Mount Masunsgwe was a conspicuous landmark for us for several days about here. It is a massive granite kopje, placed as a sort of spur to the range of hills which surrounds ’Mtoko’s country. It is also covered with similar ruined stone walls belonging to a considerable town long since abandoned. The next day we crossed a stream near a village, called the Inyagurukwe, where the natives were busily engaged in washing the alluvial soil in search of gold. We halted for the night by another stream, under the impression that Mangwendi’s was only about four miles off, and that an easy day was in store for us. But the fates willed otherwise. Shortly after passing a large village, where the inhabitants were more than usually importunate to see my wife’s hair, screaming ‘Voudzi! voudzi!’—Hair! hair!—as they scampered by our side until she gratified their curiosity, we all lost our way in an intricate maze of Kaffir paths. Our interpreter was ahead and took one way; my wife and I on horseback, in attempting to follow him, took another; Mr. Swan on foot took another; and what happened to the men with the donkeys we never knew, for they did not reach Mangwendi’s till late in the afternoon, complaining bitterly of their wanderings. We thought we were making straight for our goal, when, lo and behold! we found ourselves at the top of a hill near one of the deserted towns, tenanted only by a tribe of baboons. Our position was critical—we did not know which way to turn, when luckily we espied two little Kaffir boys, who guided us to Mangwendi’s; and, worn out with our long hot ride, we made a frugal meal by the side of a stream before ascending to the kraal. Mangwendi’s kraal is a large one, and situated curiously on the top of a lofty ridge. On turning to a Portuguese writer, Antonio Bocarro, who gives, in his thirteenth decade of his chronicle of India, an interesting account of the empire of Monomatapa, he says: ‘The ’Monomatapa are of the Mocaranga race, a free race who do not have defensive arms, nor fortresses, nor surrounded cities.’ This seems at first sight rather against the theory that the Monomatapa erected these hill fortresses, but then we must bear in mind that the Portuguese penetrated but little into these districts; and, furthermore, we found at Chipunza’s kraal, a few days’ journey off, the natives actually constructing similar walls around their chief kraal, evidently a heritage of stone building retained by them from some higher form of civilisation.