This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1895 edition. Excerpt: ... distance it is not always easy to see where the one begins and the other ends. From here you see the country spread out before you, fantastic kopjes and exquisite blue hills in the distance, and at your feet, on the yellow grassy plain, the Zimbabye temple enclosure, filled, as the circle of a coronet is with ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1895 edition. Excerpt: ... distance it is not always easy to see where the one begins and the other ends. From here you see the country spread out before you, fantastic kopjes and exquisite blue hills in the distance, and at your feet, on the yellow grassy plain, the Zimbabye temple enclosure, filled, as the circle of a coronet is with velvet, with luxuriant vegetation. The masonry is all dry-stone, and the stones, which are not much larger than bricks on their outer surface, are laid with marvellous regularity. They are usually slightly wedge-shaped, so as to permit of being built into curves. At places there were signs of furnaces, apparently without chimneys, for the whole of the walls near them, both inside and out, had turned orange-red from the heat. Both Mr. G. Grey and Mr. Gale averred that the modern native could not produce heat enough in the space to have had such an effect on the surrounding stones. That evening after dinner we sat over our camp-fire, and Captain Brabant told us some of his experiences among the natives. He says that they are much pleased at our conquest of the Matabili. When the telegraph wire was first put up they had an idea that no Matabili would be able to pass under it without being killed, and came to him with sorrowful complaints when they found this was not so. They believed a tractionengine to be a cannon which would with ease sweep the Matabili from the face of the earth. Lion stories succeeded, the best being one told by Mr. Gale, of one of the post-riders whose horse fell sick and died on the road, so he left it and walked on. After some time he became aware that he was being followed by a lion, which stopped when he stopped, and went on when he went on, always keeping about the same distance behind him. Evidently it meant to wait...
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