7 8 
BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA 
as these French Missionaries had any political sentiments at all they were 
on the side of bringing the Barutse under British influence. The history of 
Barutseland is only artificially connected with the rest of British Central 
Africa, by the fact that at present it is included within the same political 
sphere. Otherwise its history is mainly connected in the past with that of 
British South Africa, and in the future it will unquestionably become an 
appanage of that portion of the Empire. 1 
The greatest difficulty which at that time hampered the development of the 
eastern part of British Central Africa, was the fact that it could only be 
approached from the outer world through Portuguese East African Possessions. 
In those days, anyone wishing to proceed to Lake Nyasa, and shirking the 
overland journey from Zanzibar, which was length)', arduous, and often full 
of risk, landed at Quelimane, a little to the north of the Zambezi delta, 
journeyed up the Kwakwa River in small boats to a point called Mopeia, then 
crossed overland, a distance of three or four miles, to Vicenti, a trading station 
on the Zambezi. At Vicenti one was met by either of the African Lakes 
Company’s two steamers, the James Stevenson or the Lady Nyasa , and so 
travelled on up the Zambezi and up the Shire, as far as the season of the year, 
and consequent depth of the waters would permit, and thence overland 
to the British settlements. This route, however, compelled travellers to land 
at the Portuguese port of Quelimane ; and even assuming the Kwakwa to be, 
like the Zambezi, an international waterway, a fact which could not be asserted 
and maintained, it was impossible to reach the waters of the Zambezi without 
crossing a mile or so of Portuguese territory. No arrangement existed with 
Portugal to secure us exemption from Customs duties or even graver 
hindrances that might be placed in our way by the local Portuguese authorities, 
and these authorities—bearing in mind that the boundaries of Portuguese and 
British influence in the Hinterland had not yet been settled—were naturally 
very jealous of this immigration of British subjects, the said British subjects 
being never too careful of Portuguese rights and susceptibilities. It was this 
difficulty with the Portuguese which had caused Her Majesty’s Government 
in 1863 to arrive at the conclusion that the Zambezi expedition of Livingstone 
must be recalled. It was again this difficulty which hampered Her Majesty’s 
Government in the “eighties,” in preventing them from affording active assistance 
to the traders on Lake Nyasa in their war with the Arabs, and, indeed, in 
formulating any decisive policy in regard to Nyasaland. Had it been possible 
for vessels of fair size and draught to enter the river Zambezi from the sea, 
all these difficulties from overland transport would have disappeared. Her 
Majesty’s Government had for some time past maintained the principle of the 
freedom of navigation of the Zambezi, but although ships did occasionally 
succeed in getting over the bar of the Kongone mouth—a bar on which at 
low tide there was only a depth of 5 to 6 feet of water—the enterprise was too 
uncertain to be often prosecuted, and the best proof of its impracticability lay 
in the fact that the African Lakes Company had almost abandoned this way 
into the Zambezi, and preferred to pay the heavy Customs duties of Quelimane 
and submit to all reasonable restrictions on the part of the Portuguese, rather 
than attempt to communicate with the Shire by means of the Kongone mouth 
of the Zambezi—an attempt indeed which they could only make at fitful 
1 Whereas, on the other hand; the history of the eastern half of British Central Africa, east of the 
Kafue River, has always been mixed up with that of Zanzibar and the northern half of Portuguese East 
Africa. 
