of the

peculiarities of design so characteristic of the better walls, except

in two instances, where they seem to be rough reconstructions of older

walls. We may, therefore, assume that these poorer walls are not of the

original period, and that they were built by a people who either did

not practise solar worship or who did not do so under the original

forms. We will, therefore, disregard the poor walls in studying the

plans of the temples. It is much to be regretted that we could recover

no plan of the western side of the original outer wall, as 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 discover no reason for its being built

in its peculiar position. It has not been placed with any reference to

the points of the compass nor to the bearing of the sun at the

equinoxes, and its position is only indirectly connected with the

position of the sun at the solstices. But it is in the middle of the

space marked off by the two inner doorways, and the more easterly of

these two doorways is at the point where the sun would appear when

rising at the summer solstice when regarded from the central altar, as

will be shown farther on; and the other doorway is at the point where

the decoration on the outer wall terminates, and that is at the part of

the wall where the sun’s rays would be tangential to its curve when

rising at the same solstice. The portion of the outer wall behind the

above-mentioned sacred enclosure is built in the form of a circular arc

with its two extremities at B and K, and its centre at P, and the tower

stands midway between these points. Close to the great tower is the

little one, and no reason for its position suggests itself; but the

relative proportions of the two towers are curious, and seem to offer

an explanation of the plan of some other parts of the building—in fact,

the diameter of the great tower seems to have represented the unit of

measure in the construction of the curves of the outer walls and of all

the regularly curved inner walls in the great temple, and in all the

well-built temples in Mashonaland. The diameter of the great tower at

its base is 17·17 feet or 10 cubits, [9] and this is exactly equal to

the circumference of the little tower. This ratio of circumference to

diameter and the above measure of 10 cubits seem together to have

determined either the length of the radius or diameter, or halves of

these, of all the circular curves on which many of the walls are built.

For instance, the radius of the curve behind the great tower is 169⅓

feet, and this is equal to the diameter of the great tower multiplied

by the square of the ratio of circumference to diameter; or 17·17 ×

3·142 = 169·34. The well-built partly circular enclosure to the

north-west of the tower has a diameter of 54 feet, and this is equal to

17·17 × 3·14. The curve of the outer wall, from the eastern end of the

sacred enclosure (at K) to A is circular, and has its centre at the

altar, and its radius is 107⅘ feet. This is equal to twice 17·17 ×

3·14. This length of 107⅘ feet is also the exact distance between the

middle points of the two doorways at either end of the sacred

enclosure. The curve of the outer wall from A to the great doorway

seems to have a similar radius to the arc behind the tower, namely,

169⅓ feet, but in our measurements there we hardly fixed a sufficient

number of points in the line of the wall to make quite certain of this.

The inner long wall is parallel to the outer one until it reaches the

sacred enclosure, so it may be considered as combined with the outer

wall for our present purpose. Besides these there are no well-built

curved walls in the great temple, except the piece of wall near the

monoliths at M, and it is too short to allow of the centre of its curve

being laid down with certainty of accuracy. It does not, however, seem

to belie this system of measurement.

We need hardly expect to find the same measure always applying to the

buildings on the hill, for the form of these buildings is often

controlled by the nature of the ground. Still they do apply, and the

diameter of the curve on which the wall of the eastern temple is built

is 84½ feet, which is equal to half of 17·17 × 3·142. Of the two curved

walls on the left hand when entering this temple from the south the

diameter of the curve of one is equal to 17·17 × 3·14, and the radius

of the other is 17·17 feet. The only other regularly curved wall on the

hill is the western great wall with monoliths and round towers, and the

diameter of the circle of which the curve of this wall forms a part is

254 feet, and this does not agree with our system of measure. But this

wall and its towers are not well built, and there is good reason to

suppose that it is not the original wall, or that the outer portion of

it is not original; and, in fact, we discovered the foundation of part

of another parallel wall, as is partly shown in plan, six feet west of

this wall. If this were the original wall, it would give a diameter of

266 feet for the circle, which is half of 17·17 × 3·143.

At Matindela the only regularly curved piece of wall is that about the

principal doorway, but it is so rough in its construction that one

hesitates to deal with it, and we can only say that it seems to be

built on a curve of 107⅘ feet radius = twice 17·17 × 3·14. The whole

appearance of this wall and the slight inaccuracies in the orientation

of the decorations which it carries, suggest that it is a more recent

wall built roughly as a copy of an original wall on the same

foundation.

The ruin at the Lundi River is circular in form and well built, and its

diameter is fifty-four feet, which is equal to 17·17 × 3·14.

Of course all the above measurements refer to the outside of the walls

at the base, as this is the way in which the tower itself was measured.

The same principle of measurement applies to the curves which determine

the shape of the two towers themselves, and this explains why it is

that the little tower tapers much more rapidly towards the top than

does the great one. If we describe a circular curve with its centre on

the same level as the base of the great tower and its radius equal to

twice 17·17 x 3·14 on 107⅘ feet, we find that it exactly fits the

outline of the great tower as it is shown in our photographs. Also, a

curve described in a similar way but with a radius equal to twice the

diameter of the little tower multiplied by 3·14 (5·45 × 3·14 × 2 =

34·34 feet) will correspond to the outline of that tower.

The towers when built were doubtless made complete in their

mathematical form and were carried up to a point as we see in a coin of

Byblos, where we have a similar tower represented with curved outlines.

Their heights as determined by these curves would be 42·3 and 13·5 feet

respectively, and these numbers also bear the same relation to each

other that the circumference of a circle does to its diameter.

We have no explanation to give of the position of the little tower

relatively to the great one, but there probably was some meaning in it

which might appear had we a plan of the original walls around the

towers. It is very doubtful that these walls, which now mark off the

sacred enclosure, are of the same period as the towers. They are shaded

darkly in our plan because they are fairly well built; but although

they are better built than most of the secondary walls, yet they are

not equal in point of execution to the great outer wall and the towers,

and their lines, too, are not so regular as those of the original walls

generally are. It seems probable that they are rough copies of some old

walls which had fallen, and are wanting in some of the essential

features of their originals. We can only say that the centre of one

tower is distant 17·17 feet from the centre of the other, within a

limit of error of two inches.

The angular height of both the towers measured from the centres of the

curves which determine their forms is the same—namely 23° 1′.

None of the angular values of the arcs seem to have been of any special

significance, except perhaps the angle at the altar in the great

temple, which is subtended by the arc AK. The value of this angle is

about 57°, and is equal to our modern unit of the circular measure of

an angle, which is the angle at the centre of any circle that is

subtended by an arc equal to the radius. It is hardly likely that it

can have had this meaning to the builders of the temple, and the

probable cause of the coincidence is that at A they meant to halve the

angular distance between K and the doorway. Besides, the sun’s rays,

when it rises at the summer solstice, do not fall directly on the part

of the wall beyond A, and this probably had some connection with their

reason for changing the radius of the arc at this point.

There is no evidence that any of the trigonometrical functions were

known to the builders of Zimbabwe; not even the chord, which was

probably the earliest recognised function of an angle, for the chords

of the various arcs bear no simple relation to each other. The only

interesting mathematical fact which seems to have been embodied in the

architecture of the temples is the ratio of diameter to circumference,

and it may have had an occult significance in the peculiar form of

nature worship which was practised there. We do not suppose that it was

intended to symbolise anything of an astronomical nature, and it is

extremely improbable that the builders of Zimbabwe had any notion of

mathematical astronomy, for their astronomy was purely empirical, and

amounted merely to an observation of the more obvious motions of the

heavenly bodies. When the minds of men were first interested in

geometry it would at once occur to them that there must be some

constant ratio between the circumference of a circle and its diameter,

and they would easily discover what this ratio was, and they may have

considered this discovery so important and significant that they

desired to express it in their architecture. Analogous instances of an

embodiment of simple mathematical principles in architectural forms

will occur to every one.

The centres of the arcs seem generally to have been important points,

and altars were sometimes erected at them from which the culminations

or meridian transits of stars could be observed, and on which

sacrifices were probably offered to the sun when it was rising or

setting at either of the solstices.

Around the outside of the wall of the great temple, between the points

marked A and B on plan, there extend two bands of a kind of chevron

pattern, formed, as will be seen from the illustrations, by placing

stones on their edges. This pattern seems to have been symbolical of

fertility, and it extends along the part of the wall which receives

directly the rays of the sun when rising at the summer solstice. It

reminds one of the Egyptian hieroglyphic symbol for water, and of how

naturally the idea of water would be associated with fertility in the

mind of a solar worshipper. It also resembles the symbol for the

zodiacal sign of Aquarius, and we might suppose that the temple was

built when the sun was in this sign of the zodiac at the summer

solstice, did such a supposition not carry us back to too remote a

period. Besides, the sun is generally believed to have been in

Capricornus at the December solstice at the period at which the zodiac

was invented, and when its signs received their names.

One hundred and seven and four-fifths feet from A and the same distance

from K and from B is the centre of the arc AK, and at this point is

some ruined masonry which seems once to have formed an altar. Zimbabwe

is in South latitude 20° 16′ 30″, and consequently the sun, when rising

there at the summer solstice, would bear East 25° South were the

horizon level. But Mount Varoma interposes itself between the temple

and the rising sun at this time, so that the sun attains an altitude of

5° before its rays reach the temple. Then its amplitude will be more

nearly 24°, and a line produced in this direction from the altar will

pass across the doorway of the sacred enclosure, where the curve of the

wall changes its radius, and, roughly speaking, through the middle of

the chevron pattern. The same line drawn in an opposite direction for

seventy-three feet would fall on a tall monolith which we there found

lying by its well-built foundation. Where the pattern ends at A and B

the rays of the sun are nearly tangential to the wall, so that all

parts of the wall, and those parts only, which receive the direct rays

of the sun when rising at the summer solstice are decorated by this

symbolical pattern.

The sun’s rays would not fall on the altar at this time, and it seems

strange to have an altar devoted to solar worship under the shadow of a

wall; but the same objection would apply to every part of the interior

of the temple, and we can hardly suppose that the priests at Zimbabwe

performed their ceremonies of worship outside of the temple, as some

tribes of Arabs do with some stone circles at the present day, neither

is there any sign of such ceremonies having been performed on the top

of the broad wall. The monolith, seventy-three feet from the altar, was

sufficiently tall to receive the rays of the sun when it rose over

Mount Varoma, and the shadow of a monolith erected on the wall at K

would fall on it at the same time, thus marking with great accuracy the

occurrence of the solstice. Monoliths had been erected at intervals

along the decorated part, and only on this part, of the wall, and these

may have served to indicate other periods of the year in a similar way.

Near the top of the great tower, which at present stands thirty-two

feet high, there is a dentelle pattern, which may be described as a

chevron pattern laid on its side, and which resembles a common Egyptian

pattern. This extends partly round the tower, but it is impossible to

determine its aspect with accuracy as so much of it has fallen away. It

seems, however, to have faced the setting sun at the winter solstice.

At the temple at the east end of the fortress on the hill similar means

are provided for observing the summer solstice. Only a small part of

the decorated wall remains, the middle part, which was of great height,

having fallen, so that we do not know how far the decoration may have

extended towards the south. On the other side it terminates at the

doorway, which is placed close to the high cliff which forms the

northern side of the temple. We discovered the altar, with several

phalli and many little terracotta images of the solar disc lying near

it, and some among the stones of the altar. This altar is not at the

centre of the arc, but is placed ten feet nearer the rising sun at the

solstice, and its position seems to be due to the position of the break

in the cliff, which is true north of the altar, so that the meridian

can be observed through this passage from the altar in its actual

position, and it could not have been observed from the altar were it

placed at the centre of the arc. It was impossible to describe the arc

with the altar as its centre owing to the position of some rocks which

would have interfered with the building of the wall. At the summer

solstice the sun rises here on a level horizon and bears East 25°

South, and a line drawn from the altar in this direction passes through

the pattern, and continued for ten feet in the opposite direction it

would fall on the centre of the arc.

The great curved wall at the western end of the fortress, which is

surmounted by little round towers and erect monoliths, faces the

setting sun at the winter solstice. If we suppose the altar was placed

here, we have on an eminence marked A, fifty feet true north of the

altar, a tall monolith which would enable the meridian transits of

northern stars to be observed from the altar, and a line drawn from

this altar towards the setting sun at the winter solstice would seem to

have passed through the middle of the line of towers and monoliths.

This great wall is not so well built as the walls at the eastern

temple, and it seems probable that it is a restoration of an old wall

which was originally parallel to this, and whose foundations we

discovered as already mentioned. Possibly on the original wall the

round towers and monoliths were aligned between the altar and the

setting sun at certain definite periods of the year. At present they do

not seem to mark any important periods, but the position of the setting

sun at the summer solstice is well marked by a round tower on the wall

overhanging the high cliff, and this is undoubtedly a wall of the best

period.

At this western end of the fortress we have two instances of parts of

walls which faced the setting sun at the winter solstice being

decorated by a dentelle pattern.

The disposition of the ornamental patterns on the little round ruin at

the Lundi River is interesting. It faces the rising sun at the winter

solstice, but the place had been inhabited by Kaffirs, and all vestige

of an altar, if it ever existed, had been destroyed. The nature of the

patterns here is different from that of those at Zimbabwe. The one near

the top of the wall is composed of two rows of little squares

alternating with blank spaces, and a little way below this are two rows

of a herring-bone pattern. There is a curious rounded protuberance on

the outside of the wall, and the herring-bone pattern stops at this

point, but the other extends right round to the south-eastern doorway.

This temple is similar in many ways to the partly circular one

north-west of the great tower at Zimbabwe. They have both the same

diameter and they each have two doorways which are in somewhat similar

positions, although the temple at the Lundi is oriented towards the

rising sun at the winter solstice, and the other, if it ever had a

pattern, would have had it facing the setting sun at this solstice.

The dentelle pattern on the great tower seems to have been oriented

towards the setting sun at the winter solstice, and the centre of the

partly circular temple at G is roughly in a line between the centre of

the tower and the sun at this time. When the sun is rising at the

summer solstice G will be behind the tower and in the middle of its

shadow, in a position analogous to that of the altar behind the arc AK.

The direction of the wall at the north-eastern extremity of the arc of

which G is the centre is towards the rising sun at the winter solstice,

and its inner side points past the centre of the arc AK [10] towards

the point of the outer wall which is in a straight line between the

altar and the sun when it rises at this solstice. The wall at the other

extremity of the arc points to the rising sun at the other solstice.

It is perhaps worthy of remark that the centre of the great tower is

distant the length of its own height (42·3 feet) from the solstitial

line MK, while the centre of the little tower would be the same

distance from a parallel solstitial line drawn from the south-eastern

extremity of the arc of which G is the centre; and also that the

centres of the great tower and the centres of the arcs AK and KB lie in

one straight line.

At Matindela the general aspect of the decorated part of the building

is towards the setting sun, but the masonry is so rough in its

construction that we need expect little accuracy in orientation. The

whole appearance of the place suggests that what exists at present is

merely a rough rebuilding of an older structure. What remains of the

internal arrangements of the building is very fragmentary, and we could

find no trace of an altar. Over the doorway there is a herring-bone

pattern facing the setting sun at the summer solstice, and adjoining

this on its north side there is a band of ornament of the dentelle kind

with a similar aspect. Above this dentelle pattern there is a loophole

in the wall which may have served to pass a ray of light from the

setting sun to an altar at some festival. Farther along the wall there

is another pattern facing the setting sun at the winter solstice, and

on the inside of the wall yet another looking towards the rising sun at

the summer solstice. The construction of the doorways at Matindela is

remarkable. They have been originally made of considerable width, and

then been narrowed very much by square masses of masonry which were

built at both sides. The direction of the doorways also seems to have

some meaning, for three of them look East 25° North, and four East 25°

South, thus corresponding to the direction of the sun rising and

setting at the solstices.

At the Mazoe Valley, and to the north-east of Matindela, near Mount

Chiburwe, there are well-built ruins of the best period of this style

of architecture, but, unfortunately, too little of them remains to

allow us to understand their plans. They are both very small, and are

not circular, like the Lundi River ruin, but their walls seem to have

been built on a series of curves like the wall of the great temple. A

very extraordinary thing regarding all the older ruins in Mashonaland

is the way in which the stones which once composed the walls have

disappeared. They have not been covered up by soil, and there is no

trace of them in the surrounding country, and yet in these two ruins

not one-twentieth part of the stones remain, and all that do remain are

in their original places in the walls.

When the western wall was rebuilt at the great temple at Zimbabwe there

was apparently a want of stones, and the rebuilders were too lazy to

procure more, so they probably shortened the wall by decreasing the

size of the temple, and also economised stones by making the new wall

much less thick.

The place marked A near the western end of Zimbabwe Hill is remarkable.

It is a natural eminence, the height of which has been increased by

building. To the south of it is a great mass of masonry which is

pierced by several roofed passages, and over which a winding stairway

leads from the eastern buildings to the eminence, while a similar

staircase leads from the eminence towards the buildings lying

northward. To the eastward of the eminence tower great granite

boulders, the termination at this end of that line of boulders which

caps the hill along its whole length, and which protects the fortress

on the north side. At the highest point of the eminence is erected the

great monolith before referred to, which seems to have marked the

meridian for the altar at R. Close to this monolith stood another made

of soapstone. We found its base in its place, and its other fragments,

shown in the illustration, were all discovered near. This monolith was

decorated with bands of the chevron pattern running halfway round, with

images of the sun and other geometrical patterns placed between the

bands. It seems probable that it served as a gnomon, and that means had

been provided for measuring the length of its shadow at midday. The

foundation of the monolith is twenty-five feet higher than the site of

the altar, and the monolith itself was ten feet long, so that we have a

total height for its summit of thirty-five feet above the base of the

altar, and it stood fifty feet true north of the altar. At Zimbabwe the

altitude of the upper limb of the sun at midday, at the winter

solstice, is about 46½°, so that the top of the monolith would then

throw its shadow in the direction of the altar, and to within about

seventeen feet of its centre. Probably some arrangement had been made

near the altar for observing the length of its shadow; and were the

shadow received on an inclined plane or staircase, as seems to have

been done with the dial of Ahaz, mentioned in the Old Testament, it

might be lengthened to any extent and its variations in length

increased in magnitude; and so the change in declination of the sun

could be observed with considerable accuracy. The sun is little more

than three degrees south of Zimbabwe at midsummer, and it would be

difficult to measure with accuracy the short shadows then cast, and we

do not find anything to show that they had been observed, and the means

provided in the two other temples for observing the position of the sun

on the horizon would be much more effectual for fixing this solstice.

The positions of the doorways relatively to the altars or the centres

of the arcs is of interest; and we find that every important doorway in

walls of the original period, with the exception of the south-eastern

doorway in the temple at the Lundi, and the south-western one in the

partly circular interior temple at Zimbabwe, is placed true north of

the centre of an arc or of an altar, and the centre of every arc has

had a doorway or some other means of marking out the meridian placed

north of it. True north of the centre of the tower itself we have a

doorway in the wall of the sacred enclosure, and although the wall in

which this doorway is made was probably not built at the original

period, yet there probably was a doorway in a similar position in the

wall which it has replaced. The part of the great outer wall north of

the tower seems also to have been marked, for about this point we found

a great step constructed on its top about five feet high.

Above the temple at the east end of the fortress on the hill, a cliff

rises perpendicularly for fifty feet, and poised on its top there

stands a most remarkable great rock which may once have been an object

of veneration to the worshippers in the temple beneath it. It forms one

of the highest points on the hill. A line drawn true south from this

rock and produced 680 yards would pass through the doorway in the great

temple and fall on the altar in the centre of the decorated arc. Until

this line suggested itself we were puzzled to account for the peculiar

character of the doorway. It passes through a wall sixteen feet thick,

and is itself only three feet wide, and it does not pass through the

wall at right angles, but cuts it somewhat obliquely, so that its axis

is roughly parallel to the meridian line.

A line drawn true north from the centre of the arc at G will pass

through the doorway of the small temple and the centre of the arc KB at

P. This line points through the outer wall where the gap occurs, and it

is probable that the opening which was made in the outer wall to allow

of observation along this line, determined its fall at this point. This

meridian line is thirty-six feet distant from the other from the centre

of the arc AK, and it must have pointed to the same great stone. But if

both these lines point to the middle of this stone, which is 680 yards

distant, they will incline towards each other about one degree, and the

time of the transit of a star over the stone observed by one line will

differ four minutes from that observed by the other. This inaccuracy

would be so obvious to the observers that we cannot suppose they would

have worked in this way. The great stone measures nearly, if not quite,

thirty-two feet across, and were the lines directed, not both to its

centre, but one to either side, they would be parallel to each other

and would both give the same time for a transit of a star. This would

imply that stars were observed, not passing over the stone, but

disappearing and reappearing behind it, and a star observed at the

altar to disappear would at the same instant reappear to an observer at

G and P; or if the rock were less than thirty-two feet wide the star

would reappear at G and P before it disappeared at the altar. We have

thus a sort of double observation of the same meridian transit.

If we admit that these meridian lines were used for the observation of

stars in this way, and if we can determine what star or stars were

observed, the time that has elapsed since they were observed admits of

calculation. The apparent altitude of the middle of the stone as seen

from the centres of the arcs is 7½°, and the latitude of Zimbabwe is

20° 16′ 30″, so that we want stars having a north polar distance of

about 28°. Owing to the changing direction of the pole of the earth,

which produces the phenomenon of the precession of the equinoxes, the

declinations and right ascensions of all the stars are undergoing a

slow but regular change; but there are no stars of the first magnitude

which have had approximately this polar distance since any probable

date of the foundation of Zimbabwe. Of stars of the second magnitude

there are four, and of the third magnitude many more, which may have

been used, and they would all serve for widely different periods. In

order to enable us to select the proper star from this number we must

have its right ascension, and this we may yet hope to get when we have

the date of some important yearly festival at Zimbabwe, and the hour at

which the star would be wanted on the meridian on the night of this

festival.

There are two other places where the meridian transits of stars have

been watched at Zimbabwe, and in these cases it is still the same

portion of the heavens which has been observed. The altar in the

eastern temple in the fortress has been placed ten feet E.S.E. of the

centre of the arc, in order to permit of the meridian being observed

through the gap in the rock which formed the northern doorway. Here the

line laid off is much shorter than that between the rock and the great

temple, but still fairly accurate observations could be made. To the

north of the centre of the arc of the great wall of the western temple

there is, as we have already shown, a great monolith erected, and at

one side of this the stars might be observed at their culminations. As

seen from the altar this monolith would mark out an angular distance of

9° of the meridian.

It is remarkable that only stars of the northern hemisphere seem to

have been observed at Zimbabwe, for in the great temple itself the

culminations of southern stars could quite as easily have been observed

as those of northern ones, and in the fortress all view of the northern

sky is almost completely shut off by the cliffs and huge boulders which

form its northern line of defence; yet every point from which northern

stars could have been observed has been used for this purpose, and

there is no temple there from which northern stars were not observed,

while at the same time the openly displayed southern sky has been left

unregarded. This, of course, points to a northern origin for the

people, and suggests that before they came to Zimbabwe they had

acquired the habit of observing certain stars—a habit so strong that it

led them to disregard the use of the southern constellations, though

they must have known that they would equally well have served to

regulate their calendar; it even seems to indicate that they attached

ideas of veneration to certain stars, and rendered them worship. It

seems a plausible supposition that while the great temple itself was

devoted to solar and analogous forms of worship, the little circular,

or partly circular, temples within its walls, of which we found one

fairly well preserved and fragmentary remains of several others, were

dedicated to the cult of particular stars.

There is no sign in the temples of any observation of anything external

to the temples themselves, unless of the heavenly bodies; and no

features of the surrounding country, such as prominent mountain-peaks

or great isolated rocks, of which there are many striking instances

near the temples, have had any regard at all paid to them. The outer

walls, with the exception of the decoration towards the solstices, are

featureless and blank, and the doorways, where one might expect

ornament, are extremely narrow and entirely plain. When one is within

the great temple one realises how fitting a place it is in which to

observe the starry sky, for the high walls around exclude all view of

the landscape, and the only objects which attract one’s attention are

the heavenly bodies above one; and at night-time one feels how easily

the thoughts of a star-worshipper could be concentrated on their proper

object.

It is incredible that such a style of architecture as we have

described, and such a civilisation as it signifies, could have

originated and developed in South Africa, for such a development would

have required a very long time, and would have implied at least a long

and peaceful settlement in the country; and although the builders of

Zimbabwe may have long possessed the place, yet it is apparent that

they never considered the country was their own. This is clear from the

nature of their defences and the strength of their fortifications. Had

they lived long enough in the land to alter or develop any of their

arts independently of their mother country, they would have left a

deeper mark on their surroundings than they have; besides, living as

they must have lived, they could not have increased in civilisation,

nor developed any of its arts, and we may assume that they had their

architecture as well as their religion in common with their mother

country. The balance of probabilities seems to be in favour of that

country being South Arabia; and when it and Abyssinia, with which it

was so long associated, are better known, we may find temples which are

built of similar small stones and with similar mathematical and other

peculiarities in their construction. Our information of these countries

is meagre, but some of those buildings which are known in Yemen, which

seem to combine temple and fortress in one, as on Zimbabwe Hill, may

have been built by the same race that constructed Zimbabwe; and the

elliptic temples at Marib and Sirwah, and the one at Nakab al Hajar,

with its north and south doorways seeming to indicate an observation of

the meridian, may embody some of the mathematical principles

illustrated by the ruins of Mashonaland.

When the original builders of Zimbabwe have been traced to their home,

it will remain to discover who were their successors in Mashonaland

that rebuilt the western wall of the great temple and some portions of

other buildings, for this certainly was not done by any of the present

negro races.

There is nothing to show that even these walls do not belong to a now

far distant time; for although they would not long remain in this

country, yet at Zimbabwe they might endure for an indefinite period,

for there, in a clear atmosphere free from dust, and a tropical climate

with its yearly torrential rains, no soil can accumulate among the

stones to support vegetation which would destroy the walls. The few

small plants which grow even on the oldest walls are of species which

do not require much mineral matter for their growth, and whose roots

are so soft that they mould themselves to the shape of the interstices

in the walls, but do not press asunder the stones. Besides, the present

inhabitants of the country do not use stone in any of their

constructions, and never trouble themselves to remove stones from any

existing walls, so that more stones have probably been disturbed during

the two years of British occupation of the country than the Kaffirs

would disturb in as many centuries; and under the old conditions the

walls might endure for an indefinite time. [11]

CHAPTER VI

THE FINDS AT THE GREAT ZIMBABWE RUINS

In this chapter I propose to discuss all the objects discovered during

our excavations in the ruins as apart from the buildings themselves,

and to analyse the light that they throw on the original constructors

and their cult. All these objects were found, with a few minor

exceptions, in the eastern temple on the fortress. As I have said,

traces of a recent Kaffir habitation will account for the absence of

objects in the lower buildings, but the upper ruin, sheltered from the

sun and hidden by trees and lofty boulders, was a spot repugnant to the

warmth-loving Kaffir, and to this fact we owe the preservation of so

many objects of interest belonging to the ancient inhabitants. The most

remarkable feature in connection with the finds is that everything of a

decorative nature is made of a steatitic schist or soapstone. This

stone is found in the country, and is still employed by natives farther

south in making pipes for smoking dokha or hemp; it lends itself easily

to the tool of the artist, and is very durable.

First, let us take the birds perched on tall soapstone columns, which,

from the position in which we found most of them, would appear to have

decorated the outer wall of the semicircular temple on the hill. These

birds are all conventional in design. The tallest stood 5 feet 4 inches

in height, the smallest about half a foot lower. We have six large ones

and two small ones in all, and probably, from the number of soapstone

pedestals with the tops broken off which we found in the temple, there

were several more. Though they are all different in execution, they

would appear to have been intended to represent the same bird; from the

only one in which the beak [12] is preserved to us intact, we

undoubtedly recognise that they must have been intended to represent

hawks or vultures. The thick neck and legs, the long talons and the

nature of the plumage point more distinctly to the vulture; the

decorations on some of them, namely, the dentelle pattern at the edge

of the wings, the necklace with a brooch in front and continued down

the back, the raised rosette-shaped eyes, and the pattern down the

back, point to a high degree of conventionality, evolved out of some

sacred symbolism of which these birds were the embodiment, the nature

of which symbolism it is now our object to arrive at. Two of the birds,

similar in character, with straight legs and fan-shaped tails different

from the others, are represented as perched on zones or cesti; two

others have only indications of the cestus beneath their feet; a fifth,

with nothing beneath its feet, has two circles carved under it and two

on the wings [13]; a sixth is perched on a chevron pattern similar to

that which decorates the large circular temple; hence there is a sort

of similarity of symbolism connecting them all.

We have now to look around for comparisons by which we may hope to

identify the origin of our birds, and I have little doubt in stating

that they are closely akin to the Assyrian Astarte or Venus, and

represent the female element in creation. Similar birds were sacred to

Astarte amongst the Phœnicians and are often represented as perched on

her shrines.

Of the maternal aspect in which the ancient Egyptians held the vulture

we have ample evidence. Horapollo tells us (I. 11) that the vulture was

emblematic of ‘Urania, a year, a mother,’ whilst Ælian goes so far as

to suppose that all vultures were females, to account for their

character as emblems of maternity. The cesti and the circles point

obviously to this, and these birds in connection with phallic worship

are interesting as emblems, signifying incubation. Let us now consult

Lucian, who in his work ‘De Syriâ Deâ’ describes a temple at

Hierapolis, near the Euphrates, which, as we have seen, has much in

common with these temples at Zimbabwe. In § 33, p. 479, he mentions a

curious pediment, of no distinctive shape, called by the Assyrians ‘the

symbol,’ on the top of which is perched a bird. Amongst some of Dr.

Schliemann’s discoveries at Mycene, there are also images surmounted by

birds which differ from the ξόανον in the ‘De Syriâ Deâ’ solely in the

fact that they are not shapeless, but represent a nude female figure.

The goddess of this shrine was evidently Astarte, and wore a cestus,

‘with which none but Urania is adorned.’ [14] On a Phœnician coin found

in Cyprus we have the dove on the betyle or pedestal as the central

object. [15] In Egyptian archæology we also come across the bird on the

pedestal, more particularly in the curious zodiac of Denderah, where a

bird perched on a pillar, and with the crown of Upper Egypt on its

head, is, as Mr. Norman Lockyer tells me, used to indicate the

commencement of the year; also from the Soudan we have a bird on a

pedestal carved on some rude stone fragments now in the Ashmolean

Museum. It is just possible that the birds at Zimbabwe had some

solstitial meaning, but as their exact position on the temple walls is

lost, it is impossible to speak on this point with anything like

certainty. Also in the difficult question of early Arabian cult, which

was closely bound up with that of Egypt, Assyria, and Phœnicia, we find

the vulture as the totem of a Southern Arabian tribe at the time of the

Himyaritic supremacy, and it was worshipped there as the god Nasr, and

is mysteriously alluded to in Himyaritic inscriptions as ‘the vulture

of the East and the vulture of the West,’ which also would seem to

point to a solstitial use of the emblem. [16]

The religious symbolism of these birds is further attested by our

finding two tiny representations of the larger emblems; they, too,

represented birds on pillars, the longest of which is only three and a

half inches, and it is perched on the pillar more as the bird is

represented in the zodiac of Denderah. Evidently these things were used

as amulets or votive offerings in the temple. Lucian alludes to the

phalli used as amulets by the Greeks with a human figure on the end,

and he connects them with the tower thirty cubits in height.

In the centre of the temple on the hill stood an altar, into the stones

of which were inserted and also scattered around a large number of

soapstone objects representing the phallus either realistically or

conventionally, but always with anatomical accuracy which unmistakably

conveys their meaning, and proves in addition that circumcision was

practised by this primitive race; ‘its origin both amongst the

Egyptians and Ethiopians,’ says Herodotus, ii. 37, 104, ‘may be traced

to the most remote antiquity.’ We have seen in the previous description

of the tower the parallel to Lucian’s description of the phalli in the

temple at Hierapolis. Here, in the upper temple, we found no less than

thirty-eight miniature representations of the larger emblem; one is a

highly ornate object, with apparently a representation of a winged sun

on its side, or perchance the winged Egyptian vulture, suggesting a

distinct Semitic influence. There is a small marble column in the

Louvre, twenty-six inches in height, of Phœnician origin, with a winged

symbol on the shaft like the one before us; it is crowned by an

ornament made of four petalled flowers. This winged globe is met with

in many Phœnician objects, and MM. Perrot and Chipiez, in their work on

Phœnicia, thus speak of it as ‘a sort of trade-mark by which we can

recognise as Phœnician all such objects as bear it, whether they come

from Etruria or Sardinia, from Africa or Syria.’ And of the stele in

the Louvre the same authors say, ‘We may say that it is signed.’ A

carefully executed rosette with seven petals forms the summit of our

object found in the temple. Now the rosette is also another distinctly

Phœnician symbol used by them to indicate the sun. We have the rosette

on Phœnician sepulchral stelæ in the British Museum in conjunction with

the half-moon to indicate the heavenly luminaries, and here at Zimbabwe

we have this object surmounted by a rosette, rosettes carved on the

decorated pillars, and the eyes of the birds, as before mentioned, are

made in the form of rosettes. The fact of finding these objects all in

close juxtaposition around the altar and in the vicinity of the birds

on pillars is sufficient proof of the nature of the objects and their

religious symbolism. Thus we have in both cases the larger emblems and

their miniature representatives, the tower and the smaller phalli, the

large birds and the tiny amulets, proving to us that the ancient

inhabitants of the ruins worshipped a combination of the two deities,

which together represented the creative powers of mankind.

A curious confirmation of this is found in the pages of Herodotus, who

tells us [17]: ‘The Arabians of all the gods only worshipped Dionysus,

whom they called Ourotalt, and Urania;’ that is to say, they worshipped

the two deities which, in the mind of the father of history,

represented in themselves all that was known of the mysteries of

creation, pointing to the very earliest period of Arabian cult, prior

to the more refined religious development of the Sabæo-Himyaritic

dynasty, when Sun-worship, veneration for the great luminary which

regenerated all animal and vegetable life, superseded the grosser forms

of nature-worship, to be itself somewhat superseded or rather

incorporated in a worship of all the heavenly luminaries, which

developed as a knowledge of astronomy was acquired.

We have already discussed the round towers and the numerous monoliths

which decorated the walls and other parts of the Zimbabwe ruins;

excavation yielded further examples of the veneration for stones

amongst the early inhabitants. One of these was a tall decorated

soapstone pillar 11 feet 6 inches in height, which stood on the

platform already alluded to, and acted as a centre to a group of

monoliths; the base of this pillar we found in situ, the rest had been

broken off and appropriated by a Kaffir to decorate a wall; it was

worked with bands of geometric patterns around it, each different from

the other and divided into compartments by circular patterns, one of

which is the chevron pattern found on the circular ruin below; it only

runs round a portion of the pillar; and may possibly have been used to

orient it towards the setting sun. Besides this tall pillar we found

two fragments of other similar pillars decorated one with geometric

patterns and the other with an extraordinary and entirely inexplicable

decoration. On these pillars the rosette is frequently depicted, and it

would seem that they all came from the same place, namely, the platform

decorated with monoliths. Here also we found several stones of a

curious nature and entirely foreign to the place. Two of them are

stones with even bands of an asbestiform substance, a serpentine with

veins of chrysolite, the grooves being caused by the natural erosion of

the fibrous bands. Another stone is an irregular polygonal pillar-like

object of coarse-grained basalt, the smooth faces of which are natural

points, the whole being a portion of a rough column or prism. Another,

again, is a fragment of schistose rock, apparently hornblendic; also we

found several round blocks of diorite in this place. The collection

here of so many strange geological fragments cannot be accidental, and

points to a veneration of curious-shaped stones amongst the earlier

inhabitants of the ruins, which were collected here on the platform, a

spot which, I am convinced, will compare with the βαιτύλια or betyles

of the Phœnicians, and of this stone cult we have ample evidence from

Arabia. El Masoudi alludes to the ancient stone-worship of Arabia, and

leads us to believe that at one time this gross fetichism formed a part

of the natural religion of the Semitic races. Marinus of Tyre says they

honoured as a god a great cut stone. Euthymius Zygabenus further tells

us that apparently ‘this stone was the head of Aphrodite, which the

Ishmaelites formerly worshipped, and it is called Bakka Ismak;’ also,

he adds, ‘they have certain stone statues erected in the centre of

their houses, round which they danced till they fell from giddiness;

but when the Saracens were converted to Christianity they were obliged

to anathematise this stone, which formerly they worshipped.’ [18] Herr

Kremer, in his account of the ancient cult of Arabia, makes frequent

allusions to the stone-worship. In the town of Taif a great unformed

stone block was worshipped, identical with the goddess which Herodotus

calls Urania; and one must imagine that the Kaaba stone at Mecca

resembles the black schistose block which we found at Zimbabwe; it is

an exceedingly old-world worship, dating back to the most primitive

ages of mankind.

The next series of finds to be discussed are the numerous fragments of

decorated and plain soapstone bowls which we found, most of them deeply

buried in the immediate vicinity of the temple on the fortress; and

these bring us to consider more closely the artistic capacities of the

race who originally inhabited these ruins. The work displayed in

executing these bowls, the careful rounding of the edges, the exact

execution of the circle, the fine pointed tool-marks, and the subjects

they chose to depict, point to the race having been far advanced in

artistic skill—a skill arrived at, doubtless, by commercial intercourse

with the more civilised races of mankind. Seven of these bowls were of

exactly the same size, and were 19·2 inches in diameter, [19] which

measurements we ascertained by taking the radii of the several

fragments. The most elaborate of these fragments is a bowl which had

depicted around its outer edge a hunting scene; it is very well worked,

and bears in several points a remarkable similarity to objects of art

produced by the Phœnicians. There is here, as we have in all Phœnician

patterns, the straight procession of animals, to break the continuity

of which a little man is introduced shooting a zebra with one hand and

holding in the other an animal by a leash. To fill up a vacant space, a

bird is introduced flying, all of which points are characteristic of

Phœnician work. Then the Phœnician workmen always had a great power of

adaptability, taking their lessons in art from their immediate

surroundings, which is noticeable all over the world, whether in

Greece, Egypt, Africa, or Italy. Here we have the same characteristic,

namely, a procession of native African animals treated in a Phœnician

style—three zebras, two hippopotami, and the sportsman in the centre is

obviously a Hottentot. The details in this bowl are carefully brought

out, even the breath of the animals is depicted by three strokes at the

mouth. There is also a fragment of another bowl with zebras on it

similarly treated, though somewhat higher and coarser. The fragments of

a large bowl, which had a procession of bulls round it, is also

Phœnician in character. [20] The most noticeable feature in the

treatment of these bulls is that the three pairs of horns we have

preserved to us are all different.

There are three fragments of three very large bowls, which are all of a

special interest, and if the bowls could have been recovered intact

they would have formed very valuable evidence. Search, however, as we

would, we never found more of these bowls, and therefore must be

content with what we have. The first of these represents on its side a

small portion of what must have been a religious procession; of this we

have only a hand holding a pot or censer containing an offering in it,

and an arm of another figure with a portion of the back of the head

with the hair drawn off it in folds. Representations of a similar

nature are to be found in the religious functions of many Semitic

races, and it is much to be regretted that we have not more of it for

our study.

The second fragment has an elaborate design upon it, taken from the

vegetable world, probably an ear of corn; it was evidently around the

lip of the bowl and not at the side; it is a very good piece of

workmanship, and of a soapstone of brighter green than that employed in

the other articles. The third fragment is perhaps the most tantalising

of all; it is a fragment of the lip of another large bowl which must

have been more than two feet in diameter, and around which apparently

an inscription ran. The lettering is provokingly fragmentary, but still

there can be no doubt that it is an attempt at writing in some form:

the straight line down the middle, the sloping lines on either side

recall some system of tally, and the straightness of the lettering

compares curiously with the proto-Arabian type of lettering used in the

earlier Sabæan inscriptions, specimens of which I here give, and also

with some curious rock carvings found by Mr. A. A. Anderson in

Bechuanaland. It was common in Phœnician and early Greek vases to have

an inscription or dedication round the lip; vide, for example, a lebes

in the British Museum from a temple at Naucratis with a dedication to

Apollo on the rim, and used, like the one before us, in temple service.

The circles on the birds also appear to have a line across, like the

fourth letter given as illustrating the early Arabian alphabet.

Of the other fragments of bowls we found, one has a well-executed cord

pattern running round it, another a herring-bone pattern alternating

with what would appear to be a representation of the round tower; and

besides these there are several fragments of what have been perfectly

plain bowls, notably one large one, the diameter of which is outside 2

feet and inside 1 foot 8 inches. The edges of this bowl are very

carefully bevelled and the bottom rounded, and it is a very fine

specimen of workmanship, the whole of which we were able to recover

saving a portion of the bottom. Another plain bowl has a round hole

pierced through its side, and another fragment is made of a reddish

sort of soapstone with oxide of iron in it. The tool marks on these

bowls point to very fine instruments having been used in carving them.

Altogether these bowls are amongst the most conspicuous of our finds,

and the fact they all came from the proximity of the temple would

undoubtedly seem to prove that they were used in temple service, broken

by subsequent occupants of the ruins, and the fragments thrown outside.

The next find from Zimbabwe which we will discuss is the circular

soapstone object with a hole in the centre, which at first is

suggestive of a quern; but being of such friable material such could

not have been the case. It is decorated round the side and on the top

with rings of knobs, four on the side and four on the top; from the

central hole a groove has been cut to the side, and the whole is very

well finished off. This thing is 2 feet 2 inches in circumference. We

also found portions of a smaller bowl with the same knob pattern

thereon. The use of this extraordinary soapstone find is very obscure.

Mr. Hogarth calls my attention to the fact that in the excavations at

Paphos, in Cyprus, they found a similar object, similarly decorated,

which they put down as Phœnician. It is now in the Fitzwilliam Museum

at Cambridge, and is a cylindrical object of coarse white marble six

inches in diameter and about four and three-quarter inches high. It is

studded with round projecting studs left in relief on the marble,

resembling in general disposition those on our soapstone find, and

there is no question about the similarity of the two objects. They

remind one of Herodian’s description of the sacred cone in the great

Phœnician temple of the sun at Emesa, in Syria (Herodian, bk. v. § 5),

which was adorned with certain ‘knobs or protuberances,’ a pattern

supposed by him to represent the sun, and common in phallic

decorations.

In the vicinity of the temple we also came across some minor objects

very near the surface, which did not do more than establish the

world-wide commerce carried on at the Great Zimbabwe at a much more

recent date, and still by the Arabians—namely, a few fragments of

Celadon pottery from China, of Persian ware, an undoubted specimen of

Arabian glass, and beads of doubtful provenance, though one of them may

be considered as Egyptian of the Ptolemaic period. Glass beads almost

of precisely the same character—namely, black with white encircling

lines—have come from ancient tombs at Thebes, in Bœotia, and are to be

found in almost every collection of Egyptian curiosities.

The pottery objects must have been brought here by Arabian traders

during the middle ages, probably when the Monomatapa chiefs ruled over

this district and carried on trade with the Arabians for gold, as

European traders do now with objects of bright appearance and beads.

Similar fragments have been found by Sir John Kirk in the neighbourhood

of Quiloa, where in mediæval times was a settlement of Arabs who came

from the Persian Gulf, forming an hereditary intercourse between the

Arabs and the east coast of Africa until the Portuguese found them

there and drove them away three centuries ago. It is impossible that a

collection of things such as these could have been brought together by

any but a highly commercial race during the middle ages, and the

Arabians alone had this character at the time in question.

Considering the large quantity of soapstone fragments, bowls, and other

things, the finds of pottery of a good period at Zimbabwe were not

many. Noticeably one piece of pottery is exceedingly excellent, worthy

of a good period of classic Greek ware. The pattern round it is

evidently stamped on, being done with such absolute accuracy. It is

geometric, as all the patterns on the pottery are. It is not hand-made

pottery, for on the back of it are distinct signs of a wheel. Then

there are some black fragments with an excellent glaze and bevel, also

fragments of pottery lids, and a pottery stopper, pointing to the fact

that the old inhabitants of Zimbabwe had reached an advanced state of

proficiency in ceramic art. Fragments of one pot with holes neatly

bored round the neck remind one of water-coolers still found in the

East. Besides the fragments of pots, we found an enormous number of

small circular objects of pottery, which may have been used as

spindle-whorls, though most of them show no signs of wear, and some of

them having rude decorations thereon. The only fragment which shows an

attempt at the use of pottery for other than domestic purposes is a sow

which we found in a kitchen midden just outside the large circular

building on the plain, with two phalli near it. This animal compares

well with the rude attempts to depict animal life found in prehistoric

excavations on the Mediterranean. Whether it has any religious

significance or not is, of course, only conjecture, but it is curious

that Ælian tells us that the Egyptians ‘sacrifice a sow to the moon

once a year;’ and Herodotus says ‘the only deities to whom the

Egyptians are permitted to offer a pig are the moon and Bacchus.’ All

that the pottery proves to us is that the ancient inhabitants of

Zimbabwe had reached a high state of excellence in the manufacture of

it, corresponding to a state of ceramic art known only to the rest of

the world in classical times.

Concerning the bronze and iron weapons and implements which we found at

Zimbabwe it is very difficult to say anything definite. In the first

place, these ruins have been overrun for centuries by Kaffir races with

a knowledge of iron-smelting, who would at once utilise fragments of

iron which they found for their own purposes; secondly, the shapes and

sizes of arrows and spear-heads correspond very closely to those in use

amongst the natives now. As against this it must be said that there are

many iron objects amongst our finds which are quite unlike anything

which ever came out of a Kaffir workshop, and the patterns of the

assegai, or spear-head, and arrow are probably of great antiquity,

handed down from generation to generation to the present day. Amongst

the most curious of our iron finds at Zimbabwe certainly are the double

iron bells, of which we found three in the neighbourhood of the temple

on the fortress. Similar bells are found now on the Congo. There are

some in the British Museum, and also in the Geographical Society’s

Museum at Lisbon, which came from San Salvador, on the Congo, and are

called Chingongo, whereas amongst the present race inhabiting

Mashonaland the knowledge of this bell does not exist, nor did it

presumably exist in Dos Santos’ days, who enumerates all the Kaffir

instruments which he saw; and he would assuredly have mentioned these

bells had they existed there in his days 300 years ago. We must,

therefore, conclude that either these bells are ancient, and were used

by the old inhabitants of these ruins, the traditional form of which

has been continued amongst the negroes of the Congo, or that some

northern race closely allied to the Congo races swept over this country

at some time or another, and have left this trace of their occupation.

The barbed bronze spear-head we found under a mass of fallen rock close

to the entrance to the fortress. This again finds a parallel in weapons

which come from much farther north in Nubia, though its execution is

finer than any of that class which has come before my notice. The shape

of this weapon is exactly the same as that of the unbarbed spear-head,

which has a coating of gold on it, [21] and shows the same peculiarity

of make as the assegai-heads still made by the natives—namely, the

fluting which runs down the centre being reversed on either side. Then

there are the tools—chisels, an adze, pincers, spades, &c., which are

quite unknown to the Kaffir races which now inhabit this country. Still

it is possible that all these things may have been made during the time

of the Monomatapa, who evidently had reached a higher pitch of

civilisation than that existing to-day; so that I am inclined to set

aside the iron implements as pertaining to a more recent occupation,

though at the same time there is no actual reason for not assigning to

them a remoter antiquity.

The finds in the fortress of Zimbabwe which touch upon, perhaps, the

most interesting topic of all are those which refer to the manufacture

of gold. Close underneath the temple in the fortress stood a

gold-smelting furnace made of very hard cement of powdered granite,

with a chimney of the same material, and with neatly bevelled edges.

Hard by, in a chasm between two boulders, lay all the rejected casings

from which the gold-bearing quartz had been extracted by exposure to

heat prior to the crushing, proving beyond a doubt that these mines,

though not immediately on a gold reef, formed the capital of a

gold-producing people who had chosen this hill fortress with its

granite boulders for their capital owing to its peculiar strategic

advantages. Gold reefs and old workings have been lately discovered

about twelve miles from Zimbabwe, and it was from these that their

auriferous quartz was doubtless obtained.

Near the above-mentioned furnace we found many little crucibles, of a

composition of clay, which had been used for smelting the gold, and in

nearly all of them still exist small specks of gold adhering to the

glaze formed by the heat of the process. Also we found several

water-worn stones, which had been used as burnishers, which was

evidenced by the quantity of gold still adhering to them; and in the

adjoining cave we dug up an ingot mould of soapstone of a curious

shape, corresponding almost exactly to an ingot of tin found in

Falmouth Harbour, which is now in the Truro Museum, and a cast of which

may be seen at the School of Mines in Jermyn Street. This ingot of tin

was undoubtedly made by Phœnician workmen, for it bears a punch mark

thereon like those usually employed by workmen of that period; and Sir

Henry James, in his pamphlet describing it, draws attention to the

statement of Diodorus, that in ancient Britain ingots of tin were made

ἀστραγάλων ῥυθμοὺς, or of the shape of astragali or knuckle-bones; and

the form of both the ingots is such that the astragalus may easily be

used as a rough simile to describe them. Probably this shape of ingot

was common in the ancient world, for Sir John Evans, K.C.B., has called

my attention to an ingot mould somewhat similar in form, found in

Dalmatia, and the Kaffirs far north of the Zambesi now make ingots of

iron of a shape which might easily be supposed to have been derived

from the astragalus; but at the same time the finding of two ingots in

two remote places where Phœnician influence has been proved to be so

strong is very good presumptive evidence to establish the fact that the

gold workers of ancient Zimbabwe worked for the Phœnician market. A

small soapstone object with a hole in the centre would appear to have

been a sort of tool used for beating gold.

An interesting parallel to the ancient gold workings in Mashonaland is

to be found by studying the account of the ancient gold workings at the

Egyptian gold mines in Wadi Allaga, also given us by Diodorus. There,

too, the gold was extracted from the quartz by a process of crushing

and washing, as we can see from the process depicted in the paintings

on the Egyptian tombs; and in any gold-producing quarter of

Mashonaland, near old shafts and by the side of streams, innumerable

crushing-stones are still to be seen, used anciently for a like

purpose, when slave labour was employed. Diodorus tells us of the gangs

of slaves employed, of the long dark shaft into which they descended,

of which a countless number are scattered still over Mashonaland; and

after describing the process of washing and crushing he concludes:

‘They then put the gold into earthen crucibles well closed with clay,

and leave it in a furnace for five successive days and nights, after

which it is suffered to cool. The crucibles are then opened, and

nothing is found in them but the pure gold a little diminished in

quantity.’ Hence it is obvious that the process employed by the ancient

Egyptians for crushing, smelting, and forming into ingots was exactly

the same as that employed by the ancient inhabitants of Zimbabwe; which

fact, when taken in conjunction with the vast amount of evidence of

ancient cult, ancient construction, and ancient art, is, I think,

conclusive that the gold-fields of Mashonaland formed one at least of

the sources from which came the gold of Arabia, and that the forts and

towns which ran up the whole length of this gold-producing country were

made to protect their men engaged in this industry. The cumulative

evidence is greatly in favour of the gold diggers being of Arabian

origin, before the Sabæo-Himyaritic period in all probability, who did

work for and were brought closely into contact with both Egypt and

Phœnicia, penetrating to many countries unknown to the rest of the

world. The Bible is full of allusions to the wealth of Arabia in gold

and other things. Ezekiel tells us that the Sabæans were merchants in

gold for the markets of Tyre. Aristeas tells us that a large quantity

of spices, precious stones, and gold was brought to Rome διὰ τῶν

Ἀράβων, not from Arabia, but by the Arabians. The testimony of all

travellers in Arabia is to the effect that little or no gold could have

come from the Arabian peninsula itself; it is, therefore, almost

certain that the country round Zimbabwe formed one at least of the

spots from which the ‘Thesaurus Arabum’ came. Egyptian monuments also

point to the wealth of the people of Punt, and the ingots of gold which

they sent as tribute to Queen Hatasou. No one, of course, is prepared

to say exactly where the kingdom of Punt was; the consensus of opinion

is that it was Yemen, in the south of Arabia. But suppose it to be

there, or suppose it to be on the coast of Africa, opposite Arabia, or

even suppose it to be Zimbabwe itself, the question is the same: where

did they get the large supply of gold from, which they poured into

Egypt and the then known world? In Mashonaland we seem to have a direct

answer to this question. It would seem to be evident that a prehistoric

race built the ruins in this country, a race like the mythical Pelasgi

who inhabited the shores of Greece and Asia Minor, a race like the

mythical inhabitants of Great Britain and France who built Stonehenge

and Carnac, a race which continued in possession down to the earliest

dawnings of history, which provided gold for the merchants of Phœnicia

and Arabia, and which eventually became influenced by and perhaps

absorbed in the more powerful and wealthier organisations of the

Semite.

CHAPTER VII

THE GEOGRAPHY AND ETHNOLOGY OF THE MASHONALAND RUINS

The ancient geography of the east coast of Africa is a subject fraught

with difficulties on all sides. To begin with, our authorities are not

only meagre, but they are men who had no practical knowledge of the

subject, and who knew next to nothing of the vast extent of commercial

operations which were going on outside the limits of the Red Sea. The

written accounts come to us from either an Alexandrian or Roman source,

whereas the practical knowledge possessed by the Arabs themselves of

these outer waters is lost to us for ever. It was probably the

monopolising policy of the Semitic nations which induced them to

conceal from other countries the whereabouts of their commercial

relations, which on the one hand extended outside the pillars of

Hercules to the Canaries and Great Britain, and on the other hand

outside the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb to India, China, and the east

coast of Africa. Of these two directions the voyage to Great Britain

was undoubtedly the most adventurous, the navigation of the Indian

Ocean with a knowledge of the monsoons, which the Arabian who lived on

it must have had from time immemorial, presenting far less difficulty.

Hippalus has the credit of introducing the monsoons to Western

civilisation, but surely a seafaring race like the Arabians, who lived

on the spot, must have known all about them long before his day; and

just as they were reticent on the subject of their voyages, so were

they reticent on the subject of the localities from which their

merchandise came. The knowledge given us by Marinus of Tyre, by the

anonymous author of the ‘Periplus of the Red Sea,’ by Ptolemy, by

Pliny, and others, was obviously not the knowledge possessed by the

traders of the world, for they do not even attempt to elucidate the

question of where the precious commodities came from which they

enumerate.

Ptolemy’s information is provokingly vague, and he candidly admits in

his first chapter that it was obtained from a merchant of Arabia Felix;

he gives us such names as Cape Aromata, supposed to be Guardafui,

outside the straits, the inland province of Azania and Rhapta. The only

thing we gather from him is that they were trade emporia, and therefore

places of considerable importance.

The ‘Periplus’ enters into further details, and mentions that the Arab

settlement at Rhapta was subject to the sovereign of Maphartes, a

dependency of Sabæa or Yemen. Dean Vincent imagines Rhapta to have been

10° south of the equator, that is to say, near Quiloa, where again an

Arab settlement continued right down into the middle ages. The

‘Periplus’ further tells how Muza, Aden, and other points near the

mouth of the Red Sea were emporia for the goods brought from outside by

the Arabians and then transferred to Egyptian and Phœnician trading

vessels.

Further south the ‘Periplus’ mentions Prasum as the farthest point

known to the author; and here he says ‘an ocean curves towards sunset

and, stretching along the southern extremities of Ethiopia, Libya, and

Africa, amalgamates with the western sea.’ All this probably the author

of the ‘Periplus’ got from the Arabs, just as the Portuguese got all

their information from the same source thirteen centuries later, and

just as Herodotus got his vague story of the circumnavigation of Africa

six centuries before, when he tells us how the Phœnicians in the

service of Pharaoh Necho, B.C. 600, ‘as they sailed round Africa had

the sun on their right hand.’

From these and other statements in Marinus of Tyre, Pliny, and others,

it is obvious that the waters of East Africa were known only to the

Greeks and Romans vaguely through a Phœnician and Arabian source. The

early legendary stories of Greece tell of a voyage fraught with every

danger in search of gold. The celebrated Argonautic expedition has

given commentators an immense amount of trouble to reconcile its

conflicting statements—namely, that it went to the extremities of the

Euxine, entered the great stream ocean that went round the world, and

returned by the Nile and Libya. It certainly appears to me simple to

suppose that it is merely the mutilation of some early Phœnician story

made to suit the existing circumstances of the people to whom the story

was narrated. The Bible gives us the account of King Solomon’s

expedition undertaken under Phœnician auspices; in fact, the civilised

world was full of accounts of such voyages, told us, unfortunately, in

the vaguest way, owing doubtless to the fact that those who undertook

them guarded carefully their secret.

From an Egyptian source also certain knowledge may be gained, though

the Egyptians themselves would appear never to have carried their

commerce outside the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, but to have met at the

port of Adule, at the south of the Red Sea, Arabian merchants who did

so. Now in the reign of Queen Hatasou, of the eighteenth dynasty, in

the seventeenth century B.C., the land of Punt was conquered by an

Egyptian expedition, and on the monuments of Deir-el-Bahari the

conquered people of Punt are depicted as sending tribute, which

included ebony, ostrich feathers, leopard skins, giraffes, lions,

living leopards, cynocephalous apes, elephants’ tusks, and ingots of

gold, all products of South-eastern Africa. When compared with the

Biblical account of King Solomon’s expedition about seven centuries

later, the productions of both show a very remarkable analogy. Gold was

the most important of the objects brought, gold in ingots such as the

mould would produce which we found at Zimbabwe, and the gold of Arabia

in antiquity was proverbial. During the height of the prosperity of

Rome gold was sent thither by the Arabians, as we have seen from

Aristeas. Horace bears testimony to this in his line, ‘Thesauris Arabum

et divitis Indiæ.’ Agatharcides, in B.C. 120, speaks in glowing terms

of the wealth of the Sabæans; allusions to it are common in the Bible,

and the connection between Phœnicia and Arabia is borne testimony to by

Ezekiel in his denunciation of Tyre: ‘Arabia and all the princes of

Kedar, they occupied with thee in lambs, and rams, and goats: in these

were they thy merchants. The merchants of Sheba and Raamah, they were

thy merchants: they occupied in thy fairs with chief of all spices, and

with all precious stones, and gold.’ [22] Probably community of origin,

the inherent commercial instinct common to the Semitic races, brought

about this intimate relationship between Phœnicia and Sabæa. Another

testimony to the wealth of gold in Arabia is given us by the Assyrian

inscriptions, on which Tiglath Pileser II., B.C. 733, is mentioned as

receiving tribute from that country in gold, silver, and much incense;

and Sargon in his annals also mentions the tribute of Shamsi, Queen of

Arabia, as paid in gold and spices. There was little, if any, gold to

be found in Arabia itself; on this point all travellers who have

penetrated this country are agreed. Here, near the east coast of

Africa, far nearer to Arabia than India and China and other places,

which they were accustomed to visit, not only is there evidence of the

extensive production of gold, but also evidence of a cult known to

Arabia and Phœnicia alike, temples built on accurate mathematical

principles, containing kindred objects of art, methods of producing

gold known to have been employed in the ancient world, and evidence of

a vast population devoted to the mining of gold.

As to the vexed question of the land of Ophir, I do not feel that it is

necessary to go into the arguments for and against here. Mashonaland

may have been the land of Ophir or it may not; it may have been the

land of Punt or it may not; Ophir and Punt may be identical, and both

situated here, or they may be both elsewhere. There is not enough

evidence, as far as I can see, to build up any theory on these points

which will satisfy the more critical investigation to which subjects of

this kind are submitted in the present day. All that we can

satisfactorily establish is that from this country the ancient Arabians

got a great deal of gold; but as gold was in common use in prehistoric

times, and lavishly used many centuries before our era, there is no

doubt that the supply must have been enormous, and must have been

obtained from more places than one. ‘Tyre heaped up silver as the dust,

and fine gold as the mire of the streets,’ Zechariah tells us (ix. 3),

and the subject could be flooded with evidence from sculptural and

classical sources; and though the output from the old workings in

Mashonaland is seen to have been immense, yet it can hardly have

supplied the demand that antiquity made upon it. The study of Arabian

and Phœnician enterprise outside the Red Sea is only now in its

infancy—we have only as yet enough evidence to prove its extent, and

that the ruins in Mashonaland owe their origin to it.

After the commencement of the Christian era there is a great gap in our

geographical knowledge of these parts; and as far as Western

civilisation is concerned, this corner of the world had to be

discovered anew. It was not so, however, with the Arabians, who, though

probably banished from the interior many centuries before by the

incursions of savage tribes, still held to the coast, and exchanged

with the natives their cloth and their beads for gold which they

brought down. Of Arab extension in Africa we have also other evidence.

The ‘Periplus’ tells us that the Sabæan King Kharabit in A.D. 35 was in

possession of the east coast of Africa to an indefinite extent. The

Greek inscription from Axume in Abyssinia, copied by Mr. Salt in his

travels there, further confirms this. It was a dedication to Mars of

one golden statue, one silver, and three of brass in honour of a

victory gained by ‘Aizanes, king of the Axomites, of the Homerites

(given us by Eratosthenes as one of the Arabian tribes), of the

Æthiopians, and of the Sabæans.’ Three cities of the name of Sabæ are

mentioned as connected with this kingdom, two in Arabia and one in

Æthiopia; and now we have the river which doubtless in those days

formed the great outlet for the population between the Zambesi and the

Limpopo, still bearing the name of Sabæ or Sabi, and in the Æthiopian

tongue the word Saba is still used for ‘a man.’ Herr Eduard Glaser, the

Arabian traveller and decipherer of Himyaritic inscriptions, states in

his work: ‘So much is absolutely certain, that Himyar (Arabia) then

possessed almost the whole of East Africa. Such a possession, however,

was not won in a night, but rather presupposes, in those old times,

without cannon and without powder, centuries of exertion.’

Arabian writers of the ninth and tenth centuries a.d. frequently allude

to the gold of Sofala; but to the Western world this country was a

blank until Portuguese enterprise again opened it out. John II. of

Portugal sent Pedro de Covilham and Alfonso de Payva in 1487 to Cairo

to gather information concerning a route to India by the Cape. It is

not at all unlikely that Covilham heard from the Arabs reports

concerning the gold country behind Sofala; but sufficient evidence to

this effect is not forthcoming. He died in Abyssinia, and never

returned to Portugal to tell in person his experiences. At any rate,

ten years later the Cape was rounded by the Portuguese, and Vasco da

Gama in all the ports he called at on the east coast of Africa found

Arab traders established, who told him about the gold. The next

expedition, under Alvarez de Cahal in 1505, found Sofala, and in its

harbour two Arab dhows laden with gold.

The Portuguese commander, Pedro de Nhaya, took possession of the town

of Sofala in the name of the King of Portugal and garrisoned the old

Arab fort there, and with this act began the modern history of this

country, about which a veil of mystery had hung from the very beginning

of time. That the Arabs were confined to the coast at this period is

evident from Duarte Barbosa’s remarks, who wrote in 1514: ‘The

merchants bring to Sofala the gold which they sell to the Moors (the

name applied to the Arabs by the Portuguese), without weighing it, for

coloured stuffs, and beads of Cambay.’

Before discussing the Portuguese accounts of this country, let us

linger a little longer amongst the Arabs, and see what we can get from

them about the inhabitants of this district and the irruption of the

wild Zindj tribes over it, which probably caused the destruction of the

earlier civilisation. Zaneddin Omar ibn ’l Wardi’ gives us an account

of these Zindj. He wrote in the 336th year of the Hegira, and tells us

that ‘their habitations extend from the extremity of the gulf to the

low land of gold, Sofala ’t il Dhab,’ and remarks on a peculiarity of

theirs, namely, that ‘they sharpen their teeth and polish them to a

point.’ He goes on to say: ‘Sofala ’t il Dhab adjoins the eastern

borders of the Zindj ... the most remarkable produce of this country is

its quantity of native gold, that is found in pieces of two or three

meskalla, in spite of which the natives generally adorn their persons

with ornaments of brass.’ He also states that iron is found in this

country and that the natives have skill in working it, and adds that

‘ships come from India to fetch it.’ This shows us the origin of the

skill still possessed by the natives in smelting iron, which has been

handed down from generation to generation.

El Masoudi, who has been called the Herodotus of Arabia, gives us still

further details about the race, speaking of Sofala as a place to which

the Arabs of his time went habitually to obtain gold and precious

stones from the natives. He is more explicit about the descent from the

north of the Zindj tribes, which took place not long before his day;

and unless there was a previous wave of barbarians, concerning whom we

have no account, it may be supposed that it was owing to their advent

that the gold settlements up country were finally abandoned, and the

Arab traders restricted to the coast. Describing the natives of the

land behind Sofala, he speaks of them as negroes naked except for

panther skins; they filed their teeth and were cannibals; they fought

with long lances, and had ambuscades for game. They hunted for

elephants, but never used for their own purposes the ivory or gold in

which their country abounded. From this picture it is easy to see that

in those days the inhabitants were just as they are now, an uncultured

wild race of savages. We get another testimony to this in the voyage of

two Arabs who went to China in 851 A.D., and returned by the east coast

of Africa. M. Renaudot has translated their experiences, in which they

describe the Zindj as follows: ‘Among them are preachers who harangue

them, clad in a leopard skin. One of these men, with a staff in his

hand, shall present himself before them, and having gathered a

multitude of people about him, preach all the day to them. He speaks of

God and recites the actions of their countrymen who are gone before

them.’ In this account we easily recognise the witch-doctor and

ancestor worship, the Mozimos and Muali of the present race. Abou

Zeyd’s evidence is also to the same effect. He thus speaks of the

Zindj: ‘Religious discourses are pronounced before this people, and one

never finds elsewhere such constant preachers. There are men devoted to

this life who cover themselves with panther and monkey skins. They have

a staff in their hands, and go from place to place.’ Quite an accurate

description of the South African witch-doctor. Consequently, from this

mass of evidence we may affirm with absolute certainty that for a

thousand years at least there has been no change in the condition of

this country and its inhabitants. Further testimony to the same effect

is given us by Edrisi in his geography, who alludes to the Zendj tribes

as inhabiting this country, and occupying the coast towns Dendema and

Siorma, ‘which latter is situated on a gulf where foreign vessels come

to anchor.’ He speaks, too, of the iron trade which the Zendj carried

on with the Indians, and of the abundance of gold in the mountains

behind Sofala, adding, ‘nevertheless, the inhabitants prefer brass,

making their ornaments of the latter metal.’

The simple Arabian stories of Sindbad the sailor and Aladdin are quite

as credible as some of the stories which the first Portuguese

travellers who visited the east coast of Africa tell us about the great

Emperor Monomatapa and the wealth of gold in his dominions. When they

first appeared on the scenes the Monomatapa was a big Kaffir chief,

like Cetewayo or Lobengulu, who ruled over the gold district in which

the Zimbabwe ruins are situated; nevertheless they burden their

accounts with stories of the gilded halls in which he lived, of nuggets

of the precious metal as big as a man’s head, and which with their

force raised the roots of trees. Needless to say these are the

fabrications of their own brains, written to attract attention to the

country they had discovered.

That this big Kaffir chief, Monomatapa, lived at his Zimbabwe or head

kraal is, however, pretty clear, not necessarily at the place where the

ruins are, because the whole of this country is scattered with

Zimbabwes. Each petty chief now calls his head kraal by this name, and

this fact, not thoroughly recognised, has brought about endless

confusion in topography. The derivation for this name which to my mind

appears the most satisfactory is of Abantu origin, and came from the

north, where it is generally used to denote the head kraal of any

chief. Zi is the Abantu root for a village, umzi being in Zulu the term

for a collection of kraals. Zimbab would signify somewhat the same, or

rather ‘the great kraal,’ and we is the terminal denoting an

exclamation, so that Zimbabwe would mean, ‘here is the great kraal.’

Again, another source of confusion arises from the fact that

Monomatapa—or, as it ought to be written, Muene, or lord of Matapa—is a

dynastic name, just as every petty chief in Mashonaland to-day has his

dynastic name, which he takes on succeeding to the chiefdom. So did the

lords of Matapa. In various Portuguese treaties we have the names of

different Monomatapa’s: one is called Manuza, another Lucere, and so

forth, right down to the days of Livingstone, when the Monomatapa he

mentions was a petty chief near the Zambesi.

When the Portuguese arrived at Sofala they got a lot of information

from the Arab traders they found there concerning the wonders of the

country, the great chief and the great ruins; and as Zimbabwe was the

name of the chief’s residence and the name given by the inhabitants to

the ruins, it is not to be wondered at that some confusion arose.

Now these Arab traders were particularly and not unnaturally jealous of

the arrival of the Portuguese, perhaps not unlike the Portuguese are

now of the British arrival. They made all the mischief they could

between the Portuguese and the natives, they represented the Portuguese

Jesuit Father Silveira, who nearly managed to convert the Monomatapa to

Christianity, as a spy, and conduced to his martyrdom in 1561. In fact,

one of the great obstacles to the success of the Portuguese was Arab

jealousy, which was at the bottom of the failure of all their

expeditions up country.

Of all the Portuguese travellers who wrote about this country, Father

dos Santos is the most reliable. Though he did not travel far up

country, nevertheless he told no lies; and anyone who has been amongst

the inhabitants as they are now will recognise in his narrative a

faithful and accurate account of the people, proving how little they

have altered in the lapse of between three and four centuries. A few

extracts will show this: ‘They beat their palms, which is their mode of

courtesy.’ [23] ‘They smelt iron and make mattocks, arrows,

assegai-points, spears, little axes, and they have more iron than is

necessary, and of copper they make bracelets, and both men and women

use them for their legs and arms.’ He describes their indistinct idea

of a Supreme Being, their feasts in honour of their ancestors, their

curious pianos, ‘with bars of iron enclosed in a pumpkin,’ their ‘wine

of millet, which the Portuguese could not bear, but were obliged to

drink and make festivity, for fear of quarrelling.’ ‘They have an

infinity of fowls, like those of Portugal;’ and also he describes the

days on which they are not to work, appointed by the king, unknown to

them, when they make feasts and call these days Mozimos, or days of the

holy already dead. [24] In fact, this narrative is so truthful in all

its details, that we may safely take from it his account of the

disintegration of the Monomatapa chiefdom, as it accounts for many

things which otherwise would be obscure. He tells us that a Monomatapa

sent three sons to govern in three provinces, Quiteve, Sedanda, and

Chicanga; on their father’s death they refused to give up to the heir

their respective territories, and the country became divided into four.

Since then it has been subdivided again and again; each petty chief

fought with his neighbour, union was impossible, and in their turn they

have fallen an easy prey to the powerful Zulu organisation under

Umzilikatze and his successor Lobengulu. This I take to be, in a few

words, the history of the country and its people during modern times,

and as much probably as will ever be known of them.

Dos Santos calls these people Mocarangas, and in this too, I think, he

is right, for the reasons I have previously given. [25] They are now,

as we have seen, a miserable race of outcasts, fleeing to the mountain

fastnesses on the approach of a Zulu raid, hounded and robbed until

there is no more spirit in them. Monteiro mentions a Monomotapa, or

emperor of Chidima, very decayed, but respectable, with a territory to

the west of the Zambesi, near Zumbo. This is probably the same that

Livingstone alludes to. An interesting fact that Monteiro also gives us

is the number of Zimbabwes north of the Zambesi, as the head kraals of

chiefs, showing the northern origin of the name.

Having considered the people in whose country the Great Zimbabwe ruins

are, let us now proceed to cull what we can from a Portuguese source

concerning the ruins themselves.

De Barros [26] gives us the fullest account of the ruins. Let us take

it and see what it is worth: ‘In the midst of the plains in the kingdom

of Batua, in the country of Toroe, nearest the oldest gold mines,

stands a fortress, square, admirably built, inside and out, of hard

stone. The blocks of which the walls consist are put together without

mortar and are of marvellous size. The walls are twenty-five spans in

thickness; their height is not so considerable compared with their

breadth. Over the gate of the building is an inscription, which neither

the Moorish traders (the Arabs of the coast) who were there, nor others

learned in inscriptions, could read, nor does anyone know in what

character it is written. On the heights around the edifice stand others

in like manner built of masonry without mortar; among them a tower of

more than twelve braças (yards) in height. All those buildings are

called by the natives Zimbahe—that is, the royal residence or court, as

are all royal dwellings in Monomotapa. Their guardian, a man of noble

birth, has here the chief command, and is called Symbacao; under his

care are some of the wives of Monomotapa, who constantly reside here.

When and by whom these buildings were erected is unknown to the

natives, who have no written characters. They merely say they are the

work of the Devil (supernatural), because they are beyond their powers

to execute. Besides these, there is to be found no other mason work,

ancient or modern, in that region, seeing that all the dwellings of the

barbarians are of wood and rushes.’

De Barros further states that when the Portuguese Governor of Sofala,

Captain Vicento Pegado, pointed to the masonry of the fort there, with

a view to comparison with the buildings up country, the Moors (Arabs)

who had been at the ruins observed that the latter structure was of

such absolute perfection that nothing could be compared to it; and they

gave their opinion that the buildings were very ancient, and erected

for the protection of the neighbouring gold mines. From this, De Barros

inferred that the ruins must be the Agizymba of Ptolemy, [27] and

founded by some ancient ruler of the gold country, who was unable to

hold his ground, as in the case of the city of Axume, in Abyssinia.

In criticising this account, it is at once apparent that it was written

by a person who had never seen the ruins; the fortress is round, not

square; the blocks of stone are all small and not of ‘marvellous size;’

the tower is wrongly placed on the heights above instead of in the ruin

on the plain. But at the same time De Barros is candid, and as good as

tells us that his account was gathered from ‘the Moorish traders who

were there.’ That is to say, all the wonders of the upper country we

get second hand from an Arabian source. Legends of inscriptions on

stone are common to all mysterious ruins in every country. Possibly the

decorated soapstone pillar gave rise to it, as it did to the subsequent

account of the ‘Zimbabwe cryptogram,’ which ran through the papers

shortly after the visit of the first pioneers of the Chartered Company.

At all events, now there is no sign of anything over any gateway or any

trace of such a stone having been removed.

Alvarez gives us an account even vaguer than De Barros. The following

is Pory’s translation, published in London in 1600: ‘For here in Toroa

and in divers places of Monomatapa are till this day remaining manie

huge and ancient buildings of timber, lime and stone being singular

workmanship, the like whereof are not to be found in all the provinces

thereabout. Heere is also a mightie wall of five-and-twenty spannes

thick, which the people ascribe to the workmanship of the divell, being

accounted from Sofala 510 miles the nearest way.’

Pigafetta copies this account in pretty much the same strain, as also

does Dapper, whose account of this country is a tissue of

exaggerations. He says: ‘In this country, far to the inland on a plain

in the middle of many iron mills, stands a famous structure called

Simbaœ, built square like a castle with hewn stone, but the height is

not answerable. Above the gate appears an inscription which cannot be

read or understood, nor could any that have seen it know what people

used such letters.... The inhabitants report it the work of the devil,

themselves only building in wood, and aver that for strength it exceeds

the fort of the Portuguese at the seashore, about 150 miles from

hence.’

We could quote several other allusions to the ruins from Portuguese,

Dutch, and English sources, copied one from the other, and all bearing

the stamp of having come from the same fountain-head, namely, the

Arabians, who told the Portuguese about them when they first arrived at

Sofala. Our examination of the ruins confirms this in every respect. In

our excavations we found Celadon pottery, Persian pottery, and Arabian

glass, similar to the things found at Quiloa, where the Arabs also had

a settlement. These objects represent the trading goods brought by the

Arabians and exchanged with the inhabitants who lived in and around

these ruins in the middle ages; but at the same time we found no trace

whatsoever of the Portuguese, which would have been the case, as in

other places occupied by them in Arabia and the Persian Gulf, had they

ever been there. From these facts I think it is certain that we may

remove from the Portuguese the honour claimed by them of being the

modern discoverers of the ruins, an honour only claimed in the face of

recent events, for De Barros is candid enough in telling us that his

information came ‘from the Arabs who were there.’ Clearly to settle

this question it is only necessary to quote a letter which I saw in the

library at Lisbon, dated April 17, 1721, from the Governor of Goa,

Antonio Rodrigue da Costa, to the king. East Africa was included then

in the province of India, and the governor wrote as follows:—

‘(1) There is a report that in the interior of these countries many

affirm there is in the court of the Monomatapa a tower or edifice of

worked masonry which appears evidently not to be the work of black

natives of the country, but of some powerful and political nations such

as the Greeks, Romans, Persians, Egyptians, or Hebrews; and they say

that this tower or edifice is called by the natives Simbabóe, and that

in it is an inscription of unknown letters, and because there is much

foundation for the belief that this land is Ophir, and that Solomon

sent his fleets in company with the Phœnicians; and this opinion could

be indubitably established if this inscription could be cleared up, and

there is no one there who can read it. If it were in Greek, Persian, or

Hebrew, it would be necessary to command that an impression be made in

wax or some other material which retains letters or figures, commanding

that the original inscription be well cleaned.

‘(2) At the same time it would be suitable to examine whether in that

land is a range of mountains called Ofura, what distance it is from the

coast or seaport, and whether it contains mines of gold or silver.

‘(3) In the same way it would be as well to inquire into the most

notable names of those parts, mountains, chiefdoms, and rivers.

‘(4) To learn if the lands of Sofala are high or low, or marshy, or if

they have any mountain ranges.’

Hence it will be seen that, even as late as 1721, it was only rumoured

that there were ruins, and that the Portuguese sphere of influence went

very little inland. Needless to say, the expedition was never sent, and

that the reports were of the vaguest and most contradictory character.

Bocarro and Corvo both testify to the fact [28] that the Portuguese,

after the disastrous campaigns of Baretto, advanced but little into the

country, and were confined almost exclusively to the littoral. Taking

the map of this district, and looking at the spelling of the names, it

is easy to see how far Portuguese influence extended. They spell the

common prefix Inya with an h instead of a y: for example, they write it

Inhambane. Also they spell the name Gungunyama, Gungunhama; other

nations spell such names with a y, for example, Inyagowe. Hence the h

for y clearly marks the Portuguese sphere of influence.

These reports of an Eldorado northwards continued, and produced

periodical excitements amongst the young colonists of South Africa. The

Boers were everlastingly getting up treks with a view to reach it; the

vague mystery about King Solomon’s mines existing there, and the palace

of the Queen of Sheba, whetted their appetites when they heard these

rumours; but still nothing was definitely done until a German traveller

of more than ordinary energy penetrated as far as the Zimbabwe ruins in

the year 1871. This man was Karl Mauch: he examined them carefully and

wrote an accurate account of them, but, unfortunately, he ventured on a

speculation as to their origin which at once cast discredit on his

discoveries in the eyes of unbelieving archæologists. He maintained

that the fortress on the hill was a copy of King Solomon’s temple on

Mount Moriah, that the lower ruins were a copy of the palace which the

Queen of Sheba inhabited during her stay of several years in Jerusalem,

and that the trees in the middle of it were undoubtedly almug trees.

The result of this was that the subject of Zimbabwe ruins was in

abeyance for nearly twenty years after Mauch’s visit, and was rather

accredited as a traveller’s tale until the British Chartered Company

took possession of the country and enabled research to be

satisfactorily made. Nevertheless to Karl Mauch is distinctly due the

honour of being the first to investigate the ruins in modern times.

PART III

EXPLORATION JOURNEYS IN MASHONALAND