along the right bank, and passed
thousands of Manganja fugitives living in temporary huts on that side,
who had recently been driven from their villages on the opposite hills by
the Ajawa.

The soil was dry and hard, and covered with mopane-trees; but some of the
Manganja were busy hoeing the ground and planting the little corn they
had brought with them. The effects of hunger were already visible on
those whose food had been seized or burned by the Ajawa and Portuguese
slave-traders. The spokesman or prime minister of one of the chiefs,
named Kalonjere, was a humpbacked dwarf, a fluent speaker, who tried hard
to make us go over and drive off the Ajawa; but he could not deny that by
selling people Kalonjere had invited these slave-hunters to the country.
This is the second humpbacked dwarf we have found occupying the like
important post, the other was the prime minister of a Batonga chief on
the Zambesi.

As we sailed along, we disturbed many white-breasted cormorants; we had
seen the same species fishing between the cataracts. Here, with many
other wild-fowls, they find subsistence on the smooth water by night, and
sit sleepily on trees and in the reeds by day. Many hippopotami were
seen in the river, and one of them stretched its wide jaws, as if to
swallow the whole stern of the boat, close to Dr. Kirk's back; the animal
was so near that, in opening its mouth, it lashed a quantity of water on
to the stern-sheets, but did no damage. To avoid large marauding parties
of Ajawa, on the left bank of the Shire, we continued on the right, or
western side, with our land party, along the shore of the small lake
Pamalombe. This lakelet is ten or twelve miles in length, and five or
six broad. It is nearly surrounded by a broad belt of papyrus, so dense
that we could scarcely find an opening to the shore. The plants, ten or
twelve feet high, grew so closely together that air was excluded, and so
much sulphuretted hydrogen gas evolved that by one night's exposure the
bottom of the boat was blackened. Myriads of mosquitoes showed, as
probably they always do, the presence of malaria.

We hastened from this sickly spot, trying to take the attentions of the
mosquitoes as hints to seek more pleasant quarters on the healthy shores
of Lake Nyassa; and when we sailed into it, on the 2nd September, we felt
refreshed by the greater coolness of the air off this large body of
water. The depth was the first point of interest. Thi