TALL NATIVES. 343 



lower millstone, in the same way that a baker works his dough, when pressing 

 it and pushing it from him. The weight of the person is brought to bear on 

 the movable stone ; and while it is pressed and pushed forwards and backwards, 

 one hand supplies every now and then a little grain, to be thus at first bruised, 

 and then ground in the lower stone, which is placed on the slope, so that the 

 meal, when ground, falls on to a skin or mat spread for the purpose." 



Before being ground, the corn is pounded in a large wooden mortar, 

 exactly similar to the method of the ancient Egyptians. The pestle is about 

 six feet long, and four inches in thickness. By this process the husk is removed 

 from the grain ; and that it is a tedious process we have the authority of Solo- 

 mon, who thought that it took more vigour and trouble to separate " a fool 

 from his folly" than to remove the hard husk from the wheat. 



"A chief named Muazi presented Livingstone with a basket of unground 

 corn ; and on his hinting that he had no wife to grind it for him, the chief's 

 buxom spouse archly said, ' I will grind it for you ; and leave Muazi, to 

 accompany and cook for you in the land of the setting sun.' " 



Everywhere he was struck with little touches of human nature, which 

 told him that blacks and whites in their natural ways were very much the 

 same. Sleeping outside a hut, but near enough to hear what passed in the 

 interior of it, he heard a native woman commence to grind in the dark, about 

 two o'clock in the morning. " Ma," said her little daughter, "why grind in 

 the dark ?" After telling her to go to sleep, she said, " I grind meal to buy 

 a cloth from the strangers, which will make you a little lady." And no doubt 

 the little child went to sleep quite contented, just as an English girl would, 

 under like circumstances. 



Their greatest luxury was beer, of which they drank considerable quan- 

 tities, generally in an hospitable kind of way, inviting their neighbours to share 

 in the jollification. Under such circumstances they politely praise the quality 

 of the liquor provided, a common saying being that it was so good, " the taste 

 reaches right to the back of the neck." 



The merchants or traders of the district are the Babisa. They are dis- 

 tinguished by a line of horizontal cicatrices, down the middle of the forehead 

 and chin. They collect the ivory from the Manganja and the Ajawa, and 

 carry it to the coast and sell it, bringing back European manufactures, beads, 

 etc., in return for it, and deal in tobacco and native iron utensils. Some of 

 the natives to the west of the lake were very tall and strong ; many of them 

 were a good way over six feet in height, and six feet was common. On reach- 

 ing Lake Nyassa on their return journey, they found many of the inhabitants 

 living in hiding among the reeds by the margin of the lake ; temporary huts 

 being erected on the flattened reeds, which were so thick and strong as to 

 form a perfect, though yielding floor, on the surface of the lake. They had a 

 miserable half-starved appearance, agriculture being out of the question while 



