An earthquake happened here last year, that is about the end of it or beginning of this (the crater on the Grand.  Comoro Island smoked for three months about that time); it shook all the houses and everything, but they observed no other effects.[20] No hot springs are known here.

17th September, 1866.—­We marched down from Mukate’s and to about the middle of the Lakelet Pamalombe.  Mukate had no people with canoes near the usual crossing place, and he sent a messenger to see that we were fairly served.  Here we got the Manganja headmen to confess that an earthquake had happened; all the others we have inquired of have denied it; why, I cannot conceive.  The old men said that they had felt earthquakes twice, once near sunset and the next time at night—­they shook everything, and were accompanied with noise, and all the fowls cackled; there was no effect on the Lake observed.  They profess ignorance of any tradition of the water having stood higher.  Their traditions say that they came originally from the west, or west north-west, which they call “Maravi;” and that their forefathers taught them to make nets and kill fish.  They have no trace of any teaching by a higher instructor; no carvings or writings on the rocks; and they never heard of a book until we came among them.  Their forefathers never told them that after or at death they went to God, but they had heard it said of such a one who died, “God took him.”

18th September, 1866.—­We embarked the whole party in eight canoes, and went up the Lake to the point of junction between it and the prolongation of Nyassa above it, called Massangano ("meetings"), which took us two hours.  A fishing party there fled on seeing us, though we shouted that we were a travelling party (or “Olendo “).

Mukate’s people here left us, and I walked up to the village of the fugitives with one attendant only.  Their suspicions were so thoroughly aroused that they would do nothing.  The headman (Pima) was said to be absent; they could not lend us a hut, but desired us to go on to Mponda’s.  We put up a shed for ourselves, and next morning, though we pressed them for a guide, no one would come.

From Pima’s village we had a fine view of Pamalombe and the range of hills on its western edge, the range which flanks the lower part of Nyassa,—­on part of which Mukate lives,—­the gap of low land south of it behind which Shirwa Lake lies, and Chikala and Zomba nearly due south from us.  People say hippopotami come from Lake Shirwa into Lake Nyassa.  There is a great deal of vegetation in Pamalombe, gigantic rushes, duckweed, and great quantities of aquatic plants on the bottom; one slimy translucent plant is washed ashore in abundance.  Fish become very fat on these plants; one called “kadiakola” I eat much of; it has a good mass of flesh on it.

It is probable that the people of Lake Tanganyika and Nyassa, and those on the Rivers Shire and Zambesi, are all of one stock, for the dialects vary very little.[21] I took observations on this point.  An Arab slave-party, hearing of us, decamped.