XXXVI.] STEAMERS ON El VERS. 479 



way into regions of untold richness to lie neglected and useless. 

 Why are not steamers flying the British colors carrying the 

 overglut of our manufactured goods to the naked African, and 

 receiving from him in exchange those choicest gifts of nature 

 by which he is surrounded, and of the value of which he is at 

 jDresent ignorant ? 



The Portuguese hold the keys of the land route from Loanda 

 and Benguela, and keep out foreign capital and enterprise, and 

 are morally accomplices of slave-traders and kidnapers. If 

 they threw open their ports, and encouraged the employment 

 of capital and the advent of enei-getic men of husiness, their 

 provinces of Angola and Mozambicpie might rival the richest 

 and most prosperous of the dependencies of the British crown. 

 But a blind system of protection, carried on by under-paid ofli- 

 cials, stifles trade, and renders these places hot-beds of corrup- 

 tion. 



Many of the Portuguese are aware of this and lament it, but 

 say they are powei'less. The Marquis Sa de Bandeira — now, 

 alas ! dead — was, and M. le Vicomte Duprat is, wiser than the 

 majority of their countrymen. If their suggestions and advice, 

 and those of men like Admiral Andrade, lately Governor-general 

 of Angola, were followed, we might soon see a vast stride made 

 toward the civilization of Africa. 



A charter has lately been granted by the Portuguese Govern- 

 ment to a company to place steamers on the Zambesi ; and if 

 the project be carried out vigorously, some results may soon be 

 heard of from that quarter. 



Many people may say that the rights of native chiefs to 

 govern their countries must not be interfered with. I doubt 

 whether there is a country in Central Africa where the people 

 would not soon welcome and rally round a settled form of gov- 

 ernment. The rule of the chiefs over their subjects is capri- 

 cious and barbarous, and death or mutilation is ordered and car- 

 ried out at the nod of a drunken despot. 



The negroes always seem prone to collect round any place 

 where they may be comparatively safe from the constant raids of 

 their enemies, and thus the settlements of both East and West 

 Coast traders frequently become nuclei of considerable native 

 populations. These people, throwing off the yoke of their own 



