Outside Kunzi’s kraal is a fine iron smelting furnace, decorated with the breast and furrow pattern, and with a large quantity of newly made blow-pipes of dried mud, and decorated with a spiral pattern, lying in heaps outside. We watched the process here at our leisure. First they crush the ore obtained from the neighbouring mountains, which has a large quantity of manganese in it, and spread it on the rocks; the forge is heated with charcoal and kindled by two men with four bellows, each worked by one hand; the nozzles are inserted into the blow-pipes, and the blow-pipes into the charcoal; they press the bellows with their hands by means of a wooden handle, and work with great vigour, singing and perspiring freely as they work. Around the furnace is a hedge of tall grass, and at night time, when the ore is cool, they remove it from the furnace and afterwards weld it into the required shapes with stone hammers. This time-honoured handicraft interested us much, mentioned as it is by Dos Santos three hundred years ago, and by the Arabian writers close upon a thousand years ago, as a speciality of the country. One of the neighbouring kraals is ruled over by Kunzi’s brother Gwadeli, who, in his anxiety to be hospitable, gave us warm beer to drink, which nearly had the effect of an emetic. A rock rises out of the centre of this kraal, where is an induna’s grave walled into the rock, with four pots of beer before it, and hedged off by a rope of bark. The following morning we watched with some interest a trader from Fort Salisbury selling goods to the natives. Beads, gunpowder, and salt were the favourite commodities he had to offer, in return for which he rapidly acquired a fine lot of pumpkins, maize, potatoes, and other vegetables; whilst for blankets and rifles he obtained cattle which I am sure would bring him in a handsome profit when he reached the capital. We ourselves got a few interesting things at Kunzi’s, including a quill with gold in it which the natives had found in the ’Nyagowe River, and a dexterously wrought garment for a young lady, about half the size of a freemason’s apron; it is made of bark fibre, with geometrical patterns of excellent design worked into it, a species of textile with which we were to become better acquainted in ’Mtoko’s country. Here, too, we saw sticks set up in the ground with the bark peeled off and bound round the top—a sort of fetich, which they call their Maklosi or luck sign. They set these things up whenever they come to a new country; also, on similar occasions, they kneel before a tree and burn snuff, saying as they do so: ‘Muali!’ (the native name for God) ‘we have brought knives, give us meat.’ Then they do the same at another tree, asking the same petition for their children.