a place of royal sepulture. The natives remember the names of
the dead chiefs, but little else, and cannot tell one when the fortress
was built nor why it was forsaken. Everything is so rude that one must
suppose the use of loopholes to have been learned from the Portuguese,
who apparently came from time to time into these regions; and the
rudeness confirms the theory that the buildings at the Great Zimbabwye
were not the work of any of the present Bantu tribes, but of some less
barbarous race.

It is not easy to find one's way alone over the country in these parts,
where no Kafir speaks English or even Dutch, and where the network of
native foot-paths crossing one another soon confuses recollection.
However, having a distant mountain-peak to steer my course by, I
succeeded in making my way back alone, and was pleased to find that,
though the sun was now high in heaven and I had neither a sun-helmet nor
a white umbrella, its rays did me no harm. A stranger, however, can take
liberties with the sun which residents hold it safer not to take.
Europeans in these countries walk as little as they can, especially in
the heat of the day. They would ride, were horses attainable, but the
horse-sickness makes it extremely difficult to find or to retain a good
animal. All travelling for any distance is of course done in a waggon or
(where one can be had) in a Cape cart.

From the Lezapi River onward the scenery grows more striking as one
passes immediately beneath some of the tall towers of rock which we had
previously admired from a distance. They remind one, in their generally
grey hue and the extreme boldness of their lines, of some of the
gneissose pinnacles of Norway, such as those above Naerodal, on the
Sogne Fiord. One of them, to which the English have given the name of
the Sugar Loaf, soars in a face of smooth sheer rock nearly 1000 feet
above the track, the lichens that cover it showing a wealth of rich
colours, greens and yellows, varied here and there by long streaks of
black raindrip. Behind this summit to the north-east, eight to twelve
miles away, rose a long range of sharp, jagged peaks, perfectly bare,
and showing by their fine-cut lines the hardness of their rock. They
were not lofty, at most 2000 feet above the level of the plateau, which
is here from 4000 to 5000 feet above sea-level. But the nobility of
their forms, and their clear parched sternness as they stood in the
intense sunshine, made them fill and sa