SHIP WAS WRECKED ON LAKE NYASSA.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17837, 4 May 1926, Page 6

SHIP WAS WRECKED ON LAKE NYASSA.

SCIENTIST’S THRILLS ON FISHING EXPEDITION.

LONDON, April 1. After a ten months' scientific fishing expedition on Lake Nvassa, Major Cuthbert Christy, R.A.M.C., has returned to London. Some thousands of his wonderful specimens—many being new to science, have arrived in the East India Dock on board the Guildford Castle, “Over a year ago,” said Major Christy, to a “Daily Chronicle” representative, “the offer of my services was accepted by the British Museum. The expedition has given me one of the most interesting times in 30 years of nature study in tropical parts of the globe. “When T got to the lake I made friends with the natives. Day by day, and night by night, I just sat on the shore, watched their ‘catch.’ and studied local conditions generally. SLEEPING SICKNESS CURE. “I had no difficulty in getting together a splendid team of fishermen. Fine fellows, very keen, and mightily puzzled as to my real object. I have some reputation among them as a doctor, and their main idea was, I believe,’ that I was pickling fish to be used as a cure for sleeping sickness I “One of my greatest difficulties was water transport. From time to time I was able to make use of missionary steamers, and more often of a British Government steamer. But Lake Nyassa is some 40 or 50 miles wide, and J wanted to hang about special spots. So in the end I fitted up a big ironbarge as a house-boat and arranged to be towed by the Government steamer. “Although an inland lake, Nyassa is sometimes as rough as the English Channel, and on one occasion we suffered partial shipwreck, and were in danger of losing all our gear. It took 60 men to pull us up on the beach to ' THE RAINBOW’S END. “I have never seen a more magnificent spectacle of its kind when the big trawl-nets —each 200 yards long—were hauled in. “There were hundreds upon hundreds of flashing fish of a bright deep sky blue, gleaming yellows, scarlet and mixed iridescent colours. But the sky blues predominated, many of the fish being scarlet-bellied. “This moving glow of colour thrills you through and through. Yet within a few minutes all the gorgeous blues have faded away, leaving only the reds and the yellows.”