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The immense depth of the Lake prevents the rays of the sun from raising the temperature as high as that of the Shire and Zambesi; and the crocodiles, having always clear water in the Lake, and abundance of fish, rarely attack man; many of these reptiles could be seen basking on the rocks. A day's march beyond Molamba brought us to the lakelet Chia, which lies parallel with the Lake.
They pressed onward and presently came upon a lovely lakelet near the beach, as clear as crystal and with bushes with dark green foliage growing on all sides but that toward the sea. They stopped for a moment to gaze upon it with surprise and admiration, then pushed on again till the top of the high bluff known as Tom Never's Head was reached.
Here, after encircling the tree, it passed on a little to the north of east, leaving the tulip tree some twenty feet to the south, and making no decided alteration in its course until it came near the midway between the eastern and western boundaries of the valley. This lakelet was, perhaps, a hundred yards in diameter at its widest part. No crystal could be clearer than its waters.
This kind has to be planted every season in the highlands; yet, because it makes stronger cloth, many of the people prefer it to the foreign cotton; the third variety is not found here. It was remarked to a number of men near the Shire Lakelet, a little further on towards Nyassa, "You should plant plenty of cotton, and probably the English will come and buy it."
I hoped that, once clear of the forest, they might encamp and make a large fire, the smoke of which would serve to guide me to them. Should they, on the contrary, continue searching about, we might miss each other. The shore of the lakelet was at last reached, but my first glance at it convinced me that there was every probability of its being of great depth.
On a crest of land overlooking and sloping gently down to the blue lakelet which Major Hester had named in honor of his wife, he erected a substantial blockhouse of squared timbers. Behind it were ranged a number of log outbuildings about three sides of a square, in the centre of which was dug a deep well.
"You must come another time with Miss Graham, and bring Mrs. Bowen. It's quite time we were going home." The light under the limbs of the trees had begun to grow more liquid. The currents of warm breeze streaming through the cooler body of the air had ceased to ruffle the lakelet round the fountain, and the naiads rode their sea-horses through a perfect calm.
This is a charming little lakelet of unknown depth, never yet stirred by a breeze, and its eternal calm excites the imagination even more profoundly than the silvery lakes of the glaciers rimmed with meadows and snow and reflecting sublime mountains.
It was a strange thought that came into my mind, that for all the ages these woods and lakelet had existed this was the first time they had echoed back our Scottish melodies. When Alice started Ye banks and braes o' bonny Doon, we helped in the first verse, but as the scenes we had left rose before our minds voices quavered, until all became silent, tears flowed, and Mrs Auld was sobbing.
To the northward rose the fantastic range of peaks that overhang the Wangat gorge, and almost below my feet, at a depth of some 1500 feet, lay a sombre lakelet, steely dark and still, in the shadow of the ridge upon which I sat. The sun was going down fast into a fleecy bed of clouds, amid which I knew that Nanga Parbat lay swathed from sight.
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