[11] Even one of the Deputation publicly declared that blame was due not “on account of wrong doing, but of want of action”. Now the one object that I had aimed at, was to act towards the Committee’s colony at Blantyre exactly as clergymen act towards colonies in all parts of the world, while I understood that the Lay Missionaries were to go on with the colonial work in the same way as they had been doing before my arrival. According to the minute of appointment, I had been sent out as “Clerical Head of the Mission,” and I had always given the Committee credit for knowing the laws of the Church too well to make me anything else. But now it appeared that we had been playing at cross purposes: for the Directors began to insist that “Clerical Head of the _Mission_” really meant “Civil Governor of the _Colony_”. [12] On one occasion there was a great conflagration at Zomba, in which a house was burned down. Although the danger was great a certain native was not afraid to mount on the roof. He then called for water, but the only method available was to hand up some in an old tea-kettle, which his companions did. He might as well have hoped to extinguish the flames by throwing on a pinch of snuff. Still he persevered, but, which was more ridiculous, when the fire came nearer, the man became very thirsty, and had to drink a large percentage of the water with which he expected to extinguish the flames! [13] The Anyasa name for a hippopotamus is _mvu_, the Yao name is _ndomondo_. The first word is undoubtedly taken from the snorting of the animal, while the second word may be taken from the splash with which the animal returns to the river after feeding on the bank. [14] On such a journey as ours the traveller may make every day so much of a Sabbath or so little of a Sabbath (as the case may be) that he loses his reckoning. It is exceedingly easy for a person to do this, and having nothing to refer to he becomes quite helpless. We were told that on one occasion, on Lake Nyassa, a party of Missionaries mistook their days, and while “one day in seven” was diligently observed by them, “the first day of the week” was profaned!