ordinary Kaffir in intelligence. Contrary to the
prognostications of our advisers, we found that some
of them rapidly learnt their work, and were very
careful excavators, never passing over a thing of
value, which is more than can be said of all the
white men in our employ. Some of them are decidedly
handsome, and not at all like negroes except
in skin; many of them have a distinctly Arab cast of
countenance, and with their peculiar rows of tufts on
the top of their heads looked en pro fit like the figures
one sees on Egyptian tombs. There is certainly a
Semite drop of blood in their veins ; whence it comes
will probably never be known, bnt it is marked both
on their countenances and in their customs. In
religion they are monotheists—that is to say, they
believe in a supreme being called Muali, between
whom and them their ancestors, or mozimos, to whom
they sacrifice, act as intercessors. They lay out food
for their dead; they have a day of rest during the
ploughing season, which they call Muali’s Day; they
ha ve dynastic names for their chiefs, like the Pharaohs
of old ; they sacrifice a goat toward off pestilence and
famine; circumcision is practised amongst some of
them. We have also the pillows or head rests,
the strigil, the iron sceptres of the chiefs, the
iron industry, all with parallels from the north.
Then, again, their musical instruments, their games,
and their totems point distinctly to an Arabian
influence, which has been handed down from generation
to generation long after the Arabians have ceased
to have any definite intercourse with the country.
During the course of these pages numerous minor
illustrations will from time to time appear which
point in the same direction. It is a curious
ethnological problem which it will be hard to unravel.
All over the country sour milk is much drunk and
called mast, as it is in the East, and in parts of this
country beer is called dowra or doro, a term which
has come from Abyssinia and Arabia, and the method
of making it is the same. The corn is soaked in
water and left till it sprouts a little; then it is spread
in the' sun to dry and mixed with unsprouted grain;
then the women pound it in wooden mortars, and the
malt obtained from this is boiled and left to stand in
a pot for two days, and over night a little malt that
has been kept for the purpose is thrown over the
liquid to excite fermentation, It will not keep at all,
and is sometimes strong and intoxicating. Women
are the great brewers in Mashonaland, 7 and a Ogood
wife is valued according to. her skill in this
department.
This Kaffir beer. is. certainly an old-world drink.
There are several classical allusions for what is termed
‘barley beer.’ Xenophon and the Ten Thousand one
evening, on reaching an Armenian village in the
mountains of Asia Minor, refreshed themselves with
what he describes as ‘ bowls of barley wine in which
the grains are floating.’
The Egyptians too made beer after the same
fashion, and used it also in sacrifices. Much that
was known in the old world has travelled southwards
through Nubia and Abyssinia, and is to be found still