what the Hebrew Chronicler said of that of King Solomon, that no sound of hammer had been heard in the place while it was building.' Large stones might easily have been obtained, but only small stones and stones of a fairly uniform size have been used; and the reason for this probably was, that the curves on which the walls are built might be regularly formed. The evenness of the masonry has been attained solely by a careful selection of stones of a similar thickness for each one of the courses, and by the more regularly shaped stones being used for the facing of the walls. The result of this care is certainly a marvellously true reproduction in dry stone masonry of a carefully designed plan; and one's wonder is excited by the accurate construction of the curves of the walls, and more especially of the great tower, which is a masterpiece, and almost as true in its lines as the column of a Greek temple.

A glance at the plan will give a clearer idea of the temple than I can convey in words. Its most important feature is the great outer wall which is about 15 feet thick at its base, and 25 feet high. The greatest diameter of the temple is about 250 feet. The original buildings inside the temple are nearly all destroyed, but the greater part of a long wall parallel to the outer wall remains. Between it and the outer wall is a long, narrow passage which leads from the principal doorway to the sacred enclosure in which stand the two towers. These towers were the most important objects of reverence in the form of nature worship which was practised by the builders of Zimbabwe.

But these people also associated solar worship with the worship of fertility, and quite as numerous as the phalli which we found were the little terra-cotta images of the solar disc, and these resemble the hieroglyphic sign for Ra, the Egyptian sun-god. But this symbol was employed commonly by most ancient peoples to signify the sun; and, indeed, we now use it in our astronomical books with the same meaning, so that we cannot argue an Egyptian origin for these discs. Each one of the temples was decorated by a geometrical design which was oriented to the sun on the horizon when

1 This using of only naturally formed stones reminds us of what is written in Exodus xx. 25. "If thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not make it of hewn stone; for if thou lift up thy tool upon it thou hast polluted it ;" and it suggests that it was a religious necessity that the temple should be built of unwrought stone.

either rising or setting at one of the solstices. This temple is decorated on the part of the outer wall which faces the sun when rising at the summer solstice, by a chevron pattern constructed of the same small stones, and which was probably symbolical of fertility. It resembles the Egyptian hieroglyphic, as also the Chaldean symbol for water, and the timehonoured sign for Aquarius, and may have meant water; for at Zimbabwe, as in Egypt, it is at the summer solstice that water is most abundant, vegetation most luxuriant, and the earth most fertile. We have five instances of temples in Mashonaland being oriented in this way, and while the decorations had a purely reverential signification, means seem also to have been provided to mark the occurrence of the solstice, and thus regulate the calendar.

The most interesting points in these temples are those connected with an observation of the stars. They are very numerous, and in no ancient temple that I know of are so many means provided for watching these heavenly bodies. The ancient Egyptians and the Greeks observed stars on the horizon, and oriented their temples toward the point on the horizon at which the special star rose; and the chief yearly festival of the temple so oriented, was celebrated when the time of the rising or setting of the star nearly coincided with that of the sun. Thus the sun's position relatively to that of the star could be easily observed, and its position in the zodiac or its progress in its yearly circuit ascertained. Thus the calendar came to be regulated by these yearly festivals, and thus ideas of worship came to be attached to certain stars; and particular stars seem to have been associated with certain gods. A similar attachment of ideas of worship to certain stars seems to have influenced the people at Zimbabwe; for we find that they did not pay any regard to the stars of the southern hemisphere, in which they found themselves, but only to stars of the northern hemisphere, from which doubtless they had come and where they had learnt to reverence the heavenly bodies.

Before we describe the manner in which they observed the stars, we must further examine the plan on which the temples were built. The great outer wall when first glanced at, seems to be built on an irregular ellipse; but when it is carefully examined it is found to be built on a series of circular curves, with radii of different lengths. The most important of these curves are AK, KB and BC. We first of all found the centres of these arcs, and then we

discovered that they ranged themselves on two true north and south or meridian lines. We had previously observed that all the temples had doorways true north of the centre of the curves of their walls; and it holds true of every temple of the best style which we saw in Mashonaland, that every centre of an arc had a doorway true north of it: or where it was impossible from the nature of the ground to have a doorway in this position, then the north point was marked by an erect monolith. We know of only four door

The thicker curved lines in this diagram correspond to the outer lines of foundations of walls.

ways which are not true north of a centre, and their positions can be otherwise explained. The two above-mentioned meridian lines TW and GP point, the one through the centre of the great doorway, and the other through a gap in the wall where a doorway had probably been.

Having fixed the centres of the arcs we measured their radii, but we could find no simple relation which their lengths bore to each other; and it occurred