6 forked sticks similar to those I had seen before, but in this instance the bark lay folded over the fork and flat against the sides of the sticks. I took the three strange emblems to him and asked him what they were for. He said, pointing to the strips of bark: 'This is meat. We pray for meat thus: and turning towards the ruin he cried in a tone of entreaty: A-ru-pan-ga! give us meat, give us meat that we may cut it with a knife!' I said to him, 'You call these ruins Arupanga, do you speak to the stones?' (I remembered that Bent had stated that the natives did not revere the ruins at Zimbabwe.) He only repeated what he had said before. I again asked him: 'Do you address a person or these stones?' Then he made a change in his prayer, crying: 'Mambo! Umlozi! give us meat that we may cut it with a knife!' 'Mambo' means Lord, and the title Umlozi would naturally be given by one of the Amalozi to the chief of his own tribe. About these wishing' or 'prayer' sticks, I may mention that Bent speaks of having seen them in another part of the country, but peeled, and with the bark twisted round the top, while he heard the natives praying thus: Our knives are ready, give us meat!' The native commissioner of Umtali, Mr. Nesbitt, told me that he came one day upon a hunting party in search of game with several such praying sticks, and that on his telling them that he had shot a buck and that they could have it, they immediately, in token of thanksgiving, cut such a stick, peeled off the bark and wound it round the top. While surveying in the neighbourhood of Ghoko, I had read Bent's book, but I afterwards re-read it at Zimbabwe, when I became quite convinced that those ruins were once a temple erected to the all-Father and all-Mother, the Creator, as manifested in the generative powers of Nature, by people connected in religion with the ancient Phoenicians and Arabians, a religion many other traces of which still exist in this country. There was probably nothing gross in their reverence for the generative principle, it was the result of their groping after the all-Father who had produced man and all creation. I told a number of people, including officers of the Chartered Company, Mr. J. Dawson (now Captain Dawson), Mr. Selous, and others, of the evidence on which I had stumbled of a living and influencing religion, still utilised on occasion for political purposes, the workings of which were well worth watching. Mr. Dawson told me he had heard much of Molimo' or 'Umlimo,' and that once a rough white trader had gone to Matojeni and entered the sacred cave of the god. Searching it and finding nobody, he shouted mockingly to Molimo, and cursed and swore at him. Afterwards he proceeded to Johannesburg, and was returning with his wagon and a load of goods when he was struck dead by lightning. When the Matabele heard of this, 'You see,' they said, 'not even whites can insult our god with impunity.' Politically considered, I think enough has been told to show that the priests of Umlimo will require to be looked after in future to prevent more mischief being done through their means. Perhaps it would be well to blow up the sacred cave containing the oracle, but it is said that there are several places known where Molimo is to be heard. He must thus be considered to be present in more places than one, if not everywhere, I once mentioned the above facts to my old friend the Rev. Frédéric Ellenberger of the French Mission in Basutoland, a country which I have long known intimately, and the government of which I administered at one time. I knew that all the Basuto and Bechuana tribes, whose traditions show that they emigrated from the North, were found by the missionaries to be worshippers of Molimo' in various ways, and that the missionaries adopted the name of 'Molimo ' for God. He told me that the worship of Molimo (Morimo, Modimo, &c.) was found to extend up to Lake Tanganyika at least, though not everywhere throughout the intervening countries. The early Portuguese discoverers mention it under different dialectic changes, as Mozimo, &c. A Jesuit missionary from the Zambesi told me that the people among whom he had been labouring prayed to Mozimo as intercessor with the Supreme Being, whom they called 'Umlungo' or Master, which is the name given to white men by many tribes. The language of Mashonaland will, I am told, take one all over the country, from far north of Nyassa land down to near Delagoa, though a wave of Zulu invasion and language has passed northward through those countries. Mr. Ellenberger, from his critical knowledge of the Basuto language, explained to me what he believes to be the etymology of the word 'Molimo,' pronounced Modimo by the Basutos; He says the root word dimo is an almost obsolete word, appearing sometimes as the name of a man, and that it means hidden, invisible, mysterious. It is found in the words: Modimo, God, the unseen spirit. Plural Medimo. The plural Ba-dimo, the unseen persons, i.e. the spirits of ancestors. Le-dimo, a hidden person. Plural, Madimo, a euphemism (according to the genius of the language, which avoids shocking expressions) meaning man-eaters or cannibals, people who hide to entrap man for food and devour it in secret caves. Ho-dimo, upwards, towards the invisible world. Lehodimo, the invisible world, the sky, the heavens. Dimola, to reveal the unseen (to un-hide, the termination ola denoting the reverse action of a verb). This etymology may not be traceable in the Mashona language, but may, none the less, be the correct one, the Basutos having carried it with them in their migration southward, from the present Mashona or Makalanga country. The Mashonas themselves may not retain it, though it explains the fundamental meaning of the name of the. object of their worship. In the same way the Bechuana tribe called Ba-tsipi, the men of iron (or those who reverence iron tribally), know nothing of the reason of the words they use when praying for success in the chase. O Thou of the broken leg,' they cry, 'thou who didst fall from heaven, give us food!' This is evidently a hymn descended to them through thousands of years. Hearing such things carries one back into the times of the ancient classics, as I felt once in '74 when hearing a case as British Resident in the Wanskei. It was a charge of murder for alleged witchcraft against Umhlonhlo, the chief of the Pondomisi, and a woman giving evidence told me how, in the subsequently murdered woman's hut, where the lightning spirit had enveloped her, she had, in her sleep, been embraced by the 'thunder bird,' the eagle, the veritable bird of Jupiter Tonans, which produced a sort of possession, by the power of lightning, the worst effect of witchcraft. I may explain that the murdered woman was believed to have dealings with this bird, and her crime was causing the lightning to strike close to the chief's hut. But these beliefs found in Mashonaland, these temples and praying sticks, carry one further back than any written history goes. Zimbabwe (which in the Mashona language means the 'house of stone') is clearly a hermaphrodite temple, or temple to the dual generative principle (as Baal and Ashtaroth) as well as to the heavenly bodies and all manifestations of the powers creative of man and Nature. It would be a good thing for some one systematically to visit and to make measurements and plans of the many other temples and altars which exist in that country, so that these might be compared with ruins in other parts of the world, especially those of Phoenician origin. There is a peculiar feature in some of these which I shall attempt to describe. An oval stone platform was built, about twelve to fifteen feet high and eighty long, with perpendicular walls, upon a granite rock foundation. Upon this was built another smaller oval platform, and on that two round altars, with steps and a central pillar to each. There was Zimbabwe' ornamentation on the wall over a narrow platform-like projection along one side of the ruin. The very peculiar feature of this ruin was that seven well-like circular holes had been made in the platform round about the altars. These holes were about eight inches in diameter at the top but widened as they went down till they reached the solid rock at a depth of from twelve to fifteen feet, where they were twelve or more inches in diameter. They were lined with stone, cut in segments of a circle to fit into their sides. There were no monoliths in this case. In another ruin these holes were larger and proportionately wider at the bottom. In Bent's book he gives an illustration of an iron smelting furnace, faintly and conventionally showing the female form. All the furnaces found in Rhodesia are of that form, but those which I have seen (and I have come upon five of them in a row) are far more realistic, most minutely and statuesquely so, all in a cross-legged sitting position and clearly showing that the production or birth of the metal is considered worthy of a special religious expression. It recognised the Creator in one form of his human manifestation in creation. The magistrate of Gwello, when he had his first house. built in wattle and daub,' found that the Makalanga women, who were engaged to plaster it, had produced, according to a general custom, a clay image of the female form in relief upon the inside wall. He asked them what they did that for. They answered benevolently that it was to bring him good luck. This illustrates the pure form of the cult of these people, who worship the unknown and unseen God by reverencing his manifestation (in this instance) in the female side of the creative principle. I do not pretend to any extensive reading on the subject of the widespread and ancient prevalence of this cult. I only give facts as I have picked them up, showing something of a present local phase of this religion. With regard to the praying sticks I may mention that I saw a reference in Lemprière and also in an article in a German Konversations-Lexicon' to the caduceus of Mercury, as having been of Phoenician origin, and originally simply a forked stick with some band wound about the top of it, just like the praying or wishing sticks now used by these tribes; also that sometimes a pair of leaves was represented as growing out of the stick opposite each other near the fork, and that afterwards these leaves came to be represented as wings. Mercury Caducifer, the quick messenger between the gods and men who carried answers to prayer and gave fertility, carried this symbol and wore similar wings in his ankles and on the fillet round his head. The writer of the article in the Konversations-Lexicon ' to which I have referred says that 'the forked stick appears to be identical with the "wishing stick" of our forefathers as mentioned in the sagas,' which was evidently a praying stick used in appeals to the Deity. They remind one also of certain metal emblems with wings similarly situated which have been found in the excavations at Pompeii and which illustrate the same principle. They likewise recall the rods which Jacob peeled and placed before the flocks of his father-in-law as well as the representation of the Phoenician god of ' teeming flocks and fruitful fields' which, in after ages, was used to mark the boundaries of properties, &c., in Roman times, but the fundamental idea of which was originally identical with the cult of Hermes and other ancient gods. Thus the use of these praying sticks and the other customs and modes of thought which I have mentioned add further links to the chain of evidence furnished by the ruins in Rhodesia of a near connection between northern ancient religions and those held by the people who built the temple of Zimbabwe, and which religious ideas in their present phase appear to be still spread through a wide extent of country around the ruins. JOSEPH MILLERD ORPEN. NATURE VERSUS THE CHARTERED COMPANY ALTHOUGH from the earliest times, and in almost every country, the efforts of mankind have been constantly directed towards overcoming natural obstacles, and moulding the forces of human nature afresh for human purposes, there has never been, perhaps, in one country, within an equal period, a time when nature has seemed to oppose the progress of human civilisation as in South Africa during the last eight months. The Chartered Company and Mr. Rhodes are to-day fighting two foes, rinderpest and rebellion, each having famine as a possible ally, but of these two evils the much more deadly and powerful is the 'rinderpest,' destroying or paralysing the power of moving necessaries of human life and munitions of war, which are vital to outposts of the Empire, such as Bulawayo or Salisbury. In Rhodesia the real enemy of the Chartered Company not only to-day, but for the next eighteen months, will be, not the Matabele or the Mashonas, but the rinderpest.' It would be foolish to state that the native rising was not serious, but the rebellion is nothing like so urgent as the food question. For the past three years a white population, numbering three or four thousand, have received all the luxuries and nearly all the necessities of civilised life from a base at Mafeking, 600 miles away, these food supplies being brought up by ox wagon. The black population is also largely dependent on the 'trek ox' for its subsistence. The journey, after this manner, generally occupied from forty to forty-five days, each wagon carrying from seven to eight thousand pounds weight of food-stuffs. To-day the position has entirely altered. Fully ninety per cent. of the 'trek' oxen have died of this plague, and even the small percentage which have recovered are so weak and poor in condition as to make them practically useless for haulage purposes. We thus have, so to speak, a garrison of 4,000 white persons in Bulawayo and Rhodesia, let alone the black allies, to whom food can only now be conveyed by mule or donkey wagon. At first it might seem as if the substitution of the donkey or mule for the ox would make comparatively little difference; but whereas the ox can, by being outspanned' every night, find sufficient nourishment in the grass on the veldt to keep him in excellent condition, the mule 6 |