The blacksmith’s forge stood on one side of this _bwalo_, and very often mats were spread at the foot of the tree for men to sit in the shade. Here one sees the rows of holes for the _mchombwa_ game scooped in the ground; here, too, dances are held, whether ceremonial or merely for amusement, and cases are tried, or in native idiom ‘the _mlandu_ talked.’ The ground is swept every day by a man whose business it is to look after it, and who is called ‘the master of the _bwalo_.’ He also receives strangers (the etiquette is for them to go and sit down in the _bwalo_ as soon as they arrive), and informs the village chief that they have come. He used to receive as his perquisite the heads of all goats killed in the village. Sometimes there is a shed in the middle of the _bwalo_, known as the ‘strangers’ house,’ where they eat and sleep during their stay; the villages west of Lake Nyasa have structures exactly like band-stands for this purpose. Natives are sometimes thought not to have much family affection, because they are not as a rule very demonstrative in words, but this is a mistake. I remember the touching distress of an old man who thought his wife had been carried off by the Machinga and would have to drudge at pounding corn for strangers in her old age. Fortunately she turned up safe and sound, along with some other women who had been hiding in the bush. A woman who lived about twelve miles from Blantyre, hearing that her son, a boarder at the Mission, was ill, walked in and carried him home on her back—a big lad of thirteen or fourteen. ‘The boy is the light of the mother’s eye. When he goes off on a journey she awaits his return anxiously; sometimes, it may be, making a vow not to shave her head till he returns; on his return she goes through a wild dance of joy, often casting white ash or flour over herself and making a shrill noise, _lululuta_. She clasps her child round the body, sometimes round the neck, herself kneeling; she sees nothing of onlookers ... then she must be poor indeed if she cannot cook porridge enough for him and a friend or two.’ The elasticity which makes those carried into slavery—especially young people—forget their troubles is sometimes thought to be a proof of callousness; but the eagerness with which they will seize any chance of returning home after years of separation, or follow up any clue to a lost relation, is sufficient disproof. There is a pathetic belief in some parts that slaves going to the coast find a plant in the hills, which they eat ‘to make them forget the friends of their youth,’ lest their grief should be too great. It loses its efficacy as soon as anything happens to remind them of home, or they get a chance of returning. The often-made assertion that parents will sell their children into slavery has very little foundation, as far as Anyanja and Yaos are concerned. This only happens in very exceptional cases: in the extremity of famine