ople other than respectable, and it costs little.

We came close to the foot of several squarish mountains, having
perpendicular sides. One, called "Ulazo pa Malungo," is used by the
people, whose villages cluster round its base as a storehouse for
grain. Large granaries stand on its top, containing food to be used in
case of war. A large cow is kept up there, which is supposed capable
of knowing and letting the owners know when war is coming.[30] There
is a path up, but it was not visible to us. The people are all
Kanthunda, or climbers, not Maravi. Kimsusa said that he was the only
Maravi chief, but this I took to be an ebullition of beer bragging:
the natives up here, however, confirm this, and assert that they are
not Maravi, who are known by having markings down the side of the
face.

We spent the night at a Kanthunda village on the western side of a
mountain called Phunze (the _h_ being an aspirate only). Many villages
are planted round its base, but in front, that is, westwards, we have
plains, and there the villages are as numerous: mostly they are within
half a mile of each other, and few are a mile from other hamlets. Each
village has a clump of trees around it: this is partly for shade and
partly for privacy from motives of decency. The heat of the sun causes
the effluvia to exhale quickly, so they are seldom offensive. The rest
of the country, where not cultivated, is covered with grass, the
seed-stalks about knee deep. It is gently undulating, lying in low
waves, stretching N.E. and S.W. The space between each wave is usually
occupied by a boggy spot or watercourse, which in some cases is filled
with pools with trickling rills between. All the people are engaged
at present in making mounds six or eight feet square, and from two to
three feet high. The sods in places not before hoed are separated from
the soil beneath and collected into flattened heaps, the grass
undermost; when dried, fire is applied and slow combustion goes on,
most of the products of the burning being retained in the ground, much
of the soil is incinerated. The final preparation is effected by the
men digging up the subsoil round the mound, passing each hoeful into
the left hand, where it pulverizes, and is then thrown on to the heap.
It is thus virgin soil on the top of the ashes and burned ground of
the original heap, very clear of weeds. At present many mounds have
beans and maize about four inches high. Holes, a foot in diameter and