(_i_) There are no evidences that any of the passages, except as stated later, were ever roofed. Possibly the winding stairs and the sunken passage in the Eastern Temple were originally covered over, as a great quantity of long, flat slate beams were found on their floors. It is believed that a single wall once crossed over the sunken passage in Platform Enclosure at about 15 ft. from its upper end, for when this passage was opened in 1902 slate beams were found at this spot, but at no other point in the passage. The passage through the main west wall of the Western Temple, which was blocked up by a Makalanga-built wall, of course, was covered over by the main wall, while the Covered Passage in the same temple remains intact as originally built. Moreover, the widths of many of the passages though narrow on their floors are wide at the summits of their side walls, and their irregular form precludes suggestion of any roofing having been placed over them, some being doubly as wide as the longest of the slate and granite beams found, beside which the general absence of long slate and granite beams on the floors of the passages would seem to further negative any such conjecture. The West Passage leading to the South Cave was not artificially roofed over, but the outer wall was raised up to the height of the boulder which overhangs the passage. • • • • • _Entrances and buttresses._—When in 1891 Bent approached Zimbabwe through North Bechuanaland, Gwanda, Tuli, and Belingwe, he passed through the centre of that area in which the earliest of the many ancient ruins of Rhodesia are located. All the ruins he described or mentioned had rounded ends of walls and rounded buttresses, all angular features being conspicuous by their absence. This fact appeared to him so striking that he was constrained, after comparing these ruins with Zimbabwe, to believe that such rounded features belonged to the earliest period of Zimbabwe architecture. Fully a score of competent writers on our ruins, whose valuable and trustworthy contributions, based on personal examination of the same area, have been welcomed by the leading scientific associations of Great Britain and Germany, are also emphatic as to the rounded entrances and buttresses being one of the chief distinctive features of the earliest Zimbabwes. This is further demonstrated in the detailed descriptions of almost one hundred ruins within the same area which are given in _The Ancient Ruins of Rhodesia_, in the great majority of which ruins angular features, except in reconstructions of a later period, are altogether absent. [Illustration: South Entrance N^o. 7 ENCLOSURE Elliptical Temple W. _Divisional Walls_ B. _Buttresses_ s.s. _Steps_] But the Great Zimbabwe being the finest type of that early class of ancient building, it may be interesting to know that Bent’s conclusion is thoroughly confirmed by these ruins. ENTRANCES