The derivation of the word Mulungu throws some light on the subject. Henry Salt (1814) says that among the Makuas it means “the sky”. We have heard Yao expressions that would prepare us to accept this interpretation; and the Yao word may be sometimes used for rainbow (which is either Mulungu or ukunje wa Mulungu): it is singular too that Chilungu means earthquake. We think a more correct view lies in the derivation stated by Bleek, which makes it originally mean “great ancestor”. 10.—NUMBER OF THE NATIVES’ GODS. We saw that every human being has a Mulungu or spirit (2). This position every native will uphold, except perhaps in the case of a young child who has not reached six days of age, and has not been formally introduced into the world or “taken out of the house” (kopoka m’ nyumba) (44). If a child of six days has been introduced into the world though only a day before its death, its spirit is entitled to offerings, and receives these offerings at least from its parents. When the little child meets the parents beyond the grave it will say, “You remembered me; I saw what you were doing”. The spirit of every deceased man and woman, with the solitary exception of wizards and witches becomes an object of religious homage. The gods of the natives then are nearly as numerous as their dead. It is impossible to worship all; a selection must be made, and, as we have indicated, each worshipper turns most naturally to the spirits of his own departed relatives; but his gods are too many still, and in farther selecting he turns to those that have lived nearest his own time. Thus the chief of a village will not trouble himself about his great-great-grandfather; he will present his offering to his own immediate predecessor, and say, “Oh, father, I do not know all your relatives, you know them all, invite them to feast with you”. The offering is not simply for himself, but for himself and all his relatives. We ask him, “What if they quarrel with the other relatives about their share of the feast?” “Let them quarrel,” he replies, “I have given them enough.” _Key to their view of the Spirit World._ We may think that the native chief in selecting his predecessor alone, has left all the rest of the people that once lived in his village without any homage. Here we encounter an important native view that a chief represents and is responsible for all his people. If any one wish to treat with a native village it is with the village chief that he must deal. If we give a present to a village it is to the village chief that we must give it. This does not prevent us from giving presents to any other individual. So it is in the world beyond, which the natives conceive to be peopled in the same way as this world. There the old chief has his wives and slaves and companions about him as of yore. To the natives death is the time when they, in like manner, shall be literally “gathered to their fathers”. _Nature of Offerings._