CHAPTER IV.

The Upper Shire—­Discovery of Lake Nyassa—­Distressing exploration—­Return to Zambesi—­Unpleasant visitors—­Start for Sekeletu’s Country in the interior.

Our path followed the Shire above the cataracts, which is now a broad deep river, with but little current.  It expands in one place into a lakelet, called Pamalombe, full of fine fish, and ten or twelve miles long by five or six in breadth.  Its banks are low, and a dense wall of papyrus encircles it.  On its western shore rises a range of hills running north.  On reaching the village of the chief Muana-Moesi, and about a day’s march distant from Nyassa, we were told that no lake had ever been heard of there; that the River Shire stretched on as we saw it now to a distance of “two months,” and then came out from between perpendicular rocks, which towered almost to the skies.  Our men looked blank at this piece of news, and said, “Let us go back to the ship, it is of no use trying to find the lake.”  “We shall go and see those wonderful rocks at any rate,” said the Doctor.  “And when you see them,” replied Masakasa, “you will just want to see something else.  But there is a lake,” rejoined Masakasa, “for all their denying it, for it is down in a book.”  Masakasa, having unbounded faith in whatever was in a book, went and scolded the natives for telling him an untruth.  “There is a lake,” said he, “for how could the white men know about it in a book if it did not exist?” They then admitted that there was a lake a few miles off.  Subsequent inquiries make it probable that the story of the “perpendicular rocks” may have had reference to a fissure, known to both natives and Arabs, in the north-eastern portion of the lake.  The walls rise so high that the path along the bottom is said to be underground.  It is probably a crack similar to that which made the Victoria Falls, and formed the Shire Valley.

The chief brought a small present of meal in the evening, and sat with us for a few minutes.  On leaving us he said that he wished we might sleep well.  Scarce had he gone, when a wild sad cry arose from the river, followed by the shrieking of women.  A crocodile had carried off his principal wife, as she was bathing.  The Makololo snatched up their arms, and rushed to the bank, but it was too late, she was gone.  The wailing of the women continued all night, and next morning we met others coming to the village to join in the general mourning.  Their grief was evidently heartfelt, as we saw the tears coursing down their cheeks.  In reporting this misfortune to his neighbours, Muana-Moesi said, “that white men came to his village; washed themselves at the place where his wife drew water and bathed; rubbed themselves with a white medicine (soap); and his wife, having gone to bathe afterwards, was taken by a crocodile; he did not know whether in consequence of the medicine used or not.”