78 
Central Africa. 
steamer Illala was launched upon Lake Nyassa, and the 
little settlement of Livingstonia founded on the promontory 
of Cape Clear. In 1878, a second station was founded at 
Bandawe, on the west coast of Nyassa, and the little mis- 
sion steamer explored and circumnavigated the lake twice, 
in order to check the slave-trade. When it is remembered 
that from 15,000 to 20,000 slaves have been drawn annually 
from the Nyassa region alone to feed the Arab slave-markets, 
beside those who perished of wounds, famine, or disease, it 
will be seen what a substantial service to the poor native 
population was thus rendered. In 1879, the mission- 
engineer, James Stewart, Esq., travelled for the first time 
across the two hundred and ten miles of land intervening 
between the north end of Nyassa and the south end of 
Tanganyika. This journey decided him to make the road 
proposed to the London Missionary Society, thus securing 
the co-operation of that society in opening up a new route 
into the country, by means of the new road, river, and lake 
system. The Blantyre mission has made a good road of 
nearly seventy miles to the south of Nyassa, in the Shire 
district, so that every link in the chain seemed to 
promise well for the completion of the undertaking. Mr. 
Stewart reported thus to the Royal Geographical Society 
upon the feasibility of the undertaking : " The Livingstonia 
Mission possesses the best, perhaps the only, available route 
by water into the heart of Africa. The whole of the dis- 
tance from Quilimane to Malisaka, at the north end. of 
Nyassa, about eight hundred miles, can now be accom- 
plished by steam power, with the exception of two small 
breaks. I have traversed the distance in twenty-two days, 
including five days of stoppages, and letters sent from that 
point can be delivered in Edinburgh in fifty-five days. From 
this it is evident that Lake Nyassa may now be considered 
