lo started on foot for Lake Shirwa. They
travelled in a northerly direction over a mountainous country. The
people were far from being well-disposed to them, and some of their
guides tried to mislead them, and could not be trusted. Masakasa, a
Makololo headman, overheard some remarks which satisfied him that the
guide was leading them into trouble. He was quiet till they reached a
lonely spot, when he came up to Dr. Livingstone, and said, "That fellow
is bad, he is taking us into mischief; my spear is sharp, and there is no
one here; shall I cast him into the long grass?" Had the Doctor given
the slightest token of assent, or even kept silence, never more would any
one have been led by that guide, for in a twinkling he would have been
where "the wicked cease from troubling." It was afterwards found that in
this case there was no treachery at all, but a want of knowledge on their
part of the language and of the country. They asked to be led to "Nyanja
Mukulu," or Great Lake, meaning, by this, Lake Shirwa; and the guide took
them round a terribly rough piece of mountainous country, gradually
edging away towards a long marsh, which from the numbers of those animals
we had seen there we had called the Elephant Marsh, but which was really
the place known to him by the name "Nyanja Mukulu," or Great Lake. Nyanja
or Nyanza means, generally, a marsh, lake, river, or even a mere rivulet.

The party pushed on at last without guides, or only with crazy ones; for,
oddly enough, they were often under great obligations to the madmen of
the different villages: one of these honoured them, as they slept in the
open air, by dancing and singing at their feet the whole night. These
poor fellows sympathized with the explorers, probably in the belief that
they belonged to their own class; and, uninfluenced by the general
opinion of their countrymen, they really pitied, and took kindly to the
strangers, and often guided them faithfully from place to place, when no
sane man could be hired for love or money.

The bearing of the Manganja at this time was very independent; a striking
contrast to the cringing attitude they afterwards assumed, when the cruel
scourge of slave-hunting passed over their country. Signals were given
from the different villages by means of drums, and notes of defiance and
intimidation were sounded in the travellers' ears by day; and
occasionally they were kept awake the whole night, in expectation of an
instant