Note 2 — Chapter VII · THE GEOGRAPHY AND ETHNOLOGY OF THE MASHONALAND RUINS

Of all the Portuguese travellers who wrote about this country, Father dos Santos is the most reliable. Though he did not travel far up country, nevertheless he told no lies; and anyone who has been amongst the inhabitants as they are now will recognise in his narrative a faithful and accurate account of the people, proving how little they have altered in the lapse of between three and four centuries. A few extracts will show this: ‘They beat their palms, which is their mode of courtesy.’2 ‘They smelt iron and make mattocks, arrows, assegai-points, spears, little axes, and they have more iron than is necessary, and of copper they make bracelets, and both men and women use them for their legs and arms.’ He describes their indistinct idea of a Supreme Being, their feasts in honour of their ancestors, their curious pianos, ‘with bars of iron enclosed in a pumpkin,’ their ‘wine of millet, which the Portuguese could not bear, but were obliged to drink and make festivity, for fear of quarrelling.’ ‘They have an infinity of fowls, like those of Portugal;’ and also he describes the days on which they are not to work, appointed by the king, unknown to them, when they make feasts and call these days Mozimos, or days of the holy already dead.3 In fact, this narrative is so truthful in all its details, that we may safely take from it his account of the disintegration of the Monomatapa chiefdom, as it accounts for many things which otherwise would be obscure. He tells us that a Monomatapa sent three sons to govern in three provinces, Quiteve, Sedanda, and Chicanga; on their father’s death they refused to give up to the heir their respective territories, and the country became divided into four. Since then it has been subdivided again and again; each petty chief fought with his neighbour, union was impossible, and in their turn they have fallen an easy prey to the powerful Zulu organisation under Umzilikatze and his successor Lobengulu. This I take to be, in a few words, the history of the country and its people during modern times, and as much probably as will ever be known of them.