368 "lake of mud." 



the fish cold, and they would not bite." Many gardens of 

 maize, pumpkins and tobacco fringed the marshy banks, be- 

 longing to natives of the hills, who come down in the dry 

 season, and raise a crop on parts at other times flooded. While 

 the croj)s are growing, large quantities of fish are caught, 

 chiefly Clarias oosperms and Mugil Africanus; they are dried 

 for sale or for future consumption. 



Farther up, they passed a deep stream about thirty yards 

 wide, flowing in from a body of open water several miles broad. 

 Numbers of men were busy at different parts of it, filling their 

 canoes with the lotus root, called Nyika, which, when boiled or 

 roasted, resembles our chestnuts, and is extensively used in 

 Africa as food. Out of this lagoon, and by this stream, the 

 chief part of the duckweed of the Shire flows. The lagoon 

 itself is called Nyanja ea Motope (Lake of Mud). It is also 

 named Nyanja Pangono (Little Lake), while the elephant 

 marsh goes by the name of Nyanja Mukulu (Great Lake).^ It 

 is evident from the shore line still to be observed on the adja- 

 cent hills, that in ancient times these were really lakes, and the 

 traditional names thus preserved are only another evidence of 

 the general desiccation which Africa has undergone. No one 

 would believe that beyond these little and great Nyanjas Por- 

 tuguese geographical knowledge never extended. But the 

 Viscount Sa da Bandeira, in an official letter to the Governor- 

 General of Mozambique, in his patriotic anxiety to prove that 

 Dr. Livingstone did not discover Lake Nyassa, quotes as the 

 only information the ancient archives of Lisbon can disclose, 

 that the people of Senna held commercial intercourse with the 

 people on Morambala, and of course, as he avers, must have 

 sailed into the little and great marshes or Nyanjas referred to 

 above. No wonder that assumption exhibiting at once so much 

 falseness and ignorance was rather a strain on the longsuffering 

 of the man who had so patiently overcome the tremendous 

 obstacles of distance and dangers in bringing the hidden regions 

 to the knowledge of the civilized world. 



The channel continued quite good, but the little steamer, 

 which they had long before found to be a grand humbug, gave 

 them such an amount of trouble, and consumed such quantities 

 of wood, that their advance was hardly easier than it would 



