I cannot begin this chapter better than by describing one of the villages I know best—those of the Anyanja in the Upper Shiré district.

This district lies between the Kirk Mountains on the west and the Zomba range on the east, and the part I am thinking of is a fertile plain, slightly undulating in parts and crossed by two good-sized streams, which slopes down from the western mountains to the river. As you look from the hill on which our house stood, you see a wide level—green during the rains, yellow when the grass is dry, with patches of bush here and there and one grove of great trees plainly in sight—the nkalango, where the dead are buried. Here and there, dotted about the plain, are little groups of huts, several of which, taken together, may be held to constitute a village. Each group, as a rule, contains one family (i.e. husband and wife or wives with their children), and is enclosed in a stout fence of grass and reeds, woven as closely as matting, and tall enough to keep any ordinary wild beast from leaping over. There is a door to this enclosure, but, not being on hinges, it is usually invisible in the daytime, as the people take it down, and, as often as not, lay it on some short posts fixed in the ground, and use it as a table, on which they can spread out grain or other things to dry. At night the door is fastened by cross-bars, and perhaps thorn-bushes are stuck in at the sides to give additional security.

Inside the enclosure stand the round huts, with their conical thatched roofs—three, four, or more, according to the number of the family. Between them are the corn-bins, called nkokwe—in a small enclosure only one, or perhaps two. In the picture, which is that of a Yao village near Domasi, several of these nkokwe are to be seen—one with the top off—but they do not look as neat as one often sees them. They are like huge round baskets, woven of split bamboo, seven or eight feet high, without top or bottom, raised from the ground on a low platform roughly floored with small logs, and covered with a conical roof like those of the huts, but not fastened down, so that it can be tilted up by means of a stick, or taken off altogether when corn is wanted. They are reached by a primitive ladder made of two poles, and cross-pieces lashed between them with bark.

This Yao village is in several ways different from the one I am describing. It is larger, and, being in a more settled district, not enclosed in a fence, though some of the huts may have a semicircular one before the door, to screen it from the wind. The houses, too, are many of them square, a fashion introduced, in some places by Europeans, in others by coast people.

The huts in the enclosure have their doors facing inward; there may be a tree (probably the ‘prayer-tree’) in the middle of the vacant space; in any case, you will see the mortars, in which the women pound the grain, perhaps a reed mat, with flour drying on it, or millet waiting to be husked, and one or more little fires, with their three stones for supporting the cooking-pot. Perhaps there will be also a pigeon-house, like a neatly plaited basket, with a pointed roof, raised on a post, and another post close by, supporting half an old water-jar, which has come to grief, but can still be used as a bath and drinking-place for the pigeons. The fowl-house, if any, is somewhere between, and rather behind the huts, and perhaps there is also a house for the goats, but some people prefer to have their stock sleeping in the hut with them, for security’s sake. I remember calling at Sambamlopa’s one day, and finding his mother engaged in plastering three or four stalls for the goats against the circular wall of the hut, just leaving room for some of the family to sleep between them and the central fireplace.

Sometimes there is a single enclosure, standing by itself; sometimes several are grouped very closely together, the entrances being reached by narrow, winding paths between the stockades, which, I suppose, are intended to puzzle the enemy, in case of a night attack. Two old men, brothers, Pembereka and Kaboa, had their enclosures side by side, and the sacred tree in the narrow space of ground between the two. A little way off, on one side of the path, was the well mentioned in the last chapter, which I saw the women clearing out; and near this, too, some trees had been left standing.

Entering Pembereka’s stockade, one day in early spring, we found a certain bustle and excitement pervading the place, the cause of which was soon apparent, when we saw the head-wife, old Anapiri (the same whom I found conducting the rain-ceremony a fortnight later), seated on a mat, with a new-born baby on her knees. It was a queer little yellow thing; they always start in life very light-coloured, but grow darker before long. They also seem, to me, at least, to have more hair than European babies, though they are not allowed to retain it. The mother on this occasion was not visible—she was a younger wife of Pembereka’s; she was in one of the huts, which she would not leave for some days—perhaps eight or nine, perhaps less. The baby is supposed to stay with her, till formally ‘brought out into the world’; but it may be that Anapiri had been giving it its first bath and oiling. The eldest child of a family is called the ‘child of the washing,’ or ‘of oil’—not that the others are not bathed and oiled, but this is a ceremonial washing (with ‘medicine’) and anointing. (Both children and grown-ups require plenty of oil to keep their skins from cracking and chapping; they neither look nor feel well without it.)

A Yao woman used—sometimes, at any rate, if not always—to go out into the bush a few days before the birth of a child. One or two women would go with her, to put up a little grass shelter and look after her, till they could bring back mother and baby to the village, where, in the case of a first child, they were met with great joy, the grandmother coming out to welcome them and singing, ‘I have got a grandchild, let me rejoice.’ The mother would then go into the special house set apart for her—no one being allowed to enter it except the older women—and stay there for three or six days. If the baby dies during this interval, no mourning is held for it; it has not been formally introduced into the world, and its spirit is not supposed to count, or require propitiating. Perhaps they think it has not really attained to a separate existence of its own.

When the time of seclusion is over, the old women shave the mother’s head and also the baby’s, and they are brought out and rejoiced over. The baby is now named by one of the women. I am not sure, however, that the name is always given quite so soon. A Nyanja woman once seemed very much amused when I asked her baby’s name, and said, ‘It has no name—it’s only an infant.’ She was going about with it on her back, so that it must have been more than a few days old if the custom of seclusion had been observed. But perhaps she only thought it unlucky to tell me the name, being a stranger.

Children are sometimes called after their father, or other relations, and frequently a person who is no relation ‘may make “friendship” with the babe and give it his own name, or the name of his brother or sister.’ Very often, too, the name is determined by some circumstance connected with the place or time of birth. The father may have been making a canoe (ngalawa), and finished it on the day of the child’s birth, so he will name it Ngalawa accordingly. I knew a small boy called Chipululu, ‘the wilderness,’ because, as his mother explained, ‘he was born at the time of the hunger, when the people had to go into the bush to gather food.’ The baby at Pembereka’s was named Donna,[17] in honour of ourselves, as we happened to visit the family on the day when he arrived. His being a boy is nothing to the purpose—there is no such thing as grammatical gender in the Bantu languages, and no one thinks (in Nyanja, at any rate) of making any difference between the names given to girls and boys. In fact, one occasionally finds the same name borne by both. Most names have some obvious meaning—‘Leaves,’ ‘Affliction,’ ‘Wind on the Water,’ ‘It goes,’ ‘We shall see it when we die,’ ‘I have been a Fool,’ ‘Ends of Grass,’ ‘The Day of Beer,’ are a few specimens. But there are others not so easy to make out, and if you ask, people will tell you ‘they are just names—nothing more.’ Probably, unless they are found to be borrowed from another language, these will be old words, obsolete except as proper names. Sometimes, too, a compound, used as a name, is so contracted that its separate parts are scarcely recognisable.

Mothers, when seated, hold their babies in their arms and on their knees, just as they do in other countries. But when walking about, they carry them on their backs, supported by a piece of cloth knotted in front, the two upper corners passing under the arms and over the breast, the lower round the waist; or, in some parts, by a goat-skin, with strings tied to the four legs. The babies develop a most marvellous power of holding on. One sees them sometimes spread out like the letter X; sometimes, when the cloth is quite firmly fixed, and allows of a comfortable attitude, seated in ‘the bight’ of it, with their feet appearing round the mother’s waist in front. I do not remember seeing babies seated astride the hip (as in India), but no doubt it is sometimes done, as shown in the group of Likoma Island women in the photograph.

Babies are not dressed, but the mothers wash and oil them carefully, and hang a string of beads round their necks or waists, and a charm or two to keep them from sickness or accident. In some parts they shave their heads on both sides, leaving a little band in the middle, running from the forehead to the nape of the neck. Of course, in cold weather, they are wrapped in anything that comes handy, and the skin or cloth fastening them to the mother’s back keeps them as warm as clothing would do. When not being carried about, they are laid to sleep on a mat. They are not weaned till two or three years old—sometimes later; in tribes where cattle are not kept, it is somewhat difficult to get suitable food for them, but a kind of thin porridge or gruel is made. The Anyanja, though many of them keep goats, never drink milk.

As soon as the children can walk, or even crawl, they are left to play about among the huts while the mothers are busy, cooking or pounding grain. They are left in charge of the grandmother, and perhaps one of the elder children, when the women have to go away to the gardens. They are allowed to do pretty much as they like, so long as they keep out of the fire, or refrain from climbing up any of the many tempting places whence a fall might be dangerous—the fence, or the nkokwe ladder, or what not. If there is any one to keep an eye on them, they will be snatched back in the first case, and fetched down in the second, and slapped in both, to emphasise the lesson that ‘we don’t want to have a mourning for you because you died by accident’—that being a wholly wilful and gratuitous proceeding. One sometimes sees scars of bad burns that must have been caused by a tumble into the fire; but, on the whole, these infants learn to take care of themselves after a fashion at a wonderfully early age. It is when the mothers have begun to put them into European garments that fatal accidents are apt to occur; the child stands at what would be quite a safe distance from the fire but for the little shirt or frock, and the calico is ablaze before any one is aware.

Children wear nothing much for the first few years, unless they feel cold, and are supplied with a skin, or a piece of cloth, to wrap themselves in. The little boy in the illustration has a pretty complete toilet. This family, like the group above them, were photographed at Likoma, but the mother is a Makua and wears the chipini—the leaden ornament like a drawing-pin stuck through a hole in the side of the nose—which is in fashion among the coast women and some of the Yaos.

Very little Angoni boys have a mat of beads, three or four inches square, worked for them by their mother or elder sister, and wear it like an apron. Sometimes also they have a ‘sporran,’ made from the skin of some small animal, such as a field-rat. In most homes now there is enough calico to give each of the children a piece to wrap round the waist, as they grow bigger. The only difference between the dress of the boys and girls, as a rule, is that the latter put theirs on a little higher up. The stuff used is the cheap ‘unbleached,’ which can be got in this country for about twopence a yard. Babies are washed very carefully; older children are left to do much as they please in the matter of cleanliness; but they love bathing, when the means are accessible, and near a lake or river all know how to swim.

Small children’s heads are shaved, from time to time, in the interests of cleanliness, by their mothers; older boys and girls do it for each other. I saw a woman performing this service for her little girl who was squatting on the ground before her; she first greased the hair with some mixture which she took out of a small earthen pot, and which had the consistency of soft soap, and then scraped from the nape of the neck forward and upward, with a little spatula-shaped iron razor, held firmly in the right hand. Having finished the hair, she went on to shave the eyebrows, but I do not think this is always done.

The strings of beads which the very little girls wear round their waists disappear from view when they grow older and wear a cloth; but they are kept on all the same, and added to from time to time, till, when they are grown up, they may have several thick rolls. These, of course, are not worn for ornament, but it is considered the safest and handiest way of storing property, and a woman thus carries her private fortune about with her.

Children and young people often stick flowers in their hair, or into the perforation of the ear, and girls at Likoma weave wreaths or crowns out of the namteke blossoms, a small kind of sunflower.

As soon as children are able to eat solid food, they fare much the same as their elders, though there are two or three kinds of sweet, thick gruel, besides that already mentioned, which are made specially for the younger ones, and also sometimes for sick people. It is sweetened—not with sugar, but with malt (that is, sprouting maize or millet), or the juice of a kind of millet, which is almost as sweet as sugar-cane. The stalks of this msale—and also sugar-cane, where that is to be had—are constantly being chewed, both by children and grown-up people. The results are visible on every native path as little bundles of tousled white fibrous matter—and the new comer is apt to wonder what they are.

There is a game which mothers sometimes play with children supposed to be too old for special infant diet; they tickle the child’s back with a stalk of grass, and, if he starts, accuse him of having ‘eaten the baby’s gruel’—which would be more attractive than the ordinary nsima.

It can readily be inferred that the young are not overburdened in the way of education. Some training there must be—some elementary inculcation of modesty and manners, to judge by results: but the deference shown to very small children—especially boys; the girls begin to make themselves useful at an early age, and are duly kept in their places—is somewhat ludicrous, and one would expect it to be disastrous, only that the effects do not seem to answer such expectation. When a six-foot Ntumbi native informed me that his son (a precocious youth of perhaps eight, and extremely minute for that age) had failed to attend school because he had gone ‘to a beer-drinking at So-and-So’s,’ and I expressed some not unnatural surprise, not unmingled with reprobation, the father replied, ‘If he has made up his mind to go, who can hinder him?’ ‘Akana mwini—his lordship refuses,’ was the answer given by the female relatives of another youthful truant to the teacher of the Blantyre mission-school.

I was still new to the country when I went out for a walk at Blantyre with one Limwichi—aged, I suppose, ten, and with something of a reputation for chipongwe (the best translation is ‘cheek’)—to carry my butterfly-net. We met a big Yao, meditatively walking along and eating a piece of chinangwa (cassava root) as he went. Whether Limwichi was previously acquainted with this gentleman or not, I don’t know; but he walked coolly up to him and asked (with what degree of politeness my proficiency in the language did not enable me to judge) for a share in this delicacy. I half expected to see Limwichi’s ears boxed, instead of which the man broke off a piece of his chinangwa and handed it to him. I fear he did not say ‘Thank you.’ (Some hold that natives never do—perhaps not understanding that ‘Chabwino’—‘It is good’ conveys the same thing.)

Limwichi, I am sorry to say, had been to school—not long enough, let us say, to have his manners (though these were not precisely ferocious) softened by learning; but nothing could be gentler and prettier than the ways of the unschooled Ntumbi village children who, having got over their first shyness at the unwonted white faces which made babies shriek and dogs bark from end to end of the kraals, followed one along the narrow native paths—somewhat embarrassing in their desire to walk alongside, where the nature of the ground made it difficult, and to hold one’s hands, half a dozen at once—but not really forward or troublesome. I never, with fair opportunities to have come across that sort of thing if it had been at all common, saw a child struck or otherwise ill-treated. On the whole, I think, if native parents fail in their duty, it is through being too easy-going.

I cannot understand the statement sometimes made, that native children do not know how to play, are without toys and games, and have rather a melancholy time of it altogether. The traveller who speaks of their portentous and unnatural solemnity has, of course, only observed them under the inspiring influence of his own immediate neighbourhood. It is curious to contrast the pathetic appeals on this score to the compassion of English children which one sometimes reads with the experience of the missionaries at Magomero. ‘Indeed it was a question with us at one time what it was we could teach these children of ours in the way of amusement. At last, Scudamore and Waller thought to surprise them with a kite. The kite was made, the children assembled to see it ascend, but it was lop-sided and heavy, would not go up, went down, and the children made merry thereat. Said Waller, “You have never seen anything like this before, have you?” Said a little urchin in reply, “Oh yes! we have, though. We have seen them, but ours were different to yours. Ours went up, yours go down.”’

These children had been hunted away from their homes, some of them had lost their parents, they had all suffered more or less from hunger and some of them from illness, so that a certain amount of depression would have been excusable; but the spirit in which they entered into the kindly meant effort to amuse them is thoroughly characteristic. But for that casual question, their instructors would never have learned that they knew how to make kites which would go up. Miss Woodward tells me that she has seen the Likoma children playing with kites, but I have never seen one myself, and cannot describe their exact construction.

There are two kinds of tops, the wooden one (nguli), which is kept up by beating, like our whipping-top, with a lash of three strands of bark tied to a bit of stick. The other, the nsikwa, is made of a round piece of gourd-shell, with a spindle of cane through the middle of it.

‘The game is played by two parties sitting opposite to each other, with a bare space of hard ground between them, and spinning the tops across the empty space with as much force as a twirl between the finger and thumb is capable of, at little pieces of maize-cob set up before their adversaries.’ Any number can play, one top and one piece of maize-cob being allowed to each, and the game is to knock over all the pieces on the opposite side before those on one’s own side are overthrown. The player whose piece is knocked over catches his adversary’s top and fires it back at him.

Maize-cobs (zikonyo) are also used in the game of ponyana zikonyo, or throwing these missiles at each other; and in that of tamangitsana (literally ‘making run,’ in which one side pretend to be Angoni, and carry shields). There is a very popular game called chiwewe, which is a somewhat original exercise with a skipping-rope. One player squats down and whirls the cord, weighted at one end, round his head, so as to describe round himself a circle of two or three yards in diameter, while the others jump over it; the one who fails to clear it has to take his place in the middle.

Children build little houses of grass, and otherwise imitate the proceedings of grown-up people; the boys make themselves little bows, with arrows of grass-stalks (sometimes these are tipped with sharp bits of bamboo and strong enough to kill small birds with), and girls grind soft stones to powder, pretending they are ufa, and carry maize-cobs on their backs for babies. The little Yao girls have a kind of wooden doll called a mwali (‘girl’): there is no attempt at representing the human figure; in fact, the thing is more like a ninepin than anything else, except that both ends are rounded, so that it will not stand up, and one of them, by way of suggesting the head, is covered with small scarlet seeds, fitted on like a wig.

Cat’s cradle is played, though I am not certain how, and there is a variety of guessing games, called ‘tricks’ (zinyao), such as chagwa, which is something like ‘hunt-the-slipper’; and another where ‘three arrows or three sticks are set, and one guesses which is chosen—if he guess wrongly, his companions laugh and beat him in fun with the sticks.’

An elementary kind of swing is sometimes extemporised by means of a convenient creeper hanging from the branch of a large tree; but I think I have also seen one made with a rope.

There is a genuine native ball-game (mpira) played with an india-rubber ball, in which the players stand in a circle, and, after every catch, clap their hands rhythmically and leap into the air. This, being done with great regularity, has a very pleasing effect. In one account I have seen, an umpire is described as calling out ‘Hock! hock!’ after every good catch. This is an impossible word in either Yao or Nyanja; one conjectures it may be meant for yaka, ‘catch.’ The well-known game of ‘mankala,’ which seems to be played all the way down from Abyssinia to Mashonaland, and to be of Arab origin, is here called mchombwa and msuo. The Abyssinians play it on a board, but this is not at all necessary; the four rows of holes can be made on any bit of smooth ground, and one often sees them in the bwalo of a Nyanja village, where the men sit smoking and gossiping and weaving baskets. It has been said that no European has ever succeeded in mastering this game; and I must own that I have always failed to follow the explanations obligingly given by the players, but Dr. Scott’s description seems fairly clear. Premising that there are two players, each provided with a handful of pebbles or seeds, and six (or nine) holes in each row, it is as follows: ‘The game consists in distributing one’s men along the rows of holes on one’s own side, and again moving them up one hole at a time, until those in any one hole surpass in number those in the enemy’s hole opposite, when the latter are appropriated and placed out of the game; the game is won when one is able to appropriate the last remaining one on his opponent’s side.’

Chuchu is a kind of combination of this game and ‘hunt-the-slipper.’ A spiral is drawn on the ground, and holes made in it; three stones are chosen and two put into the holes. ‘The people are divided into two bodies, and the stone belonging to each party is moved up according to the skill of that party in guessing who has the other stone—this third stone is put in the hands of one by a person who goes all round and pretends to give the stone to each.’ A somewhat similar game is played with ten holes and nine stones, and the boy who goes away (or hides his face) has to guess whether there is a stone in any particular hole at the moment he is asked, or not.

Some of the above, especially the mchombwa, are also played by adults, who enter into them with great zest. On the coast, and in the Portuguese settlements, they also play at cards, though the game, or that form of it which has now spread to the Shiré Highlands, is said to be ‘unintelligible to Europeans.’ They call the court-cards after local celebrities, such as Sir Harry Johnston (‘Jonsen’) and the late Mr. John Buchanan (‘Makanani’). Speaking of games adopted from Europeans—though it does not strictly belong to our subject—I cannot forbear quoting the following description from Mr. H. L. Duff’s Nyasaland under the Foreign Office:—

‘The football played at Kota Kota has scarcely more in common with Association than with Rugby or any other known rules. Indeed, the distinguishing peculiarity of the game would seem to be its gay immunity from any rules or restrictions whatever. No limit is apparently set to the extent of the ground, to the period of time to be covered, or to the number of those who participate in the game. The spectators may and do join in when and where they please, and continue to play as long as they can stand or see. The ball, once fairly committed to the mêlée, disappears for good. So, of course, does any man who has the misfortune to tumble down in a scrimmage. The goal-posts are rickety superfluities, a mere concession to appearances, heeded by nobody and nearly always prostrated at the first rush. The same abundant energy and the same lack of restraint are noticeable wherever these Central African natives take to any European game, and they take to European games of the rougher sort very readily indeed. I have seen them at Blantyre clubbing one another on the head, under pretence of playing hockey, just as they rend one another to pieces at Kota Kota under pretence of playing football. It is, however, only fair to add that they show great activity, enthusiasm, and pluck; nor is there much reason to doubt that they might develop into really sound players, if they could only be induced to adopt a coherent system and a somewhat more chastened style.’

Games are very often played by moonlight; some of these come rather under the heading of dances, and vice versâ. In fact, the words sewera, ‘to play,’ and bvina, ‘to dance,’ are used interchangeably; on one occasion, when the drums boomed all night long from Chona’s kraal, and the dancing was still going on at 8 A.M., we were told that ‘it was the Angoni playing.’ As the drums are an essential feature of the dance, this moonlight diversion becomes trying for the hearer in the vicinity of European settlements, where empty tins can be got hold of and made to do duty in the orchestra. The boarders at the Blantyre girls’ school used to let off their superfluous gaiety by drumming on the zinc baths used in the laundry, and this was permitted, within limits, lest worse should befall.

One of these moonlight games, at Likoma, consists in the players joining hands in a ring and dancing round and round, singing the words Zunguli, zunguli, bwata (‘Go round, go round, crouch!’) over and over again. Every time the word bwata comes, the whole ring drops into a squatting position. In another, ‘a ring of boys dance round one boy crouching in the middle with a cap or something on his head, and each one of the ring has in turn to dance round the boy in the middle, keeping his back to him, not losing his hold of his companions on either hand, and not displacing the object on the boy’s head.’ One refrain sung with this game is: ‘Katuli, katuli, eee katuli—don’t tread on the boy who has it, don’t tread on him!’—I have not been able to find out the meaning of katuli (e-e-e is just the repeated vowel sound, very common in songs, of which the refrain is often nothing more than i, i, i or o, a, o), it probably has none, as now used, and belongs to the same category as ‘Tit, tat, toe’ and the like. Words sung in games are often more or less of this kind, though sometimes quite intelligible, like Nkondo lelo ijija—‘War comes to-day,’ which belongs to a game something like ‘Fox and Geese.’ ‘Two captains, each with a long tail of followers, holding tight one behind the other, face one another, singing this song, and each seeks to swoop upon the last man in his opponent’s tail and make a prisoner of him, without his own tail being broken.’ Wrestling is practised (at least by the Yaos), and a kind of single-stick.

One sometimes comes on a little group of children quietly busy and happy on the bank of a stream and finds that they are engaged in modelling figures out of clay. One does not see this art carried into adult life; and as there is no attempt to make the results permanent by burning them, they are not often met with. I suppose it was an unusually successful group I once saw, set up on the ant-heap just outside Ndabankazi’s kraal; it was, I think, meant to represent a European (there could be no mistake about that, for he had a hat on) riding on an ox. I was so struck with this work of art that I offered to buy it if it could be baked, and understood that the offer had been agreed to—but nothing came of it.

It has been remarked that what knowledge they have seems to come to these African children instinctively—for no one ever sees them taught, or chastised for not knowing! Certainly one wonders how they learn some things which the smallest children do quite easily. Twisting string, for instance, out of bark, or the fibre of the bwazi, the sonkwe hibiscus, and other plants, is a thing which requires a certain knack, yet you see the whole population at it, when they have the materials handy, and nothing else to do—from the old grandmother sitting on the ground to have a chat with you, to the little boy or girl whose attention is found to be wandering in school. I imagine they must always have bunches of fibrous stuff secreted somehow about their persons. The process begins with rubbing a bit of it against one’s leg with the open hand—further than that, I cannot tell exactly what is done, or how they manage to twist two strands round each other without making the whole thing curl up, as it does when I try it.

Having got a sufficient supply of string, the next thing is to make string bags—which is done by making a row of loops for the bottom of the bag, and working round and round, putting the end of the string through each loop to make a fresh row. Usually the end is fastened to a hen’s feather to make it go through easily. It is a kind of netting without the knot, and is often quite tastefully done in string of two colours.

But the realities of life begin to make themselves felt. Girls get real babies tied to their backs instead of dolls, as soon as they are big enough to carry them. I have no doubt that this injures their growth less than dragging them about in their arms; and anyhow they are usually very cheerful about it. Then they have to fetch water, and, as soon as they are able, to help their mothers in pounding corn and hoeing in the gardens. The boys have an easier time—at ten, or so, perhaps earlier, they are set to herding the goats, and will start for the dambo in the early morning, as soon as the kraal gate is opened, with their sticks, and, during the rainy season, an old worn-out shield to shelter under in case of a shower. They take a bit of cold porridge with them, done up in a leaf, or some roasted maize cobs, unless they are near enough to run home for the family meal a little before noon. Sometimes they make a fire in the dambo, and roast their maize themselves—or any small game they may have taken. They shoot small birds with arrows, or knock them down with sticks; they set various kinds of traps in the grass, and, if they can find the burrows (which are fairly common), they dig out field-mice (mbewa), which are considered a rare delicacy, and roast them as shown in the illustration.

The various kinds of traps will be described more fully under the heading of Hunting and Fishing.

When not cooking, eating, or keeping their charges from straying, they will find plenty of diversion to help them through the day. They build little houses in trees, putting up a platform of sticks and a grass shelter over it; they dig out mole-crickets (lololo), guided by the sound of their chirping, or they make models, as aforesaid, if they find a patch of moist clay, or an ant-heap and water in happy conjunction. In fact, whenever, in walking through bush or dambo, you come across any phenomenon obviously due to human agency—such, for instance, as hats made out of leaves pinned together with thorns or bits of grass—yet without visible author or apparent object, you may be sure your escort will attribute it to the abusa—herd-boys. When I asked the meaning of a number of tufts of grass knotted together in the middle of a piece of meadow, the children cheerfully said that the abusa had done it in order to trip people up. I think, however, that they need not be credited with this, as it is more probable that some one had been marking out a plot for hoeing next rainy season; and besides, natives are not in the habit of walking off the path.

They divert themselves also with music, of a sort, making flutes and whistles out of hollow reeds, or joints of bamboo—it is surprising what sweet sounds they get out of a very simple bamboo flute. There was a boy, Bvalani, who used to play on his flute all the way up the hill, as he came to school. He further distinguished himself by wearing a charming little coronet, plaited out of pale green palm-leaves, into which he had stuck two or three blossoms of the crimson ‘Turk’s cap’ lily. Sometimes they fasten several lengths of reed together to make a kind of Pan-pipes. The only times they are likely to get into serious trouble are when they let the goats get into the gardens—or when (being set to watch the fields when the crops are ripening) they fail to drive off the baboons.

Then, as the sun gets low, they drive their respective flocks home, put them up for the night, and join the family at the evening meal—or, if that is over, the mothers are sure to have put aside something for them. And then come the evening games, on moonlight nights—or the sitting round the fire, telling stories and asking riddles. This is the appropriate hour for such amusements. A little Yao boy told Mr. Macdonald that ‘the old people’ said that ‘if boys recited riddles at midday, horns would grow on their foreheads.’ This might be intended as a precaution against their attention being absorbed by this pastime when they ought to be herding.

The girls sometimes join the games and dances, but they also have their own amusements apart; and the boys, as they grow older, stand on their dignity and ‘keep themselves to themselves.’ They have their own dormitory (gowero) when too big to sleep in their mothers’ huts with the babies; and in some villages, they have an open shed reserved for their use, where they make a fire in the evenings, and sit round it, telling tales and roasting sweet potatoes till a late hour. When they are older, and after they have attended the dances in the bush and been recognised as men, they are admitted to the bachelors’ house, the bwalo, till they marry and set up an establishment of their own. In a village like Ntumbi, of small, scattered kraals, the grown-up men of each family will most likely have a small hut to themselves, as there will not be a regular bwalo, in this sense—which is not quite the same as when the word is used to mean the ‘village green’ or ‘forum.’

Like most other boys, they quarrel occasionally, and fight sometimes, with fists, sticks, and anything else—scratching and biting not barred. But on the whole they are not particularly combative, unless under exceptional provocation, and their affectionate comradeship is a very pleasing trait. A boy will never eat alone; and special treats, such as biscuits, are often subdivided into very minute portions to make them go round. The boy in the illustration is performing a service for his friend which is only too frequently needed of late years, since the non-indigenous pest, the jigger (matekenya), was introduced by Arab caravans at the North End, and gradually found its way south to the Zambezi. Unless the insect’s egg-sac can be extracted (usually from under the toe-nail) before the eggs are hatched, a very bad sore is the result.

With the ‘mysteries,’ childhood ends, and a new phase of life begins, which will be dealt with in the next chapter.