olific people, and under
the conditions of peace which European rule secures they multiply with a
rapidity which some deem alarming.

How long the various Bantu tribes have been in South Africa is a
question on which no light has yet been thrown, or can, indeed, be
expected. Some of them have a vague tradition that they came from the
north; but the recollections of savages seldom go back more than five or
six generations, and retain little except the exploits or the genealogy
of some conspicuous chief. When the Portuguese arrived in the end of the
fifteenth century, they found Kafirs already inhabiting the country from
Natal northward. But apparently they did not then extend as far to the
west of Natal as they do now; and there is no reason to think that
considerable parts of the interior, such as the region which is now the
Orange Free State and Basutoland, were not yet occupied, but left to the
wandering Bushmen. The Kafirs were then, and continued down to our own
time, in a state of incessant tribal warfare; and from time to time one
martial tribe, under a forceful chief, would exterminate or chase away
some weaker clan and reduce wide areas to a wilderness. Of any large
conquests, or of any steady progress in the arts either of war or of
peace, there is no record, and indeed, in the general darkness, no
trace. The history of the native races, so far as ascertainable, begins
with the advent of the whites, and even after their advent remains
extremely shadowy until, early in this century, the onward march of
settlement gave the Dutch and English settlers the means of becoming
better acquainted with their black neighbours.

Across this darkness there strikes one ray of light. It is a very faint
ray, but in the absence of all other light it is precious. It is that
which is supplied by the prehistoric ruins and the abandoned
gold-workings of Mashonaland.

CHAPTER IX

OUT OF THE DARKNESS--ZIMBABWYE

The ruined buildings of Mashonaland and Matabililand have excited in
recent years an amount of interest and curiosity which is
disproportionate to their number, size, and beauty, but by no means
disproportionate to their value as being the only record, scant as it
is, we possess of what has been deemed an early South African
civilization. I will describe in the fewest words such of these
buildings as I saw, leaving the reader of archaeological tastes to find
fuller details in the well-known book of that enterpris