(3) On still lower levels were found the floors and lower portions of the sides of huts made of a red-coloured cement without poles fixed in the cement sides. This is not ordinary daga. The inside faces of the walls, as well as the floors which are beautifully smooth, have been baked with fire, and fragments will ring almost like metal, portions having become white with the heat. This cement has in most instances been faced with a thin yellow glaze. On the floors are quantities of small rims very neatly bevelled, with three or four parallel faces on the top, the ends of the rims being rounded off. The bevelled rims are from 1½ in. to 4 in. wide. The roofs of these buildings were supported by poles inserted in the cement floors outside the huts at the distance in many instances of 1 ft. The posts round the outside of the huts were from 1 ft. 6 in. to 2 ft. 4 in. apart, and, judging by their butt-ends, which have been preserved by the cement, were made of hard woods, including mahobohobo, which is plentiful at Zimbabwe. The best examples of these huts, of which some score can be seen, are in No. 1 Enclosure in the Elliptical Temple, in the North-West Enclosure, Acropolis, and on the cleared section of floor in the Western Temple. These huts stand on cement platforms without stone foundations, and the platforms are about 1 ft. high, and the top edges are neatly bevelled. In two of these remains at Zimbabwe have been found gold dust, iron spring pincers with flux on the top, pottery, gold scorifiers, and the crudely-shaped soapstone moulds.
Old pioneers assert that these buildings are of Makalanga construction. The Makalangas themselves claim these as having been built by their people in a very remote past. Similar buildings, but without traces of gold-smelting, are known to have been built by the Makalanga in different parts of Southern Mashonaland.
Mr. Alfred Drew, Native Commissioner for Victoria district, who arrived in this country in 1890, and is a recognised authority on old Makalanga buildings, expresses his entire agreement with the above descriptions of old native clay huts, also with the conclusions arrived at concerning them.
(4) There is another class of native hut which is not very frequently found in Southern Rhodesia, but is commonly met with in Basutoland and Swaziland, and in other territories further south. At Zimbabwe there are four such huts on the higher floors of filled-in ruins. This class of hut is constructed of cement of a good quality and of great thickness, with no poles to support the roof. It is circular in form, and from its exterior sides are four, sometimes five, short radiating walls of stones extending outward some 5 ft. or 6 ft. The walls are about 4 ft. wide, and in height reach almost to the top of the cement sides of the hut. The entrance usually has an immense cement buttress on either side, while between each radiating wall, and at the base of the side of the hut, runs a cement bevel rounded on its outer edge as if to form a seat. This bevel is about 14 in. high and 16 in. wide. In all weathers and at any time of day the occupiers could have sat in some one of these partially open spaces between the radiating walls sheltered from sun, rain, or wind. The remains of two such huts were found in the Western Temple on the Acropolis, and one of the radiating walls of one of them, which was more exposed and less ruined than the other short walls, was fixed upon by Swan as an “altar.” This wall is B wall, mentioned in the description of the Western Temple, which follows in Chapter XV.