: one forms a lake in its course, and the
sources of the Rovuma lie in the same region. After leaving Mataka's
we crossed a good-sized one flowing to Loendi, and, the day after
leaving Pezimba's, another going to the Chiringa or Lochiringa, which
is a tributary of the Rovuma.

_6th August, 1866._--We passed two cairns this morning at the
beginning of the very sensible descent to the Lake. They are very
common in all this Southern Africa in the passes of the mountains, and
are meant to mark divisions of countries, perhaps burial-places, but
the Waiyau who accompanied us thought that they were merely heaps of
stone collected by some one making a garden. The cairns were placed
just about the spot where the blue waters of Nyassa first came fairly
into view.

We now came upon a stream, the Misinje, flowing into the Lake, and we
crossed it five times; it was about twenty yards wide, and thigh deep.
We made but short stages when we got on the lower plateau, for the
people had great abundance of food, and gave large presents of it if
we rested. One man gave four fowls, three large baskets of maize,
pumpkins, eland's fat--a fine male, as seen by his horns,--and pressed
us to stay, that he might see our curiosities as well as others. He
said that at one day's distance south of him all sorts of animals, as
buffaloes, elands, elephants, hippopotami, and antelopes, could be
shot.

_8th August, 1866._--We came to the Lake at the confluence of the
Misinje, and felt grateful to That Hand which had protected us thus
far on our journey. It was as if I had come back to an old home I
never expected again to see; and pleasant to bathe in the delicious
waters again, hear the roar of the sea, and dash in the rollers. Temp.
71 deg. at 8 A.M., while the air was 65 deg. I feel quite exhilarated.

The headman here, Mokalaose, is a real Manganja, and he and all his
people exhibit the greater darkness of colour consequent on being in a
warm moist climate; he is very friendly, and presented millet,
porridge, cassava, and hippopotamus meat boiled and asked if I liked
milk, as he had some of Mataka's cattle here. His people bring sanjika
the best Lake fish, for sale; they are dried on stages over slow
fires, and lose their fine flavour by it, but they are much prized
inland. I bought fifty for a fathom of calico; when fresh, they taste
exactly like the best herrings, _i.e._ as we think, but voyagers' and
travellers' appetites are often so whetted