In Mr. Macdonald’s time, the chiefs of the Blantyre and Zomba villages were all Yaos, and their canonised predecessors therefore belonged to the same tribe; but a certain amount of reverence was also paid to ‘the old gods of the land’—_i.e._ the spirits of dead Nyanja chiefs who haunted the principal mountains, and were specially appealed to for rain. We have already alluded to Kangomba of Sochi. The Rev. H. Rowley, when at Magomero, in 1861, saw Kangomba in the flesh; he was then ‘about forty years of age, had a frank, open countenance and a good head, and was altogether a very manly fellow.’ Apparently he did not live to be old. Mr. Macdonald says: ‘One tradition concerning him is this—When the Wayao were driving the Wanyasa[9] out of the country, Kangomba, a Wanyasa chief, saw that defence was hopeless, and entered a great cave on the mountain-side. Out of this cave he never returned; “he died unconquered in his own land.” The Wayao made the old tribe retire before them, but the chief, Kangomba, kept his place, and the new comers are glad to invoke his aid to this day. Their supplication for rain takes the form _Ku Sochi, kwa Kangomba ula jijise_, “Oh, Kangomba of Sochi, send us rain!” The Wayao chief, Kapeni, often asks some of the Wanyasa tribe that can trace connection with Kangomba to help him in these offerings and supplications.’ The offerings usually consist of native beer and maize flour (_ufa_), sometimes also calico, as seen in the illustration. It is torn into strips lest it should be appropriated by some needy and unscrupulous passer-by, or perhaps because each offerer only feels it incumbent on him to present a mere shred as a symbolic gift, since spirits, properly speaking, have no use for calico. Mr. Macdonald quotes the native reasoning on the subject. Spirits intimate their desire for various things—in dreams, or by means of the oracle, and, if their request be at all reasonable, it is granted. But, ‘if a spirit were to come, saying, “I want calico,” his friends would “just say that he was mad,” and would not give it. “Why should he want calico? What would he do with it? There was calico buried with him when he died, and he cannot need more again.”’ Food and tobacco, and even houses, are, it would appear, quite another matter. Perhaps this opinion as to calico has been modified since the above was written; certainly I have seen at least one tree covered with strips of calico, and that within a mile or two of a mission station. That on the Ndirande tree is a special sacrifice for rain. Usually the stones at the foot of the tree support one or more pots of _moa_ (native beer made of millet), and there is either a little basket of flour, or some is poured in a heap on the ground.