About eight miles from Zimbabwe, standing alone in a fertile valley, there is another ruin which we visited, presumably of a later and inferior date, for the courses and stones are irregular and correspond to the later constructions at Zimbabwe. It too stands on a flat granite rock, and its structure is equally intricate, as will be seen from the plan. The natives know it by the name of the Little Zimbabwe, but for purposes of investigation into the origin of the constructing race it affords us no special point of value, which is the case also with most of the other ruins which we visited, and nothing need be said about them except to point out their existence. These remarks refer to the ruins which we found at Metemo, Chilondillo, Chiburwe, and in the Mazoe valley, all of which were obviously erected as forts to protect a surrounding population. Some of them are of the best period of workmanship, notably those at Chiburwe and in the Mazoe valley; others are of inferior workmanship, with uneven courses and irregularly shaped blocks of granite, proving that, as we find the two periods side by side at the Great Zimbabwe, also we have them scattered over the country. The great ruin at Matindela is second only in importance to the Great Zimbabwe itself, and merits a close description. The circular building at Matindela encloses an area not far short of that enclosed by the large circular building at the Great Zimbabwe; it crowns a low sloping granite kopje about 150 feet in height. The place is full of huge baobab trees, two of which in their growth have pushed down and grown up in the walls themselves. There are those that tell us about the fabulous age of the baobab, attributing an age of 5,000 years to the larger ones. The Director of Kew Gardens, Mr. Thiselton Dyer, tells me that this is grossly exaggerated, and that a few centuries is probably all that can be attributed to the very largest. Be this as it may, the baobabs have grown up and arrived at maturity long after the building of the Matindela ruins and their subsequent abandonment. The best built portion of the wall has the same aspect as that at the Great Zimbabwe; but the other side, corresponding to the worst built part of the Zimbabwe wall, has never been completed at Matindela; the fact that the south-eastern side has been so strongly built and so much trouble has been spent on its decoration, and that the north side is comparatively open and neglected, and that the hill is equally assailable from both sides, leads one naturally to infer that the idea of a temple is here more prominent than that of a fortress.