There are five branches of the Yao nation: the Makale, near the sources of the Rovuma; the Namataka (or Mwembe people), on the hills west of the Lujenda; the Masaninga, Mangoche, and Machinga. The last three were the tribes who entered the Shiré Highlands. Their chiefs seem to have been quite independent of one another; Kapeni of Sochi was perhaps the most powerful. The chieftainship is hereditary, and passes, as already stated, to the deceased’s younger brothers in succession, or, failing those, to the eldest son of his sister. The new chief takes, at the same time, his predecessor’s official name, so that there is always a Kapeni, or Malemya, or Mponda, as the case may be. The Angoni chiefs, however, observe the Zulu rule of inheritance, and are succeeded by the eldest son of the principal (or ‘official’) wife, who is the one married after accession—earlier ones do not count. But there are some chiefs who have not succeeded to their position by right of birth, but attained it by superior cleverness and energy. Such a man may even be a slave, as was said to have been the case with Chibisa, who, in the early sixties, had much more real power than his neighbour Mankokwe, the Rundo of the Shiré Highlands. This man began by representing himself as possessed by the spirit of Chibisa, a deceased prophetess of note among the Nyungwe tribe, near Tete, whose name he assumed. The Nyungwe believed him, and he gradually obtained a complete ascendency over their chief, Kapichi, finally inducing part of the latter’s people to secede with him and settle at the foot of the Murchison Cataracts. His history may be read in the Rev. H. Rowley’s _Story of the Universities’ Mission_, where it is related how, at last, he fell in battle, fighting Terere, though without mention of the sand-bullet which killed him—the only thing against which he had no charm. The unexpected rise of a man like this has often been the agency in breaking up Bantu ‘empires’ like that of Undi. But the new power is seldom permanent, as it does not often happen that such parvenu chiefs leave behind them successors of equal ability; while, having no backing but their own immediate followers, they lack that support of custom and tradition which in normal times will keep a mere average ruler in his place, so long as he does not forfeit it by any act of his own.