484 NEW COUESE OF MAECH. Chap. XXIV. 



Our object now was to get away to the N.N.W., 

 proceed parallel with Lake Nyassa, but at a considerable 

 distance west of it, and thus pass by the Mazitu or Zulus 

 near its northern end without contact — ascertain whether any 

 large river flowed into the Lake from the west — visit Lake 

 Moelo, if time permitted, and collect information about the 

 trade on the great slave route, which crosses the Lake at 

 its southern end, and at Tsenga and Kota-kota. The 

 Makololo were eager to travel fast, because they wanted 

 to be back in time to hoe their fields before the rains, 

 and also because their wives needed looking after. Indeed 

 Masiko had already been obliged to go back and settle 

 some difference, of which a report was brought by other 

 wives who followed their husbands about twenty miles 

 with goodly supplies of beer and meal. Masiko went off 

 in a fury ; nothing less than burning the offenders' houses 

 would satisfy him; but a joke about the inevitable fate of 

 polygamists, and our inability to manage more than one 

 wife, and sometimes not even her, with a walk of a good 

 many miles in the hot sun, mollified him so much, that a 

 week afterwards he followed and caught us up without having 

 used any weapon more dangerous than his tongue. 



In going in the first instance N.E. from the uppermost 

 Cataract, we followed in a measure the great bend of the river 

 towards the foot of Mount Zomba. Here we had a view of 

 its most imposing side, the west, with the plateau some 3000 

 feet high, stretching away to its south, and Mounts Chirad- 

 zuru and Mochiru towering aloft to the sky. From that 

 goodly highland station, it was once hoped by the noble 

 Mackenzie, who, for largeness of heart and loving disposition, 

 really deserved to be called the " Bishop of Central Africa," 

 that light and liberty would spread to all the interior. 

 We still think it may be a centre for civilizing influences ; 



