Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/353





MOZAMBIQUE.

HE territory assigned to Portugal by the late international treaties still continues north of the Zambese as far as the valley of the Rovuma, and extends from the seaboard inland in the direction of Lake Nyassa. But Portuguese jurisdiction is very far from making itself felt throughout the whole of this vast domain. Even the influence of the officials appointed from Lisbon extends in many places little beyond the immediate vicinity of the coast. They possess nothing except mere hearsay knowledge of the lands represented on the maps as belonging to the crown of Portugal. Even down to recent times the slave-trade was the only traffic carried on in this region; hence the beaten tracks were jealously guarded by the dealers in human merchandise, and these alone dared to venture into the interior, which they described as inhabited by hordes of ferocious anthropophagists.

The station of Mozambique itself, mainstay of the Portuguese authority along the seaboard, is situated not on the mainland but on a neighbouring island, while the surrounding country might, till quite recently, be described as a terra incognita to within a short distance of the opposite coast. Like all other stations on the East African seaboard, except Sofala, Mozambique was regarded as little more than a port of call for vessels plying between Europe and India. It had never been utilised as a starting-point for exploring expeditions in the interior, and the Portuguese continued to occupy it for three hundred years without collecting any information regarding the neighbouring lands und peoples that might, nevertheless, have easily been visited.

The journeys of Lacerda and his successor Gamitto were the first serious geographical expeditions, and even these were directed towards the regions beyond Nyassa. Then came Roscher, Johnson, Last, Cardozo, and especially O'Neill, by whom the Mozambique lands have been traversed in every direction during the latter half of the present century. Strictly speaking, this territory has become a part of the known world mainly through the labours of O'Neill, by whom the banks of the Shire and of Lake Nyassa have been connected with the maritime