s are in places steep
and even abrupt, which they would not be if during many years the rains
had been washing the earth down into the trenches. Moreover, iron
implements have been found at the bottom, of modern shapes and very
little oxidized. Probably, therefore, while some of these workings may
be of great antiquity, others are quite recent--perhaps less than a
century old. Such workings occur in many places over Mashonaland and
Matabililand. They are always open; that is to say, the reef was worked
down from the surface, not along a tunnel--a fact which has made people
think that they were carried on by natives only; and they almost always
stop when water is reached, as though the miners had known nothing of
pumps. Tradition has nothing to say as to the workings; but we know that
during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a good deal of gold was
brought down to the Portuguese coast stations; and when the Mashonaland
pioneers came in 1890, there were a few Portuguese trying to get the
metal out of the alluvial deposits along the stream banks. The reefs,
which are now being followed by level shafts or galleries driven into
the sides of the hills, are (in most cases at least) the same as those
which the old miners attacked from above.

North of Penha Longa lies an attractive bit of country, near a place
called Inyanga, which, unfortunately, we had not time to visit. It is a
sort of tableland about thirty miles long by fifteen wide, from 6000 to
7000 feet above sea-level, with the highest summits reaching 8000 feet;
and in respect of its height enjoys not only a keen and bracing air, but
a copious rainfall, which makes it a specially good grazing country. It
will probably one day become not only the choicest ranching-ground of
East Central Africa, but also a health resort from the surrounding
regions. At present it is quite empty, the land having been, as I was
told, bought up by several syndicates, who are holding it in hope of a
rise in prices. Here are the remarkable stone-cased pits, referred to in
Chapter IX.; and here there are also numerous ancient artificial
watercourses for irrigating the soil, which were constructed by some
race of immigrants accustomed to artificial irrigation in their own
country, for it would hardly have occurred to natives to construct such
works here, where the rainfall is sufficient for the needs of tillage.
Still farther to the north is a less elevated region, remarkable for the
tra