"THE LAKES COMPANY" 283 



" The Lakes Company," as this useful commercial 

 body is called for short, has had an interesting, 

 indeed an almost romantic career. After the es- 

 tablishment in 1876 of the Church of Scotland 

 Mission, which still labours in the Shird Highlands, 

 and is known throughout the country as the 

 " Blantyre Mission" from the circumstance that 

 its headquarters are located at that place, it was 

 soon found essential by its supporters in Scotland 

 to incorporate an association to assist it by con- 

 structing roads, providing trade goods, provisions, 

 and necessaries, and by relieving it, in so far as 

 was possible, of the preoccupations attendant upon 

 business details. As a result, the original African 

 JLakes Company sprang into being, and that body 

 has numbered among its employes several men of 

 great strength of character and resource, whose 

 assistance to the administration of the country, 

 which was shortly afterwards undertaken by the 

 British Government, has on several occasions of 

 stress and crisis been of great value, and proved 

 a powerful factor in the subjugation and pacification 

 of the tribes of Nyasaland. From these small 

 beginnings, therefore, there grew up the present 

 well-organised, far-reaching corporation, with its 

 many comfortable^ — I had almost vsrritten palatial — 

 river and lake steamers, which have revolutionised 

 transport on the inland waterways, its dozens of 

 barges and lighters, its trading depots all over 

 South Central Africa, and the many conveniences 

 with which foresight and prudent management 

 have enabled it to endow that rising country. 



Still, there is no doubt, when regard is had to 



