Note 586 — Chapter X · —Man's Relation To The Water

In little Lake Mohrya, located near the upper Lualaba River, a southern headstream of the Congo, Cameron found numerous pile dwellings, whose owners moved about in dug-out canoes and cultivated fields on land,586 as did their Swiss confrères of twenty centuries ago. Livingstone, in descending from Lake Nyassa by the Shire River, found in the lakelet of Pamalombe, into which the stream widened, similar water huts inhabited by a number of Manganja families, who had been driven from their homes by slave raiders. The slender reeds of the papyrus thicket, lining the shore in a broad band, served as piles, number compensating for the lack of strength; the reeds, bent downward and fastened together into a mat, did indeed support their light dwellings, but heaved like thin ice when the savages moved from hut to hut. The dense forest of papyrus left standing between village and shore effectually screened their retreat, and the abundant fish in the lake provided them with food.587