But if actual proof is lacking, it is scarcely to be doubted--for the
numerous old workings in Rhodesia tell their own tale--that it was the
presence of payable gold reefs worked by slave labour which tempted the
Phoenician merchants and chapmen, contrary to their custom, to travel
so far from the sea and establish themselves inland. Perhaps the city
Zimboe was the Ophir spoken of in the first Book of Kings. At least, it
is almost certain that its principal industries were the smelting and
the sale of gold, also it seems probable that expeditions travelling by
sea and land would have occupied quite three years of time in reaching
it from Jerusalem and returning thither laden with the gold and precious
stones, the ivory and the almug trees (1 Kings x.). Journeying in
Africa must have been slow in those days; that it was also dangerous is
testified by the ruins of the ancient forts built to protect the route
between the gold towns and the sea.
However these things may be, there remains ample room for speculation
both as to the dim beginnings of the ancient city and its still dimmer
end, whereof we can guess only, when it became weakened by luxury and
the mixture of races, that hordes of invading savages stamped it out
of existence beneath their blood-stained feet, as, in after ages, they
stamped out the Empire of Monomotapa. 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.
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