POSTSCRIPT TO PEEFACE. ix 



wards for 690 miles, they Lave 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 Mosanibique 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 gar- 

 risoned 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 was 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. 



It 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 Mosanibique, was 

 demanded by H.M.S. "Wasp," at Mosanibique, 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 



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