FOUNDING THE PROTECTORATE 
*9 
a long and arduous journey in the interior, and are also, I hear, short of 
provisions, I have taken the liberty of making up this small supply for your 
use on your way to Quelimane.” Therewith he handed into the boat two 
hampers, which contained not only a supply of champagne and other wines* 
but all sorts of little luxuries very grateful to the jaded palate of a travel-weary 
man. Then, giving me a letter to ensure my not being stopped on my way to 
Quelimane, he bade me farewell. Upon my expressing my thanks very warmly, 
he said, “ We are both doing our best for our respective countries, and however 
much our political views may differ that is no reason why one white man should 
quarrel with another in Central Africa.” This was indeed the keynote of the 
Portuguese demeanour towards me, then and thenceforth, and I feel it only just 
to place these facts on record, for I have been often vexed at the unjust 
aspersions which have been cast upon the Portuguese in the British Press. 
On my way up the Shire to Blantyre I had encountered Mr. Alfred 
Sharpe, who was travelling up the river in his own boat. Knowing that a great 
deal of ground would have to be covered in treaty-making, and that I should be 
unable to reach all parts of British Central Africa myself, I desired to engage 
some one who might suitably represent me in such portions of this territory 
as lay outside my line of route, especially in Central Zambezia and the countries 
between Nyasaland and the Barutse. The latter country had been placed under 
the British flag by Mr. Rhodes’s agents acting for the Chartered Company. 
I had heard much of Mr. Alfred Sharpe from persons acquainted with 
Nyasaland. He had taken a leading part in the war between the Arabs 
and the Lakes Company, in which war he had been wounded. Mr. Sharpe, 
who had been trained for the law, had held a Colonial appointment in Fiji for 
some years, but when this appointment, in common with many others, was 
abolished at a time when the state of Fiji finances compelled severe retrench¬ 
ments, he had been offered a District Commissionership on the Gold Coast. 
For a time, however, he preferred to travel and hunt in Central Africa. In 
1890 Mr. Sharpe accepted employment under the British South Africa 
Company, in whose service he remained about a year, securing for them many 
important concessions north of the Zambezi. Early in 1891 he was appointed 
H.M. Vice-Consul in British Central Africa. 1 It had been arranged between 
Mr. Sharpe and myself, before I quitted Blantyre for the north, that he should 
proceed due westward to beyond the Portuguese dominions at Zumbo, and 
secure to the British the Central Zambezi, and that afterwards he should make 
treaties along the Luangwa River and, northwards, to Lake Mweru and Lake 
Tanganyika. All this he successfully accomplished. After passing into the 
service of the British South Africa Company he made an expedition to 
Ivatunga, but did not succeed in making a treaty, as the chief, Msiri, though 
expressing a desire to remain on friendly terms with all white men, refused to 
become subservient to any particular European Nation. Subsequently Msiri 
similarly refused to make a treaty with Captain Stair’s expedition, which repre¬ 
sented the Congo Free State, and having assumed a hostile demeanour towards 
the expedition he was shot by the late Captain Bodson, who himself was killed 
immediately afterwards by Msiri’s followers. His country was afterwards 
annexed to the Congo Free State. 2 
1 Consul in 1894 ; Deputy Commissioner in 1896. 
2 Msiri does not deserve much pity. He was a stranger to the country of Ivatunga, being merely 
a Mnyamwezi slave trader who by the aid of an armed rabble of Wanyamwezi freebooters and coast Arabs 
had carved out a kingdom for himself in South Central Africa. Fie was a persistent slave raider and was 
hated by the people over whom he ruled. These latter rallied to the Belgian authorities after Msiri’s death. 
