These varying and composite races speaking Semitic tongues appear to have travelled south and west from Syria and Arabia on the heels of both Libyans (Amorites) and Hamites, and even to have settled on the Red Sea coast of Egypt at a very early period before the dynastic Egyptians had conquered the Nile valley. Much later they invaded Lower Egypt in force as the Haqshu (Hikushahu) or Shepherd kings—if these are rightfully identified as speaking a Semitic tongue. Still later they began to cross the Red Sea farther south and colonized Abyssinia and even Somaliland. In these regions (Abyssinia and Harrar) their Semitic tongues remain to this day. Perhaps as early as 1000 years before the time of Christ (at a guess) their ships, more seaworthy than those of the Egyptians, found their way from the ports of the Sabaean, Minaean and Himyarite kingdoms to India, to the Zanzibar coast of Africa, and to the north end of Madagascar and the Comoro Islands. Later, in all probability, than the first Minaean ventures along the East African coast was a more authentic voyage of the Phoenicians, which will be mentioned in the next chapter. Attention should be given at this stage in our survey of the ancient colonization of Africa to the unsolved mystery of the Rhodesian ruins—the stone-built forts, the aqueducts, round towers, stone-embanked hill-terraces, stone-lined pits, rock-mines, and buildings which suggest the name of “temple.” These ruins (in and under which have been found beautiful gold ornaments, ingot-moulds, strange, sculptured birds—eagles or vultures—at the ends of long soap-stone monoliths, and stone _phalli_) dot the surface of Southern Rhodesia somewhat thickly. They seem to radiate, as it were, from the head streams of the Sabi River, in fact from where the most wonderful of all these ruins, Great Zimbabwe, is situated. The northernmost of the clusters of ruins of stone buildings is to the north of Mt Hampden and the modern town of Salisbury; but none of these strange remains of an unexplained civilization are found anywhere near the Zambezi. It would seem that the unknown people to whom the really antique and skilfully built among these towers, temples, and labyrinthine fortifications (and not their more modern, negro-made clumsy imitations) are to be ascribed, entered south-east Africa at or near the old Arab port of Sofala and made their way up the Sabi river. The ruins are all situated on lofty tablelands or mountain ridges, in healthy, cool country. Their existence was noted by Arab writers so early as the 10th century A.C.; and they were described as old and partly in decay when first seen by the Portuguese in the 16th century. The name “Zimbaoe,”—like the modern Zimbabwe—applied to them in Portuguese writings is simply a local Bantu plural word meaning “stones”; but these Zimba or Zimbabwe came to be specially associated with the remarkable negro kingdom or empire of Monomotapa[11] which