GEOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION 417 



I shall ever remember his kindness with deep gratitude 

 He has written me, since my arrival in England, that my 

 men had killed four elephants in the course of two months 

 after my departure. 



On the day of my arrival I was visited by all the gentle- 

 men of the village, both white and colored, including the 

 padre. Not one of them had any idea as to where the 

 source of the Zambesi lay. They sent for the best-travelled 

 natives; but none of them knew the river even as far as 

 Ivansala. The father of one of the rebels who had been 

 fighting against them had been a great traveller to the 

 southwest, and had even heard of our visit to Lake N garni ; 

 but he was equally ignorant with all the others that the 

 Zambesi flowed in the centre of the country. They had, 

 however, more knowledge of the country to the north of 

 Tete than I had. One man, who had gone to Cazembe 

 with Major Monteiro, stated that he had seen the Luapura 

 or Loapula flowing past the town of that chieftain into the 

 Luameji or Leeambye, but imagined that it found its way, 

 somehow or other, into Angola. The fact that sometimes 

 rivers were seen to flow like this toward the centre of the 

 country led geographers to the supposition that Inner 

 Africa was composed of elevated sandy plains, into which 

 rivers ran and were lost. One of the gentlemen present, 

 Senhor Candido, had visited a lake forty -five days to the 

 N.N.W. of Tete, which is probably the Lake Maravi of 

 geographers, as in going thither they pass through the 

 people of that name. The inhabitants of its southern coast 

 are named Shiva, those on the north, Mujao; and they call 

 the lake ISTyanja or Nyanje, which simply means a large 

 water, or bed of a large river. A high mountain stands 

 in the middle of it, called Murombo or Murombola, which 

 is inhabited by people who have much cattle. He stated 

 that he crossed the Nyanja at a narrow part, and was 

 thirty-six hours in the passage. The canoes were punted 

 the whole way, and, if we take the rate about two miles 

 per hour, it may be sixty or seventy miles in breadth The 

 2B 



