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In the following romantic sketch the writer has ventured no easy task to suggest incidents such as might have accompanied this first extinction of the Phoenician Zimbabwe.
"Coming here, sir?... Coming here to Zimbabwe?" "So the letter says. It also adds that they may wish to camp near, and they are to be shown every attention." "They shall be ..." quoth The Kid, so comically that even Carew's lips relaxed.
It was the Labour trouble in the Transvaal which had brought the two schoolfellows together again. White had been on his way to Zimbabwe. An emotional disturbance of unusual intensity had driven him to seek consolations in strange scenery and mysterious desolations. It was as if Zimbabwe called to him.
How it happened that a trading town, protected by vast fortifications and adorned with temples dedicated to the worship of the gods of the Sidonians or rather trading towns, for Zimbabwe is only one of a group of ruins were built by civilised men in the heart of Africa perhaps we shall never learn with certainty, though the discovery of the burying-places of their inhabitants might throw some light upon the problem.
There is the old problem, the problem as old as Zimbabwe and the pyramids, the declining problem, the problem of organizing masses of unskilled labor to the constructive ends of a Great State, and there is the new modification due to machinery, which has rendered unskilled labor and labor of a low grade of skill almost unnecessary to mankind, added coal, oil, wind and water, the elementary school and the printing-press to our sources of power, and superseded the ancient shepherding and driving of men by the possibility of their intelligent and willing co-operation.
He hesitated. Well, he had reason to believe, he said, that not far north of the Zambesi there was an unmapped, ruined city similar to the stone city called Zimbabwe, which adventurers from Phoenicia were supposed to have built four thousand years ago, as a mining town of the fabled Land of Ophir.
He says he used to be in Salisbury, but very much prefers Zimbabwe." "Most of the police prefer a quiet place with good shooting; and now that he has Major Carew there so much it must often be interesting." "Do you know Major Carew well?" and her quick voice failed to entirely hide her interest. "As well as perhaps anyone does. He comes to see us fairly often on Sundays."
"He is gruffer than usual to-night. Perhaps something has happened to upset him. I think I must be going also," and Stanley reluctantly rose to follow his chief. "Of course he is gruffer," said Diana. "Two tiresome women have dared to journey to Zimbabwe to look at his ruins."
Before them lay a plain, clothed with sere yellow grass for the season was winter and bounded by mountains of no great height, upon whose slopes stood the city which they had travelled far to seek. It was the ancient city of Zimboe, whereof the lonely ruins are known to us moderns as Zimbabwe.
You see, the Government do not particularly wish that route used, and so they have allowed the road to lapse. Let us hope there will very shortly be a railway, at any rate, to Edwardstown, and that then visitors will be encouraged to go and see your wonderful Zimbabwe ruins, instead of discouraged by the discomforts of the way."
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