312 
the burning of tens of thousands of acres of tali grass, the atmo- 
sphere becomes like a partial cloud or fog, but insufferably hot. 
When we ascended the second terrace, the air felt delightfully cool, 
and on the third it was perfect, neither too cold nor too hot. All 
these terraces are wonderfully well supplied with running rills of 
deliciously cool water ; and cotton of the indigenous variety (which 
feels more like wool than cotton, and requires to be cropped 
annually) is cultivated to a very considerable extent. On the last 
terrace rises Mount Zomba, which we ascended, and found to be in 
round numbers 7000 to 8000 feet high. Here it was cold; but 
there is cultivation and a fine stream in a large valley on its top. 
It has a base of 20 or 30 miles. We have thus differences of 
climate within a few miles of each other. This for keeping Euro- 
peans well. Then we are indulging the pleasant belief, from which 
you may deduct a percentage, that we can cure the fever, even in 
the lowlands, quickly and without loss of strength to the patient. 
We shall beat Holloway yet! only we tell every one what our pills 
are made of. It is the system followed when I was alone, and ad- 
verted to at the end of my book. We have, thank God, not lost a 
man yet, and gave the quinine a fair trial. It never prevented an 
attack. We have given it up now. We took it after our wine was 
done, partly for the sake of the dram, and partly to prevent you 
folks blaming us after we were dead. 
CD 
Well, beyond Zomba the land between Shire and the two lakes of 
Shirwa, or, as its name really is, Tamandua, and Nvassa or Nyin- 
yessi, contracts into a narrow isthmus, and all the slave trade from 
the interior must cross, in order to get past the lakes without 
embarking on either. We met a large slaving party there. I 
think they are what people suppose to be Arabs at the Angoxia 
river, but they could not speak Arabic. They were the most 
blackguard-looking set I ever saw. When they understood we were 
English, they made off by night, probably with the same opinion of 
us as we had of them. They had an immense number of slaves. 
A station for lawful commerce here would root out that traffic. 
The lake at its southern end seemed eight or ten miles broad — had 
a heavy swell on it though there was no wind — and it must be large 
to give off the Shire constantly (80 to 120 yards wide, 2 fathoms 
deep, and 2 \ knot current) the whole year, with a variation in the 
river of about 2 feet from the wet to the dry season. 
