HISTORY 
79 
intervals, and by specially chartering ocean-going steamers, as no established 
Steamship Line would hear of calling in at the Kongone mouth as a matter 
of course. 
At this juncture a discovery of the greatest importance was made, which 
completely altered the political aspect of the question. Mr. Daniel J. Rankin, 
an explorer who had originally proceeded to Nyasaland as private secretary 
to Consul Foot, and who had also acted in a Consular capacity at Mozambique, 
was enabled by the Royal Scottish Geographical Society to institute an 
exploration of the Zambezi delta. In the course of his journey he discovered 
the Chinde mouth of the Zambezi, which apparently was quite unknown to the 
Portuguese Government, though it had probably been first discovered by a 
Portuguese planter who was working a concession in the delta. This planter’s 
information put Mr. Rankin on the track of his discovery, which he announced 
to the world in the spring of 1889. 1 It was briefly this, that the Chinde mouth 
of the Zambezi possessed a bar shorter and safer and simpler than that of any 
other outlet of the Zambezi, and with a minimum depth of water at high tide 
of 17 feet (as against, say, 10 feet at the Kongone). At the time Mr. Rankin 
sounded the bar, I believe he found a depth of water on it of 21 or 22 feet, 
a depth which has several times since been recorded, but chiefly at that season 
of the year when the river was visited by Mr. Rankin, namely when the 
Zambezi is in full flood. Ordinarily the depth of water at high spring-tides 
is 17 to 19 feet. Not only was the Chinde bar a far less serious obstacle' 
than that of any other mouth of the Zambezi, but its channel from the sea 
into the main Zambezi was easier of navigation than the other branches of 
that river. In its far-reaching political importance, probably no greater 
discovery in the history of British Central Africa has been made than that 
of the navigability of the Chinde River from the Indian Ocean to the main 
Zambezi. 
1 In the Times Newspaper. 
ON THE CHINDE MOUTH OF THE ZAMBEZI 
