90 LIVINGSTONE'S LAST JOURNALS. [Chap. IV. 



where, as in the interior, they have no certainty of re- 

 maining any length of time in one spot. 



5th August. — We left Miule, and commenced onr march 

 towards Lake Nyassa, and slept at the last of the streams 

 that flow to the Loendi. In Mataka's vicinity, N.E., there 

 is a perfect brush of streams flowing to that river : one 

 forms a lake in its course, and the sources of the Rovmna 

 lie in the same region. After leaving Mataka's we crossed 

 a good-sized one flowing to Loendi, and, the day after 

 leaving Pezimba's, another going to the Chiringa or Loch- 

 iringa, which is a tributary of the Rovuma. 



6th August. — We passed two cairns this morning at the 

 beginning of the very sensible descent to the Lake. They 

 are very common in all this Southern Africa in the passes 

 of the mountains, and are meant to mark divisions of 

 countries, perhaps burial-places, but the Waiyau who accom- 

 panied us thought that they were merely heaps of stone 

 collected by some one making a garden. The cairns were 

 placed just about the spot where the blue waters of Nyassa 

 first came fairly into view. 



We now came upon a stream, the Misinje, flowing into 

 the Lake, and we crossed it five times ; it was about twenty 

 yards wide, and thigh deep. We made but short stages 

 when we got on the lower plateau, for the people had great 

 abundance of food, and gave large presents of it if we rested. 

 One man gave four fowls, three large baskets of maize, 

 pumpkins, eland's fat — a fine male, as seen by his horns, — and 

 pressed us to stay, that he might see our curiosities as well 

 as others. He said that at one day's distance south of him 

 all sorts of animals, as buffaloes, elands, elephants, hippopo- 

 tami, and antelopes, could be shot. 



Sfli August. — We came to the Lake at the confluence 

 of the Misinje, and felt grateful to That Hand which had 

 protected us thus far on our journey. It was as if I had 

 come back to an old home I never expected again to see ; 



