Explore "Tropical Africa" by Henry Drummond on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
LAKES SHIRWA AND NYASSA.
Somewhere in the Shiré Highlands, in 1859, Livingstone saw a large lake -- Lake Shirwa -- which is still almost unknown. It lies away to the East, and is bounded by a range of mountains whose lofty summits are visible from the hills round Blantyre. Thinking it might be a useful initiation to African travel if I devoted a short time to its exploration, I set off one morning accompanied by two members of the Blantyre staff and a small retinue of natives. Steering across country in the direction in which it lay, we found, two days before seeing the actual water, that we were already on the ancient bed of the lake. Though now clothed with forest, the whole district has obviously been under water at a comparatively recent period, and the shores of Lake Shirwa probably reached at one time to within a few miles of Blantyre itself. On reaching the lake a very aged female chief came to see us, and told us how, long, long ago, a white man came to her village and gave her a present of cloth. Of the white man, who must have been Livingstone, she spoke very kindly; and, indeed, wherever David Livingstone's footsteps are crossed in Africa the fragrance of his memory seems to remain.