da, where the boiling-point of water showed an
altitude of 3440 feet above the sea, the air was delightful. Looking
back we had a magnificent view of the Lake, but the haze prevented our
seeing beyond the sea horizon. The scene was beautiful, but it was
impossible to dissociate the lovely landscape whose hills and dales had
so sorely tried our legs and lungs, from the sad fact that this was part
of the great slave route now actually in use. By this road many "Ten
thousands" have here seen "the Sea," "the Sea," but with sinking hearts;
for the universal idea among the captive gangs is, that they are going to
be fattened and eaten by the whites. They cannot of course be so much
shocked as we should be--their sensibilities are far from fine, their
feelings are more obtuse than ours--in fact, "the live eels are used to
being skinned," perhaps they rather like it. We who are not philosophic,
blessed the Providence which at Thermopylae in ancient days rolled back
the tide of Eastern conquest from the West, and so guided the course of
events that light and liberty and gospel truth spread to our distant
isle, and emancipating our race freed them from the fear of ever again
having to climb fatiguing heights and descend wearisome hollows in a
slave-gang, as we suppose they did when the fair English youths were
exposed for sale at Rome.

Looking westwards we perceived that, what from below had the appearance
of mountains, was only the edge of a table-land which, though at first
undulating, soon became smooth, and sloped towards the centre of the
country. To the south a prominent mountain called Chipata, and to the
south-west another named Ngalla, by which the Bua is said to rise, gave
character to the landscape. In the north, masses of hills prevented our
seeing more than eight or ten miles.

The air which was so exhilarating to Europeans had an opposite effect on
five men who had been born and reared in the malaria of the Delta of the
Zambesi. No sooner did they reach the edge of the plateau at Ndonda,
than they lay down prostrate, and complained of pains all over them. The
temperature was not much lower than that on the shores of the Lake below,
76 degrees being the mean temperature of the day, 52 degrees the lowest,
and 82 degrees the highest during the twenty-four hours; at the Lake it
was about l0 degrees higher. Of the symptoms they complained of--pains
everywhere--nothing could be made. And yet it was evident tha