ZAMBEZIA 



CHAPTER I 



INTRODUCTORY 



I HAVE endeavoured in the following pages to give 

 some account of that portion of the Zambezi, and 

 of the lands washed by its all too shallow waters, 

 which have fallen, in the partition of Africa, beneath 

 the sovereignty of the Portuguese Crown. It is, 

 of course, but a part of Africa's fourth greatest 

 waterway ; but, since the lower Zambezi is at 

 present the doorway through which we reach the 

 slowly awakening colonies of Nyasaland and North- 

 Eastern Rhodesia— and even the far-away basin of the 

 mighty Congo — it is with that portion of the river 

 we are at present most concerned, and it will no 

 doubt continue to claim our attention until slowly 

 developing railway enterprise shall one day bring 

 the remoter stretches of the great river within the 

 daily widening scope of the modern traveller. 



The name "Zambezia," properly speaking, is used 

 among geographers to designate a vast district 

 most of which has been granted, as a concession 

 for mineral and agricultural exploitation, to an 



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