The Mashonas are very clever workmen in wood and iron, and make very handsome bowls, snuff-boxes, spoons, daggers, assagais, and spears, which they ornament with carvings. Many of their figures so much resemble ancient Egyptians that it is difficult to distinguish any difference. Quaint musical instruments show great skill, having keys similar to a piano, bass and treble producing very sweet sounds. They make all their iron picks for preparing the ground for the seed. Blankets they make from the wild cotton, which they dye brown; also bags for holding milk or water of the bark of the baobab and other trees. Their bows and arrows are beautifully made. They are very clever in cutting out from a block of wood little stools, which are used for pillows by the young dandies, to preserve their hair from touching the ground when sleeping. The fashion with the young men is to allow their woolly hair to grow quite long, which they increase in length by tying it up with red bark from the trees (mimosa is preferred), and anoint it with fat. The hair is so arranged that it forms ridges from the front to the back of the head. When sufficiently long, that is about a foot, it is dressed with fat mixed with charcoal, and then divided in the centre, that the curls may fall down on each side, with a band round the head to keep the curls in their place, and to preserve them from dirt or dust. Each dandy carries with him one of these wooden neck-pillows, which are in most cases elaborately carved, and are much prized. Many of their customs are similar to those we see in Egyptian paintings of those people, and when they are sitting down, their figures, face, and features, and mode of dress are in every way Egyptian. Their villages are almost always built on the most inaccessible parts of the mountain ridges, to be safe from any sudden attack of the Matabele warriors. Some of them are perched on the top of masses of granite rocks, so that the people themselves have difficulty to reach them. A pole or ox-reim is used to climb up. Other rocks are used to stow away their corn and food. The tsetse-fly is common nearly all over the country, but there are certain districts clear of them. I have been told by the natives that cattle born in the country are free from any ill-effect of the bite. The Mashona huts are very well-made, most of them with circular roofs. The Matabele build their huts very similar to the Bechuanas, but the Zulus of Natal have round roofs fenced in with a high stick fence, and kept very neat and clean. The Mashonas are a well-made people, and some of the women very good-looking when young, but after twenty they begin to show age. A man may have as many wives as he can buy, but few men have large families.