Chap. XXVII. WE AEE TAKEN FOR MAZITU. 549 



up the trees, lopping off the branches, to prevent the shade in- 

 juring the crops below, or were clearing away the shoots from 

 stumps formerly cut. Sometimes a woman is seen hoeing 

 alone, or she has a couple of boys collecting the weeds and 

 grass into bundles to be burned. At other times the whole 

 family is working briskly, or all the neighbours are collected 

 to give a day's hoeing for a quantity of beer. Our guides 

 always asked these gatherings " if all the beer were drunk." 

 Some of the women were watering their patches of maize and 

 pumpkins from the running streams with calabashes and pots. 

 About the end of the hot dry season, they make holes about 

 the gardens, and sow maize in them, and water it till the 

 rains begin. This plan gives the maize and pumpkins a 

 start in the race towards harvest. The consequence is, that 

 the owner has fresh green maize to eat some six weeks after 

 the commencement of the regular showers. 



The next village at which we slept was also that of a 

 Manganja smith. It was a beautiful spot, shaded with tall 

 euphorbia-trees. The people at first fled, but after a short 

 time returned, and ordered us off to a stockade of Babisa, 

 about a mile distant. We preferred to remain in the smooth 

 shady spot outside the hamlet, to being pent up in a tree- 

 less stockade. Twenty or thirty men came dropping in, all 

 fully armed with bows and arrows, some of them were at least 

 six feet four in height, yet these giants were not ashamed to 

 say, "We thought that you were Mazitu, and, being afraid, 

 ran away." Their orders to us were evidently inspired by 

 terror, and so must the refusal of the headman to receive 

 a cloth, or lend us a hut have been ; but as we never had 

 the opportunity of realizing what feelings a successful inva- 

 sion would produce, we did not know whether to blame them 

 or not. The headman, a tall old smith, with an enormous, 

 well-made knife of his own workmanship, came quietly round, 



