The day before the ceremony women may be seen pounding corn for the occasion, as they have been doing for several days. A preparation is made that might do for a marriage feast. The young woman that is to be the subject of the mystery is seated before the door of her hut, and her head is smeared over with castor oil. The “Cook” seems to superintend this operation, although other women assist. They take the thinner end of their razor (lukwangulo), and keep poking all along her head while the girl sits quiet and gloomy. That day her head is shaved. Next day there is the mystery proper. The Surety (48) has gone to invite other women. The “Cook” also invites her friends. The young woman herself (achakongwe wene) invites some. There is a very imposing gathering of matrons; songs and dances of the usual indelicate character are the order of the day. One of the most conspicuous parties is to be seen with an enormous pumpkin tied under her dress. The young woman is anointed with oil and red ochre (ngama). The ceremony is finished towards night and inside the house. The fee to the “Cook” is two bushels of maize. This is the last of these mysteries. The advice given to the young woman (and her husband) is not deficient in quantity; but on its quality we prefer to be silent. To the natives themselves it appears ridiculous as soon as they become critical. We have met a Yao far from his own home, and once or twice, in order to find out at what age he had been carried off in slavery, we have asked whether he was at the mysteries; the very mention of the subject nearly put him beside himself with laughter. He looks back to the matter as a comical experience of his life; but at the same time he is rather ashamed, especially when he thinks that a European knows about it. The following from the Zulu tales of Bishop Callaway illustrates a similar practice in the South of Africa:—“When young men come to the Umgongo where the ceremonies of puberty are being performed (for when a damsel is of age it is then that the filthy custom is practised of all the young people going there), the house is now a house of sweethearts and damsels where all kind of evil will be spoken; modesty is at an end at that time, and all fearful things are mentioned, which ought not to be openly mentioned, and which, if a man mentioned them by name, he would be regarded as mad. There then all become mad, for there is no one of authority to say, ‘Do not mention such things’.”