2 6 8 EXPLORATION JOURNEYS IN MASHONALAND
Kunzi is an ambitious man, | and talks of becominOg
king of Mashonaland, but as he was driven back during
his last attack on his neighbour Mangwendi, and as
the Chartered Company may have something to say
to it, this eventuality seems at present in the dim
future. Kunzi is, however, a man of promise, and if
he had been born a little earlier he might have been in
a position to resuscitate the fallen glories of the race.
Outside Kunzi’s kraal is a fine iron smelting fur-
MAKALANGA IR O N SM E L T IN G FU RN A C E
nace, decorated with the breast and furrow pattern,
and with a large quantity of newly made biow-pipes of
dried mud, and decorated with a spiral pattern, lying in
heaps outside. We watched the process here at our
leisure. First they crush the ore obtained from the
neighbouring mountains, which has a large quantity
of manganese in it, and spread it on the rocks ; the
forge is heated with charcoal and kindled by two men
with four bellows, each worked by one hand; the
nozzles are inserted into the blow-pipes, and the blowpipes
into the charcoal; they press the bellows with
their hands by means of a wooden handle, and work
with great vigour, singing and perspiring freely as
they work. Around the furnace is a hedge of tall grass,
and at night time, when the ore is cool, they remove
it from the furnace and afterwards weld it' into the
required shapes with stone hammers. This time-
honoured handicraft interested us much, mentioned
as it is by Dos Santos three hundred years ago, and
GOAT SKIN B E L LOW S AND B L O W -P IP E F O R IR O N SM E L T IN G
by the Arabian writers close upon a thousand years
ago, as a speciality of the country.
One of the neighbouring kraals is ruled over by
Kunzi’s brother Gwadeli, who, in his anxiety to be
hospitable, gave us warm beer to drink, which nearly
had the effect of an emetic. A rock rises out of the
centre of this kraal, where is an induna’s grave walled
into thé rock, with four pots of beer before it, and
hedged off by a rope of bark.