46 
TRIBES OP THE TANA VALLEY 
often — why, a la guerre comme a la guerre . ‘ Why not ? — 
we eat each other ! ’ 
Pishing is carried on with a hook and line, by spearing, with 
a conical basket called chiha (which is lowered into the water, 
enclosing the fish like a bell-net), or in a trap, mono, 1 * * on the 
principle of the lobster-pot, and of a shape which, I believe, is 
the same all over Bantu Africa and quite different from the 
ema used by Swahili coast-fishermen. The mamba (lung- 
fish ?), which sometimes reaches a length of B feet 6 inches and 
over, is during the dry season speared in the nest which it 
makes for itself in the beds of variable lagoons like Shaka 
Babo. 
The Pokomo hut is of the same shape as that made by 
the Galla and Wasanye (when the latter is more than the most 
elementary shelter), with this difference, that the wattles are 
tied together at the top, instead of crossing each other in a 
series of arches. The three ridges into which the thatch is 
cut in the best-finished huts are also a feature of Galla construc- 
tion : which race borrowed it from the other it is hard to 
say. 
The limits of this paper forbid a fuller discussion of the 
Pokomo ‘ secret societies ’ (I fancy 4 age-classes ’ would be a 
better term), and more especially the complicated subject of 
the luva and its relations to the Galla institution of the same 
name. It would indeed be premature to do so with only the 
facts at present available. But further investigation may 
perhaps point to the conclusion that both parties derived 
them from the Wasanye. 
1 The Nyanja word for the same thing. It is curious that Pokomo, especially 
in the upper river dialects, has words (e.g. ku gona, ‘to sleep’) which occur 
in Chinyanja, but not, so far as I am aware, in any geographically intervening 
language. 
