It is no wonder that the Lufígy, winding through level plains, and wasting itself in so many channels, should reach the sea with a very diminished volume.

Our readers, actuated by that curiosity which so commonly urges us to seek the fountains of great rivers, will now probably demand whence comes the Lufígy. To this we can only reply, that the Arabs of Zanzibar assert that it descends from a great inland sea, known to them by the general African appellation of Ziwa, that is the lake, and called by those who dwell on its shores Ñassa, or N'yassa, which means the sea. Having been heard of by the Portuguese on the Zambesi, through their northern neighbours the Marávis, it has been named by European geographers lake Marávi. To this statement of the Arabs, considered in itself, we see no objection; but the general errors of their geographical speculations are communicated, more or less, to each particular detail, and diminish not a little the value of their testimony. Many of the Arabs go so far as to say, that three rivers descend from the lake to the eastern coast, viz. the Ozy (near the northern termination of Formosa bay, in lat. 2° 30′), the Lufigy, and the Livúma, near cape Delgado. Others reject the Ozy, while some, we believe, regard the Livúma alone as the true outlet of the lake. Notwithstanding, therefore, the confidence of our Arab friend, who regarded the connexion of the Lufígy and the lake as a point established beyond question, we are not altogether without our misgivings, though still disposed to believe.

The fact is, that the Arabs, not navigating the Lufígy to any distance, are quite in the dark as to the upper part of its course. In their expeditions up the country, their routes are determined wholly by motives of trade. They seek the most populous tribes, the largest towns, and the markets best supplied with slaves and ivory. Wholly occupied with their mercantile concerns, they never quit the path of gain to examine the wonders of nature, or to solve the problems of geography. They usually take their departure from Kilwa a few days before the termination of the rains. On the second day of their journey, they cross the Lufigy, which they recross in the country of the M'sagára on the fifteenth or twentieth day, and then direct their course to Iáo. The route of the M'iáo from Kilwa to their own country is more direct, and does not touch the Lufígy. A month's journey brings them to the Livúma, which, where they reach it, is as wide as the Thames at London bridge, and very deep. Its banks are shaded by trees.

* The Rovooma of Captain Owen's chart.

of enormous size, and of these are made canoes large enough to carry thirty or forty men. This river is accessible to large vessels, according to M. Saulnier de Mondevit (in whose chart it is erroneously named Touvouman), and has a good depth of water as far up as it has been explored. Our Arab friend assures us, that the Livúma, where he crossed it on his journey from Kilwa to Mozambique, about a hundred miles from its mouth, was nearly a mile wide. From the place where it is usually crossed by the M'iáo traders to Kelingo, the capital of their country, is a fortnight's journey. The Livúma flows with a very rapid and impetuous current, and is much infested with crocodiles and hippopotami. Our M'iáo informant tells us, that cataracts of great height are numerous in his country, and that the Livúma has falls as well as its tributary streams.

We now hasten forward to the most interesting portion of our exploratory journey; omitting, therefore, all unnecessary details, we shall not stop to name the villages perched on the hill-tops along our route, nor tell what rivulets are overgrown with canes; what shaded with thickets yielding gum copal. Beyond Kelingo, towards the W.S. W., the road ascends through a rich hilly country, till, at the end of four days, it conducts us to the base of a mountain ridge of great elevation. This mountain is thickly covered with houses, not collected in villages, but scattered at little distances all over its sides and summit, which pears to be a plain of great length. But when the traveller has gained the summit of N'jesa (as this mountain is called), and looks towards the west, his eyes are greeted by a brilliant and novel spectacle; the great inland sea (N'yassa) is spread before him, about fifty miles distant, bounding the horizon from S. to N. W., its lucid surface dotted with innumerable islands.

ap

This sea or lake stretches from S. E. to N. W.: it is not to be wondered at, therefore, that the M'iáo, not much used to geographical accuracy, should describe its greatest length as being towards the setting sun. They say, that paddling five or six hours a-day, and resting every night on an island, it would take them two moons to reach the farthest limit of the lake; but they add, that a ship with sails would perform the voyage in one moon. Its breadth is three days' good paddling in a canoe. The opposite shores are no where visible across the lake, as far as it is known to our informants. Its waters are perfectly fresh; we are emphatically assured that there is no salt in N'yassa.' It is free from hippopotami and crocodiles, which swarm in all the rivers flowing eastward on the other side of N'jesa, but abounds in fish and water fowl, which latter visit the adjacent mountain ridges in immense flocks. Our informant insisted much, though in

terms perhaps not likely to prove quite satisfactory to a naturalist, on the perfect resemblance between the geese of N'jesa and those which he plucked for the table in Whitechapel. The tribe of Mun'yassa (or Wun'yassa, in the dialects of the coast), that is, the sea people inhabiting the shores of the lakes nearest to the M'iáo, are the Mucamango, a people resembling in most respects the Movíza on the opposite or western shores, with whom they maintain a constant commercial intercourse. The Movíza, as our readers probably know already, maintain a correspondence with the Milúa, who trade with Angola, so that, by tracing the route from Kilwa to the lake, we have achieved the completion of an established path of intercourse between the eastern and western

coasts.

But we must not tarry too long on the shores of the lake; our business is with the coast rather than with the interior of the African continent. We cannot leave this interesting region, however, without observing, that the information respecting it contained in Bowdich's little volume on the Discoveries of the Por'tuguese in Mozambique and Angola,' is not to be implicitly relied on. It exhibits all the perversions and corruptions to which statements are liable when they are repeatedly abridged, copied, and eked out with surmises. The depositions of Manoel Caetano Pereira, who visited the capital of the Cazembe, the ruler of the Movíza, are written in a barbarous creole dialect, presenting many difficulties, which have been slurred over, or altered at discretion, by Bowdich, or the copyist employed by him. The despatches of Doctor Lacerda, including the depositions of Pereira and of the native travellers, and the account of the lake given by the missionary Luigi Mariano (of whose letter D'Anville had evidently but a corrupt and imperfect copy), are now before us in their original languages; and we find them to agree in so remarkable a manner with one another, and with the native authorities before referred to, as to determine unquestionably, within certain limits, the position, direction, and general character of this great lake.

We have said that the Portuguese documents respecting this part of the world have been published in English, in a very mutilated and corrupt state. We shall now produce a remarkable passage of the despatch above alluded to, which Bowdich has omitted; premising that the writer of it, Francisco José de Lacerda e Almeida, a colonel of engineers and professor of mathematics, was a man of learning and ability, appointed to the government of the Rios de Sena (as the Portuguese colony on the Zambesi is called) in 1797 by an enlightened minister, for the specific purpose of fixing the geography of that region by astronomical observations, as far as his opportunities reached; and of col

lecting, with a careful scrutiny, intelligence respecting the remoter countries of the interior. This well-instructed man, then, wrote respecting the Movíza and their northern neighbours as follows:

One thing is certain, that, though this empire (that of the Cazembe) is in the heart of Africa, it is by no means so barba'rous as closet geographers are accustomed to paint these natives; ⚫ and its relative condition may be compared to that in which the Spaniards found the Mexicans and Peruvians, who were (so far, at least, as my opinion goes) more polished and civilized than the Spaniards themselves in that age.' The high opinion which Lacerda formed of the civilisation of the Movíza, has been vindicated and confirmed to us by educated Portuguese gentlemen who have conversed in Mozambique, or the Rios de Sena, with individuals of that nation; and it is the more deserving of attention, because the civilisation which it announces has a much wider extent than is directly indicated. In fact, not merely all the nations contiguous to the lake or on the highlands, but all who do not inhabit the swamps and forests of the coast, know the advantages of industry, social order, and of commerce. The Movíza and the Monomoézi are equally designated Vavúa, or the rich people; and even the M'iáo, though of an inferior race, are highly prized in the slave markets on account of their ingenuity, steady habits, and skill as traders. There are certainly some savage tribes in Eastern Africa, in situations where none but savages could dwell; the M'dóa, for instance, only three days distant from Zanzibar, eat their enemies killed in battle. But in general, the Arabs of Zanzibar, who are well acquainted with the native tribes of the adjacent continent, do not consider them barbarians, but view them in a rather favourable light, and travel with as little apprehension among them as across their own island.

We have said that the M'iáo are of a different race from the Movíza, and inferior to them. This leads us to make a comment on the erroneous, but commonly received opinion, that the natives of the eastern coast of Africa are all negroes. The fact is, that the black polished skin, depressed features, and woolly head of the true negro, are nowhere seen in thorough-bred perfection on that coast, from the country of the Macúa, a little below Cape Delgado, northwards to Cape Gardafui. Eastern Africa, considered in its ethnographical colouring, is dotted, in a most extraordinary manner, with black, white, and brown. If we were to attempt to explain this motley grouping, and to trace the causes, physical or moral, which have so often placed apparently different races in close juxtaposition, we should be inevitably led into de

tails too numerous, and a field of discussion far too wide for our present limits. It will be sufficient, however, to observe, that of all the nations of Eastern Africa known to the Arabs (the Macúa always excepted), those which have most of the negro character are the M'iáo and the Chaga—the former nation at the sources of the Livúma, the latter some hundred miles further north. There are few who would not at first sight pronounce a M'iáo to be a perfect negro. Yet a practised observer would soon perceive that the complexion of the M'iáo differs widely from that of the native of Guinea. It does not rival the jetty gloss of polished ebony, but is a diluted, and (if we may use the expression) a sallow black, not darker than brown, but without the sanguine and lively radiance of the latter colour. Neither have the M'iáo or the Chaga such flattened noses, and salient cheek-bones, as those which characterise the Mandingo or Jalof. The forehead of the M'iáo is well developed; his countenance bold and generous. Though a negro, in short, he is neither ugly, nor yet quite black. . Some tribes of the interior, though perfectly black (to the eyes of common observers), have yet finely moulded features, without the slightest trace of negro coarseness. Such are the Meremongáo behind Mombasa. But the majority of the tribes inhabiting Eastern Africa are a dusky brown people of mixed physiognomy, varying much in depth of colour, and bearing a general resemblance to the Bechuana and Kafir tribes on the borders of the Cape colony. The nations, however, who possess the open highlands above the sources of the rivers, viz. the Movíza, Mucamango, Muchíva, Monomoézi, &c. are all of a bright-brown complexion, tall, handsome, and vigorous, like the Amazúla (commonly called the Zoolas), or the purest of the Bechuana tribes near the Cape. There is one tribe pre-eminent above all others in fairness of complexion and physical endowments;--the Wambúngo, situated near the M'iáo. Their black neighbours pronounce them the handsomest people on the earth. A Wambúngo lady has been known to fetch in Zanzibar the enormous price of 3000 dollars, a sum far exceeding what is usually paid for the choicest beauties of Abyssinia. These handsome tribes of the interior are, by the Arabs and natives of the coast, all loosely designated white people; a fact which bears out the assertion of Ebn Haukal, and of the earliest Portuguese travellers, that there are white nations in the interior of Africa.

Of the inferiority of the negro race in this part of the African continent, at least, there can be little doubt. The M'iáo are the most civilized of the negro tribes; they make a beautiful figured cloth from the fibres of palm leaves, and also some striped cotton cloth, though this last branch of manufacture is almost wholly in