There is something full of pathos in the sight of a man invoking his deceased relatives. He has got into great difficulty. None of his friends can assist him, they hardly sympathise with him. His thoughts turn to days when he had no difficulty, to the bright period of which, heathen that he is, he can say, “Heaven is about us in our infancy”. He is so sure that if he only had the grey-headed man that smiled on him then, all his difficulties would vanish. That man could understand him, and believe good of him as he did long ago. Could he but reach him across the portals of the grave all would be well. Thus, with great earnestness, the native turns to the spirits of his fathers. 13.—THE CREATION—COSMOLOGY. The existence of the world itself is accepted as a fact not to be explained. But there are legends that explain the introduction of the sun, moon, and stars, clouds and rain; as also how mountains and rivers appeared on the scene. Man, or at least the father of these central tribes, sprang from a hole in a rock, from which the lower animals came also. Around this hole there were abundant footprints of all kinds of animals. It was closed by the people of Mulungu, and is now in a desert place ‘towards the north’ (kumpoto). Subsequent to the appearance of man, many changes occurred specially calculated for his benefit. Thus the mist was sent to keep the sun from burning up the crops—an arrangement that would readily commend itself to these philosophical children of the tropics. Their legends go on to state that the Wayao, Anyasa, Angulu, Awisa and others sprang from a common stock, and to explain how the tribes separated through one going to one side of the country and another to another. The chief cause of such separations is said to be war. The Zulus and the English belong, they say, to a different stock; where they came from the natives cannot tell. They have a legend about Zulus (Mangoni) coming out in great swarms near a large river; and another legend about a black man crossing a bridge, as he looked round he was greatly astonished to find that a white man (msungu) was following him. The white men are represented as having staid longer with the people of God (Mulungu), and learned more than the black men. With all due deference to the toothless old man who told me that the Zulus are different from the Yao, I am strongly of opinion that although their languages are not mutually intelligible now, there was a time when their forefathers played together by the same streams and hills; but this time is more remote than his legend, which only explained when the Wanyasa separated from his tribe. CHAPTER IV. ON WORSHIP AND OFFERINGS—OCCASIONS FOR WORSHIP. “None shall appear before me empty.”—EXOD. 23, 15. STARTING ON A JOURNEY (ULENDO), WAR, OR HUNTING EXPEDITION. 14.—PRAYERS AND OMENS.