w where, or in what condition, or with what
companions, for the dead never return to tell us. Sometimes the dead do
come back, and appear to us in dreams; but they never speak nor tell us
where they have gone, nor how they fare."

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