9 8 
BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA 
Captain Cecil Montgomery Maguire 1 (of the Haiderabad Contingent Lancers) 
to raise a small force of Indian troops as a nucleus for our police force in 
Central Africa. Captain Maguire was to start from India and meet me at 
the mouth of the River Chinde. Captain Sclater and the rest of my staff 
were to leave England subsequent to myself and also meet me at Chinde. In 
the meantime I proceeded to Zanzibar and Mozambique, to make arrangements 
for the disembarkation of my expedition at the mouth of the Zambezi. In 
the autumn of 1890 Lord Salisbury had resolved to place two gunboats on 
the Zambezi, and these vessels, the Herald and the Mosquito , were very ably 
put together at Chinde under the superintendence of the Senior Naval Officer, 
Commander J. H. Keane, R.N., C.M.G., who managed to launch his gunboats 
without undue friction with the Portuguese. All the various sections of my 
SIKH SOLDIERS OF THE CONTINGENT NOW SERVING IN BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA 
expedition arrived with delightful punctuality at Chinde, and with the aid of 
the two gunboats and the steamers of the African Lakes Company we con¬ 
veyed men, beasts, and goods without accident to Chiromo. 
By the Anglo-Portuguese Convention of 1891 we had lost a little territory 
to the west of the Shire basin, but had been allotted in exchange by the 
Portuguese a portion of the right bank of the River Shire, below the I Ruo 
Junction. This brought the British Protectorate almost within sight of the 
Zambezi. On my journey up the river, therefore, in H.M.S. Herald , I had to 
fix the Anglo-Portuguese boundary according to the Convention, and take 
over political possession of the Lower Shire District. 
We had no sooner arrived at Chiromo in the month of July, 1891, than we 
were greeted with the news that the Yao chief, Chikumbu, 2 had attacked the 
British settlers who had commenced coffee-planting in that country. The 
1 Captain Maguire obtained from the Indian Army seventy volunteers, of whom about forty were 
Mazbi Sikhs, of the 23rd and 32nd Pioneers, and the remainder Muhammadan cavalrymen from the 
various regiments of Haiderabad Lancers. As nearly all our first batch of horses died of horse sickness 
or tsetse fly, the Cavalry became useless and were eventually sent back to India. We subsequently 
decided to engage in future nothing but Sikhs for our Indian Contingent. 
2 A recent arrival in the Mlanje district, who had developed by degrees into a powerful African 
chief. 
