SOUTH AFRICAN MYSTERY

Otago Witness, Issue 3594, 30 January 1923, Page 24

SOUTH AFRICAN MYSTERY

RUINS OF ZIMBABWE. A VICTORIAN’S IMPRESSONS. Many Australians seem to think of Rhodesians a new country—the country founded by Cecil Rhodes at the end of the ’eighties; yet Southern Rhodesia, with its wonderful paintings in the caves of the bushmen who inhabited the country 2COO or 3000 years ago, possibly before that; with its ancient rock mines, “the most extensive gold mines sunk to depth on rode yet known to the world” ; and with its hundreds of mysterious ruins, may well be regarded as pre-historie. One authority says: “It would require a year or two for anyone merely to visit such of the ruins as are of major importance without allowing time for their proper examination.” Some of them may be comparatively modern, others mediaeval, 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 ryins are about 200 miles to the south of Salisbury, the political capital 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 pre-his-toric 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 goldmine area” in Rhodesia until about the days of King Solomon, when Asiatic people, probably from Southern Arabia, arrived, and for centuries obtained gold—it is estimated to the value of a hundred million pounds sterling—which they took back to Asia. There are reasons given for this belief. While no g-old was iound in Arabia itself, Opliir, so iained lor its gold, is now agreed by geographical as well as Biblical students to have been situated in Southern Arabia, in the kingdom of Saba (or in Hebrew Sheba), and it is also known that gold, together with ivory, slaves, apes, and ostrich leathers, was sent for many centuries from Safala (Southern Rhodesia) to Arabia Later — it js thought centuries later —when hosts of Bantus appeared in Rhodesia, rock-min-ing ceased, and Zimbabwe was built, probably by the conquered Bantus, at the bidding of their Asiatic masters. The building took place, Hall thinks, between 3tXJ A.L> ana 613 A D. At Zimbabwe modern engi neers and builders are as much (ost in wonder at the huge boulders ' that were carried up a hill 200ft-270ft high and placed oh wall? 2i)tt to 30ft high, as are modern architects at the proportions and symmetry of the mails, which it is thought may still be standing in 2000 years. Mr Hall agrees with the late Mr Bent, another authority, that only when the gorges and ravines in the hills around Zimbabwe are explored will the graves of the people who inhabited Zimbabwe, “the original occupiers,” be disclosed. He is of the opinion that in these yet undiscovered cemeteries there will be found relics through which it will be proved absolutely when and by whom the temple was built. The following is an account of the visit to the ruins by a woman who formerly lived in Melbourne : “We got to Umvuma the day after we left Salisbury, and then went to Fort Victoria, where we stayed a day. We saw over the old fort (built 30 years ago to protect settlers from the Matabele). After a good night's rest, which we needed, we motored out to Zimbabwe. The people near the ruins have huts for visitors. We were there three days. Very comfortable and food excellent. Besides the wonder of the ruins, 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 I went off with numerous boys and sacks and collected palms, orchids, ferns, tree-ferns; also various seeds. So the curator of the ruins, Mr Wallace showed me round the temple again, and told me all sorts of interesting things. No 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 away from the temple and the Valley of Ruins lies between. “I think 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 modern 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 seme of the walls. “The 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 w:as a mist till seven, and the mountain peaks in the far distance looked like islands rising out of a perfectly still blue sea. While I was taking ‘snaps’ I sat on the steps at an entrance to a doorway, and looked down a sheer precipice of 700 feet—looked across the Valley of Ruins 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, all 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 I 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 huts where we stayed had a portion of a bowl of soapstone about the size of a low salad bowl, and carved outside of it a wonderful bird and the head of an ox. And I also saw in the Valley of Ruins where gold used to be smelted. “Zimbabwe is in the midst of a district of granite formation, and so they are sure that the black shining slate in chevron pattern on temple walls facing east, and on the tower, had to be brought 14 miles from the terapie at least. The passages in the Acropolis are only wide enough for one to go through at a time, except in places in the walls, 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 seen 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 one place in that vast mass of ruins—with a square corner! Why are not there any human bones? Do you think they burnt their dead? If so, why are there no remains of the last 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 It is weird and wonderful. “There is a most deadly uncanny quiet inside the Temple Walls, which are about 22ft to 32ft high. I spoke of it. and both J. and -Mr Wallace say it is always the same. Everyone speaks of it. We missed the moonlight. Feople go specially to see the remple in the moonlight, and one or two friends were quite distressed that I should miss it. Incidentally I say it is just as well, as leopards prowl in the Ruins a good deal. They say women sometimes become quite hysterical and scream. I heard of a party who went to see the Ruins by moonlight, and one of th© women screamed and sobbed, “Take me away 1 ft s dreadful ! It’s all too horrible! Oh take me away!” And she had to be taken right away from the place. I spoke to Mr Wallace about the leopards, and h© says they are in the kopjes all round and are often about the Temple, but he does not think they would bother a large party of people, and they are not as numerous now as they used to be. J. says when he wag down there 18 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 we saw nothing. Well, when we were on the top of the Acropolis (precipice side) looking over miles of country, suddenly out of nowhere two vultures appeared, came close 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 flung over the precipice, and they scented a feast. “lh© place is wonderful beyond any description, and grows on one. No pictures can take the vastness or wonder of it. it is too old for history. And in this country there are altars to Diana; traces of Portuguese settlement (you know the Portuguese settled on the South-East African coast about the time Columbus discovered America); traces of Arab settlement long before the Portuguese and all disgustingly .modern compared with Zimbabwe. No one knows, but they say it is as old as the Phoenicians.”