Outside the walls of the temple or fortress we
found many circular foundations, very regularly
built of granite blocks, and varying in diameter from
six to fifteen feet. They were built in groups at considerable
intervals apart, and we counted over forty
of them. Some of these circular foundations have a
double circle, as if for a step; the probability is that
they formed the foundations of stone huts like those
found in the Marico district of the Transvaal, and were .
the homes of the ancient inhabitants under the protecting
wing of the temple-fortress. There are no traces
of these circular foundations within the walls of the
enclosure, but all were found outside within a radius
of two hundred yards. There are traces, , too, of
other buildings about half-way down the slope of the
granite hills, two walls parallel to one another, about
thirty feet long, with doorways and six circular foundations
outside them. There are also two depressions
on the eastern side of the hill, now filled up
with timber, which were probably the quarries
from which the builders obtained the stone for their
work.
About twelve miles to the north of Matindela,
near a mountain called Chiburwe, on another low
granite hill, we found another fort with similar circular
foundations on the plain around it. This fort is
about forty feet in diameter, and the walls are of the
best period, with courses far more even than those of
Matindela, and the stones of more uniform size and
fitting more closely, corresponding to the best of the
buildings at the Great o Zimbabwe. Here, too, was
another gigantic baobab tree, which had grown up
in the wall and knocked it down; and here, too, the
south-eastern portion of the wall is much better and
thicker than the rest, which has in places either never
existed or fallen down ; but the destruction here was
so complete that it was impossible to tell if there
ever had been a pattern on it or not.