Fort Jameson to Nawalia 



The African Lakes Company, who had fitted us 

 out at Blantyre, have here one of their principal 

 branches, including a bank, and do a consider- 

 able trade. The usual trade route from this part of 

 North- East Rhodesia, both for export and import, 

 is through Portuguese territory to Tete on the 

 Zambesi, a disagreeable, waterless march of some 

 twenty days, and thence by steamer to Chinde. 

 This route is closed for three months or so in the 

 year, owing to the stoppage of navigation for want 

 of water. It was closed at the time of our arrival, 

 and would not, we were told, re-open before 

 January, when the heavy rains would have refilled 

 the river. Even so, however, our Nyasaland heads, 

 which we left at Fort Jameson in October for 

 despatch to England, reached Messrs. Rowland 

 Ward in safety, and were mounted and on the walls 

 of our rooms at home before the heads we left at 

 the railhead at Broken Hill on the 9th of December 

 reached England. 



Saturday was of necessity devoted to business. 

 Our first duty was to pay off our Nyasaland boys, 

 the majority of whom had elected to return to their 

 homes. I was sorry to part with my willing 

 machilla team: we had always been on the best of 

 terms. A tramp through North- East Rhodesia 

 appears, however, to be anything but an enticing 

 prospect to a Nyasaland native; it is to him a 

 foreign country, with a strange language, a strange 

 climate and strange diseases, notably the kufu bug 

 fever, which is unknown in the Zomba and Blantyre 

 districts. He also has the idea that he will not get 



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