5th August, 1866.—­We left Miule, and commenced our march towards Lake Nyassa, and slept at the last of the streams that flow to the Loendi.  In Mataka’s vicinity, N.E., there is a perfect brush of streams flowing to that river:  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 as to be incapable of giving a true verdict in matters of taste.

[It is necessary to explain that Livingstone knew of an Arab settlement on the western shore of the Lake, and that he hoped to induce the chief man Jumbe to give him a passage to the other side.]