136 THE LAKE KEGIONS OF CENTEAL AFRICA. 



The earliest name given by theoretical writers to the 

 hypothetical single lake appears to have been Zemb^re, 

 Zembere, Zambre, Zambri, or Zembre, probably a cor- 

 ruption or dialectic variety of Zambesi, that river being 

 supposed, like the Nile, the Zaire, the Manisa, and others, 

 to be derived from it. The word Moravi or Maravi, which 

 still deforms our maps, is the name of a large tribe or a 

 lordly race like the Wahinda, dwelling to the south-east 

 and south-west of the Nyassa. In the seventeenth century 

 Luigi Mariano, a missioner residing at the Rios de Sena, 

 calls the Central Sea the Lake of Hernosura ; his descrip- 

 tion however applies to the Nyassa, Maravi or Kilwa 

 Lake, and the word is probably a corruption of Rusuro or 

 Lusuro, which in the language of Uhiao signifies a river 

 or flowing water. In the 'Mombas Mission Map' the 

 lake is called " See von Uniamesi," a mere misnomer, 

 as it is separated by hundreds of miles from the Land 



— " African missionaries, penetrating some little distance inland from the 

 S.E., recently brought information, which they received second-hand from 

 Arab travellers, of a vast fresh-water lake far in the interior, described as 

 being of enormous dimensions — as nothing less than a great inland sea. 

 Frequenters of the Geographical Society's meetings in Whitehall-place have 

 observed in consequence, on the site which used to be marked in the maps 

 as a sandy desert, a blue spot, about the size of the Caspian, and the shape 

 of a hideous inflated leech. We trusted that a more accurate survey would 

 correct the extreme frightfulness of the supposed form. Mr- Andersson has 

 spared us further excitement. The lake turns out to be a mirage — a 

 mythus with the smallest conceivable nucleus of fact. On the very spot 

 occupied by this great blue leech — long. E. from Greenwich 23° and lat. 

 S. 20° 21' — he found a small speck of bitter water, something more than 

 twenty miles across, or the size o$ Lake Corrib in Galway. So perishes 

 a phantom which has excited London geographers for a whole season." 



Had the learned reviewer used his eyes or his judgment in Whitehall- 

 place, he would not thus have confounded the hypothetic sea of the ' Mombas 

 Mission Map ' — a reservoir made to include the three several waters of 

 Nyanza, Tanganyika, and Nyassa — in E. long. 24° — 29°, and S. lat. 0° 13' 

 — with the little Ngami explored by Dr. Livingstone and a party of friends 

 in August, 1849, and placed by him in E. long. 23°, and in S. lat. 20° 20' 

 21'. The nearest points of the two waters are separated by an interval, in 

 round numbers, of 700 miles. 



