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.
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