About two miles from our camp there was a long flat granite rock, along which the path passed. On either side of this are two piles of stones, and a line is scratched on the rock between them. Our guides each took a stone, scratched them along the line, and deposited them on the heap opposite. On returning in the evening they did exactly the same thing, and we were told that it is a luck sign, which they do on undertaking a journey to ensure them from danger by the way. It was a very lovely ride, past huge granite boulders, and hills covered with dense foliage, beneath which the women of a village danced for us to the tune of their drum, forming one of the wildest, weirdest pictures we had ever seen. On another occasion we rode to a fortified rock, which had been long since abandoned; but the rude stone walls had been constructed by a more recent race, and compared with certain ruined villages we afterwards saw in Mangwendi’s country. [6] On our homeward ride we turned aside to rest in a hut where we found natives busily employed in making beer, a process which they always carry out in the fields, where they have their stores, and in cooking locusts, which we tasted and thought not altogether unlike shrimps. Thus our time passed at Zimbabwe, actively and pleasantly, and when our second month of work was up, as we had much travelling before us in the country, we reluctantly decided on departure. We went up to take leave of the induna Ikomo at his kraal on the day before our departure. He was seated in front of his hut, eating his red-coloured sodza, made of millet meal, and locusts, allowing his head men, who sat around, to take occasional handfuls from his savoury platter. Conversation turned on his tribe. He told us how they had come to Zimbabwe about forty years ago, when he was only eighteen years of age, from the neighbourhood of the Sabi River, where they had lived for many years. No one was then living on Zimbabwe Hill, which was covered, as it is still in parts, with a dense jungle. No one knew anything about the ruins, neither did they seem to care. This is how all tradition is lost among them. The migratory spirit of the people entirely precludes them from having any information of value to give concerning the place in which they may be located; they seldom remain more than one generation in one place, and one place is to them only different from another inasmuch as it affords them refuge from the Matabele and has soil around it which will produce their scanty crops. On leaving Zimbabwe and our work, we determined on making a tentative trip of a few days, with horses and a donkey, to see how we could manage travelling in the wilds in this country without our waggon home. Moreover, we wished to pay a visit to Umgabe at his kraal, and to take his rival, Cherumbila, on the way back to Fort Victoria.