ariety. Generations and generations of men have passed that stone,
and it still waits for a man with an altruistic idea. But it would be
a very stony country indeed--and Africa is far from stony--that would
wholly account for the aggravating obliqueness and indecision of the
African foot-path. Probably each four miles, on an average path, is
spun out, by an infinite series of minor sinuosities, to five or six.
Now, these deflections are not meaningless. Each has some history--a
history dating back perhaps a thousand years, but to which all clue
has centuries ago been lost. The leading cause probably is fallen
trees. When a tree falls across a path no man ever removes it. As in
the case of the stone, the native goes round it. It is too green to
burn in his hut; before it is dry and the white ants have eaten it,
the new detour has become part and parcel of the path. The smaller
irregularities, on the other hand, represent the trees and stumps of
the primeval forest where the track was made at first. But whatever
the cause, it is certain that for persistent straightforwardness in
the general, and utter vacillation and irresolution in the particular,
the African roads are unique in engineering.

Though one of the smaller African lakes, Shirwa is probably larger
than all the lakes of Great Britain put together. With the splendid
environment of mountains on three of its sides, softened and distanced
by perpetual summer haze, it reminds one somewhat of the Great Salt
Lake simmering in the July sun. We pitched our tent for a day or two
on its western shore, among a harmless and surprised people who had
never gazed on the pallid countenances of Englishmen before. Owing to
the ravages of the slaver, the people of Shirwa are few, scattered,
and poor, and live in abiding terror. The densest population is to be
found on the small island, heavily timbered with baobabs, which forms
a picturesque feature of the northern end. These Wa-Nyassa, or people
of the lake, as they call themselves, have been driven away by fear,
and they rarely leave their lake dwelling unless under cover of night.
Even then they are liable to capture by any man of a stronger tribe
who happens to meet them, and numbers who have been kidnapped in this
way are to be found in the villages of neighboring chiefs. This is an
amenity of existence in Africa that strikes one as very terrible. It
is impossible for those at home to understand how literally savage man
is a