MYSTERY RUINS

Evening Star, Issue 18175, 16 January 1923, Page 6

MYSTERY RUINS

GOLD-MINE AREA OE RHODESIA

A VICTORIAN'S IMI’RKSSIONS.

Many Australians .«m lo think of Rhodesia as a now country—the country founded by Cecil Rhodes at the end of the eighties; yet Southern Rhodesia (says the Melbourne ‘Argus’), with its wonderful paintings in caves by the bushmeu who inhabited the country 2,000 or 3,000 years ago, possibly before that; with its ancient rock mines, “the most extensive gold mines sunk to depth on rock yet known to the world”; and 'with its hundreds of mysterious rains, may well be regarded as pro-historic. One authority says; “It would require a year or two for anyone merely to visit jsuch of the ruins as are of major importance without allowing time for their proper examination.” Some of them may be comparatively modern, others medieval, while others, it is thought, are as old if not older even than the great Zimbabwe ruins, the best known of them all. These Zimbabwe ruins are about 200 miles to the south of Salisbury, the political capi- ; tal of Southern Rhodesia, and, wonderful and famous as they are, it is stated that not even a tenth part of them has yet been explored. Mr Hall, the great authority on prehistoric Rhodesia, is of the opinion that from a period unknown aboriginal bushmen —the race of hunters, and artists who painted the rocks in the caves—occupied “the gold-mine area” in Rhodesia until about the days of King Solomon, wiien Asiatic people, probably from hdathern Arabia, arrived, and dor centime's obtained gold—it is estimated to tie value of ft hundred million pounds sterling — which they took back to Asia. There are reasons given for this belief. While no gold was found in Arabia itself, Oplrir, so famed for its gold, is now agreed by geographical as well as Biblical students to have been situated in .Southern Arabia, in the kingdom of Saha, (or in Hebrew Sheba), and it is also' know;i that.gold, together with ivory, slaves, apes, and ostrich feathers, was sent for many centuries from Sofala (Southern Rhodesia) to Arabia. Later—it is thought centuries later—when hosts of Bantus appealed in Rhodesia, rock mining ceased, ami Zimbabwe was built, probably by the conquered Bantus, at the bidding of their Asiatic masters. The building took place, Hall thinks, between 300 A.n. and 613 a.d. At Zimbabwe modem engineers and builders are as much lost in wonder at the huge boulders that were carried up a hill 200 ft to 270 ft high and' placed on walls 20ft to 30ft high as are modem architects at the proportions and symmetry of the walls, which it is niought may still be standing in 2,000 yea is. Mr Hall agrees with the late Mr Bent, n. Her authority, that only when the gorges and ravines in the hills around Zimbabwe arc explored will the graves of the people who inhabited Zimbabwe, “the original occupiers,” bo disclosed. He is of opinion that in these yet undiscovered cemeteries there will be found relics through wiA'i it will be proved absolutely when and by whom the templo was built. The fallowing is an account of the visit to the ruins by a woman vio 'onnorly lived in Melbourne

"We got bo Umvuma the day after wo loft Salisbury, and then went on to Fort Victoria, where we stayed a day. Wo saw over the old fort (built thirty years ago to protect settlers from the MatabeJo). After a good night s rest, which wo needed, wo motored out io Zimbabwe, The people near the ruins hare huts for visitors. We were there throe days. Very comfortable and food excellent. Besides tho wonder of the mins, Zimbabwe is a most beautiful place, just at the edge of a very mountainous country, and the vegetation is tropical. The last day we were there 1 went off with numerous* bovs and sacks and collected palms, orchiJs, ferns, tree-ferns; also various seeds. 80 the curator of tho ruins, Mr Wallace, showed me round the temple again, and told me all sorts of interesting things. iNo place I have ever been in, or at, has ever impressed me so much as the Acropolis—it is even more wonderful than the temple. It is about a mile aivay from the temple and the Valley of Hums lies between.

“1 thinjc of the countless years this place took to fortify, and the* countless slaves who built it, toiling up that immense mountain with all the stone! Why fortified? Against whom? Except to modem artillery the place is impregnable. High up on the Acropolis walls are battlements. There, are huge stones,' blocks

of stone, besides. Immense fig. trees grow on top of some of tlie walls. Tlie weather while we were at Zimbabwe was perfect. The sky was a glorious blue, and the ruins and granite hills and mountains are a pale french grey almost white in the distance. The first morning we were there there was a mist till 7, and the mountain peaks in the far distance looked like islands rising out of a perfectly et.-ill blue sea. While I was taking ‘snaps’ 1 sat on the steps at an entrance to a doorway, and looked 1 down a. sheer precipice of 700 ft —looked across the Valley of Enins to the temple, and tried to imagine the life of these unknown people. Up the sides of the mountain, and just wide enough for one man to climb at a time, was a narrow made pathway, ail stone up to where I sat on the steps of the doorway. I think of the fights there, and of the people who went over that precipice! Not a bone of them left, but all those ox-bones! The vegetation is wonderful, J. says because of the bones, for the Valley of Ruins (soil t mean) is composed of nothing else. They have found tools, solid gold bangles, exquisitely engraved, gold stick ferrules, gold plates, gold beads, gold tacks and wire, and wonderful soapstone carvings. The people at the lints where we stayed had a portion of a bowl of soapstone about the size of a large low salad bowl, and carved outside of it a wonderful bird and the head of an ox. And I also saw in tlie Valley of Ruins where gold used to ho smelted. “ Zimbabwe is in the midst of a- districtof granite formation, and so they are sure that the black shining slate in chevron pattern on temple walls lacing east, and on the lower, had to lie brought fourteen miles from the temple at least. Tlie passages in the Acropolis are, only wide enough fur one to go through at a time, except in place® in the wadis, where there is a space big enough for a man to stand as another passes. It is a regular maze of these passages, all curving. No doorway can be aoen till one is just on it. Every corner of the temple, and of all the buildings and walls and passages of the Acropolis, is rounded, except just at one place near the great tower in the temple —just on© place in that vast mass of ruins —with a 6qua.ro corner! Wliy are not there any human bones? Do you think they burnt their dead? If so, why are there no remains of the la*t of them that lived there? And there must have been countless thousands. The Acropolis alone must have taken hundreds of years to build. You can see traces of ancient drainage, it is weird and wonderful “ There is a most deadly uncanny ouiot inside the temple walls, which are about 22it to 52ft high, 1 spoke of it and both ,1. and .Mr Wallace say it is always the same. Evervone sneaks of it. We missed the moonlight. People go specially , to B€o tho tempi© in the moonlight, and one or two friends were quite distressed : that I should miss it. Incidentally I say j it. is just as well, as leopards prowl in the . ruins’a good deal. They say women some- j times become quite hysterical and scream. | I heard of a party who went to see the i ruins by moonlight, and one of the women j zereamed and sobbed 1 Take me away 1 j It’d dreadful! It'a all too horrible! Oh, | take me away!’ And she had to be i taken right away from the place. 1 j snoke to Mr Wallace about the leopards, ' and ho says they are in the kopjes all ] round and" are often about the temple, : but he does not think they would bother i a lares party of people, and l they arc not as numerous now as they used to be. J, savs when he wsa down there eighteen years ago he used to hear them yelling at night and they are never heard now. The natives who are in the reserve to clear paths, etc., always have dogs with them. We saw nothing except flowers, plants, and several squirrels. Oh! I said wo saw nothing. Well, when wo were on the top of the Acropolis (precipice side) looking

over miles of country, suddenly out of nowhere two vultures appeared, came doe« up, almost whirled about our heads, and then flew off again. J. said they were the descendants of the vultures that used to appear from nowhere when slaves or enemies were Hung over the precipice and they .scented a feast. “ The place is wonderful beyond any description, and grows on one. No pictures can lake in the vastness or wonder of it. It is 100 old for history. And in this country there arc altars to Diana; traces of Portuguese settlement (you know the Portuguese settled on the South-east African coast about the time Columbus difi- • covered America); traces of Arab settlement long before the Portuguese, and’ all disgustingly modern compared with Zimbabwe. No one knows, but they say it ia as old as the Phoenicians."