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BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA 
but the Portuguese Minister for Foreign Affairs assured Her Majesty’s Govern¬ 
ment that Serpa Pinto would merely proceed to the Portuguese establishments 
on the Upper Zambezi and on the Luangwa River, and would not enter 
the debatable ground of the Shire Highlands. Consequently, as the Portuguese 
claim to Zumbo and to the Lower Luangwa had not been contested—or 
indeed their claims anywhere where occupation or political supremacy could be 
shown—it was thought that if the Portuguese did not attempt to impose their 
rule on any new lands where our interests might be affected, no such direct step 
as the establishment of a Protectorate on our part should be undertaken until 
negotiations with Germany and Portugal had, more or less precisely, fixed 
the limits of our political influence. 
I started for Mozambique in the early summer of 1889. On my arrival 
at that place the Foreign Office, at my request, appointed Mr. W. A! Churchill, 1 
Vice-Consul, so that I might be free to start on my journey to the interior, 
without leaving Consular matters unattended to. Soon after I reached 
Mocambique there arrived H.M.S. Stork , a surveying vessel commanded 
by Lieut.-Commander Balfour, R.N. The Stork had just returned from Chinde, 
where it had been sent to verify Mr. Rankin’s discoveries. The Commander 
informed me that in his steam-launch he had passed up into the Zambezi, and 
had found the channel all the way deep enough for even the Stork herself, and 
the Stork was a vessel drawing 13J feet. I felt that it would be good policy to 
show that I had reached these regions of the interior, without necessarily 
landing on Portuguese territory, so I obtained permission from the Government 
to use the Stork for the conveyance of my expedition. At the same time the 
authorities at Mozambique were made fully aware of the purposes I intended to 
fulfil, namely the negotiation of a peace with the Arabs and the conclusion of 
treaties of friendship with the local chiefs, who were not under Portuguese juris¬ 
diction. The Governor asked me pointedly if I intended to proclaim a British 
Protectorate, and I told him I was authorised to do nothing of the kind, so long 
as Major Serpa Pinto or other Portuguese explorers took no political action 
outside Portuguese territory. No difficulty whatever was placed in my way by 
the Portuguese, whether or not they approved of my expedition. I think parti- 
cular stress should be laid on this fact, as had Portugal been animated by really 
hostile intentions to Great Britain, there were a hundred pretexts by which they 
might have stopped my journey. So little need was there to preserve any 
mystery about my operations, that instead of proceeding direct to Chinde, 
I called in with the Stork at Quelimane, and there visited the Portuguese 
officials, and communicated with the African Lakes Company. The Stork 
crossed the bar of the Chinde mouth without difficulty, on the 28th of July, 
1889, and steamed up the Chinde River into the main Zambezi, to the 
unbounded astonishment of such few inhabitants as were on the banks, for 
neither they nor any other people had seen so large a vessel enter the Zambezi 
before. A short distance above the confluence of the Chinde with the main Zambezi 
the Stork came to anchor, and we continued our journey in a flotilla of steam 
launches and boats, by which means we finally came up with the African 
Lakes Company’s steamer, the James Stevenson , near Morambala, a very notable 
mountain which is situated some twenty miles up the Shire River. My expedi¬ 
tion consisted of Mr. J. L. Nicoll, formerly of the Lakes Company’s service,' 2 
whom I had engaged at Quelimane as an assistant; Ali Kiongwe, my Zanzibari 
headman, who had accompanied me on my journey to Kilimanjaro, and whom I 
1 Now Consul at Mocambique. 2 Just returning from the Arab War. 
