This custom of drying fish, flesh, and fruits, on stages over slow fires, is practised very generally: the use of salt for preservation is unknown.

Besides stages for drying, the Makonde use them about six feet high for sleeping on instead of the damp ground: a fire beneath helps to keep off the mosquitoes, and they are used by day as convenient resting-places and for observation.
Pottery seems to have been known to the Africans from the remotest times, for fragments are found everywhere, even among the oldest fossil bones in the country.

Their pots for cooking, holding water and beer, are made by the women, and the form is preserved by the eye alone, for no sort of machine is ever used.

A foundation or bottom is first laid, and a piece of bone or bamboo used to scrape the clay or to smooth over the pieces which are added to increase the roundness; the vessel is then left a night: the next morning a piece is added to the rim--as the air is dry several rounds may be added--and all is then carefully smoothed off; afterwards it is thoroughly sun-dried.

A light fire of dried cow-dung, or corn-stalks, or straw, and grass with twigs, is made in a hole in the ground for the final baking.