But as no European has ever been present at these celebrations, and as those natives who might be willing to tell Europeans about them have never been initiated themselves, it is very difficult to say anything with certainty on this head. The booths are, as a rule, destroyed when the _unyago_ is over, with all other traces of what has gone on—the clay figure of a lizard seen by Mr. Lindsay in the bush was quite an exceptional case. The sticks above mentioned, with others used in the dances, are burnt or broken up; though some are ‘put together at a cross-road’—doubtless as a charm of some sort. I once saw a short club of dark wood, with a carved head, said to have been used at one of these dances, which was sufficiently remarkable. It was polished with handling, as if it had seen service for many years, and the head at the top had a head-dress very like that on Egyptian mummy-cases, and a curiously long and narrow face with features which I should not like to call un-African, because I have occasionally seen natives with similar ones, but which was rather the type of the Wahima[18] than that of the average Bantu. For a wonder this stick had been offered for sale to the lady who showed it to me, by a boy who brought it to the house and either could not or would not—certainly he did not—give any account of how he came by it. He called it _tsanchima_, which is the name given to the maskers or mummers taking part in the dance already referred to in Chapter IV. The principal person at these Yao mysteries is a man called ‘the rattler of the tails’ (tails of wild cats and other animals are a great item in witch-doctors’ outfits, and believed to be possessed of all sorts of occult virtues), who communicates to the initiated all information about the customs of the tribe, and delivers moral lectures, as for instance, on unselfishness. A man who refuses to share his food with another is laughed at as ‘uninitiated’ (_mwisichana_). Before they go home, all the boys are given new names; and henceforth it is a deadly insult to address one by his childish appellation. When they go home, they are promoted to sleep _m’bwalo_, with the other unmarried men, and continue to do so till they marry and set up a house or houses of their own.