In a small village, the men and boys all eat together, in the _Bwalo_. The women of the several families take it in turns to prepare the food. The porridge, when not eaten out of the pot, is ladled out into a wooden platter or a flat basket, which is set down on the mat on which the men are sitting, with the _ndiwo_ in a pot or bowl beside it; and they squat round and eat from the dish with their fingers, which they are careful to wash before and after. The women and little girls eat by themselves either in a different place or later; the mother, or hostess, helps every one else, putting their portions by hand into their plates, which may be small flat baskets, or shallow bowls of wood or earthenware. A mouthful is scraped off with the forefinger, rolled into the palm and eaten; being first, if the _ndiwo_ is boiled fowl or the like, dipped in the gravy. No spoons are used except the large wooden ladles, often neatly carved, which serve to remove the porridge from the pot. On the Lake, shells are sometimes used for the same purpose. Salt is put into the food when cooking, if it is to be had at all; it is greatly valued because rather scarce, especially in the western part of the Upper Shiré district, where men, women, and children suffered from an insufficiently nutritious diet and consequent poorness of blood. One result of this was a great craving for salt; they gladly accepted a few spoonfuls as payment for work or provisions brought for sale; another was the formation of a virulent ulcer every time a person stubbed a toe or barked a shin. The need for salt is not the same among people who, like the Zulus, have plenty of fresh meat and milk. Language affords a curious corroboration of this: there is no native Zulu word for salt—they call it _usaoti_, from the Dutch _zout_. There are genuine Bantu words for it in Yao, Nyanja, and all the neighbouring languages. The method of making salt will be described in treating of Industries. I do not know of any other condiment, strictly so called, used by natives, except Chile peppers, which are common on the River and near the Portuguese settlements, but rare up-country. They are called _sabola_, which is the Portuguese _cebola_, ‘an onion.’ The word is used in its proper sense as well, and probably, to the native mind, conveys the idea of ‘flavouring’ simply. The only sort of bread known to the natives of this part of Africa is a kind of roll called _mkate_, made of maize-flour, bananas, and honey. I have neither seen nor eaten it, but it appears to be either baked by being put on the fire, in a pot without water, or rolled in leaves and dried in the sun.