HISTORY 
61 
is a widening of the Upper Shire, Livingstone and his companions finally 
reached the southern extremity of Nyasa, near the site of the modern settle¬ 
ment of Fort Johnston, on the 16th of September, 1859, the first white men, 
as far as we know with any certainty, who stood on the shores of Lake Nyasa. 
As the district in which Livingstone discovered this third greatest of the lakes 
of Africa was under Yao domination, he recorded its name as pronounced 
by the Yao, i.e. Nyasa; but its most common appellation is Nyanja. This is 
the same word as Nyanza farther north, and Nyasa, Nyanja, and Nyanza 
are derived from an archaic and widespread Bantu root -anza, which means 
“a broad water.” 1 
Livingstone and his party extended their explorations of the western coast 
of Lake Nyasa as far north as about 11*30 south latitude, a little more than 
THE POINT ON THE SOUTH SHORE OF LAKE NYASA WHENCE THE LAKE WAS FIRST SEEN 
BY DR. LIVINGSTONE AND SIR JOHN KIRK IN 1859 
half-way up the lake. Subsequently Livingstone travelled inland west of Lake 
Nyasa till he reached the watershed of the great Luangwa River, and it 
was upon hearing at that point of a not far distant lake that he resolved, 
on his succeeding journey, to proceed along the same route, and thus discovered 
the south end of Lake Tanganyika, Lake Mweru, the Luapula River, and Lake 
Bangweolo. Whilst Livingstone and Kirk were exploring Lake Nyasa and 
the Shire Highlands, however, they were joined by a Christian Mission under 
Bishop Mackenzie, which had been sent out from the two great English 
Universities, and which exists to this day under the name of the “ Universities 
Mission to Central Africa.” These missionaries settled in the eastern part 
of the Shire Highlands, just as the invasions of the Muhammadan Yao slave 
raiders were beginning. 
1 This root is found even among the more corrupt Bantu tongues of Western Equatorial Africa. 
For instance, the broad estuary of the Cameroons River is called in the Duala tongue “Muanza.” 
and the same name is given to the Lower Congo. 
