In
a word, the "Gold of Ophir" came from Havilah (Rhodesia), and was
worked and brought thence first by the Himyarites (Sabaeans and
Minaeans), later by the Phoenicians, the chief ports engaged in the
traffic being Ezion-geber in the Red Sea, Tharshish in Havilah, and
midway between the two, Ophir in South Arabia.1
For
sixty years from the opening of the eighteenth century there was no
considerable exploration, or even prospecting of any consequence, in
the region north of the meridian passing through the Olifants River.
Yet even in this ap-1 A. H. Keane. Monomotapa, The Hon. A.Wilmot, 1896
