Two or three days' journey north and west of Morumballa, among the distant hills which border the valley of the Shiré, Livingstone marks a spot in his sketch-map where coal is to be found. After examining the neighborhood with some care, and cross-examining the native tribes, I conclude that Livingstone must, in this instance, have been either mistaken or misinformed. A black rock certainly occurs at the locality named, but after securing specimens of this as well as of all the dark-colored rocks in the vicinity, I found them to be, without exception, members of the igneous class. One very dark diorite was probably the rock which, on a distant view, had been mistaken for coal, for none of the natives along the whole length of the lower Shiré had ever heard of "a black rock which burned." Coal, however, as already mentioned, does certainly occur farther inland on the Zambesi; while, farther south, the Natal and Transvaal coalfields are now well known. While speaking of coal I may best refer here to a small coal-bed associated with an apparently different series of rocks, and of special interest from its occurrence in the far interior of the country. On the western shore of Lake Nyassa, about 10° south latitude, coal was reported a few years ago by a solitary explorer, who penetrated that region prospecting for gold in the wake of Livingstone. The importance of such a discovery--a coal-seam on the borders of one of the great inland seas of Africa--cannot be over-estimated; and the late Mr. James Stewart, C.E., who has done such important work for the geography of Africa, made a special examination of the spot. From his report to the Royal Geographical Society I extract the following reference:-- "On the 29th we marched northwards along the coast, reaching, after three miles, the stream in which is the coal discovered by Mr. Rhodes. The coal lies in a clay bank, tilted up at an angle of 45°, dip west. It is laid bare over only some 30 feet, and is about 7 feet thick. It hardly looks as if it were in its original bed. The coal is broken and thrown about as if it had been brought down by a landslip, and traces of clay are found in the interstices. Yet the bed is compact, and full of good coal. I traced it along the hillside for some 200 yards, and found it cropping out on the surface here and there. It is 500 feet above the lake-level, and about a mile and a half from the shore. I lit a good fire with it, which burned up strongly. The coal softened and threw out gas bubbles, but gave no gas-jets. It caked slightly, but not so as to impede its burning."--_Proceedings_, vol. iii. No. 5, p. 264.