The ruined cities of Mashonaland: Being a record of excavation and exploration in 1891

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MASHONALAND

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Wooden Platter found in a Cave about 10 Miles from Zimbabwe

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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 16^th STREET
1895
All rights reserved

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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.

First Edition, 8vo. November 1892; New and Cheaper Edition, with additional Appendix, crown 8vo. August 1893; Reprinted, with additions, January 1895. [[vii]]

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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 [[viii]]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).

[[ix]]

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 [[x]]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 [[xi]]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 [[xii]]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 [[xiii]]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 [[xiv]]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 [[xv]]so fine that to see it easily one has to use a magnifying glass. The most remarkable point about the gold ornaments is the quantity in which they are found. Almost every panful of stuff taken from anywhere about the ruins will show some gold. Just at the fountain the ground is particularly rich. I have tested some of the things from Zimbabwe, and, in addition to gold, 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 [[xvi]]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. [[xvii]]

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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 [[xviii]]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 [[xix]]for alabaster, which I visited in February of this year. The quarry is situated in the Gebel-Kiawleh, to the east of the Siut road. It is a large natural cave, which has been worked into a quarry yielding a rich yellow alabaster, such as was used for making vases and toilet vessels. Over the door were sculptured the cartouches of Teta, the first king of the Sixth Dynasty, but, as may be seen from the accompanying sketch, in the centre of the lintel was a panel on which is sculptured the figure of a 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 [[xx]]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 [[xxi]]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. [[xxiii]]

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CONTENTS

PART I

ON THE ROAD TO THE RUINS

PART II

DEVOTED TO THE ARCHÆOLOGY OF THE RUINED CITIES

[[xxiv]]

PART III

EXPLORATION JOURNEYS IN MASHONALAND

APPENDICES

[INDEX] 413 [[xxv]]

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ILLUSTRATIONS

[[1]]

PART I

ON THE ROAD TO THE RUINS

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[[Contents]]

CHAPTER I

THE JOURNEY UP BY THE KALAHARI DESERT ROUTE

MR. THEODORE BENT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MAKING THONGS OF OX-HIDE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[[Contents]]

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 [[32]]our own brains, which was an assistance to us in guiding conversations and checking romance.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WOODEN PILLOW

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

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN PILLOW IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM

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

WOODEN DOLLASSES OR DIVINING TABLETS

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

BONE DOLLASSES

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

GOURDS FOR BALING WATER

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WOODEN HAIR COMB, CHIBI’S COUNTRY

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

GRANARY DECORATED WITH BREAST AND FURROW PATTERN

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

WOODEN PILLOW REPRESENTING HUMAN FORM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[1] M’, which looks so mysterious in all African books, is supposed to express that the first syllable may be pronounced either um or mu; there are four correct ways of pronouncing the name in question, Umtali or Mutare, Umtare or Mutali. The English have adopted the first and the Portuguese the second. [↑]

[2] Vide [Chap. VII]. [↑]

[3] [Chap. VII]. [↑]

[4] Vide illustration, [ch. X]. [↑]

[[Contents]]

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. [[61]]

MRS. THEODORE BENT

[[63]]

Our tent was our drawing-room; and in addition to these places of shelter there were the photographic dark tent, five feet six square, the kitchen, and the white men’s sleeping-room, cleverly constructed out of the sails of our waggons, with walls of grass. In the centre was an erection for our cocks and hens, but even from here the jackals occasionally contrived to steal one or two. Around the whole camp ran a skerm, or hedge, of grass, which latter adjunct gave a comfortable and concentrated feeling to it all. Outside our circle the native workmen erected for themselves three or four huts, into which they all huddled at night like so many sardines in a tin. Around us in every direction grew the tall, wavy grass of the veldt, rapidly approaching the time when it can be burnt. This time was one of imminent peril for our camp; the flames, lashed to fury by the wind, approached within a few yards of us. Men with branches rushed hither and thither, 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 [[64]]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 [[65]]soaking misty rain which always came on with a high south-east wind, and always, oddly enough, with a rise in the barometer, very exceptional, we were told, at that season of the year. Over these days I would willingly draw a veil; they were truly 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 [[66]]to the Makalanga custom of hand-clapping. The mysterious meaning attached to this hand-clapping I was afterwards able in a measure to fathom.[1] 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.

UMGABE AND HIS INDUNAS

We made arrangements with Umgabe about our [[69]]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 [[70]]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.

HATCHET

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. [[71]]

CARVED KNIVES

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 [[72]]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.

BONE ORNAMENTS

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 [[73]]beads and more stretches of limbo than if they brought it all at once. As for Umgabe himself, his chief kraal and residence was six miles away, and we saw but little of him after the first excitement of our arrival had worn off; but his brother Ikomo, the induna of the kraal on the hill behind the ruins, often came down to see us, and was a constant source of annoyance, seeing that his friendly visits had always some ulterior motive of getting something out of us. On one of these occasions my wife had collected a beautiful bowl of honey; the rascal Ikomo first eyed it with covetousness and then plunged his hand into the very midst thereof, and enjoyed his fingers complacently for some time after, whilst she in disgust had to throw away the best part of her treasure.

Frequently Ikomo would try to interrupt our work, and so 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, [[74]]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.

WOODEN SNUFF-BOXES

[[75]]

Ikomo’s kraal occupies a lovely situation on Zimbabwe Hill, with huts nestling in cosy corners amongst the rocks, from the top of which lovely views can be obtained over the distant Bessa and Inyuni ranges on the one side, and over the Livouri range, and Providential Pass on the other, whilst to the south the view extends over a sea of rugged kopjes down into the Tokwe valley. From this point the strategical value of the hill is at once grasped, rising as it does sheer out of a well-watered plain, unassailable from all sides, the most 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, [[76]]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 [[77]]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.

BOY BEATING DRUM

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 [[78]]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.

[[79]]

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 [[80]]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.

PLAYING THE PIANO

MAKALANGA PIANO

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, [[81]]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 [[82]]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 [[83]]have about as much value in it as the one told us by De Barros, that the natives of his day thought that they had been built by the Devil.

About two miles from our camp there was a long flat granite rock, along which the path passed. On either side of this are two piles of stones, and a line is scratched on the rock between them. Our guides each took a stone, scratched them along the line, and deposited them on the heap opposite. On returning in the evening they did exactly the same thing, and we were told that it is a luck sign, which they do on undertaking a journey to ensure them from danger by the way. It was a very lovely ride, past huge granite boulders, and hills covered with dense foliage, beneath which the women of a village danced for us to the tune of their drum, forming one of the wildest, weirdest pictures we had ever seen. On another occasion we rode to a fortified rock, which had been long since abandoned; but the rude stone walls had been constructed by a more recent race, and compared with certain ruined villages we afterwards saw in Mangwendi’s country.[2] 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 [[84]]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 [[85]]to Umgabe at his kraal, and to take his rival, Cherumbila, on the way back to Fort Victoria.

One lovely morning—the 6th of August—we left our waggons, our cook, and our curios to find their way to Fort Victoria by themselves, and set off. The scenery southwards down the gorge was 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 [[86]]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 [[87]]careered about us to such an alarming extent that sleep was next to impossible, and we had ample time at our disposal for contemplating our abode.

On one side was a raised place for the family jars, huge earthenware things covered with slabs of stone, containing meal, caterpillars, locusts, and other edibles. On the opposite side was a stable for the calves, which we were able to banish; but we could not so easily control the cocks and hens which came in at all the holes, nor the rats which darted amongst the smoke-begrimed rafters when day dawned. These blackened rafters of the roof the Makalangas use as cupboards, sticking therein their pipes, their weapons, their medicine phials, their tools, and their pillows, and we soon found that this was the place to look for all manner of curios; only the huts are so dark that it is impossible to see anything when there happen to be no holes in the walls. A low door three feet high is the only point for admitting light and air; consequently the huts are not only dark but odoriferous. Besides the walls, the Makalangas construct a primitive sort of cupboard out of the spreading branch of a tree tied round with bark fibre; this contains such things as they fear the rats may spoil. They are very ingenious in making things out of bark—long narrow bags for meal, hen coops in which to carry their poultry about, nets to keep the roofs on their granaries. Bark to them is one of the most useful natural products that they have.

Umgabe’s kraal has as lovely a situation as can [[88]]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 [[89]]foliage, the creepers, and the euphorbia which towered over the huts, and regretted when the pangs of hunger and the shades of evening obliged us to return to our huts to cook our frugal meal and pretend to go to bed.

HUT AT UMGABE’S KRAAL WITH EUPHORBIA BEHIND

It was a long ride next day to Cherumbila’s kraal, the bitter enemy and hereditary foe of our late host; [[90]]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 [[91]]most of the inhabitants over a steep precipice to their death: the remnant that escaped came here and settled, and have now, under Cherumbila’s rule, 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.

AT CHERUMBILA’S KRAAL

The following day a lovely ride over the mountains, through dense forests and swarms of locusts, [[92]]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. [[93]]

[1] [Chap. X]. [↑]

[2] [Chap. XI]. [↑]

PART II

DEVOTED TO THE ARCHÆOLOGY OF THE RUINED CITIES

[[95]]

[[Contents]]

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 [[96]]a long line of protection for a hill, roughly put together on the inside, but on the outside, ‘probably with some view to symmetry and decoration, there had been inserted double rows of stones, hewn into a kind of tile, and placed obliquely one row at right angles to the other. Each enclosure had an entrance facing north.’ He concludes that the ruin was constructed to protect the gold, ‘numbers of pits fifty feet deep being found in the vicinity.’ This pattern, the construction, and the object undoubtedly connect these ruins with those which I shall presently describe.

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

RUIN ON THE LUNDI RIVER

[[99]]

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

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

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

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

GENERAL VIEW OF ZIMBABWE

ACROPOLIS OUR CAMP CIRCULAR RUIN

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

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

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

PLAN OF RUINS AT MATINDELA.

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

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