332 LIFE OF DA VI D LIVINGSTONE, LL.D. 



the various chiefs and headmen, with whom, on previous occasions, they had 

 had to bargain for being transferred across the streams. The course of the 

 river was followed closely so as to avail themselves of the still reaches between 

 the rapids for sailing, and when they had passed the last of them, they 

 launched their boat for good on the Shire. The upper portion of the river is so 

 broad and deep that it is roughly spoken of by the natives as a portion of the 

 lake. At one point in the upper reaches of the river Lake Shirwa is only a 

 day's journey distant ; and within a recent period they must have been con- 

 nected. The native land party which they had sent forward to join them 

 above the rapids, passed thousands of Manganja living in temporary huts, who 

 had been compelled to fly before the bloodthirsty Ajawa. 



The following is a singular instance of tenacity of life in a native woman 

 on the Shire, who had been wounded in an attack by the Ajawa : — 



" In the afternoon a canoe came floating down empty, and shortly after 

 a woman was seen swimming near the other side, which was about two 

 hundred yards distant from us. Our native crew manned the boat and 

 rescued her ; when brought on board, she was found to have an arrow-head, 

 eight or ten inches long in her back, below the ribs, and slanting up through 

 the diaphragm and left lung towards the heart — she had been shot from 

 behind when stooping. Air was coming out of the wound, and, there being 

 but an inch of the barbed arrow-head visible, it was thought better not to run 

 the risk of her dying under the operation necessary for its removal ; so we 

 carried her up to her own hut. One of her relatives was less scrupulous, for 

 he cut the arrow and part of the lung. Mr. Young sent her occasionally 

 portions of native corn, and strange to say, found that she not only became 

 well, but stout." 



The cooler temperature on the broad and deep waters of the lake was very 

 enjoyable after the stifling heat on the river, which in its upper reaches is 

 enclosed in an almost impenetrable belt of papyrus and other water plants; 

 but they were very nearly shipwrecked in a tremendous storm which burst 

 upon them almost without warning. " The waves most dreaded came rolling 

 on in threes, with their crests driven into spray, streaming behind them. . . 

 Had one of these white-named seas struck our frail bark, nothing could 

 have saved us, for they came on with resistless fury ; seaward, in shore, and 

 on either side of us, they broke in foam, but we escaped. . . . We had to 

 beach the boat every night to save her from being swamped at anchor ; did 

 we not believe the gales to be peculiar to one season of the year, we would call 

 Nyassa the Lake of Storms." 



At no place in Africa had Dr. Livingstone found the population so dense 

 as on the shores of Nyassa. In some parts there was almost one unbroken 

 succession of villages, and the inhabitants lined the shores of every bay, look- 

 ing in wonder on a boat when propelled by sails. Whenever they landed 



