C40 GEOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION. Chap. XXXI. 



killed four elephants in the course of two months after my 

 departure. 



On the day of my arrival I was visited by all the gentlemen of 

 the village, both white and coloured, 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 Kansala. The father of one of the 

 rebels who had been fighting against them, had been a great 

 traveller to the south-west, and had even heard of our visit to 

 Lake Ngami ; 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 An- 

 gola. The fact that sometimes rivers were seen to flow like this 

 towards the centre of the country, led geographers to the supposi- 

 tion 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 45 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 Nyanja 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 Murom- 

 bola, which is inhabited by people who have much cattle. He 

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

 36 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 country all round was 

 composed of level plains covered with grass, and, indeed, in going 

 thither they travelled seven or eight days without wood, and cooked 

 their food with grass and stalks of native corn alone. The people 

 sold their cattle at a very cheap rate. From the southern ex- 

 tremity of the lake, two rivers issue forth : one, named after itself, 

 the Nyanja, winch passes into the sea on the east coast under 

 another name ; and the Shire, which flows into the Zambesi, a 



