‘On arrival at the graveyard, the people begun to shout and clap their hands to warn the spirits supposed to be about.’ After the grave was dug and the body lowered into it, the chief undertaker (called _chimbwi_, or hyena, because he is not afraid to approach the dead), ‘descended into the grave and untied the fastenings round the dead, exposing the face for a few minutes; whatever had been brought to be buried along with the dead was arranged about the corpse according to custom, and finally arranging the grave-clothes and re-covering the face, the _chimbwi_ climbed out again. The nearest relatives, one on each side of the grave, kneeling down and doing homage to the dead, pushed the first earth into the grave, using their elbows to do so. After a little, the whole company assisted in filling up the grave.... Prayers to the dead, conducted by the _chimbwi_, with responses from the other mourners, completed the obsequies at the grave, all the company having paid respect to the dead by falling from a sitting position on to their backs, clapping their hands.’ On their return from the grave, the whole party wash in ‘medicine-water.’ Sometimes, on the way back, they gather the leaves of a particular shrub, and prepare it for themselves; but sometimes special men are called in from a distance to make the medicine. Atonga mourners go to bathe in a running stream before entering the village; after this, the _chimbwi_ fetches a torch of grass pulled from the roof of the dead man’s hut, lights it at the fire in the same hut, jumps over it himself, and then holds it a few inches from the ground for the whole party to jump over, one by one. As they do so, the woman who has gathered the roots rubs them on back and breast of each person; and they are then sufficiently purified to come home. The Babemba seem to make some attempt at mummifying the corpses of their chiefs, by rubbing the body all over with boiled maize, repeating the process till the whole skin becomes dry and shrivelled. The following is an account, by an eye-witness, of the funeral of the Angoni chief, Mombera, who died in 1891:—