After leaving Matope, just above the Murchison cataracts, the _Ilala_ steams for a couple of days in the river before Lake Nyassa is reached. The valley throughout this length is very broad, bounded on either side by distant mountains which at an earlier period probably formed the shores of a larger Lake Nyassa. The fact that Lake Nyassa is silting up at its southern end becomes more apparent as one nears the lake, for here one finds a considerable expanse already cut off from the larger portion, and forming a separate sheet of water. The smaller lake is Lake Pomalombe, and it is already so shallow that in the dry season the _Ilala's_ screw stirs the gray mud at the bottom. The friendship of the few villages along the bank is secured by an occasional present; although the relations between some of them and the Big Canoe are at times a little strained, and in bad humors doubtless they would send it to the bottom if they dared. It is to be remembered that this whole region is as yet altogether beyond the limits, and almost beyond the knowledge of civilization, and few white men have ever been in the country, except the few agents connected with the Lakes Company and the Missions. Beyond an occasional barter of cloth or beads for firewood and food, the _Ilala_ has no dealings with the tribes on the Upper Shiré, and at present they are about as much affected by the passing to and fro of the white man's steamer as are the inhabitants of Kensington by an occasional wild-fowl making for Regent's Park. One is apt to conclude, from the mere presence of such a thing as a steamer in Central Africa, that the country through which it is passing must be in some sense civilized, and the hourly reminders to the contrary which one receives on the spot are among the most startling experiences of the traveller. It is almost impossible for him to believe, as he watches the native life from the cabin of the _Ilala_, that these people are altogether uncivilized; just as it is impossible for him to believe that that lurch a moment ago was caused by the little craft bumping against a submerged hippopotamus. A steel ship, London built, steaming six knots ahead; and grass huts, nude natives, and a hippopotamus--the ideas refuse to assort themselves, and one lives in a perpetual state of bewilderment and interrogation.