Chipoka had been ‘a person of importance in his day’; he was the principal chief on Mlanje in Livingstone’s time, and, when he died in 1890, ‘had, with the consent of all his sub-chiefs and subjects, transferred the sovereign rights of his country to the Queen, in order to pledge the British Government to the protection of the indigenous Nyanja people against Yao attacks.’[7] His son, of course, does not occupy anything like the same position; but the village, when I saw it, must have been in its old place—or very near it—on the bank of the Mloza, a clear stream coming down out of the heart of Mlanje, between the two peaks of Chinga and Manga. Chipoka’s grave, with some huge bamboos growing on it, was within a short distance of the huts. I had heard that a ceremony was to take place for the purpose of propitiating the old chief’s spirit; and when I walked over, on the morning of October 29, I found a sort of subdued stir, the people very busy, but all looking extremely solemn. Young Chipoka—a man of about thirty—and some other men were seated under the eaves of a hut, while the women moved in and out of the huts with pots of beer, and other people were busied about a group of neat miniature huts, made of grass, about two feet high. The roofs of these huts, which had been finished separately, were not yet put on, and I could see that a couple of earthen jars were sunk in the ground inside each. These jars were now filled with beer, and then the roof was lifted on. Chipoka, draped in his blue calico, came forward very courteously to greet me, and explained that the houses were ‘for Mulungu.’ Now ‘Mulungu’ is the word which is generally translated ‘God,’ and it really does sometimes seem to denote a supreme Deity; but here it clearly meant Chipoka’s spirit. Mr. Duff Macdonald has made it clear that the ‘gods’ of the Yaos—or, at least, those most definitely thought of as such, are the spirits of the dead—of a man’s father or grandfather, or the chief of his village,—sometimes of a great chief, who ruled over a large extent of country, like Kangomba of Sochi. When such an one lived long ago, people are apt to forget who he was when alive, and to think of him as a spirit only. Such spirits are often associated with particular hills, as is the case with Sochi and Ndirande, and might easily be mistaken by inquirers for genuine nature-powers.