Arizona weekly enterprise., 1890-11-08
AN ANCIENT CITY.
It Is Located in Southeast Afeics-Some- thing About 1t.
From the Baltimore Sun.

Some members of the British South Africa Company have just confirmed the the story of Mauch, a well-known Ger man explorer, of the existence of the ruins of what must have been an exten- sive city on the Mashonaland plateau, some twelve or fifteen miles southeast of the company's camp. When Mauch re- ported his discovery, and had drawings made of the ruins from his description of them, 1t was believed that he had a good deal exaggerated what he had seen and had drawn considerably upon his imagin- ation for his facts. It turns out now. from the report made t) the London Times, that Mauch's description of these marvellous remains was not exaggerated at all. One of the members of the ex- petition to Zinbabye from the South Africa Company's camp gives a brief but accurate description of what they had actually seen. The ruins themselves, he he says, lie at the base of a precipitous | granite 'kopje," or hill. The first fea- ture noticed on approaching the hill was ! the existence of an outer wall, about feet high, running apparently right around the entire hill, but which, owing 1 to the dense jungle, could not be traced more than half mile. Next came traces of an inner wall, which it was impossible l to follow on account of the jungle. Then, amid perfect labyrinth of remains of small circular buildings, they came to a l third wall of circular shape from 30 to 35 1 feet high, forming a complete inclosure of an area so yards in diameter. The re- markable thing about this wall, which is 10 feet thick at the base, tapering off to feet at the top is that it is built of granite blocks about twice the size of an ordinary brick, beautifully hewn and dressed, laid in perfectly even courses, and put together without the use of either mortar or cement" Inside the inclosure, which is entered by narrow slit in the wall, were quantities of trees, hundreds of years old, springing out of the jungle, which conceals traces of other circular walls, and close to the entrance and outer wall at point where it is still 30 feet high, stands a conical-shaped tower 35 feet high and Is feet in diameter built solidly throughout of the same dressed
 granite masonry. On the hill and the hillside itself are numerous traces of re- mains of a similar character circular
 buildings wedged,, in among powders of rock and at least nine walled terraces
 while on the very summit of the hill was
 an enormous mass of granite blocks in-
 tended, apparently, to be used as a
 rock.
 By whom this fortified city in South
 east Africa was built, is altogether matter
 of speculation. The writer describing
 it seems inclined to ascribe it to prehis-
 toric times, but the dressed and perfectly
 fitted granite blocks and the height and
 solidity of the walls preclude the enter
 taining of such an idea. Most of the re-
 mains of prehistoric walls that have come
 down to us are of rough, massive. un-
 hewn blocks, to which the name Cyclo-
 pean has been given. Whether prehis-
 tOric or not, says the writer, it is certain
 that the area covered by the numerous walls and circular buildings points clear ly to the existence at some time of large | and semi-civilized population at the time when slave labor was procu able to an un
 limited extent" All this, however, is
 mere conjecture, and the story of this city buried in the jungle of an African wilderness may admit of another explan
 ation, of which we are already getting
 glimpses. From the natives nothing car be learned of these ruins of Zinbabye.
 remote native tradition gives the inter
 pretation of Zlnbabye as meaning roya , residence, and the Portuguese have sug
 gested that these ruins form portion
 of the remains of the city and palace O the Queen of Sheba in the land of Ophir That they are in the rich gold beds O o Southeastern Africa has been demon ', strated, and at the time when the earlie explorations of this portion of Africa wer
 made by Portuguese adventurers ancien i Portuguese records refer to people whom f they found to be established there, an( 8 whom they represent to be working fo e gold in the far interior. That the Portu | guese should thus have been melted t
 prospect for gold in that region follow V naturally, and matter-of fact English 2 man, Maj. Erskine, formerly Colonia n Secretary of Natal, points out that tn 1T Portuguese did go there and extracte ;s from the mines in Manica four millions o g. gold annually until they were driven ou . by the natives His theory is that ZiI : babye was one of the places fortified b = the Portuguese to protect them whil v working for gold from the more warlik : tribes by whom they were ultimatel . driven out, and that in the lapse of ee1 0 turies the memory of these things ha D. been lost
 c. W. D. Harrington was in town thi le week from Ripsey ranch.
 70 Mrs. Ed. Lanoue visited Tucson fc
 several days this week.