HISTORY 
7 1 
had assisted in fixing the relative position of the two lakes and showing that 
the land transit between them did not much exceed 200 miles. The African 
Lakes Company were entrusted with the contract for conveying the London 
Missionary Society’s steamer from Nyasa to Tanganyika, an enterprise success¬ 
fully accomplished in 1885. Mr. James Stevenson, a director of the Lakes 
Company, was struck with the idea of making a permanent road from lake 
to lake, and subscribed a sum of, I believe, ,£2000 or .£3000, for the purpose 
of making preliminary surveys. The Stevenson road, however, was never 
completed, but the route it was to follow was roughly cleared for about sixty 
miles from Lake Nyasa. The engineers concerned in this work died of fever, 
and further operations were checked by the outbreak of war with the Arabs. 
The London Missionary Society did not, at first, think much of the Lake 
Nyasa route to Tanganyika, but preferred the overland journey from Zanzibar. 
They therefore devoted their attention more to the middle portion of the lake, 
especially the west coast opposite to Ujiji, and established themselves here 
on the island of Kavala. The unhealthiness of this place, however, and the 
troubles which began to arise on Tanganyika after the first Belgian expeditions, 
and from the subsequent uprising .against the Germans, obliged the London 
Missionary Society’s agents to alter their plans. They transferred their 
establishments to the south end of the lake, in order to be brought into more 
direct communication with the British settlements in Nyasaland. 
The first serious danger which may be said to have menaced the infant 
settlements in Nyasaland, was the trouble with the Makololo chiefs, to which I 
have already referred. The next danger, and a much more serious one, 
arose from the conflict with the Arabs who had settled at the north end of 
Lake Nyasa. When Livingstone and Kirk first explored Lake Nyasa they 
practically only found the Arabs established in a few places—at one or other 
of the ports on what is now the Portuguese coast of Lake Nyasa, and at 
Kotakota on the western shore of the lake; 1 at which latter place Livingstone 
visited an Arab settlement under the control of a person called “Jumbe,” 
who was a coast Arab, and a representative or wali of the Sultan of Zanzibar. 
Jumbe means “prince” on the mainland opposite Zanzibar, and the Sultan had 
no doubt chosen as his representative a man who went to Nyasa for trade 
purposes principally, but who was of sufficiently good standing to exercise 
some show of authority, in the Sultan’s name, over the Arabs wandering in 
those regions. When I use the term “ Arabs ” I mean both Arabs with white 
skins of pure blood (and usually natives of ’Oman or of Southern Arabia) 
and every degree of intermixture and type between the Arab and the negro, 
so that some of our so-called Arabs in Nyasaland are quite black, though in 
the shape of their features or in their beards, they may retain traces of the 
intermixture of a superior race. But all these so-called Arabs are sharply 
distinguished from the ordinary negroes by dressing in Arab costume, using the 
Arabic language, and by being stricter and more intelligent in their practices 
of the Muhammadan religion. 
The first interference of the Arabs with Nyasaland was merely to secure 
a passage across the lake in their caravan journeys to the countries of Senga, 
Lubisa, and Luwemba, which journeys were undertaken for ivory, or slaves, and 
had commenced, as I have already related, by their following back into South 
Central Africa the Babisa caravans that formerly traded with Zanzibar. The 
1 “ Ngotangota ”—as the natives call it, the Arabs having corrupted the name into the easier pronun¬ 
ciation of Kotakota. 
