Sunday Morning and Midnight in an Ancient Temple—Sunset on the Acropolis.

WANDERING about the Elliptical Temple at Zimbabwe on a Sunday morning one is faced at every turn with texts for innumerable “sermons in stones.” The hoary age of these massive walls is grandly and silently eloquent of a dead religion—a religion which was but the blind stretching forth of the hand of faith groping in the Dawn of Knowledge for the Deity and seeking the Unknown. Lowell urges that none should call any faith “vain” which in the evolution of religion has led mankind up to a higher level. The builders were “Pagans.” Granted, but the world four thousand years ago was in its infancy, and infancy is but a necessary prelude to development in any department of life and thought. The progressive stages of Old Testament faith demonstrate this fact most patently. We of the Christian Era, with our two thousand years of religious enlightenment, have yet to learn of the “many things I have to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.” The evolution of the Christian Ideal has not yet reached its final stage—it has still to be perfected. But the period of infancy in development should not be too hastily condemned as “vain.”

The spires that adorn our churches, the orientation of ecclesiastical buildings, the eastward position of the dead, the candles on the altars, and what is more, the idea conveyed by sacrificial offering, have their origin in the ancient faiths and world-wide litholatrous and solar ideas of the Semitic peoples, whether of Yemen or Phoenicia, who built their temples in every part of the then known world which came under their influence. In these, as in many more such instances, parallelisms become identities, but identities adapted by the Christian Church to convey in an old-world form a figure of a higher faith. The continuity between this old temple at Zimbabwe, Stonehenge, and the modern cathedral, is complete.

When one reviews the forms and practices, so far as they are known, of the Semitic builders of the Great Zimbabwe, what a flood of light shines in upon the history and worship of the Hebrews. The writings of the Prophets live afresh, and the mystic chapters of Job become full of pregnant meaning. A key is provided to the secret of Abraham offering his son, to Jacob’s pile of stones, to Jephthah’s vow, to the Syro-Phoenician woman’s conversation at the well, and to a hundred points of biblical lore which would otherwise barely attract attention, much less provoke interest. These old Semites—of whom the Hebrews were a younger branch—stinted not their worship, and knew the ecstasy of sacrifice. Their best beloved they gave—their dearest, in the belief that the gift which was offered without a pang was not prized by Deity. Bearing this in mind, the Old Testament is found to be replete with unfailing interest, charm, and point; it becomes, in fact, a marvellously new book even to the biblical student.

The builders of the temple at Zimbabwe have now, it is believed, slept through three millenniums, if not four, yet the religious faith of the Semitic family was so strong, so real, and so forceful, that its ramifications can be found in the faith of the Christian Church of to-day. Nor can this be wondered at. One has but to glance round these temple walls to read in granite blocks the fact that to the builders their religious faith was of primal importance. Here is clearly envisaged the fact that to them their religion was very real, so much so that were Europe devastated to-morrow, it could scarcely show in proportion to its other buildings such monuments to religious faith as can be seen in Rhodesia to-day. Their finest art, their best constructive skill, and the patient labour of long years, were lavished upon these buildings which thickly stud the country. Thoroughness and devotion are written large on the orientated, massive, and grandly sweeping walls of the Elliptical Temple at Great Zimbabwe. One cannot call their faith “vain” when one realises that it led them out from themselves towards something higher, while for them it must be remembered the True Light had not shined. Struggling though blindly to improve their relationship to Deity provided a no mean factor in the religious progress of the world.

While these ancient Semitic colonisers of Rhodesia have slept their many-centuried sleep, what epochs of the world’s history have come and gone, and what empires have risen and decayed! Ah! see that lichen-mantled granite block low down in the cyclopean wall. It has a little chip of stone under one corner as if to steady it. The ancient mason was a careful worker. The chip is still there to-day. One can move it with a finger. Was it there when Moses led the Hebrews towards the Promised Land, or there when young Joseph was sold as a slave into Egypt? Who shall say? Civilisations have come and gone, but the chip is there, and affords not merely an evidence of the careful mason, but a sermon on the brevity of life, the utter smallness of pomp and power, and the absolute absurdity of pride. Still the little granite chip has served its purpose for some four thousand years, and it may yet be there occupying its humble position at the end of the next millennium. The oldest fanes of Europe, whether of Greece or Rome, cannot so deeply move to awe-inspiring feeling as can the massive walls of the temple at Zimbabwe, for these old empires are believed to have been almost unborn when Zimbabwe was at its zenith. Thus the walls compel a listening to their sermons.

As one strays through the Sacred Enclosure, thoughts come:—What were the relative positions of magic and religion, especially in the complicated and closely observed Phallic worship of these ancients; whence the zodiacal, astronomical, and geometrical knowledge of the builders; what of the touch of tragedy in their exodus or departure; the exact meaning of the granite, slate, and carved soapstone monoliths on the summits of the walls; the origin of the occupiers; was Rhodesia the Havilah of Genesis; did it provide the Solomonic gold; of the close kinship of these successful ancient gold-seekers from Yemen or Tyre and Sidon to the Hebrews of Palestine; and of their intimate connection in origin, language, and neighbourhood which Holy Writ abundantly declares existed from the ninth chapter of Genesis until Paul preached in Phoenicia?

Gazing at the Sacred Tower, one thinks of the Tower of Siloam, and of the “high places” of Samaria, and of the times when even this form of worship became the state religion of Judah under Ahaziah; and sitting at the conjectured site of the ancient altar, where the writer has found in numbers the stone emblems of their faith, thoughts arise of the Bethel stones of the Hebrews, the BethÛl or “the dwelling-places of God” of the Phoenicians, and the Penuel or “Face of God” of the Midianites.

The Law of Moses adapts the rules and customs and ideas and forms of worship of far greater antiquity than the Mosaic times. So the new faith of every age borrows from the old, and the mighty processions of civilisations and faiths which have encircled this earth from very far back beyond the days of Abraham go on their even course.

But we must leave the temple and return to camp. There is still the great Zimbabwe owl sitting on his favourite bough near the “high place.” The six-foot python crawls in and out of the stones of the ancient altar. Brightly coloured lizards bask on the once consecrated walls. Blue jays, honey-birds, and doves here find a shelter. The trees, orchid-clad and lichen-festooned, throw a weird shadow over all. Possibly ancients are sleeping near.

As one passes out through the entrance into the full glare of an African noontide, one feels as if one had just returned from the far distant mystic past to modern life, for a naked Makalanga waits there with the message that Sunday lunch was cooked and waiting.

MIDNIGHT IN AN ANCIENT TEMPLE

It was the night of the full moon nearest to Midsummer Day in the Southern Hemisphere, and towards midnight the large population of Makalanga round Zimbabwe would be celebrating the feast of the full moon with dancing, singing, and doro drinking. This was evidently a special feast, for its advent had been the theme of conversation among our labourers for the past fortnight, and, unlike the other feasts, it was held simultaneously in each kraal, and not at different kraals in turn on alternate occasions.

At nine o’clock all was still and restful. There were no signs whatever of the forthcoming festivities. Passing through Baranazimba’s kraal, on the way to Havilah Camp at Zimbabwe, one found the population had retired to rest. At Mogabe’s kraal the only sign of active life was shown by the village dogs. The night was hot and close, and outside the huts natives were sleeping, each in his blanket. Arrived at Havilah Camp, one found a score of labourers, sublimely free from all anxieties, sleeping on the bare granite outside their huts, but so oppressive was the air that in their slumbers they had thrown off their blankets, and were lying in every conceivable posture, and snoring and talking in their sleep as if dancing and beer-drinking were matters that had not the slightest interest for them. The large full moon was yet some distance from its zenith, but the valleys were flooded with a greenish-grey mistiness, which lay over the high grass and ran up into the kloofs and gorges. The light made distant objects distinctly visible, throwing a mantle of romance over every clump, ridge, and kopje, while it was possible to read tolerably small print without the aid of artificial light.

For fully another hour the silence was unbroken. At last the desultory beating of a village drum at Mogabe’s kraal was heard. Later a drum was sounded at Chenga’s kraal, and another at Bingura’s kraal. The villagers were waking up for the feast. One of our labourers sat up, stretched himself and yawned, and commenced shaking his sleeping comrades. Within a few minutes Havilah Camp was all life. One native reached for his leggings of large nuts with dried kernels inside, others a horn, flute, piano, or harp, but all took two knobkerries, some having assegais. Those who possessed strings of wild-cat tails tied them round their waists. The early hours of evening had been devoted to greasing their bodies and limbs, and in the light of the moon their skins shone like burnished metal. Then began a general practising of dance steps, leapings, war-cries, and most hideous howlings. Meanwhile quite a dozen drums were being sounded up on Mogabe’s Kopje, and these were answered by similar numbers at Chenga’s and the other kraals. Horns were blown, parties of Makalanga, singing and shouting, were passing along the native tracks in front of our camp, each party going to its own kraal. Soon our labourers left in gangs for their respective villages and disappeared in the long mist-covered grass. Being all young men with a superabundant fund of spirits, they made a most fearful din in the course of their progress homewards. By this time the Zimbabwe kopjes resounded with singing, especially of girls’ singing, for the women-folk started the festivities with screams and yells, and the loud beatings in three-two time of innumerable drums. The great full moon was now fast approaching its zenith. Our camp, save for the watch-men, the kya (hut) boy, and the picaninni, once more became still and lifeless.

Theodore Bent saw in these new and full-moon feasts some connection with the cult of Nature Worship of the ancient Semites, who are believed to have built these ruins and to have mined for gold in Southern Rhodesia, as it is conjectured, some three thousand years ago. The women, who at this moment are dancing in the villages, have on their bare stomachs, worked into the skin, a “breast and furrow pattern,” identical to that found on many of the oldest of the prehistoric relics discovered in our ancient ruins, an undoubted emblem, Bent contended, of the ancient conception of Fertility. The men who will be dancing have worked in their skins, mainly in bands round their waists, the three radiating bars, similar in form to the Welsh bardic emblem of the Origin of Life. The articles they will wield in their dancing are carved with chevron pattern, one of the most ancient of all emblems of Fertility. But although the flesh decorations are now merely luck signs, neither man nor woman would on any account be without them. With these signs they say they will not be sick, will have plenty of wives and boys to work for them, and many girls on account of whom to receive lobola (marriage present to the father—practically purchase money). Anon, in the pauses of the dance, they will drink beer from pots with herring-bone pattern encircling the lips, a beer made of red millet, prepared, says Bent, in the same way and known by the same name as the beer prepared in Arabia to-day, where its methods of preparation and its name have been handed down from immemorial age.

But to-night will be the finest opportunity for the next twelve months of seeing the Elliptical Temple by moonlight. Sleep this hot, close night is impossible, especially with the sounds of noisy revelry proceeding simultaneously from all points of the compass. My native boy is disinclined to follow me to the temple, but after bargaining with him for an Isi-hle (present), he at last grudgingly consents. He mutters something about the place being bewitched, that there are many horrid things there, and alludes to the M’uali, the chief spirit of Makalanga awe and dread; but as within the two years’ residence at Zimbabwe I have only discovered two natives, and these elderly men, who would willingly go into any of the ruins, especially the temple, after darkness had settled down, I am not at all surprised at his reluctance to follow me there. However, he is mindful to take his stoutest knobkerries with him.

Looking back at the Acropolis Hill, and at its long line of precipice, one sees the ancient walls on the summit gleaming white in the moonlight, while the tall monoliths stand clear against the sky. In the passages on the hill one might almost expect on such a night to come face to face with Rider Haggard’s She at any corner, or to see her draped form issuing from one of the numerous caves which still pierce the cliffs. But we must turn our backs on the Acropolis Hill, and make for the Elliptical Temple, passing the little graveyard where the remains of Major Alan Wilson and his Shangani heroes rest in their granite tomb in the grove of euphorbia trees, whose branches cast black, sharp-cut shadows on the ground. Then across an open granite space, and up the long parallel passage on the east side of Ridge Ruins, out through its intricate southern entrance, and on to the level ground which runs up to the foot of the temple walls. The clumps of tall, old-world-looking aloes and euphorbia trees lining the walls of No. 1 Ruins on the left of our path appear strange even by daylight, but in the midnight radiance of the full moon they assume intensely weird and fantastic forms thoroughly in harmony with the outlines of the ancient buildings. The lonely grave of Thomas Bailey, an Australian gold prospector, lies close to the right-hand side of the path. He died in 1893 while searching for relics within the temple.

The temple walls covered with white lichen appear to have been whitewashed for centuries, and these gleam brightly with light in distinct contrast to the dark veld and bush from which they rise; and so white are they that at a fair distance one can see every course, block, and joint in their dry masonry. The broad bases of the walls in comparison with the widths of their summits—though a full-sized wagon and a team of sixteen oxen could stand upon the top of the more substantial portion of the walls—their sloping sides, and the utter absence of any feature of any style of architecture known in Western Europe, lend a strikingly Eastern appearance to the building, which is sufficient in itself to forcibly take one’s mind back some two or three thousand years. Meanwhile the noise of village drums, the blowing of horns, and the deep wild choruses of crowds of men, mingled with the voices of women and girls, were waxing louder and more incessant as midnight approached.

Standing in No. 5 Enclosure, just within the west entrance, the interior of the temple is seen to be full of light and shadow. But all is serenely calm and still as if possessed by the silence of the grave. The high, massive walls encircling the temple deaden to faintness the voices of the villagers. The close air, heavy with the scent of verbena wafted in from the veld, is oppressive in the extreme. An inexplicable sensation of trespassing in forbidden precincts possesses one. The native looks scared. Midnight visits to ruins are not his particular fancy.

Certainly the many visitors who travel hundreds, if not thousands, of miles to view these ruins, and who only see them by the glare of day, miss nine-tenths of the charm, fascination, and inspiration which the walls of the temple at Zimbabwe have in store for those who walk its courts in the stillness of the night when the midsummer moon is at the full. This is the time to see Zimbabwe aright, for Zimbabwe by day and Zimbabwe by night presents two entirely different aspects.

Trees throw gigantic shadows on the walls and darken the inner courts, and the floors are chequered by moonbeams shining through the foliage overhead. One somehow becomes possessed with the idea that these walls are peopled with the spirits of prehistoric age, who are moving, as of old, about the temple floors and passages, still performing their ancient priestly offices. The movement of every shadow against the walls suggests the passing from point to point of some three-millenniumed spectral form, too engrossed in its sacred avocations to heed the mortal presence of two strangers of the twentieth century after Christ. Would that these hoary-aged walls could speak and tell us of the scenes which took place here when the Great Zimbabwe was in all its glory! Assuredly a midnight hour spent in this ancient temple overwhelms one with most novel sensations, some slightly queer and shivery, others awe-inspiring and soul-stirring.

While still standing just inside the west entrance some thoughts suggest themselves. The ancients being Nature worshippers of one of the earliest cults, so says Bent, had sought in the erection of their temple to compel the concentration of thought on the heavens alone, for even the reduced heights of the summits of the walls, averaging from 22 ft. to 31 ft., shut off, except for gaps, all views of the surrounding landscape. Nothing is visible save the moon and a skyful of silent, glittering stars. The Pleiades, by the rising and setting of which the Makalanga mark their sowing and harvesting, are sinking towards the W.N.W. horizon, and Orion, which is prominent in the star-pictures of the natives, is following down in their wake. A large area of the sky is hidden by the bright radiance of the full moon. But such high massive walls enclosing the temple, and limiting the view to the sky alone, strike the mind of the stranger unread in the lore of ancient Semitic faiths as the purposed design of the ancient architects, especially so when it is recollected that some of the ancient floors are at a much lower level than the interiors as seen to-day. And just as Britishers in Rhodesia unconsciously turn their gaze at night towards the stars which lie low near the northern horizon, so in the contracted view afforded by the temple walls we can well imagine that during their midnight vigils the eyes of the ancient colonists from the north would, as naturally, frequently and lingeringly glance over the northern wall to gaze on stars known to them in their Homeland. It may be noted, too, that the ancients, as conjectured by Bent and other writers, do not appear to have been greatly interested in the alien stars of the Southern Hemisphere, for in all the ruins in Rhodesia, so far as discoveries have been made, there are no massive stone arcs surmounted with monoliths with mural decorations of old-world emblems of fertility on their outer faces, and with the raised platforms approached by steps, facing towards the south, for all such that are known are directed to some other point of the compass.

Small fragments of granite chips from ancient blocks lie about the floor, and these gleam like stars on the dark ground, and have light-haloes of their own. These suggest the splendid sight these ancient walls must have been when all the newly dressed granite blocks in the faces of the walls sparkled as they must once have done as the fragments gleamed in this glorious moonlight. The walls must have glittered like a fairy palace, as did the castle walls of lordly Camelot. To-day we approach the temple on the same level as the veld, the ground outside having been raised to this level by the silt of ages, but the recently discovered granite cement floors outside the building show that the ancients had to ascend some five feet or more to gain the threshold of the entrance. With such higher elevation for its walls, the temple, when freshly built, or perhaps for centuries afterwards, must have been on moonlit nights a most bewitching sight of splendour. But its glories to-night are those which it has gained from the hand of Time.

But on gaining the central area of the building the inexplicable sensations awakened by the weird and strange surroundings and past associations are intensified, and one’s nerves are forced to be more alive to anything unusual happening. Large bats and night-moths fly unpleasantly close to one’s face. Treading on a rotten stick, and the falling of large dry leaves which rattle on the stones below, make noises sufficient to cause one to turn round expecting the approach of some ancient spectre. A frog in some dark and dank corner startles one with a loud croak of “Work!” The hoot of an owl makes the native start. A low moaning, soughing wind now springing up sweeps round the temple and rustles in the upper branches of the trees.

The temple is now lovely in the extreme. The shadows on the walls are now in quick movement. Fireflies swing their tiny lamps over dark enclosures. The white radiance of the moonlight completely invests the conical tower, its intense whiteness being heightened by the large, thick, and dark-foliaged trees on either side. If but Time’s hour-glass were turned back for some long centuries’ space, what tales could not this tower unfold, what secrets of ancient faiths disclose!

One passes down the ancient stairs, lately uncovered, which lead into the Sacred Enclosure, and finds the long, deep-sunk Parallel Passage wrapt in sepulchral darkness, and realises the force of the dark lore of ancient priestcraft and of prayers muttered at midnight. It is pleasant to regain the interior of the temple, where broad streams of moonlight flood its surface. Seated on the east wall of No. 10 Enclosure, and immediately facing the conical tower, one has a good view all round the temple. Under the dark shades of walls and trees a hundred spectres might be lurking unseen. Amidst such surroundings a score of ancient scenes are pictured in one’s mind—the approaching priests with processional chant emerging through the north entrance from the Sacred Enclosure, the salutation to the emblems of the gods, the light of altar fire and torch reflected upon the walls and upon the sacred golden fillets bound round the brows of the priest, the incense-laden air, the subdued murmurings of the waiting crowd of worshippers, the invocations of the deity by priests who stand upon the high raised platform in front of the conical tower, the mystic rites, dark enchantments, and the pious orgies. The very air feels as if it were teeming with mystery and midnight loneliness. Here appear to rise “the thin throng of ghosts ... with beckoning hands and noiseless feet flitting from shade to shade.”

The rising wind now wafts into the ancient shrine the confused shouting, singing, tom-tom beating, and general clamour of the natives dancing in the villages on the hills around. The air has become decidedly cooler. One is glad to have visited the temple at this hour. It is one of the experiences of a lifetime.

THE ACROPOLIS AT SUNSET

In the soft sunlight of a glorious late afternoon, when calm broods over all and a profound solitude invests the immense panorama of valley, mountain, and sea of jagged kopje ranges as beheld from the summit of the Acropolis Hill some 300 ft. at least above the Zimbabwe Valley, one views a scene of indescribable loveliness. The sharp-cut ranges of hills, deep gorges flanked by cliffs, great crags of rock, and the long and broad Moshagashi Valley with its scattered kraals and patches of native plantations are all as silent as sleep.

The Acropolis itself is still. The long and labyrinthine passages give back no echoes. The temple courts are empty. The tall monoliths, like ghostly sentinels, point upwards to the sky, and the sunlight is fast fading on the ancient dentelle pattern at the Western Temple. These massive ruins, once teeming with a dense and busy population of Semitic colonists of prehistoric times, with their innumerable evidences of Phallic worship and extensive gold-smelting operations, are as quiet as the grave. The cry of a baboon, or scream of an eagle returning to its eyrie high up on the cliffs above the Eastern Temple, alone break the impressive silence enfolding one of the greatest archÆological wonders of the Southern Hemisphere.

At this height and on a hill so isolated from its neighbours, and just at sunset when shadows are already gathering in the deep defiles in the cliffs upon its summit, an inexpressible sensation of intense loneliness and solitude asserts itself. No other human foot will tread these ancient approaches to the Acropolis till the sun has risen once again. There is no white man round about for miles, and the natives will not venture near the ruins after sunset. Two hours ago the herd was mindful to drive the goats from the high points on the face of the hill down into the valley. The natives will solemnly inform the stranger that as night approaches the spirits of their departed ancestors buried in the caves of the hill awaken, that the ruins are then bewitched. It may be easily understood that in minds made craven with centuries of slavery to a succession of invaders, and haunted, till the last decade, with constant dread of Swazi and Matabele raids, the standard of Makalanga valour is low indeed, and that at nights they shun these scenes of ancient life is not in the least surprising.

Ascending the hill through the sunless Rock Passage, the air is cool and draughty, but on emerging at the upper end one is faced by the rich blinding glow of the setting sun, and here the air is still warm. As we pass through the Western Enclosure and through the gap in the main west wall of the Western Temple, a view down the sheer drop of the hill into the valley below presents itself. The Elliptical Temple is just losing its last faint touches of the golden tint of sunset. The “Valley of Ruins” is already in shadow, and its chaos of walls looks now even more chaotic and bewildering than it did in the full light of day. Mogabe’s cattle wending their way up Makuma Kopje to the kraal for the night, the bleating of sheep and goats already penned, the far-away talk of women and girls returning from collecting firewood with their bundles on their heads, and the laughter of small parties of natives returning homewards from their plantations, all speak of departing day. The lofty lichened sides of Lumbo Rocks are still bright orange in the sunset, but the nearer side of the Bentberg has become dark and black in shadow, showing up the walls of the Elliptical Temple in the foreground with striking clearness. The long ravine of Schlichter Gorge is now blurred in grey distances, while the Motelekwe and Mowishawasha valleys have already lost the sun for some minutes. The kopjes cast the same backgammon-board-shaped shadows across the valleys just as they did three and four thousand years ago when the tired ancients watched the drawing-in of day.

But turning a glance round to the Western Temple, still at this height bathed in golden sheen, one sees only the ancient walls and passages silent and deserted. This area might have been a busy spot for the ancient occupiers at this hour of the day, for monoliths, decorative mural patterns, and conical towers are now all aglow with sunset brightness, and here at this time of day, as the shadow of the slanting granite beam fades on the dentelle pattern on the platform, they might have read as on a dial face, in light and shade, the progress of the season of the year. The call to prayers and the chanting of the evening hymn of the devout at sunset might at this same hour very many centuries ago have rung round the selfsame hallowed walls which look down sphinx-like and blankly upon the modern visitor.

It is easy to fashion a tale of ancient scenes in such a spot and ’mid such surroundings. Such a scene may have been—the parties of ancient worshippers approaching the temple up the Higher Parapet or by the sunken passage in the Platform Enclosure, or along the East Passage, filling the amphitheatre and watching the bringing of the sacred vessels possibly from the now dank and evil-smelling Platform Cave to some spot near the centre of the temple, perchance at the centre of the arc of the great curved wall, which is directed towards the setting sun; the disappearance of the priests through the Covered Passage and their reappearance on the Platform, which faces west and overlooks the interior of the temple, or listening to priestly orations, the announcement of the actual sunset to the worshippers. Possibly, too, the chief priest may have announced the commencement of the “Feast of the New Moon.”

At this moment the “boys” in Havilah Camp are yelling and dancing most frantically. Something unusual must have happened to cause the sudden outbreak of unearthly din. Right in the dazzling glow of the sun, and low down in the sky, and barely discernible by the eye of white men, is the slender silver scimitar of the young moon. A noisy night of beer-drinking, dancing and singing, and tom-tom beating will follow.

But the dank smell of decay has now usurped the place of the sweet-smelling incense of the ancient ritual. The monoliths still point upwards, but who to-day can explain their plan and purpose, or read the silent intimations their shadows were wont to convey?

The associations of the ruins of the Hill Fortress lie even more with the ancient military occupiers than with those of priests and worship. Traverses, buttresses, screen walls, intricate entrances, narrow and sunken passages, rampart walls, banquettes, parapets, and all other devices of a people conversant with military engineering and defence, are in great evidence all over the hill. These in their ingenuity, massive character, and persistent repetition at every point of vantage, baffle and astonish the best experts of modern military engineering science. The ancients were military strategists, and the Acropolis a stronghold, and its most prominent feature was defence.

At this sunset hour no companies of ancient soldiery descend from the fort (East Ruins), at the foot of the Ancient Ascent, to relieve guard and take up their night watches on the wall barriers. In the now dim and scanty twilight one can wander at will through the two hill temples, the residential quarters, and into the caves which once might have held the gold stores of this part of the country. There is no officer on duty to challenge one’s approach. The sentry recesses in the narrow passages and at the entrances appear singularly empty. Fate finally came to relieve guard many centuries past, eventually permitting some semi-civilised Abantu people, such as the Makalanga, or “People of the Sun,” to desecrate the ancient temple floors with their copper and iron furnaces and bone and ash dÉbris heaps. But the lively bustling crowds of ancients and of mediÆval Makalanga, who both in turn, and for very long periods, densely populated Zimbabwe Hill, are no more.

One passes along shoulder-wide and tortuous passages, where at every corner one might expect to come face to face with Rider Haggard’s She, and enters some enclosure whose sides are formed by the perpendicular flanks of cliffs and boulders, where the ancients fashioned their gold into beads, wire, plates, and ingots. The intricate entrance still guards the spot where gold crucibles, beaten gold, and gold burnishing tools of the ancient artificers have been found in profusion. There is now no sound of hammering the precious metal on the rounded dolorite anvils, nor reddish glow of light on the cliff sides, as when the furnace was uncovered for the removal of the heated crucibles. The prehistoric workshop is now desolate and damp, and a fitting spot for the loathsome, crawling creatures which inhabit its dark recesses.

But daylight is dying fast. Glancing down through the gaps in the outer walls are seen specks of firelight at near and remote kraals where the evening meal is being prepared, and round which the advent of the new moon will soon be celebrated. An adjoining cave with yawning depth and dense blackness does not now appear particularly inviting to the visitor, and yet here relic-seekers unanimously declare was where the ancients kept large stores of gold dust. The Eastern Temple is in semi-darkness, but as one crosses its floor one sees the hole from which some fifty phalli were taken, and the exact spots from which soapstone birds were removed. Here was the site, as Bent conjectured, of the ancient altar. In this temple, it is believed, the ancients celebrated their daybreak ritual, for the arc of the main wall decorated with dentelle pattern, and on which once stood some of the soapstone birds, faces the rising of the sun. Passing along Central Passage, which is perpetually in shadow owing to huge tall boulders on either side, but is now in deepest blackness, crossing Cleft Rock Enclosure, and descending the sunken passage to the outer face of the great west wall of the Western Temple, one arrives where a slight afterglow of the sunset still lingers over the brow of Rusivanga.

Again one enters into the deep shadow of a sunken and earth-smelling passage with high side walls, and so rapidly descends the north-west face of the hill, glad to emerge once more into the cool fresh air at a lower level of some 100 ft. High in the west is Venus, the evening star, shining brightly—Venus, or Almaq, “illuminating,” the goddess of the earlier star-worshipping SabÆans of Yemen, whose worship the best-qualified scientists believe was practised by the original builders of Zimbabwe. She complacently shines down upon her ruined shrines, and wonders doubtless why these natives should convert the sacred emblems of her worship into pipe-bowls for smoking hemp. The Pleiades have set, for the harvest time is almost over. Orion is sinking towards the western horizon as if with disgust at the land where mere Kafirs[21] call him “The little pig and two dogs.”

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