Maize and mapira are ripe in May; the former is broken off by hand, and the cobs put into _mtanga_ baskets; there is a special term for the operation of inserting them point downward so as to make the basket hold as many as possible. It is dried on the _nsanja_, over the household fire, before being put into the _nkokwe_. The mapira is cut with a large knife or a reaping-hook. These small sickles are much used for cutting grass; but I am not sure whether they are of recent European introduction or not; a straight knife is also used. Beans and ground-nuts, with the _nzama_, which is very like a ground-nut and grows in the same way, the seed-vessel burying itself in the earth after flowering, are planted in patches by themselves beside the maize-garden. These are boiled and eaten, green or ripe, and the ground-nuts are also used for oil. They are pounded, boiled, and the oil skimmed from the top of the water. Castor-oil is procured in the same way; it is not used as medicine, but only for anointing the head and body. Hoeing and weeding are sometimes got through more quickly, when time is pressing (as when the first rains have fallen) by means of a ‘bee.’ The owner invites all his neighbours, men and women, and prepares large quantities of beer, with which they regale themselves after a hard morning’s work. Sometimes the pots are carried out to the garden, and the party consume the refreshment there. Each person has a certain piece of ground allotted to him or her—a ‘row to hoe,’ and the work is got through with singing and mirth. When the chief sends for a number of villagers to hoe his gardens, he entertains them royally with meat and beer. After the harvest is gathered in comes the _mpakasa_ season, which might be rendered ‘autumn’; the deciduous trees lose their leaves; the grass is dry and ready for burning, and, as the people say, ‘the wind blows and says _pi_!’ After this comes the real winter (_malimwe_), when people walk abroad and sit and drink beer, saying, ‘At present there is no hoeing to do, only odds and ends of work about the house’—though, even then, ‘some break up the new hoeing-ground.’ Then comes the time of the grass and bush-fires, when the air is full of flying soot, and then the _kokalupsya_—the driving rain which sweeps away the burnt grass—and then the last interval of waiting, when the new leaves show themselves in vivid green, red, and yellow, the thorn-trees burst into golden bloom and ‘Mpambe thunders’ in distant mutterings along the horizon. [Illustration: WOMEN CARRYING BASKETS OF MAIZE]