After some time spent in the Lake Shirwa and Shiré districts, I set out for the Upper Shiré and Lake Nyassa. Two short days' walk from the settlement at Blantyre brings one once more to the banks of the Shiré. Here I found waiting the famous little _Ilala_, a tiny steamer, little bigger than a large steam launch. It belonged originally to the missionaries on Lake Nyassa, and was carried here a few years ago from England in seven hundred pieces, and bolted together on the river bank. No chapter in romance is more interesting than the story of the pioneer voyage of the _Ilala_, as it sailed away for the first time towards the unknown waters of Nyassa. No keel had ever broken the surface of this mighty lake before, and the wonderment of the natives as the Big Canoe hissed past their villages is described by those who witnessed it as a spectacle of indescribable interest. The _Ilala_ is named, of course, after the village where David Livingstone breathed his last. It indicates the heroic mission of the little ship--to take up the work of Civilization and Christianity where the great explorer left it. The _Ilala_ now plies at intervals between the Upper Shiré--above the cataracts--and the shores of Lake Nyassa, carrying supplies to the handful of missionaries settled on the western shore. Though commanded by a white man, the work on board is entirely done by natives from the locality. The confidence of the black people once gained, no great difficulty seems to have been found in getting volunteers enough for this novel employment. Singularly enough, while deck hands are often only enlisted after some persuasion, the competition for the office of fireman--a disagreeable post at any time, but in the tropical heat the last to be coveted--is so keen that any number of natives are at all times ready to be frizzled in the stokehole. Instead of avoiding heat, the African native everywhere courts it. His nature expands and revels in it; while a breath of cold on a mountain slope, or a sudden shower of rain, transforms him instantly into a most woebegone object.