that, at an altitude of over 1000 feet, it can never exert epidemic virulence.

Summing up what we know respecting the heat, the cold, and the diurnal variation of temperature in the Tropics, we come to the conclusion that it is impossible for any European nation to become acclimatised at once in any Tropical region; but we think that if the attempt be made step by step, generation by generation, it is not improbable that northern Europeans may become acclimatised in, say, 100 years, in Tropical India or Africa; and that if representatives of a nation were to endeavour to proceed gradually from a Temperate to a Tropical country, they might, in five or six generations, acclimatise themselves either to the north or to the south within 30 degrees of their original habitat.

In conclusion, it must be admitted that the permanent residence of Europeans in Tropical climates must be first attempted in those regions possessing a definite altitude—an altitude which will give them considerably less heat, less moisture, and a greater immunity from endemic diseases than low-lying plains.

AMONG THE MACHINGA PEOPLE.

BY R. S. HYNDE.

DOMASI, one of the stations of the Established Church of Scotland Mission, in British Central Africa, lies on the northern slope of Mount Zomba, having on the west Mount Malosa (usually represented as forming one mountain with Mount Zomba), and with Lake Chirwa (Shirwa) about fourteen miles to the east. Its exact latitude is 15° 18′ 4′′ S., and its longitude 35° 18′ 7′′ E.

The station being, as I have said, situated on the northern slope of Zomba, with Malosa on the west, while a spur of Malosa looks down on it from the north, and having two small hills on the north-east, lies at the south end of a small valley. It takes its name from the river Domasi, which flows past it at a distance of about half a mile to the north-east. The Domasi is a mountain stream which takes its rise from two feeders, one on Malosa, the other on Zomba, and flows down the valley between the two mountains, cutting its way between the spur of Malosa and one of the small hills already mentioned. After a tortuous course it eventually discharges itself into Lake Chirwa. During the first half of its course it has a very steep gradient and a rocky bed, over which it flows with great rapidity. It falls very low in the dry season, but rises considerably in the wet season: hence the difficulty of bridging it. This rapid rise and fall is characteristic of all the streams of the Shiré Highlands.

Mount Zomba, as is well known, is about 7000 feet high, and Malosa is of equal height. There is nothing remarkable about either mountain unless it be the warm spring on the eastern side of Malosa, in which, however, the water is small in volume and of low temperature, and has no peculiar taste. Very different are the Morambala springs, which I

visited on my way up. They are three in number, and the water is too hot to hold the hand in. They have a strongly sulphurous smell. The summits of both Mount Zomba and Mount Malosa have an undulating outline, the former being from six to seven miles long, and Malosa of similar extent. Livingstone, who considered them as one mountain, guessed them to be about sixteen miles long. Their sides, where they have not been denuded by the natives, are covered with trees up to the base of the cliffs which surround them on all sides, giving them some similarity to Table Mountain at the Cape. The top is chiefly covered with short tufted grass and clumps of trees.

The Mlungusi stream, a tributary of the Likangala, which discharges itself into Lake Chirwa, rises in a marsh on the top of Zomba, which, in the rainy season, becomes a pool. Most of the streams of any magnitude that rise on Zomba and Malosa are perennial. The valley of the Domasi is largely used by the natives for growing Indian corn, which flourishes best at a high latitude, while most of the millet and all the rice are grown on the plain at the foot of the mountains.

The whole country, except where it has been cleared for gardens, is covered with wood, which may be forty to fifty years old. Large parts are occupied by the Masuku tree, which bears an edible fruit, a heavy crop appearing once in two years. The natives have till lately been living on the sides of the mountain (owing to fear of marauding tribes), and consequently the largest clearances are to be found there. Owing to more settled conditions, they are now gradually descending to the plain. As they do not manure their gardens, but plant a new plot every few years, they destroy a large number of trees. The wood is on the whole not large, generally from a foot to a foot and a half in diameter.

The grass on the plain is long and coarse, and reeds crop up wherever the ground is marshy. Here Indian corn and millet are grown in large quantities, and rice to a smaller extent. The country on the whole is fertile, as may be seen from the variety of products cultivated by the natives. They are Indian corn, millet, rice, tobacco, cotton (of an inferior kind), sweet potatoes, a species of cucumber, water-melons, rubber, indigo (wild), pumpkins, yams, tomatoes, several varieties of beans, castoroil plant, groundnuts, sem-sem, Indian hemp, bananas, papaya. The following have been introduced-coffee (which fetches 112s. in the market), rubber, cinchona, sugar-cane, pine-apples, oranges, lemons, guavas, granadillas, pomegranates, Cape gooseberry, English potatoes, peas, and other European vegetables, all of which grow well. Of wild fruits found are the vine, fig, custard apple, and bramble, etc. Both the tobacco and the rice grown around Domasi are among the finest in the country. Tea has only lately been introduced, but appears to be doing well.

The year is divided into two seasons-a wet and a dry. The former lasts, roughly, five months, the latter seven. They are sometimes called respectively the hot and cold seasons. At Domasi the average temperature is about 80° F., and in the cold season about 70° F. The first rains usually fall in October. There is then a slight break till near the end of November. December, January, February, and March, are

usually very wet. April is the transition month from the wet to the dry season. From May till September it is usually very dry. The rainfall has not been measured at Domasi, owing to the want of a rain-gauge, but at Blantyre-fifty miles to the south-west-it has been recorded for some years. We hope to give at a future date a few of the results.

The tribe among whom we labour is a branch of the Ajawa or Yao race. The Yao or Ajawa may be described as a cross between a nomadic and an agricultural people. They consist of five branches:-the Makale branch, which is located to the north-east of Lake Nyasa; the Makata, who dwell about the middle of the east shore of the lake, at a place called Mwembe; the Masaninga, who reside under the chieftainship of Makanjila, towards the southern part of the eastern shore; the Machinga, now chiefly settled around Chikala Mountain, Malosa, and Zomba; and the Mangoche branch, who reside chiefly at Chirazulo and Soche, near Blantyre. They thus stretch under different names from near the lower Shiré to the sources of the Rovuma. Owing to their roving disposition small numbers of them are found in much more remote parts, and to the same cause must be ascribed the pretty fair uniformity of their language The Yao spoken at Zomba is easily understood at Mataka's town, though there are a few variations. In the laws and customs slight differences are noticeable, but they are comparatively small. Physically they are rather tall and well made, and have an erect carriage, which is specially characteristic of the women. No doubt it is a result of the universal practice of carrying things on the head.

As a people they are inclined to be haughty and intractable, but this is largely the result of their intercourse with the coast and to the large number of black traders to be found among them. In the Shiré Highlands, where this influence is now almost nil, they are quite tractable, take readily to work, and are among our best scholars in the schools.

On the other hand, it was the Mataka Yaos who murdered the two Portuguese in 1890, and who destroyed all Mr. Johnston's (of the Universities' Mission) property some years previously. It was the Masaninga Yaos who in 1888 stripped and robbed H.M. Acting Consul, Mr. Buchanan, and this same Mr. Johnston; but then they are so much contaminated by black Arab traders that this is little to be wondered at. Livingstone, before they were so affected by Arab influence, was invariably well treated by them, especially by the predecessor of the present chief Mataka. So much has their intercourse with the coast increased of late that Swahili is freely spoken at their capitals on Lake Nyasa.

The population is scattered round the hills, Chikala (about fourteen miles north-east of Zomba), Malosa, and Zomba, in small villages composed chiefly of related families. Sometimes a village consists of only five or six houses, more commonly twelve or twenty, and rarely above thirty. The chief's village at Domasi consists of more than a hundred houses, but that is an exceptional case. These villages occur at intervals of a quarter or half a mile. The chief of course is paramount, and settles all cases of importance, his subordinates settle minor cases in their own districts, while each headman decides petty cases in his own village. The chief's council is composed of experienced men, who stay at his

village and "wait at the council-yard," of the head-men of his neighbourhood, and, of course, the parties interested in each case.

The old chief, Malemya, used to be at the council-yard nearly every morning by six A.M. to hear cases, and usually sat till eleven or twelve o'clock. In the event of an important dispute the court-yard would be crowded, and, as each important speaker made his point, his associates or supporters would clap their hands in African fashion,1 and one special man would chant, often not ceasing even during a speech, in a nasal tone rising to a higher key while the clapping was going on. After each side had urged its case the chief's own men would take up the argument, and either one of them or the chief himself would give the final decision.

It requires a man of no ordinary ability to arbitrate in such cases as are brought before the council, for frequently they are of many years' standing, and the judge, not having any books to refer to, must learn and keep before his mind the history and ramifications of the dispute. In fact the chief is usually a man pre-eminently gifted, both physically, mentally, and, according to their light, morally too.

It frequently happens, however, when the chief does not give an impartial decision, that the offended party, having no higher court to appeal to, decamps bag and baggage to another chief, and as a chief's power consists in the number of his subjects, the loss of a man is a serious matter.

Domestic slavery is in full force among them, but slaves are usually well treated lest they, too, should run away to a neighbouring chief. By doing so they would not necessarily become free, but they would change masters, possibly for the better. Slaves intended for sale are of course treated in the usual way. They are put into slave-sticks, or otherwise confined, and sold to the first passing caravan. As Livingstone foretold, however, legitimate trade and facilities for work would, by supplying native wants, soon put an end to the practice; and so it has turned out. Wherever the missionaries or the traders have firmly established themselves it has gradually languished, and in such districts will soon be a thing altogether of the past.

The special hardship of domestic slavery lies of course in the fact that, if the master or some of his friends should get into difficulties, the slave, his wife, or his children, may be used to pay the fine, or one or more slaves may be exchanged for goods at the option of the owner. Formerly, perhaps five years ago, no less than two hundred people were disposed of to passing caravans in one year, in the Domasi district, many of them domestic slaves; but now this traffic is extinct, and the slaves merely change hands to a small extent in the country itself. It is a frequent custom also to sell offenders who merit the punishment of death, rather than kill them.

As a rule domestic slaves are well treated, and in outward appearance cannot be distinguished from the freemen. The freemen, however, show the pride of class, and one man boasted to me that his family had so much, so to speak, blue blood in their veins that "even when they were drunk" they never cast at each other the epithet of "slave."

1 By hollowing the hands and bringing them together longitudinally.

Descent is reckoned through the sister; hence the son does not inherit position or property, but the nephew, the son of the eldest sister. The tribe seems to be in the transition stage between the matriarchal and the patriarchal systems. Each person belongs to a clan, and is not allowed to marry into his own clan. Hence (to use Highland tribal names by way of illustration), if a Macgregor man marry a Stewart woman, the children are not Macgregors but Stewarts. Therefore, if a Macgregor is to succeed he must be the son of a sister of the late proprietor, for even although she marry a Campbell her children are Macgregors. Daughters, therefore, are a greater source of strength to a village than sons. The daughter never (in ordinary circumstances) leaves her mother's village. If a man wants to marry a woman, he sends a go-between to the girl's father to arrange matters. No payment is made. If the parents' consent is obtained, that is sufficient; the girl has often no voice in the matter. The fathers of the bride and bridegroom meet at the former's village, and a fowl is cooked and eaten, which act makes the contract legal. The bridegroom then builds a house at the bride's village, and, as soon as it is ready, without further ceremony they live together as husband and wife. Hence a man with five sons would not, unless his sons should marry slave-wives, have a single house added to his village, whereas if he had five daughters, under ordinary circumstances, the five men who married these daughters would each build a house at his village.

The chief duty of the son-in-law is to help to hoe his mother-in-law's garden. One end which (designedly or not I cannot say) is served by this plan is that the wife's relations see that she is well treated, and not, for instance, sold as a slave. It is quite evident that a man living at a distance might marry ten wives (polygamy is practised), and take them away to his distant home where he could quietly dispose of those he did not wish to keep. Slave-wives go to their husband's village.

So far as we have been able to find out there is no trace of marriage by capture, nor are wives sold, as is the case south of the Zambesi. The women have usually little choice, as they are often betrothed when quite young. If, by any chance, a grown-up girl should be free, she may have the opportunity of choosing a husband. Notwithstanding these facts women are in a very subordinate position, but are allowed a considerable amount of freedom. There is no marked trace of any taboo system, though there are indications which, on fuller investigation, might point in that direction. The division of each tribe into families or clans with distinctive names, and the prohibition against marriage between persons of the same clan, is analogous to the totem system.

In religion it is difficult to state their beliefs, not only because they are reticent on the subject, but also because of the haziness of their ideas. They worship the spirits of their ancestors, especially chiefs and headmen. For the people generally there are burial-grounds away in the bush, but chiefs and influential headmen are buried in the centre of the village, and on certain occasions offerings of flour and beer are placed on the graves, and sometimes the spirits are addressed in exactly the same way as the living persons would be.