As soon as the children can walk, or even crawl, they are left to play about among the huts while the mothers are busy, cooking or pounding grain. They are left in charge of the grandmother, and perhaps one of the elder children, when the women have to go away to the gardens. They are allowed to do pretty much as they like, so long as they keep out of the fire, or refrain from climbing up any of the many tempting places whence a fall might be dangerous—the fence, or the _nkokwe_ ladder, or what not. If there is any one to keep an eye on them, they will be snatched back in the first case, and fetched down in the second, and slapped in both, to emphasise the lesson that ‘we don’t want to have a mourning for you because you died by accident’—that being a wholly wilful and gratuitous proceeding. One sometimes sees scars of bad burns that must have been caused by a tumble into the fire; but, on the whole, these infants learn to take care of themselves after a fashion at a wonderfully early age. It is when the mothers have begun to put them into European garments that fatal accidents are apt to occur; the child stands at what would be quite a safe distance from the fire but for the little shirt or frock, and the calico is ablaze before any one is aware. Children wear nothing much for the first few years, unless they feel cold, and are supplied with a skin, or a piece of cloth, to wrap themselves in. The little boy in the illustration has a pretty complete toilet. This family, like the group above them, were photographed at Likoma, but the mother is a Makua and wears the _chipini_—the leaden ornament like a drawing-pin stuck through a hole in the side of the nose—which is in fashion among the coast women and some of the Yaos. Very little Angoni boys have a mat of beads, three or four inches square, worked for them by their mother or elder sister, and wear it like an apron. Sometimes also they have a ‘sporran,’ made from the skin of some small animal, such as a field-rat. In most homes now there is enough calico to give each of the children a piece to wrap round the waist, as they grow bigger. The only difference between the dress of the boys and girls, as a rule, is that the latter put theirs on a little higher up. The stuff used is the cheap ‘unbleached,’ which can be got in this country for about twopence a yard. Babies are washed very carefully; older children are left to do much as they please in the matter of cleanliness; but they love bathing, when the means are accessible, and near a lake or river all know how to swim.