Falls, steamed up the
river, and on the 24th of November reached Panda Mokua, where the
navigation ends, about two miles below them. Hence the party started
overland, by a frightfully rough path among rocky hills, where no shade
was to be found. At last their guides declared that they could go no
further; indeed, the surface of the ground was so hot that the soles of
the Makololos' feet became blistered. The travellers, however, pushed
on. Passing round a steep promontory, they beheld the river at their
feet, the channel jammed in between two mountains with perpendicular
sides, and less than fifty yards wide. There is a sloping fall of about
twenty feet in height, and another at a distance of thirty yards above
it. When, however, the river rises upwards of eighty feet
perpendicularly, as it does in the rainy season, the cataract might be
passed in boats.

After returning to Tete, the steamer went up the Shire, January, 1859.
The natives, as they passed them, collected at their villages in large
numbers, armed with bows and poisoned arrows, threatening to attack
them. Dr Livingstone, however, went on shore, and explained to the
chief, Tingane, that they had come neither to take slaves nor to fight,
but wished to open up a path by which his countrymen could ascend to
purchase their cotton. On this Tingane at once became friendly.

Their progress was arrested, after steaming up a hundred miles in a
straight line, although, counting the windings of the river, double that
distance, by magnificent cataracts known to the natives as those of the
Mamvira, but called by the expedition the Murchison Falls.

Rain prevented them making observations, and they returned at a rapid
rate down the river.

A second trip up it was made in March of the same year. They here
gained the friendship of Chibisa, a shrewd and intelligent chief, whose
village was about ten miles below the cataracts. He told the doctor
that a few years before his little daughter had been kidnapped, and was
now a slave to the _padre_ at Tete, asking him, if possible, to ransom
the child.

From hence Dr Livingstone and Dr Kirk proceeded on foot in a northerly
direction to Lake Shirwa. The natives turned out from their villages,
sounding notes of defiance on their drums; but the efforts to persuade
them that their visitors came as friends were successful, and the lake
was discovered on the 18th of April.

From having no outlet, the water is brackish,