wards discovered, a portion of Shirwa is only about 30 miles distant from the Shire which is at all times navigable by this vessel.

The country through which we travelled was quite a highland one-in ten days we were 1500 feet above the vessel. The Shire rushes over several cataracts in that portion which we saw when on foot, and becoming confined in a narrow channel of 30 yards, has always a rapid current. It gave me an idea of water power without dams, equal to drive all the mills in England-such a cotton country we have seen nowhere except Angola : the further we went the more important did the crop appear to be to the inhabitants. They plant it at a time of the year that allows of the growth through the winter, and coming to maturity before the rains commence or insects come forth to injure the crops. Every one spins and weaves the cotton, which is chiefly of the strong indigenous kind. Chiefs may be seen setting, picking, or arranging the rove with their fingers. They have no trade in ivory-nor in anything else except slaves. I never saw so much land under cotton anywhere, and the country being so elevated it is healthy, the vegetation is exactly like that of Londa in the middle of the countryrunning streams abound-and this is the region that I have always pointed out as the proper country for cotton and

sugar.

In coming down the Shire the people brought cotton in small bags for sale-a bunch or rove as large as one's head cost only one foot of calico not worth a penny-I send it to you in the box.

But before proceeding further, I must say that having been disappointed in meeting a man of war on the 24th, the box must remain at Senna till the end of July, when we hope a ship will meet the vessel at the Kongone.

Well, our prospects do not look bright. The Shire cotton trade is as ready for development as that in the Niger, had we agents such as the Sierre Leone missions afford, but the Portuguese, instead of collecting the different articles which we point out to them as of undoubted commercial value, busy themselves only in a paltry trade in ivory.

.

A station is to be put up at the mouth of the Shire by way of claiming all our explorations in the north, and a custom house is to be erected at the mouth of the Zambesi, whose navigability we alone discovered. They durst not enter the Shire till about the end of last year, when a rebel party ran away and allowed them to go about three miles into the river.

We have had fever among us, but of so mild a character in consequence of being well provided for, that I failed to recognise it as that from which 1 suffered so severely when destitute of every comfort. We cure it readily, it looks more like a common cold than fever.

DAVID LIVINGSTONE.

No. 14.

Addressed to SIR GEORGE GREY.

*June 1st, 1859.

DEAR SIR GEORGE,

WE are now about to deliver our letters to her Majesty's ship Persian, and though I know that she has one on board for you of May last, I add a few words to that, as we are sending some buaze seeds and living plants of the motsikiri. Dr Kirk will write Mr M'Gibbon as to how they are to be disposed, and I have now to beg your good offices for speedy transmission to their destination. The buaze will do well in Natal, in localities where other cultivation is impossible. Should it grow, no care is required for an annual crop (a comfortable fact for all Hottentots, English, Dutch, and African), for it is simply pollarded when the fibre is mature in the thinner branches. The seeds yield a paint or drying oil. Some are for India and others for Natal; and we shall send more when we can. There are plants, too, of motsikiri, a tree the seed of which yields a fat and an oil valuable in commerce. It is exported from Whambane. We have sent home a report, the joint production of Dr Kirk and myself on the African fever; and we think our experience of it has rendered it a less formidable disease than heretofore. This will probably be published.

We have been able to furnish a report on the navigation of the Zambesi, after seeing all the changes to which it is annually liable. From what we have observed in an unusually dry year, a vessel drawing two feet such as they are obliged to use on the Mississippi, could ply the whole of ordinary years. During four or five months each year large vessels could ascend to Tette. There the river is 964 yards from bank to bank—about three times the width of the Thames at London-bridge; at the broadest part it is about three miles, and divided into five or six channels. A tidepole put up at my suggestion by Major Sicard showed a gradual rise above low-water mark of 8 feet; then a variation from 8 to 15 feet during some months; then a gradual decrease to 3. The low-water mark adopted was the surface of that in which from 18 inches to 24 inches were found in certain crossings from one channel to another. The channels then contained reaches, miles in length, of 8 or 10 feet, but in the crossings we had much difficulty; the vessel of 31-3 inches being of what is called the "Niger canoe or pot-bellied shape," and so weak an engine to be unable to help us in the difficulty. She was only 1-16th of an inch thick in the

beginning, and is now like an old copper kettle full of holes at one part. We are about to try Nyinyesi from the Shire, if she will only stick together so long. The Shire is more easily navigated than the Zambesi, as we have two or three fathoms constantly, and can steam by night. We are in hopes, after surmounting a thirty mile difficulty, of getting on the lakes of Eastern Africa, and then we go to the Makololo country either afloat or afoot.

P.S.-I wonder why our Cape merchants don't push their merchandise higher up the coast. The Tette traders have been compelled to wait four months at Quillimane for calicoes, or till an American ship came. They are a yard wide, coarse unbleached calico, and dearer than the English. Gentoos from India give higher prices for ivory, in English calico, than the Americans can afford. We have failed to receive our regular newspapers, and not a Punch except yours-nothing more is needed to prove us out of the world.

No. 15.

Addressed to SIR GEORGE GREY.

River Shire, July 1st, 1859.

MY DEAR SIR GEORGE,

WE have lately discovered a very fine lake by going up this river in the steam launch about 100 miles, and then marching some 50 more on foot. It is called Shirwa, and Lake Ngami is a mere pond in comparison. It is, moreover, particularly interesting from the fact reported by the natives on its shores that it is separated by a strip of land of only five or six miles in width from Nyanja or Lake N'yinyesi-the Stars-which Burton has gone to explore. We could hear nothing of his party at Shirwa, and having got no European news since you kindly sent us some copies of The Times last year we are quite in the dark as to whether he has succeeded or not. Lake Shirwa has no outlet, and its waters are bitter but drinkable. It abounds in fishes, leeches, alligators, and hippopotami. We discovered also, by examining partially a branch of the Shire called Ruo, that one portion of Shirwa is not more than 30 miles distant from a point that may easily be reached by this launch, which by newspaper measurement draws 13 inches, and actually 31 inches. The Lake Shirwa is very grand; it is surrounded on all sides by lofty green mountains. Dzombo, or as people nearest it say "Zomba," is over 6,000 feet high, of the same shape as Table Mountain, but inhabited on the top: others are

equally high, but inaccessible. It is a highland region, the lake itself being about 2,000 feet above the sea; it is 20 or 30 miles wide, and 50 or 60 long. On going some way up a hill, we saw in the far distance two mountain tops, rising like little islands on a watery horizon. An inhabited mountain island stands near where we first came to it. From the size of the waves it is supposed to be deep. Mr Maclear will show you the map.

Dr Kirk and I, with fifteen Makololo, formed the land party. The country is well peopled, and very much like Londa in the middle of the country, many streams rising out of bogs-the vegetation nearly identical also. Never saw so much cotton grown as among the Manganja of the Shire and Shirwa Valleys-all spin and weave it. These are the latitudes which I have always pointed out as the cotton and sugar lands-they are pre-eminently so, but such is the disinterestedness of some people that labour is exported to Bourbon instead of being employed here. The only trade the people have is that of slaves, and the only symptoms of impudence we met were from a party of Bajana slave traders; but they changed their deportment instantly on hearing that we were English and not Portuguese. There are no Maravi at or near Shirwa-they are all west of the Shire, so this lake can scarcely be called “Lake Maravi ”—the Portuguese know nothing of it; but the Minister who claimed (Blue Book for 1857) the honour of first traversing the African continent for two black men with Portuguese names must explain why they did not cross Shirwa. It lies some 40 or 50 miles on each side of the latitude of Mozambique.

They came to Tette only, and lacked at least 400 miles of Mozambique. We go back to Shirwa in July, and may make a push for N'yinyesi.

I HAVE been very greatly delighted by the information contained in your letter that you have been honoured to send the Gospel simultaneously with the formation of a new English Colony, and I do most heartily thank the Author of all good who has put the noble idea into your mind and given you grace to reduce it to practice. May He return your kindness to unborn generations, in abundant measure to your own bosom, and

grant the influences of His gracious Spirit, that your intentions may be more than realized. Nothing has cheered me more for a long time than this bit of news. You may be amused to hear that, in pondering over matters, I have sometimes indulged the hope that something of the same nature, though on a smaller scale, might be in store for Africa; and I believe that I mentioned in one of my letters that I meant one day to beg something from you. I am becoming more and more convinced that a small English colony in the highlands of Africa is indispensable to working out her civilization, and producing a sensible effect on American slavery, and I lately ventured to tell Lord Malmesbury so. Should my wish ever be realized, I meant and would apply to you for a Clergyman. I did not soar so high as a Bishop, but I believed in you the length of a Clergyman. I would have the Church to be the first building. A Colony of Germans is on its way out here with a lot of Portuguese. Were they Englishmen with their religious institutions along with them, slavery in this region would be an impossibility. I have more confidence in my countrymen and country women than in any other people under the sun.... I cannot get the daughter of Chibisa out of the priest's hands. He bought three girls, and says one ran away. The usual price is about three pounds, or less. I offered double, but I suspect his reverence expects more from the father. He is a great friend of mine this padre.... and has to-day sent me a present of a sheep by way of appeasing me in my disappointThe Makololo wished me to allow them to effect her escape, but I would not consent to this. If English folks knew foreign padres, they would esteem the worst of their clergy more.

ment.

We have a paper, the joint production of Dr Kirk and myself, on fever, which we send to Sir James Clark. If he publishes it in one of the medical journals, I wish the Bishop of Oxford to look at it. I think we are making the way safe for our countrymen.

Thanks for the information about the discovery of arrow-heads among the remains of hippopotami, &c. The natives of those days must have been lower than our bushmen; for, though they had the wit to burrow subterranean habitations, and, if I mistake not, made ponderous huts with huge blocks of stone, they flattened their skulls, and did not know the use of iron. The greater part of the Africans work in iron, some smelt copper, and all make pots and wooden dishes. There is, then, hope that they too will rise. But what do you make of this odd country where there is no evidence of the past at all except in its geology? Cairns occur in all the mountain-passes, and the passenger casts a stick or stone on them, and says, "Hail, chief! let it be pleasant with us in the parts to which we are