Instead of being one hundred and fifty miles long, as first supposed, Lake Nyassa is now known to have a length of three hundred and fifty miles, and a breadth varying from sixteen to sixty miles. It occupies a gigantic trough of granite and gneiss, the profoundly deep water standing at a level of sixteen hundred feet above the sea, with the mountains rising all around it, and sometimes sheer above it, to a height of one, two, three, and four thousand feet. The mountains along the west coast form an almost unbroken chain, while the north-east and north are enclosed by the vast range of the Livingstone Mountains. The anchorages on the lake are neither so numerous nor so sheltered as might be wished, but the _Ilala_ has picked out some fair harbors on the west coast, and about half as many are already known on the east. I only visited one native village on the lake, and I should hope there are none others like it--indeed it was quite exceptional for Africa. I tumbled into it early one morning, out of the _Ilala's_ dingy, and lost myself at once in an endless labyrinth of reeking huts. Its filth was indescribable, and I met stricken men, at the acute stage of smallpox, wandering about the place at every turn, as if infection were a thing unknown. The chief is the greatest slaver and the worst villain on the lake, and impaled upon poles all round his lodge, their ghastly faces shrivelling in the sun, I counted forty human heads. This village was not African, however. It was Arab. The native villages on Nyassa are rarely so large, seldom so compact, and never so dirty. Everywhere they straggle along the shore and through the forest, and altogether there must be many hundreds of them scattered about the lake. On the western shore alone there are at least fifteen different tribes, speaking as many different languages, and each of them with dialects innumerable.