18CC] NATIVE POTTERIES. 59 



Besides stages for drying, the Makonde use thern about six 

 feet liigk for sleeping on instead of the damp ground: a 

 fire beneath helps to keep off the mosquitoes, and they are 

 used by day as convenient resting-places and for observation. 



Pottery seems to have been known to the Africans from 

 the remotest times, for fragments are found everywhere, 

 •even among the oldest fossil bones in the country. Their 

 pots for cooking, holding water and beer, are made by the 

 women, and the form is preserved by the eye alone, for no 

 sort of machine is ever used. A foundation or bottom is first 

 laid, and a piece of bone or bamboo used to scrape the clay 

 or to smooth over the pieces which are added to increase 

 the roundness ; the vessel is then left a night : the next 

 morning a piece is added to the rim — as the air is dry 

 several rounds may be added — and all is then carefully 

 smoothed off; afterwards it is thoroughly sun-dried. A 

 light fire of dried cow-dung, or corn-stalks, or straw, and 

 grass with twigs, is made in a hole in the ground for the 

 final baking. Ornaments are made on these pots of black 

 lead, or before being hardened by the sun they are orna- 

 mented for a couple or three inches near the rim, all the 

 tracery being in imitation of plaited basket work. 



Chirikaloma says that the surname of the Makoa, to whom 

 he belongs, is Mirazi — others have the surname Melola or 

 Malola — Chimposola. All had the half-moon mark when in 

 the south-east, but now they leave it off a good deal and 

 adopt the Waiyau marks, because of living in their country. 

 They show no indications of being named after beasts and 

 birds. Mirazi was an ancestor ; they eat all clean animals, 

 but refuse the hyeena, leopard, or any beast that devours 

 dead men.* 



* A tribal distinction turns on the customs prevailing with respect to 

 animal food, e.g. one tribe will eat the elephant, the next looks on such 

 flesh as unclean, and so with other meat. The neighbouring Manganja 

 gladly eat the leopard and hytena. — Ed. 



