same defensive purpose; it is near a Kaffir village called
Chipadzi’s. About twenty-five miles farther up the
valley from the commissioner’s is Mapandera’s kraal
on the Sangwe Kiver, a tributary of the Mazoe or
Mazowe. Here, on the Inyota Mountain, gold is said
to be plentiful and old workings very numerous, as
many as seventy-five crushing-stones having been
counted on one single claim. Twenty miles southeast
of Mapandera’s is Ohipadzi’s kraal, and a few
miles from here in the mountains is another ruin,
described to me as being a circular wall round a
kopje from 150 to 200 feet in diameter. This wall is
in a very ruined condition, being not more than four
feet in height, but the courses are reported to be quite
as regular as those of Zimbabwe, which appears to be
the crucial test in classifying these remains of ancient
workmanship. It has no entrance, and the natives
thereabouts did not appear to know anything about
it or attach any special interest to it.
The Mazoe Valley is frequently alluded to in early
Portuguese enterprise, being easily approachable from
the Zambesi, and the river is, I am told, navigable
about eighty miles below where we struck it.
Couto, the Portuguese writer, thus speaks of the
gold mines here in his quaint legendary style : ‘ The
richest mines of all are those of Massapa, where they
show the Abyssinian mine from which the Queen of
Sheba took the greater part of the gold which she
went to offer to the Temple^ of Solomon, and it is
Ophir, for the Kaffirs called it Fur and the Moors Afur
. . . the veins of gold are so big, that they expand
with so much force, that they raise the roots of trees
two feet.’ He fixes the spot which he here alludes to
farther on when speaking about the three markets
held by the Portuguese in these parts : ‘ (1) Luanhe,
thirty-five leagues from Tete South, between two small
rivers, which join and are called Masouvo ; (2) Bacoto,
forty leagues from Tete ; and (3) Massapa, fifty leagues
from Tete up the said Eiver Masouvo.’ How the
Mazoe, which, doubtless, in the native tongue, is the
Maswe, like the Pungwe, Zimbabwe, &c., joins the
Zambesi just below Tete.
Further evidences of this Portuguese enterprise
will doubtless come to light as the Mazoe Valley is
further explored. In the vicinity of a new mine
called the Jumbo, fragments of old Delft pottery have
been found, a few of which were shown to me when
at Fort Salisbury. Nankin china is also reported
from the same district, an indubitable proof of Portuguese
presence ; and no doubt many of the large
Venetian beads, centuries old, which we saw and
obtained specimens of from the Makalangas in the
neighbourhood of Zimbabwe, were barter goods given
by the traders of those days to the subjects of the
Monomatapa, who brought them gold in quills to the
three above-named dépôts, collected from the alluvial
beds of the Mazoe and other streams. It is rumoured
amongst the inhabitants of the Mazoe and Manica
that long ago, in the days of their ancestors, white
men worked gold and built themselves houses here.
This rumour most probably refers to the Portuguese,
who at the three above-mentioned places