ing to defence that it
actually facilitates attack; for, by the help of the terraces and of the
interstices among the stones which the ornamental pattern supplies, an
active man could easily scale it in front. Moreover, there is hard by,
to the north, a higher and more abrupt hill which would have offered a
far better site for a fort. The second view is that Dhlodhlo was a
mining station, where slaves were kept at work; but if so, why was it
not placed near the old gold-workings instead of some miles off, and of
what use were the terraced walls? The inquirer is therefore led to the
third view--that the building was in some way connected with religious
worship, and that the ornament which is seen along the eastern wall was
placed there with some religious motive. There is, however, nothing
whatever to indicate the nature of that worship, nor the race that
practised it, for no objects of a possibly religious character (such as
those I shall presently mention at Zimbabwye) have been found here.

I visited a second ruin among the mountains of Mashonaland, near the
Lezapi River, at a place called Chipadzi's grave, a mile from the kraal
of a chief named Chipunza. Here a rocky granite kopje, almost
inaccessible on two sides, is protected on one of the other sides by a
neatly built wall of well-trimmed stones, similar to that of Dhlodhlo,
but without ornament. The piece that remains is some fifty yards long,
five feet thick at the base, and eleven feet high at its highest point.
It is obviously a wall of defence, for the only erections within are
low, rough inclosures of loose stones, and three clay huts, one of which
covers the grave of Chipadzi, a chief who died some twenty years ago,
and who was doubtless interred here because the place was secluded and
already in a fashion consecrated by the presence of the ancient wall.
That the wall is ancient hardly admits of doubt, for it is quite unlike
any of the walls--there are not many in the country--which the Kafirs
now build, these being always of stones entirely untrimmed and very
loosely fitted together, though sometimes plastered with mud to make
them hold.[7] There is nothing to see beyond the wall itself, and the
only interest of the place is in its showing that the race who built
Dhlodhlo and other similar walls in Matibililand were probably here
also.

Much larger and more remakable is the group of ruins (situated seventeen
miles from Fort Victoria, in southern Mashonala