8 INTRODUCTORY 



four centuries of death-like slumber, and it was not 

 until fourteen or fifteen years ago that moderately 

 efficient communication with the interior, together 

 with an increasing European population, began to 

 create those needs which rendered better transport 

 and an open waterway imperative necessities. 

 Thenceforward began that transformation in the 

 district of the Lower Zambezi which is so strikingly 

 apparent to any one visiting the country again after 

 a moderately lengthy interval. 



From my knowledge and experience of this 

 portion of Africa, gleaned during some fifteen years' 

 residence here, I look upon Zambezia as a region 

 which will do much within the next decade to 

 redeem its unfortunate past, and, I doubt not, 

 finally emerge a possession of which, for its richness 

 and productiveness, if for no other reason, any 

 European Power might well be proud. For such 

 administrative light as Great Britain has introduced 

 into our East and Central African possessions, the 

 nation has had to pay, I will not say dearly, but by 

 liberal grants-in-aid from the Treasury, and it will 

 therefore come as a surprise to many that the 

 Province of Portuguese East Africa should receive 

 no sort of regular subvention to aid her in tiding 

 over moments of financial embarrassment. All the 

 revenues of the great Dependency have been for 

 many years swallowed up by her internal neces- 

 sities, and have but sparingly sufficed even for these. 

 If we were further to consider the cost of ad- 

 ministering from one governing centre the affairs 

 of a colony of such magnitude in a manner com- 

 parable to that in which British and other colonies 



