some of them have perforated bosses, which serve the purpose of handles. All of them are provided with carved lids.
The variety of wooden vessels is as large as that of the earthenware, and their shapes quite as diversified. The dishes used for minced meats are good specimens of their kind, and exhibit some of the best carving of the Mabundas. As a general rule wooden pots are either conical or cylindrical in shape, rounded inside at the bottom, and are used for holding meal, beans, small fruits, and beer. As an intermediate production between the pots and the dishes, there are bowls with lips or spouts.
Wooden dishes are either oval or round, those to which I have just alluded are oval, and are hollowed into the form of a boat, and are repeatedly to be seen with a horizontal rim of fretwork; they are perfectly black, and without handles. Except in the houses of the upper classes they are rarely to be met with, and the most elaborately worked of any that I saw belonged to the king; but although all the oval dishes are large, I noticed a good many amongst the Matabele that were double or treble the size of any of Sepopo’s; all of them had handles at the end, and they were usually kept for serving heavy joints to a number of guests. Not unfrequently they are ornamented with a kind of arabesque carving, raised about half an inch above the surface, a mode of decorating their work in which I believe that the Mashonas carry off the palm.
Of round dishes there are a good many varieties; all of them appeared to have bosses projecting more or less, to serve as handles, and they were nearly
