NYASALAND AND LOWER ZAMBESI 137 



Herald, thirty miles farther on, is certainly 

 better suited to Asiatics than to men with white 

 skins. Both places are veritable burning fiery 

 furnaces during the greater part of the year. 

 Port Herald must indeed be accounted one of 

 the warmest places on earth. One hundred and 

 eighteen in the shade or more has been known at 

 this, the most southerly station of the Colony, 

 and needless to state, officials of the Protectorate 

 ordered to Port Herald experience some of the 

 feelings of the Nihilist banished to Siberia. But 

 Britain has assumed the white man's burden 

 here, and she must not grumble if some of her 

 sons get scorched and fever-ridden. At Chiromo 

 the river is crossed by a bridge 420 feet long 

 and founded on screw piles, and at Port Herald 

 I said good-bye to the Shire Highlands Railway, 

 and, embarking on a little house-boat with a 

 crew of ten boys, set off down the river. 



Where there were a few inches of water, my 

 dusky sailors pontooned with long bamboo poles, 

 and where there was little or practically no 

 water, they got into the bed of the Shire and 

 pushed and pulled the house-boat over the sands. 

 Ere long darkness came on, and then a tremen- 

 dous thunder-storm and a little rain. The air 

 felt like molten metal, and as the brilliant light- 

 ning flashed over the troubled but shallow waters 

 of the river, and the native villages on the banks, 

 I began to appreciate ^some of the transport 

 difficulties of Nyasaland at their true worth. 

 Until daylight my boys pontooned and tugged, 

 their lusty river chants making weird music in 

 the wild night. 



By dint of much punting, pulling and pushing, 

 I reached N'Temia the next day, where I found 

 the Scorpion, stern-wheeler, and the oldest 



