KiJoDESlAN RUINS. 5II 



and others. It is not so very long ago since they did so in the 

 :\laz<^e Valley, as an official of the British South .Vfrica Com- 

 pany intornied me. Mr. .Melons thus writes 



The .mjld niiiiiiiy went uii withuut iiUerruption till early in the present 

 century, and the old men among- the Matabili who took part in the first 

 raids made amongst the Mashunas hy Umzilikazi's warriors state posi- 

 tively that they found the Amaholi ( Alakaranga ) workino- for gold in 

 the Aiiuiguti/'- i.e., the deep holes l)tween die Zweswi and the Umfuli 

 rivers. An interesting confirmation of this statement lies in the fact that 

 at the bottom of an old shaft, 120 feet deep at Concession Hill, Mr. Cock 

 in 1801 found a Inicket and a rope made of niachahel bark, besides some 

 iron implements. Now this bucket and rope evidently intended to haul 

 quartz up from the bottom of the shaft, being made of such perishable 

 materials as bark, could not possibly have been of any very great anti- 

 quity, whilst the iron axes, etc., were absolutely the same as those in 

 present use anningst the Mashunas and showed no signs of age. ]\Ir. 

 Rolken, the American mining expert latelv in Mashunaland. also told me 

 that, from the condition of the heaps of debris at the mouths of some of 

 the shafts, he was convinced they had not been long- abandoned. f 



Mr. Seloiis also gives a quotation from Baines, " The Gold 

 Regions of South-East Africa," containing the statement of an 

 eye-witness, ^^Ir. George Wood, as to how the natives extracted 

 the gold, which the latter repeated to Selous, so that the fact is 

 Ijeyond question. The quotation reads as follows : — 



G. Wood took me to a place in which he had seen a heap of quartz 

 burn.ed and another heap piled with wood amongst it readv for burnin"-. 

 The crushing stones, like a painter's slab and muller, had also I)een lyin'; 

 in a hut near, but at the time of mv visit these were removed and the 

 calcined quartz: Init the other heap bad been fired and r.ow lay mingled 

 with the charcoal ready for crushing. 



Mr. Selous also states that he was at Tati himself, and per- 

 sonally inspected an old shaft with a heap of roasted quartz 

 heside it ready for crushing, and several round stones to be 

 used for grinding the quartz. The roof was supported with 

 inopani logs cut with native axes, and covered with the original 

 Ijark, so that he concluded that the shaft was abandoned about 

 1840. when the Alatebele came into the country, and this was 

 on their route. Yet in spite of all this, and much more infor- 

 mation of a like character personally known tO' the writer, we 

 are gravely informed that the natives knew nothing about gold 

 mining. As a large part of the Semitic theory of the origin 

 of Zimljabwe and its associated ruins rests upon the ignorance 

 of the natives of rock mining and the excessive antiquity of the 

 mines, the bottom is absolutely knocked out of it by these and 

 similar facts. ^Ir. Selous Avas in Rhodesia long before any 

 Europeans settled in the country, and he had am])le ovjportunities 

 of obtaining first hand information. Few men, if any, have 

 had more. 



Next let tis take the statement that the Mambos got the 

 Arabs to build these towns and " temples " for them to worship 

 their Amadhlozi in. There may be a certain foundation for it in 



* Correct form iiiinv^odi or iiiii:j;i>di. 



t Selous : "Travel and .Adventure in South-Rast Africa." .^;,6. 



