ose who built Zimbabwye lived in fear of
enemies. We sat beside the spring, a clear though not copious spring,
which rises a little to the south of the great building from a fissure
in the rock. Fountains so clear are rare in this country, and the
existence of this one probably determined the site of the great building
itself. It flows into a small pool, and is then lost, being too small to
form a rivulet. No trace of man's hand is seen round it or on the margin
of the pool, but those who worshipped in the temple of Zimbabwye
doubtless worshipped this fountain also, for that is one of the oldest
and most widely diffused forms of worship in the world. Restless nature
will some day overthrow the walls of the temple, which she is piercing
with the roots of shrubs and entwining with the shoots of climbing wild
vines, and then only the fountain will be left.

From Fort Victoria to Fort Salisbury it is nearly two hundred miles, the
country generally level, though studded, like parts of southern India,
with isolated rocky hills, whose crags of granite or gneiss break under
the sun and rain into strange and fantastic shapes. A people
sufficiently advanced to erect fortifications might have made for
themselves impregnable strongholds out of the tops of these kopjes. The
timid Makalakas have in many places planted their huts in the midst of
the huge detached masses into which the kopjes are cleft; but they have
not known how to make their villages defensible, and have been content
with piling up a few loose stones to close some narrow passage between
the rocks, or surrounding their huts with a rough fence of thorn-bushes.
We found one deserted village where upon each loose block there had been
placed a rude erection of clay, covered at the top, and apparently
intended for the storing of grain. Thus raised from the ground it was
safer from wild beasts and from rain. All the dwelling huts but two had
been burned. We entered these, and found the walls covered with the
rudest possible representations of men and animals, drawn with charcoal,
more coarsely than an average child of ten would draw, and far inferior
in spirit to the figures which the Lapps of Norway will draw on a
reindeer horn spoon, or the Red Indians of Dakota upon a calico cloak.
Whether the village had perished by an accidental fire, or whether its
inhabitants, relieved from that terror of the Matabili which drove them
to hide amongst the rocks, had abandoned it for s