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the ghosts of the departed, and are unwilling, except in the daytime and for wages paid by the Exploration Company, to touch or even to enter the ruins. They can hardly be persuaded even to relate such traditions as exist regarding the place. All that has been gathered is that it was the dwelling of a line of mambos, or chiefs, the last of whom was burned here by Mosilikatze, the Matabili king, when he conquered the country sixty years ago. (The place does show marks of fire.) But the buildings were here long before the mambos reigned, and who built them, or why, no one knows. The natives come sometimes to make offerings to ancestral ghosts, especially when they ask for success in hunting; and if the hunt be successful, strips of meat are cut off and placed in cleft sticks for the benefit of the ghosts. Three hypotheses have been advanced regarding the Dhlodhlo buildings. One regards them as a fortress. The objection to this is that the terraced and ornamented wall is so far from contributing to defence that it actually facilitates attack; for, by the help of the terraces and of the interstices among the stones which the ornamental pattern supplies, an active man could easily scale it in front. Moreover, there is hard by, to the north, a higher and more abrupt hill which would have offered a far better site for a fort. The second view is that Dhlodhlo was a mining station, where slaves were kept at work; but if so, why was it not placed near the old gold-workings instead of some miles off, and of what use were the terraced walls? The inquirer is

therefore led to the third view-that the building was in some way connected with religious worship, and that the ornament which is seen along the eastern wall was placed there with some religious motive. There is, however, nothing whatever to indicate the nature of that worship, nor the race that practised it, for no objects of a possibly religious character (such as those I shall presently mention at Zimbabwye) have been found here.

I visited a second ruin among the mountains of Mashonaland, near the Lezapi River, at a place called Chipadzi's grave, a mile from the kraal of a chief named Chipunza. Here a rocky granite kopje, almost inaccessible on two sides, is protected on one of the other sides by a neatly built wall of well-trimmed stones, similar to that at Dhlodhlo, but without ornament. The piece that remains is some fifty yards long, five feet thick at the base, and eleven feet high at its highest point. It is obviously a wall of defence, for the only erections within are low, rough inclosures of loose stones, and three clay huts, one of which covers the grave of Chipadzi, a chief who died some twenty years ago, and who was doubtless interred here because the place was secluded and already in a fashion consecrated by the presence of the ancient wall. That the wall is ancient hardly admits of doubt, for it is quite unlike any of the walls—there are not many in the country -which the Kafirs now build, these being always of stones entirely untrimmed and very loosely fitted together, though sometimes plastered with mud to

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make them hold. There is nothing to see beyond. the wall itself, and the only interest of the place is in its showing that the race who built Dhlodhlo and other similar walls in Matabililand were probably here also.

Much larger and more remarkable is the group of ruins (situated seventeen miles from Fort Victoria, in southern Mashonaland) which goes by the name of the Great Zimbabwye. This Bantu word is said to denote a stone building, but has often been used to describe the residence of a great chief, whatever the materials of which it is constructed. It is a common noun, and not the name of one particular place. Europeans, however, confine it to this one. ruin, or rather to two ruined buildings near each other. One of these is on the top of a rocky and in parts precipitous hill, the other in a valley half a mile from the foot of the hill.

The first, which we may call the Fort, consists of a line of wall, in parts double, defending the more accessible parts of the eastern and south-eastern end of the hill or kopje, which is about 500 feet high, and breaks down on its southern side in a nearly vertical sheet of granite. The walls, which in some

1 This place is described by Mr. Selous in his interesting book, A Hunter's Wanderings in Africa, pp. 339-341. He thinks the wall as well built as those at the Great Zimbabwye. To me it seemed not so good, and a little rougher even than the work at Dhlodhlo. Hard by is a modern Kafir fort, Chitikete, with a plastered and loop-holed rough stone wall, quite unlike this wall at Chipadzi's grave. This place is further described in Chapter XVI.

places are thirty feet high, are all built of small trimmed blocks of granite such as I have already described, without mortar, but neatly fitted together. They are in excellent preservation, and are skilfully constructed, in a sort of labyrinth, so as to cover all the places where an enemy might approach. From the openings in the wall, where doors were probably placed, passages are carried inward, very narrow and winding, so that only one person at a time can pass, and completely commanded by the high wall on either side. Everything speaks of defence, and everything is very well adapted, considering the rudeness of the materials, for efficient defence. There is no sort of ornament in the walls, except that here and there at the entrances some stones are laid transversely to the others, and that certain long, thin pieces of a slaty stone, rounded so that one might call them stone poles-they are about five to seven feet long-project from the top of the wall. Neither is there any trace of an arch or vaulted roof. None of what look like chambers has a roof. They were doubtless covered with the branches of trees. Very few objects have been found throwing any light on the object of the building or its builders, and these have been now removed, except some small pieces of sandstone, a rock not found in the neighbourhood, which (it has been conjectured) may have been brought for the purposes of mining.

It

The other building is much more remarkable. stands on a slight eminence in the level ground be

tween the hill on which the Fort stands and another somewhat lower granite hill, and is about a third of a mile from the Fort. It consists of a wall, rather elliptical than circular in form, from thirty to forty feet high, fourteen feet thick near the ground, and from six to nine thick at the top, where one can walk along a considerable part with little difficulty. This wall is built of the same small, well-trimmed blocks of granite, nicely fitted together, and for more than half the circumference is in excellent preservation, although shrubs and climbing vines have here and there rooted themselves in it. The rest of it is more or less broken, and in one place quite overthrown. There are two gates, at the west and the north. The wall is quite plain, except for about one third (or perhaps a little less) of the outer face, where there is such an ornament as I have already described, of two courses of stones set slantingly at an acute angle to the ordinary flat courses above and below. These two courses are the fifth and seventh from the top. In the space surrounded by the wall, which is about three quarters of an acre, are some small inclosures of trimmed stone, apparently chambers. There is also a singular wall running parallel to the inner face of the great inclosing wall for some twenty yards, leaving between it and that inner face a very narrow passage, which at one point must have been closed by a door (probably of stone), for at that point steps lead up on either side, and hollow spaces fit for receiving a door remain. At one end this passage opens into a small