Chap. V. PAMALOMBE LAKELET. 121 



out 011 the ground with the meal, and all cooking and 

 water pots are broken, as being of no further use. Both men 

 and women wear signs of mourning for their dead relatives. 

 These consist of narrow strips of the palm-leaf wound round 

 the head, the^ arms, legs, neck, and breasts, and worn till 

 they drop off from decay. They believe in the existence of a 

 Supreme Being, called Mpambe, and also Morungo, and in a 

 future state. " We live only a few days here," said old Chin- 

 sunse, "but we live again after death : we do not know where, 

 or in what condition, or with what companions, for the dead 

 never return to tell us. Sometimes the dead do come back, 

 and appear to us in dreams ; but they never speak nor tell us 

 where they have gone, nor how they fare." 

 ■ Our path followed the Shire above the Cataracts, which is 

 now a broad deep river, with but little current. It expands in 

 one place into a lakelet, called Pamalombe, full of fine fish, and 

 ten or twelve miles long by five or six in breadth. Its banks 

 are low, and a dense wall of papyrus encircles it. On its western 

 shore rises a range of hills running north. On reaching the 

 village of the Chief Muana-Moesi, and about a day's march 

 distant from Nyassa, we were told that no lake had ever been 

 heard of there ; that the River Shire stretched on as we saw 

 it now to a distance of " two months," and then came out from 

 between perpendicular rocks, which towered almost to the skies. 

 Our men looked blank at this piece of news, and said, " Let 

 us go back to the ship, it is of no use trying to find the 

 lake." " We shall go and see those wonderful rocks at any 

 rate," said the Doctor. " And when you see them," replied 

 Masakasa, "you will just want to see something else." 

 "But there is a lake," rejoined Masakasa, "for all their 

 denying it, for it is down in a book." Masakasa, having 

 unbounded faith in whatever was in a book, went and scolded 



