that the ancient inhabitants of Senna, a village on the
Zambesi, found no difficulty in navigating the Shire to
Lake Nyassa up what modern travellers find to be an
ascent of 1200 feet in 35 miles of latitude. A broad
shallow lake, with a strong current, which Senhor Candido
declared he had visited N.W. of Tette, is assumed to be
the narrow deep Lake Nyassa, without current, and about
N.N.B. of the same point. Great offence is also taken
because the discovery of the main sources of the Nile has
been ascribed to Speke and Grant, instead of to Ptolemy
and F. Lobo.
But the main object of the Portuguese Government is not
geographical. I t is to bolster up that pretence to power
which has been the only obstacle to the establishment of
lawful commerce and friendly relations with the native
inhabitants of Eastern Africa. The following work contains
abundant confirmation of all that was advanced by me at the
Bath meeting of the British Association; and I may here
add that it is this unwarranted assumption of power over
1360 miles of coast—from English Liver to Cape Delgado,-
where the Portuguese have in fact little real authority
—which perpetuates the barbarism of the inhabitants.
The Portuguese interdict all foreign commerce, except at
a very few points where they have established customhouses,
and even at these, by an exaggerated and obstructive
tariff and differential duties, they completely shut out the
natives from any trade, except that in slaves.
Looking from South to North, let us glance at the enormous
seaboard which the Portuguese in Europe endeavour to
make us believe belongs to them. Delagoa Bay has a small
fort called Lorenzo Marques, but nothing beyond the walls.
At Inhambane they hold a small strip of land by sufferance
of the natives. Sofala is in ruins, and from Quillimane northwards
for 690 miles, they have only one small stockade,
protected by an armed launch in the mouth of the River
Angoxa to prevent foreign vessels from trading there. Then
at Mosambique they have the little island on which the fort
stands, and a strip about three miles long on the mainland,
on which they have a few farms, which are protected from
hostility only by paying the natives an annual tribute, which
they call “ having the blacks in their pay.” The settlement
has long been declining in trade and importance. It is garrisoned
by a few hundred sickly soldiers shut up in the fort,
and even with a small coral island near can hardly be called
secure. On the island of Oibo, or Iboe, an immense number
of slaves are collected, but there is little trade of any kind.
At Pomba Bay a small fort wag made, but it is very doubtful
whether it still exists; the attempt to form a settlement
there having entirely failed. They pay tribute to the Zulus,
for the lands they cultivate on the right bank of the
Zambesi; and the general effect of the pretence to power
and obstruction to commerce, is to drive the independent
native chiefs to the Arab dhow slave-trade, as the only one
open to them.
I t is well known to the English Government, from reliable
documents at the Admiralty and Foreign Office, that no
longer ago than November, 1864, two months after my
speech was delivered at Bath, when the punishment of the
perpetrators of an outrage on the crew of the cutter of H.M.S.
“ Lyra,” near a river 45 miles S.W. of Mosambique, was
demanded by H.M.S. “Wasp,” at Mosambique, the present
Governor-General declared that he had no power over the
natives there. They have never been subdued, and being a
fine energetic race, would readily enter into commercial
treaties with foreigners, were it not for the false assertion
of power by which the Portuguese, with the tacit consent of
b 3