_Women chiefs_ are mentioned several times by Livingstone as ruling in various parts of this region: Chikandakadzi, near Morambala (her position with regard to Tingani is not stated); Nyango, who seems to have ranked as _Rundo_ in part of the Upper Shiré Valley, and Mamburuma, near Zumbo on the Zambezi; also Manenko and Nyamosana in the Lunda country. More recently, we find Nalolo, a sister of Liwanika, occupying the position of a chief in the Barotse country. The present Kazembe appears to be a woman. Sebituane, the Makololo chief, appointed his daughter as his successor, ‘probably,’ says Livingstone, ‘in imitation of some of the negro tribes with whom he had come into contact.’ She, however, soon resigned what proved a distasteful position; for her father, unwilling that she should transfer her power to a husband, directed her not to marry, but to contract any number of temporary alliances. It may be, however, that this feature of the situation was due, not so much to Sebituane’s Bechuana ideas of the husband necessarily being ‘the woman’s lord,’ as to some lingering Rotse and Lunda traditions of polyandry; and a writer in the _Livingstonia Missionary Magazine_ characterises the present Kazembe as ‘a thoroughly bad woman—a woman of Samaria over again,’ which may be due to a misunderstanding of a very peculiar institution. It is impossible not to connect these scattered indications with those afforded by the Yao system of kinship, and marriage customs, as to the state of things in an earlier period of which we have no record. The Yao tribal organisation is in itself much the same as that of the Anyanja, but it was more closely knit, owing to the exigencies of war; and the relations of the conquerors to the conquered tribes must be distinguished from those which obtained among themselves. But it must be remembered that the Yaos were not an aggressive tribe, organised for conquest, under a chief like Tshaka or Mziligazi. In their own country—between Lake Chilwa and the Upper Rovuma—they seem to have been both a pastoral and an industrial people. ‘Yao-land proper,’ says Archdeacon Johnson, ‘had plenty of smelting-furnaces, cattle, and peas and beans, plenty for man and beast.’ They cultivated ‘down both sides of the Lujenda, till the valleys were full of Indian corn, and settlement extended its fields to those of the next settlement.’ The Machinga, who occupied this country, were dislodged by the Alolo (Makua) from the south-east, who themselves expelled from the north by the (Zulu) Magwangwara, drove them into the country of the Mangoche, forcing the latter into the Shiré Highlands. This was the so-called invasion of 1861.