accurate mathematical principles, containing kindred
objects of art, methods of' producing gold known to
have been employed in the ancient world, and evidence
of a vast population devoted to the mining of
gold.
As to the vexed question of the land of Ophir, I
do not feel that it is necessary to go into the arguments
for and against here. Mashonaiand may have been
the land of Ophir or it may n o t; it may have been the
land of Punt or it may n o t; Ophir and Punt may be
identical, and both situated here, or they may be both
elsewhere. There is not enough evidence, as far as I
can see, to build up any theory on these points which
will satisfy the more critical investigation to which
subjects of this kind are submitted in the present day.
All that we can satisfactorily establish is that from
this country the ancient Arabians got a great deal of
gold; but as gold was in common use in prehistoric
times, and lavishly used many centuries before our
era, there is no doubt that the supply must have been
enormous, and must have been obtained from more
places than one. 4 Tyre heaped up silver as the dust,
and fine gold as the mire of the streets,’ Zechariah tells
us (ix. 3), and the subject could be flooded with
evidence from sculptural and classical sources; and
though the output from the old workings in Mashonaiand
is seen to have been immense, yet it can hardly
have supplied the demand that antiquity made upon
it. The study of Arabian and Phoenician enterprise
outside the Bed Sea is only now in its infancy—we
have only as yet enough evidence to prove its extent,
and that the ruins in Mashonaiand owe their origin
to it..A
fter the commencement of the Christian era
there is a great gap in our geographical knowledge of
these parts ; and as far as Western civilisation is concerned,
this corner of the world had to be discovered
anew. It was not so, however, with the Arabians,
who, though probably banished from the interior
many centuries before by the incursions of savage
tribes, still held to the coast, and exchanged with the
natives their cloth and their beads for gold which
they brought down. Of Arab extension in Africa we
have also other evidence. The 4 Periplus ’ tells us that
the Sabæan King Kharabit in a .d . 35 was in possession
of the east coast of Africa to an indefinite extent.
The Greek inscription from Axume in Abyssinia,
copied by Mr. Salt in his travels there, further confirms
this. It was a dedication to Mars of one golden
statue, one silver, and three of brass in honour of a
victory gained by 4 Aizanes, king of the Axomites, of
the Homerites . (given us by Eratosthenes as one of
the Arabian tribes), of the ^Ethiopians, and of the
Sabæans.’ Three cities of the name of Sabæ are
mentioned as connected with this kingdom, two in
Arabia and one in .¿Ethiopia ; and now we have the
river which doubtless in those days formed the great
outlet for the population between the Zambesi and the
Limpopo, still bearing the name -of Sabæ or Sabi, and
in the ^Ethiopian tongue the word Saba is still used for
4 a man.’ Herr Eduard Glaser, the Arabian traveller
and decipherer of Himyaritic inscriptions, states in