The huts in the enclosure have their doors facing inward; there may be a tree (probably the ‘prayer-tree’) in the middle of the vacant space; in any case, you will see the mortars, in which the women pound the grain, perhaps a reed mat, with flour drying on it, or millet waiting to be husked, and one or more little fires, with their three stones for supporting the cooking-pot. Perhaps there will be also a pigeon-house, like a neatly plaited basket, with a pointed roof, raised on a post, and another post close by, supporting half an old water-jar, which has come to grief, but can still be used as a bath and drinking-place for the pigeons. The fowl-house, if any, is somewhere between, and rather behind the huts, and perhaps there is also a house for the goats, but some people prefer to have their stock sleeping in the hut with them, for security’s sake. I remember calling at Sambamlopa’s one day, and finding his mother engaged in plastering three or four stalls for the goats against the circular wall of the hut, just leaving room for some of the family to sleep between them and the central fireplace. Sometimes there is a single enclosure, standing by itself; sometimes several are grouped very closely together, the entrances being reached by narrow, winding paths between the stockades, which, I suppose, are intended to puzzle the enemy, in case of a night attack. Two old men, brothers, Pembereka and Kaboa, had their enclosures side by side, and the sacred tree in the narrow space of ground between the two. A little way off, on one side of the path, was the well mentioned in the last chapter, which I saw the women clearing out; and near this, too, some trees had been left standing. Entering Pembereka’s stockade, one day in early spring, we found a certain bustle and excitement pervading the place, the cause of which was soon apparent, when we saw the head-wife, old Anapiri (the same whom I found conducting the rain-ceremony a fortnight later), seated on a mat, with a new-born baby on her knees. It was a queer little yellow thing; they always start in life very light-coloured, but grow darker before long. They also seem, to me, at least, to have more hair than European babies, though they are not allowed to retain it. The mother on this occasion was not visible—she was a younger wife of Pembereka’s; she was in one of the huts, which she would not leave for some days—perhaps eight or nine, perhaps less. The baby is supposed to stay with her, till formally ‘brought out into the world’; but it may be that Anapiri had been giving it its first bath and oiling. The eldest child of a family is called the ‘child of the washing,’ or ‘of oil’—not that the others are not bathed and oiled, but this is a ceremonial washing (with ‘medicine’) and anointing. (Both children and grown-ups require plenty of oil to keep their skins from cracking and chapping; they neither look nor feel well without it.)