RHODESIA X RL-INS. 513 



as Chil)i ( Ziinbalnvo ) and that those towns were Intilt by his orders. I 

 have never heard it said that he employed Arabs (Alazungu) in luiild 

 tliem. luit I liave often heard that there were plenty of Arabs in the 

 country at the time, and that the Portuguese drove them away. P>ut 

 not all of them, as some of them were married to native women. They 

 caine for gold and elephants' teeth. There were many of them, and 

 they built themselves houses. 



Here, again, we have definite information connecting the 

 ruins witli the natives, whose descendants live in the country 

 at the present time, and that the_\' were bitilt by those people. I 

 do not attach great weight to the statement that the Alamljo. of 

 Thaba's ka Alambo built Zimbabwe, although my first witness 

 Chapa .^aid tlie same thing. I think a Alamljo was meant, one 

 who lived a long time ago, but the way the statement is made 

 shews that there is an intimate connection between Zimbabwe 

 and the other ruins, such as Khami, Dhlo-Dhlo, and Tliaba's ka 

 Maml)(). Further investigations may yet prove that Zimbabwe 

 is }ounger than these ruins, and is, so to speak, the finished 

 article. These Mambos were powerful chiefs, and had a cer- 

 tain degree of civilization. They were not warlike, and made 

 but a poor fight against the fierce ^latebele and Amaswazi. who 

 swept everything before them from Natal to the Zamljesi. and 

 far be\'ond. So many disi)lacements and so nuich destruction of 

 populatiim have taken place in South-East Africa that the his- 

 tor_\- is now ver\- confused and hazy, and with the passing of 

 the it1d luen will l)e lost altogetlier. 



ReQardin"- the building of Khami, the assertion of Chiininva 

 receives confii-mation from quite an unexpected source. ^Iv. 

 II. X. llemans, formerly Native Commissioner at Wankie. in- 

 vestigated the history of the Abenanzwa tribe, who are an oit- 

 shoot of the Mambo's people of Thaba's ka Alambo, and who 

 migrated to their present location about a century ago under a 

 chief called Siawanka. The account was derived entirely friim 

 native sources, and may be taken as correct, the greatest care 

 being taken to check the infornnation obtained. Air. Hemans 

 thus writes : 



Siawanka. at the P>oml)Usi ( Ri\er ) built a laree town, the priiicipal 

 houses being built of dressed stone, with roofs of poles and grass A 

 couple of feet from tlie tops of tlie walls tliemselves the stones were 

 arranged in herring-lione pattern, or else diagonally, as an ornamentation, 

 which would appear to be very similar to the effects of the walls at 

 present standing at Zimliabwe. (The Abenanzwa attach no mea-iing to 

 this variation in the laving of the courses). Spaces were left for the 

 doors, which were made of dressed timlier tilled in with reeds. Ri und 

 and about these houses of stone were built ordinary pole and dagga huts 

 for the tribe as a whole, the more imposing and substantial houses being, 

 reserved for the king and his family and the chiefs. Remains of this 

 town are still to be found at Bombusi, and have been thou^dit. Init t-rrn.- 

 neously, in have been built at the same time as the ])uildin,^s wlrich 

 rcma'n on the Khami and Lundi Rivers.* 



Now all that is said here of the ruins at Bombusi is true 

 of tliose at Zimbabwe and other places, so that when we read 



■^ H. X. Hemans: "TTistory of the A''"^anzwa Tribe.'' — Proc. Rhodesia 

 Scientific Association. 12, ^y. 



