THE ANCIENT GOLD-FIELDS OF AFRICA.* TILE subject of the present
notice is rather a random collection of cuttings new and old than a book. In spite, however, of its amorphous character, it is capable of affording no small amount of entertainment. The reader will be too glad to come across the matter it contains, to make objections as to form. The fact that the compiler's store of good things is emptied in a heap at one's feet rather than carefully sorted and arranged, is, after all, a secondary matter. Mr. Stuart's work deals with all that is "in ancient or in modern books enrolled" respecting the mysterious Land of °plaits He has collected from the ancient geographies, from long-forgotten books of travel, from the recent transactions of learned Societies, and. from South African newspapers not a year old, everything that can be learnt of those mysterious highlands to the south of the Zambesi where the ground is sown broadcast with the bare grey ruins of granite forts and the remains of ancient gold-diggings. Except for some ruins of Persian origin on the East Coast, there are only three places in Africa where dumb stone wit- nesses of the past are to be found. The Roman Province of Africa, which stretched from the Pillars of Hercules to the Delta of the Nile, and Egypt itself, are, of course, full of ruins ; but you may traverse the rest of Africa from the Niger to the Tana, from the Congo to the Orange River, and save for the Land of Ophir, find nothing to mark the fact that the country has ever been held by a race who have risen above the idea of a straw-thatched wigwam or a wattled hut. The question, Who built the vast ruins with which Mashonaland is so thickly strewn ?" is one that fires the imagination in no ordinary way. They alone, of buildings that show deep science in their construction, bear not a trace of their origin upon their superficies. The palaces and temples that raise their walls amid the tropical growths of Yucatan are covered with sculptures and inscriptions as grotesque as they are fascinating. We cannot road their message, it is true ; but since the builders carved a record of their deeds, we feel that we have some sort of sympathy with their mental attitude. 'They did what it is the instinct of every civilised human being to do, to this day. In the same way, though we may never know more than the nothing we know at present of the men who reared the temples of Cambodia, we yet can understand some- thing of their standpoint as regards life. They realised, at least, the significance of the human form. What are we to think of a race who have left nothing on their buildings but a yard. or two of the herring-bone pattern ? The utilitarianism of the Mashonaland buildings is absolutely appalling in its completeness. There is no other example of a people raising walls thirty feet high—walls built of granite cut into neat bricks—and not giving the slightest suspicion • of ornament or inscription to their work. Who were these awful people ? Whence came they, and where have they departed P These are the questions that naturally arise to any one who considers the ruined forts of Mashonaland. It cannot be said that they are in any sense answered in the book before sis ; but, at any rate, such few facts as are known, and may help to afford a solution of the problem, are got together by the author, and put at the disposal of inquirers. Possibly in the course of the next few years, we shall get further informa- tion; but till we do, we can do little more than speculate and wonder.
The ruins of Zinbabye have been too often described to make it necessary to dwell on them ; but we may quote the -following account of some ruins described by Mr. G. A. Farini, in his work Through the Kalahari Desert, which is included in Mr. Stuart's collection of excerpts :—
" On the second day we sighted a high mountain which Jan ;thought was the Xi Xi mountain on the Nosob river (23 deg. 45 min, S., 21 deg. 20 mm. E. approx.) But we were not far To Ancient Gold-Beth of Africa, from tho Gold Com( to MaAltonaland„ By .7. M. Stuart. London ; Effingbaru Wiloon. enough south for that, and on reaching the foot of it, it turned out to be one that nobody seems to have ever seen or heard of. We camped near the foot of it, beside a long lino of stone which looked like the Chinese wall after an earthquake, and which, on examination, proved to be the ruins of quite an extensive struc- ture, in some places buried beneath the sand, but in others fully exposed to view. We traced the remains for nearly a mile, mostly a heap of huge stones, but all flat-sided, and hero and there with the cement perfect and plainly visible between the layers. The top row of stones was worn away by the weather and the drifting sands, some of the upper ones curiously rubbed on the underside and standing out like a centre table on one short leg. The general outline of this wall was in the form of an arc, inside which lay at intervals of about 40 ft. apart, a series of heaps of masonry in the shape of an oval or an obtuse ellipse, about a foot and a half deep, and with a fiat bottom, but hollowed out at the sides for about a foot from the edge. Some of these heaps were cut out of solid rock, others were formed of more than one piece of stone, fitted together very accurately. As they were all more or loss buried beneath the sand, we made the men help to uncover the largest of them with the shovels—a work they did not much like —and found that where the sand had protected the joints they were quite perfect. This took nearly all one day, greatly to Jan's disgust. He could not understand wasting time uncovering old stones. To him it was labour thrown away. I told him that here must have been either a city, or a place of worship, or the burial ground of a great nation, perhaps thousands of years ago So the next day we had it all to ourselves, and the discoveries we made amply repaid us for our labours. On digging down, nearly in the middle of the arc, we came upon a pavement about 20 feet wide, made of large stones. The outer stones were long ones, and lay at right angles to the inner ones. This pavement was inter- sected by another similar one at right angles, forming a Maltese cross, in the centre of which, at one time, must have stood an altar, column, or some sort of monument, for the base was quite distinct, composed of loose pieces of fluted masonry. Having searched for hieroglyphics or inscriptions, and finding none, Lulu took several photographs and sketches, from which I must leave others, more learned on the subject than I, to judge as to when and by whom this place was occupied."
The paper read by Mr. E. A. Maund before the Royal Geo- graphical Society last November contains an attempt to prove that, whoever else built the ruins, it was not the Portuguese. The evidence on this point, indeed, seems to us conclusive.
The ruins are mentioned as existing at a period very shortly after the Portuguese occupation of Mozambique. In Purchas's Pilgrimage (1614) occurs an account of the buildings which is substantially identical with those given to-day, except that the ruins were then in a better condition of repair. The following is the passage to which we refer :—
"Other mines are in Toroa, wherein are those buildings which Barrius attributeth to some forren Prince, and I, for the reasons before alledged, to Salomon. It is a square fortress° of stone ; the stones of marueilous greatnesse, without anie signe of morter or other matter to ioyne them. The wall flue and twontie spannes thick°, the height not holding proportion. Ouer the gate are letters, which the learned Moores could neyther made nor know what letters they were. There are other buildings besides of like fashion. The people call them, the Court, for an Officer keepes it for the Benomotapa, and bath charge of some of his women that are there kept. They esteeme them beyond humane power to build, and, therefore, account them the workes of Deuils ; and the Moores which saw them said the Portugals Castles were no way to bee compared to thorn. They are flue hundred and tenne miles from Sofala, Westward, in one-and-twentie degrees of Southerly Latitude, in all which space is not found one building Ancient or later ; the people are rude, and build cottages of Timber."
It will be seen that Parches dwells upon the absence of
mortar, the great thickness of the walls compared with their height, just as do the modern travellers. It is true he talks of an inscription, but this is probably a misapprehension. The fact that the buildings were believed to be the work of devils is a testimony to their antiquity. Savage nations always regard ruins whose origin is lost as connected with the powers of evil. The fact that they were then, as now, pro- nounced to be quite different from the " Portugals Castles," is also very remarkable. Mr. Theodore Bent, who joined in the discussion of Mr. Maund's paper, inclines to the theory that the ruins are to be attributed to the Sass sanian Dynasty. Sir John Kirk found ruins near Zanzibar which are almost certainly of Persian origin. Is it not possible that the Persians did not stop at Zanzibar, but went further down the coast ? Kosroes II. was the greatest of the Saseaaidm. He held, we know, a vast African Empire, and collected immense wealth ; if, then, the ruins are attributable to the Persians at all, they are Probably attributable to the Persians of his time. This is Mr. Bent's theory. Into its merits we shall not attempt to enter, except to admit that it is ingenious, and in no sense prima facie impossible. As Mr.
Bent says himself, however, "nothing definite will ever be found out about these forts until they are thoroughly dug out and investigated."
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