Lake Nyasa – in Africa discovered by David Livingstone on his travels, is the lake where the 1883 city of Blantyre, Africa was founded.
An amusing story is told regarding Livingstone’s naming of Lake Nyasa; seeing the huge expanse of water for the first time, he asked an inhabitant in a nearby village what it was called. The native informed him that it was “Nyasa” which in his language meant “lake”.
David used the local names in his notebooks and duly recorded this as Lake Nyasa, little knowing that he had named it in English as, “Lake Lake”.
From “Blantyre Explained” by Paul Veverka (c) 2016
For those who want to know more about Lake Nyasa…here are some beautiful modern photos of how it looks today and some more information. It is easy to see how Livingstone longed to return to Africa seeing such colour, warmth and beauty.
Lake Nyasa contains a greater show of indigenous species of Percoidean fishes than any added lake in the world. Humanity Wildlife Fund researchers have identified over 500 species to escort that are not recovered anywhere added in the world. That is more than all of the freshwater species recovered in all the waters of both Continent and North America. The Cichlids of Lake Nyasaland, perhaps flatbottomed writer so than the Cichlids from the other two rift lakes, are brightly bichrome and dappled. For this ground, they remain a big hit with aquarists all over the experience.