The ordinary tribute paid to chiefs varies in different tribes, but is not in general excessive. In some parts, when an elephant is killed, the chief claims ‘the ground tusk’—_i.e._ the one which touches the ground when it falls; elsewhere this is not insisted on. Presents are usually expected from strangers passing through the country, but they get something in return; and a chief (though in practice he may fall short of the ideal) is always supposed to be generous. Yao local head-men send their chief a percentage of the ivory when they kill elephants, and (if they live near enough) a haunch of any large animal (such as an eland) which they may shoot. It is also the custom for them to invite him to a beer-drinking at least once in the year. Sometimes the chief sends for the village head-men, or orders them to find men, to do some work for him at his village—hoeing, or building huts. This was frequently done by the Angoni chiefs, who also (as has been said before) made periodical levies of their subjects’ sons to herd their cattle, and of their daughters for the harem. There is no regular priestly class. The professional diviners and medicine-men to a certain extent occupy the same position, and a Yao chief sometimes appoints a ‘sacrificer,’ whose duties are of a somewhat miscellaneous character. Besides taking the omens before a battle, he has to carry the banner and lead the army—the chief himself, like David in later life, not going into action. (He stays behind to ‘supply powder and deal with deserters.’) The ‘sacrificer’ tastes the beer offered to the chief’s guests, to show that it is not poisoned, and beats one of the drums at witch-dances, where he represents the chief, if the latter is unable to be present. Whether he is the same as the chief’s medicine-man is not clear. But the strictly religious functions of a priest, as we have seen, are performed by the chief on behalf of his tribe, by the head-man for the village, by the father for the family, and (in private matters) by the individual for himself. We have seen how the chief presides over, or at least takes part in, public prayers for rain; but the Yaos and Anyanja do not at present seem to have anything corresponding to the ‘feast of first-fruits’ among the southern Bantu, where the chief ceremonially ‘tastes’ the first of the new crops before the people are allowed to gather them. There are traces of such a rite among the Yaos, and I am inclined to think that the Angoni keep up something of the kind, or did a few years back, because I was informed at one of the Ntumbi kraals, about the beginning of the harvest season, that the father of the family was away at Chekusi’s, ‘eating maize,’—an expression of which I did not at the time grasp the probable bearing. The Zulus keep the _ukutshwama_ with great solemnity, and the Angoni would have brought the custom with them from the south, though I do not know how they observe it in detail.