One Man, Who Had Gone To Cazembe With Major Monteiro,
Stated That He Had Seen The Luapura Or Loapula Flowing
Past
the town of that chieftain into the Luameji or Leeambye,
but imagined that it found its way, somehow or
Other, into Angola.
The fact that sometimes rivers were seen to flow like this
toward the centre of the country, led geographers to the supposition
that inner Africa was composed of elevated sandy plains, into which
rivers ran and were lost. One of the gentlemen present, Senhor Candido,
had visited a lake 45 days to the N.N.W. of Tete, which is probably
the Lake Maravi of geographers, as in going thither they pass through
the people of that name. The inhabitants of its southern coast
are named Shiva; those on the north, Mujao; and they call the lake
Nyanja or Nyanje, which simply means a large water, or bed of a large river.
A high mountain stands in the middle of it, called Murombo or Murombola,
which is inhabited by people who have much cattle. He stated that
he crossed the Nyanja at a narrow part, and was 36 hours in the passage.
The canoes were punted the whole way, and, if we take the rate
about two miles per hour, it may be sixty or seventy miles in breadth.
The country all round was composed of level plains covered with grass,
and, indeed, in going thither they traveled seven or eight days without wood,
and cooked their food with grass and stalks of native corn alone.
The people sold their cattle at a very cheap rate. From the southern
extremity of the lake two rivers issue forth: one, named after itself,
the Nyanja, which passes into the sea on the east coast under another name;
and the Shire, which flows into the Zambesi a little below Senna.
The Shire is named Shirwa at its point of departure from the lake,
and Senhor Candido was informed, when there, that the lake was simply
an expansion of the River Nyanja, which comes from the north and encircles
the mountain Murombo, the meaning of which is junction or union,
in reference to the water having parted at its northern extremity,
and united again at its southern. The Shire flows through a low, flat,
marshy country, but abounding in population, and they are said to be brave.
The Portuguese are unable to navigate the Shire up to the Lake Nyanja,
because of the great abundance of a water-plant which requires no soil,
and which they name "alfacinya" (`Pistia stratiotes'), from its resemblance
to a lettuce. This completely obstructs the progress of canoes.
In confirmation of this I may state that, when I passed
the mouth of the Shire, great quantities of this same plant
were floating from it into the Zambesi, and many parts of the banks below
were covered with the dead plants.
Senhor Candido stated that slight earthquakes have happened several times
in the country of the Maravi, and at no great distance from Tete.
The motion seems to come from the eastward, and never to have lasted
more than a few seconds.
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