In 1859 British explorer David Livingstone found Lake Malawi (then it was called Lake Nyasa) and thought that Shire Highlands to the south of the lake was a good place for Europeans to make a colony. Many British missions were done in the area in the 1860s and 1870s. The African Lakes Company Limited was made in 1878 to set up a trade and transport that helped with the missions, and a small mission and trading area was made at Blantyre in 1876 and a British Consul started living there in 1883.