One of these oddly marked ladies was busily engaged in building a granary on a rock. She first lays a circular foundation of mud, into which she puts sticks. On to these she plasters mud until the funnel-shaped thing is about three feet high. A hole is left near the top for inserting and extracting the grain, and it is then thatched with grass; and it effectually keeps out the many rats and mice which swarm in these parts. The costume of these natives is extremely limited. A man is content with two cat-skins, one in front and one behind, though the latter is not always de rigueur. The women wear leathern aprons and girdles, tied so tightly as almost to cut them in two, and made of several long strips of leather, like boot-laces fastened together. On to these they hang all the necessaries of their primitive life. At present old cartridge cases are the fashion for holding snuff, or decorated reeds, or wooden cases. Then they have a few decorated bone ornaments, evidently of a mystic character; a skin-scraper or two with which to perform their toilette, which articles are of the form and shape of the strigil known to us from classical times, and the ends of the boot-laces are elegantly finished off with brass or copper beads. The needle, too, is a feature seldom absent from the man’s neck and girdle, being a sharp-pointed bit of iron or brass with which they pierce the skins and fasten them together with threads of bark; these needles are fitted into a wooden case, which the more fanciful decorate with bands of brass wire. At M’lala too we saw the blind witch-doctor of the village, dressed in all his savage toggery. Small gourds with seeds inside to rattle were tied to his calves. These are the fruit of the Oncoba spinosa. A buck’s horn with a chain was hung round his neck, with which he made a hideous noise. Odd chains of beads decorated his neck, made out of the pods of the Acacia litakunensis, and his arms and legs were a mass of brass bracelets and anklets; and his hair resplendent with feathers completed the fantastic appearance of this poor blind man, who danced before us unceasingly, and made such hideous noises that we were obliged to give him some beads and ask him to stop.