Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/368

 are scarce here. They do not seem to thrive in this climate. Another peculiarity is that nearly all the women have black hair; a blonde with blue eyes is a great rarity in Africa. When a woman's hair isn't black in Africa, it is a fiery red The country between Victoria Falls and Bulawayo seems to be better developed than the country between Bulawayo and Mafeking. This afternoon, eighty or a hundred miles from the falls, we stopped at quite a coal-mining town, and saw great rows of coke ovens.

—In order to reach the sea at Beira, we were compelled to travel back to Bulawayo from Victoria Falls, and remain there from 7:30 until 10:30 We devoted the day to an automobile ride, and visited the Khami ruins, fifteen miles from the town Many centuries ago, Africa was inhabited by a race far superior in intelligence to the present native negroes. These people left the country hurriedly, for some reason, and it was one of their deserted towns we visited today. Some learned investigators say the ruined and deserted cities were built long before the Christian era, probably in the time of Solomon, and that the gold with which Solomon's temple was adorned, amounting in value to ten million dollars, was mined in Africa. There seems to be no doubt that the gold mines in Rhodesia were worked many centuries ago; the workers in the mines today find unmistakable evidence of previous occupation The ruins we visited are scattered over a good