Here we got the Manganja headmen to confess that
an earthquake had happened; all the others we have inquired of have
denied it; why, I cannot conceive. The old men said that they had felt
earthquakes twice, once near sunset and the next time at night--they
shook everything, and were accompanied with noise, and all the fowls
cackled; there was no effect on the Lake observed. They profess
ignorance of any tradition of the water having stood higher. Their
traditions say that they came originally from the west, or west
north-west, which they call "Maravi;" and that their forefathers
taught them to make nets and kill fish. They have no trace of any
teaching by a higher instructor; no carvings or writings on the rocks;
and they never heard of a book until we came among them. Their
forefathers never told them that after or at death they went to God,
but they had heard it said of such a one who died, "God took him."

_18th September, 1866._--We embarked the whole party in eight canoes,
and went up the Lake to the point of junction between it and the
prolongation of Nyassa above it, called Massangano ("meetings"), which
took us two hours. A fishing party there fled on seeing us, though we
shouted that we were a travelling party (or "Olendo ").

Mukate's people here left us, and I walked up to the village of the
fugitives with one attendant only. Their suspicions were so thoroughly
aroused that they would do nothing. The headman (Pima) was said to be
absent; they could not lend us a hut, but desired us to go on to
Mponda's. We put up a shed for ourselves, and next morning, though we
pressed them for a guide, no one would come.

From Pima's village we had a fine view of Pamalombe and the range of
hills on its western edge, the range which flanks the lower part of
Nyassa,--on part of which Mukate lives,--the gap of low land south of
it behind which Shirwa Lake lies, and Chikala and Zomba nearly due
south from us. People say hippopotami come from Lake Shirwa into Lake
Nyassa. There is a great deal of vegetation in Pamalombe, gigantic
rushes, duckweed, and great quantities of aquatic plants on the
bottom; one slimy translucent plant is washed ashore in abundance.
Fish become very fat on these plants; one called "kadiakola" I eat
much of; it has a good mass of flesh on it.

It is probable that the people of Lake Tanganyika and Nyassa, and
those on the Rivers Shire and Zambesi, are all of one stock, for the
dialects vary very litt