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The people here were shy of us at first, and could not be induced to sell any food; until a woman, more adventurous than the rest, sold us a fowl. This opened the market, and crowds came with fowls and meal, far beyond our wants. The women are as ugly as those on Lake Nyassa, for who can be handsome wearing the pelele, or upper-lip ring, of large dimensions?

They offered to purchase the craft, but he refused to sell it for any amount. It was very evident that she was to be engaged for carrying slaves across the lake. They now regretted the attempt to carry an iron vessel overland, as a wooden one might have been built at much less cost on the banks of the lake, and in a shorter time than the transit of the "Lady Nyassa" would have occupied.

Hoping that the "Lady Nyassa" might be the means of putting a check on the slavers across the lake, they hurried on with their work. She was unscrewed at a spot about five hundred yards below the first cataract, and they began to make a road over the portage of forty miles, by which she was to be carried piecemeal. Trees had to be cut down and stones removed.

A place nearer the Shire would have been chosen had he expected his supplies to come up that river; but the Portuguese, claiming the river Shire, though never occupying even its mouth, had closed it, as well as the Zambesi. Our hopes were turned to the Rovuma, as a free highway into Lake Nyassa and the vast interior.

The great slave-route from Nyassa to Kilwa passes to N.E. from S.W., just beyond them; and it is dangerous to remain in their villages at this time of year, when the kidnappers are abroad. In one of the temporary villages, we saw, in passing, two human heads lying on the ground. We slept a couple of miles above this village.

Livingstone on the Zambesi and Shiré; thus Musa, the Johanna man, was a sailor on the Lady Nyassa, whilst Susi and Amoda were engaged at Shupanga to cut wood for the Pioneer. The two Waiyau lads, Wakatani and Chuma, were liberated from the slavers by the Doctor and Bishop Mackenzie in 1861, and lived for three years with the Mission party at Chibisa's before they were engaged by Livingstone.

Colonel Rigby states that nineteen thousand slaves from the Nyassa country alone pass annually through the custom-house at Zanzibar. They, however, represent but a small portion of the sufferers. Besides those actually captured, thousands are killed and die of their wounds and famine; thousands more perish in internecine war waged for slaves with their own clansmen and neighbours.

Trade is what has brought the latitudes together and made the world the small department store it is, and forced one part of it to know and to depend upon the other. The explorer tells you, "I was the first man to climb Kilamajaro." "I was the first to cut a path from the shores of Lake Nyassa into the Congo Basin."

We had also a party at the vessel, and any indiscretion on their part might have proved fatal to the character of the Expedition. The trade of Cazembe and Katanga's country, and of other parts of the interior, crosses Nyassa and the Shire, on its way to the Arab port, Kilwa, and the Portuguese ports of Iboe and Mozambique.

One bold constructor of maps has tacked on 200 miles to the north-west end of Lake Nyassa, a feat which no traveller has ever ventured to imitate. Another has placed a river in the same quarter running 3000 or 4000 feet up hill, and named it the "NEW ZAMBESI," because I suppose the old Zambesi runs down hill.