448 LIFE OF DA VID LIVINGSTONE, LL.D. 



The common creel resembles the Khun of Western India, and is well-known 

 even to the Bushmen of the South: it is a cone of open bamboo strips or 

 supple twigs, placed lengthways, and bound in and out by strings of grass 

 or tree fibre. It is closed at the top, and at the bottom there is a narrow 

 aperture, with a diagonally-disposed entrance like that of a wire rat-trap, 

 which prevents the fish escaping. It is placed upon its side with a bait, em- 

 banked with mud, reeds, or sand, and well answers the purpose for which it is 

 intended. In Uzaramo, and near the coast, the people narcotise the fish with 

 the juice of certain plants; about the Tanganyika the art appears unknown."* 



There are many varieties of fish in the lake, but most of them are some- 

 what tasteless. One of the largest, which sometimes attains a length of five or 

 six feet, is called the Mguhe, and is the most palatable of the whole. Another 

 large fish is the Singa; it is scaleless, and has long fleshy feelers or cirri, standing 

 out from its snout. This fish is much prized by the natives on account of its rich 

 luscious fat. Two smaller varieties, known as the Mvoro and the Sanjale, are 

 somewhat like mackarel in shape. Minnows of several kinds, a kind of eel, and 

 a fresh water shrimp, are very abundant, and are largely captured and eaten. 

 A fresh-water oyster, called Sinani, is eaten by the natives, but it is unpala- 

 table to Europeans. The numerous islands on the lake are mostly all inha- 

 bited, although many of them are exceedingly unhealthy. The inhabitants 

 of the lake district are a quarrelsome and warlike people, and it is owing to 

 their hostility that the lake and its shores have never as yet been properly 

 examined by any of the travellers who have visited it. 



The lake, with its continuation Lake Liemba, is about three hundred 

 miles in length, and its breadth at the widest part ranges from twenty-five to 

 thirty-five miles, and it covers an area of nearly six thousand square miles. 

 Captain Burton, in speaking of the water of the lake, says : — 



" The waters of the Tanganyika appear deliciously sweet and pure, after 

 the salt and bitter, the putrid and slimy produce of the wells, pits, and pools 

 on the line of march. The people, however, who drink it willingly when 

 afloat, prefer, when on shore, the little springs which bubble from its banks. 

 They complain that it does not satisfy thirst, and they contrast it unfavourably 

 with the waters of its rival Nyanza ; it appears, moreover, to corrode metal 

 and leather with exceptional power. The colour of the pure and transparent 

 mass has apparently two normal varieties : a dull sea-green — never, however 

 verdigris — coloured, as in the shoals of the Zanzibar seas, where the reflected 

 blue of the atmosphere blends with the yellow of the sandy bottom — the 

 other, a clear, soft azure, not deep and dark, like the ultramarine of the 

 Mediterranean, but resembling the light and milky tints of tropical seas. 

 Under a stormy wind the waves soon rise in yeasty lines, foaming up from a 



* The reader will remember that Dr. Livingstone noticed the same practice on the Zambesi. 



