When the husband is at home, he helps in the gardens, cuts grass for thatching, executes repairs generally on huts and fences, makes the grain mortar (cut with an adze out of a tree-trunk), spins and weaves (where this is still done), sews his wife’s calico, and makes mats and baskets. On the Lake and River many are engaged all day in fishing, and some in making canoes; the fishing by hand-nets or traps is also done by women. Sometimes he accompanies his wife to the Bush for firewood, and has been much reprobated for carrying nothing but his weapons while she is heavily loaded. But this leaves out of account the ever-present possibility of attack by raiders or wild animals—of course now rapidly becoming a matter of tradition. Still, no longer ago than 1894, I saw men patrolling the gardens with spear and shield, while their wives gathered the millet—in very real danger of being carried off by the Machinga. The wife, as time goes on, is helped by the junior wives, and in due course by her daughters, sometimes also by slaves, men and women. The pounding of the grain is about the heaviest work; the maize is first husked, then the grain is stripped off the cobs with the fingers, and put into the mortar for the first rough pounding. It is then taken out and winnowed by being shaken in a flat basket, and after being separated from the bran (which is given to goats, fowls, and pigeons, or used to make coarse porridge in time of scarcity), pounded over again, sifting out the coarser particles after each pounding, till at last it is fine and white like flour. Millet is usually, when brought in from the garden, spread out on mats to dry in the sun, and then beaten with thin sticks to separate it from the husk. It is pounded with a little water, the bran sifted out, the meal washed and partly dried, and finally ground fine between two stones.