Читать книгу Great Zimbabwe, Mashonaland, Rhodesia. An account of two years' examination work in 1902-4 on behalf of the government of Rhodesia онлайн

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At this sunset hour no companies of ancient soldiery descend from the fort (East Ruins), at the foot of the Ancient Ascent, to relieve guard and take up their night watches on the wall barriers. In the now dim and scanty twilight one can wander at will through the two hill temples, the residential quarters, and into the caves which once might have held the gold stores of this part of the country. There is no officer on duty to challenge one’s approach. The sentry recesses in the narrow passages and at the entrances appear singularly empty. Fate finally came to relieve guard many centuries past, eventually permitting some semi-civilised Abantu people, such as the Makalanga, or “People of the Sun,” to desecrate the ancient temple floors with their copper and iron furnaces and bone and ash débris heaps. But the lively bustling crowds of ancients and of mediæval Makalanga, who both in turn, and for very long periods, densely populated Zimbabwe Hill, are no more.

One passes along shoulder-wide and tortuous passages, where at every corner one might expect to come face to face with Rider Haggard’s She, and enters some enclosure whose sides are formed by the perpendicular flanks of cliffs and boulders, where the ancients fashioned their gold into beads, wire, plates, and ingots. The intricate entrance still guards the spot where gold crucibles, beaten gold, and gold burnishing tools of the ancient artificers have been found in profusion. There is now no sound of hammering the precious metal on the rounded dolorite anvils, nor reddish glow of light on the cliff sides, as when the furnace was uncovered for the removal of the heated crucibles. The prehistoric workshop is now desolate and damp, and a fitting spot for the loathsome, crawling creatures which inhabit its dark recesses.