were inserted in the walls for a more complex purpose
than mere ornamentation. The arrangement of
these patterns is as follows: First to the south-east
comes the herring-bone pattern, running over the
chief entrance as a lintel for six yards. Here it ends,
and two feet below begins the dentelle pattern for
the same distance; then the pattern stops altogether
on the outside, but there are indications that it was
continued on the inside instead. Then it is again inserted
for forty feet on the outside, and finally is again
put on the inside for the remainder of its extent—
namely, thirteen feet. Above the pattern and nearly
over the principal entrance a curious loophole is still
left standing, and the best portion of the wall has
beenbattlemented, the outside portion being raised in
front two or three feet higher than the back. The
wall is eleven feet six inches at its thickest, and on
the top of it we saw holes in which monoliths
evidently once stood, as they did on the wall of the
circular building at the Great Zimbabwe.
Another very marked feature at Matindela is that
the doorways are all square, like those at the L undi
ruin, and not rounded off, as those at Zimbabwe, and
then again all these doorways have been walled up in
an uniform fashion, the courses corresponding exactly
to those of the rest of the wall.? In the original construction
of the building certain spaces of seven feet
had been left in the wall; two feet on either side had
then been built up, thus leaving an entrance of three
feet, which entrance in its turn had also been walled
up. Here, as at the Great Zimbabwe, the theory at once
occurred to me that these places had been walled up
at a time of siege ; but when one takes into consideration
the care with which these apertures have been
walled up, and the triple nature of the added wall, this
theory seems untenable. The walling up of the
pylons in certain Egyptian temples at Karnak, which
Prof. Norman Lockyer brought before my notice,
seems an apt- parallel, though the reasons for so
doing do not seem to my mind at present sufficiently
proved. It must also be borne in mind that the
walling up of the principal entrance at Matindela
must have taken place prior to the construction of
the pattern which rests upon it.
The interior of this building, as will be seen from
the plan, was divided up into chambers, as the other
ruins at Zimbabwe, but the walls heré are much
straighter, and the circular system of construction
seems to have been more or less abandoned. I take
it that this ruin at Matindela was constructed by
the same race at a period of decadence, when the old
methods of building had fallen into desuetude.