How great was the contrast between this picnic and the one we had organised last year! There were about as many flags in the company as there were pupils on the last occasion. The number of scholars had much increased. We had fully 150 this half-year and it would not have been difficult to collect over 200, but we could not encourage more children to come as we had neither sufficient teaching power, nor any prospect of assistance. In January I wrote, ‘We are not so anxious to increase the number as to manage well those that we have’. The majority of the boys lived in the Blantyre villages. Except the Magololo children, none of our pupils came from a distance, and most of the Magololo chiefs had built huts for their sons in the neighbourhood. Still many preferred to stay at the station, and were allowed to do so on the understanding that they must go home during work hours. The few boys that regularly boarded were all kept busy for about an hour in the forenoon, and two hours after school was dismissed in the afternoon. Their work was of the lightest character, having been instituted mainly for the purpose of keeping them from harm. But the little fellows certainly did much to make the station tidy. During the rains the grass threatens to overtop everything. A man may then “dig” a road or a walk, and in a few weeks after find it covered with grass so tall that it reaches up to the shoulders, and makes it impossible to tell where the track was. Thus the roads made by the Mission entailed much labour, the grass requiring to be continually hoed down. Hence during the wet season the boys were constantly occupied in cutting the grass, which if allowed to grow might have concealed a large native army! In the dry season they used to carry water for the gardeners, but in the end of 1879, I began to make them practice the ordinary arts of their native land, encouraging them to make baskets and hats under a teacher of their own tribe. They were thus kept occupied for a time, and although sometimes rebelling against the old men who taught them, they soon made more baskets and hats than were necessary. The hats they wore, the small round baskets (iselo) they used for plates. When daubed with a kind of pitch these baskets did not leak even when filled with soup. [Illustration: THE BASKET MAKERS.]