The universal agricultural implement is the hoe, which, in this part of Africa, has a short handle, so that the person wielding it has to stoop, but also gains much more power for the stroke than one has with a long handle. The blade is leaf-shaped, rounded to a blunt point in front, and tapering to a spike at the back, which is driven into the handle, and, if it projects at the back, hammered down. The blade was formerly made by native blacksmiths, but is now generally bought at a trader’s store and fixed into a handle by the purchaser, who chooses a stout piece of wood with a knob at the end—either a root of a tree, or a strong branch with a piece of the fork it springs from. Wooden hoes are still used in some remote places among the hills. They have very long, rather narrow blades, set into the handle at an acuter angle than the usual iron hoe, but, like it, suggesting the origin of the implement from the primitive forked branch with one of its ends cut short. Where hoes are unattainable, as in the case of refugees cultivating ‘scratch’ gardens in the bush in time of war, a still older instrument is used—the sharp-pointed digging-stick of bamboo. There are stories which seem to point to a time when this was in general use, and speak of the introduction of hoes. [Illustration: WOMEN WEEDING MAIZE-GARDEN Note the pumpkins between the rows of maize] Maize is sown in rows about six feet apart, the soil being gathered into heaps, and three or four grains sown on the top of each. I have seen a man and his wife doing this together, one making the holes with a pointed stick, while the other dropped the grains in. Pumpkins and gourds are sown on the same heaps with the maize, and spread out between the rows. The garden is then left alone unless the growing maize-plants require earthing up a little from time to time, till the rains are over, when it is time for the ‘second hoeing,’ to get rid of the weeds which have sprung up. ‘The time of hunger’ comes after the rains, when the last year’s corn is eaten, and the new is not yet ripe—about March. This is not altogether due to improvidence, as some would have it, but partly to the difficulty of storing large quantities of provisions. The _nkokwes_ hold just about enough for the year, and even so are tithed by rats and weevils which cannot be kept out; and the insect-proof accommodation in the smoke of the _nsanja_ does not suffice for much more than next year’s seed-corn. Besides this, large accumulations, in a country likely at any time to be ravaged by war, are scarcely a sign of prudence, but rather the reverse.