386 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Oct. 



vation. The slave-trade is the gigantic evil which meets us at 

 every step in the country. We cannot move through any part 

 without meeting captured men and women, bound, and sometimes 

 gagged; so no good can be done if this crying evil is not 

 grappled with. The good bishop had some 200 people entirely 

 at his disposal, and would soon have presented to the country 

 an example of a free community, supported by its own industry, 

 where fair dealing could be met, which undoubtedly would have 

 created immense influence; for wherever the English name is known 

 it is associated with freedom and fliir play. Some seem to take a 

 pleasure in running down their fellow-countrymen ; but the longer 

 I live, I like them the better. They carry with them some sense 

 of law and justice, and a spirit of kindliness ; and were I in a 

 difficulty, I should prefer going to an Englishman rather than to 

 any other for aid. And as for Englishwomen, they do, undoubt- 

 edly, make the best wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters in the 

 world. It is this conviction that makes me, in my desire to see 

 slavery abolished, and human happiness promoted, ardently wish 

 to have some of our countrywomen transplanted to a region where 

 they would both give and receive benefit, where every decent 

 Christian Englishman, whether churchman or dissenter, learned 

 or unlearned, liberal or bigoted, would certainly become a bles- 

 sing by introducing a better system than that which has pre- 

 vailed for ages. We conducted Bishop Mackenize and party up 

 to the highlands, and after spending three or four days with them, 

 returned, and never had any more connection with the conduct of 

 that mission. We carried a boat past Murchison's Cataracts. 

 By these the river descends at different leaps of great beauty, 1,200 

 feet in a distance of about 40 miles. Above that we have sixty 

 miles of fine deep rivers, flowing placidly out of Lake Nyassa. 

 As we sailed into this fine freshwater lake, we were naturally 

 anxious to know its depth — ten, twelve, twenty, thirty fathoms — 

 then no bottom with all our line ; and John Neill, our sailor, at 

 last pronounced it fit for the Great Eastern to sail in. We touched 

 the bottom in a bay with a line of 100 fathoms, and a mile out 

 could find no bottom at 116 fathoms. It contains plenty of fish, 

 and great numbers of natives daily engage in catching them with 

 nets, hooks, spears, torches, and poison. The water remains at 72°, 

 and the crocodiles having plenty of fish to eat rarely attack men. 

 It is from fifty to sixty miles broad, and we saw at least 225 miles of 

 its length. As seen from the lake, it seems surrounded by moun- 



