As the result of the Muhammadan invasion of Africa from Arabia—only

brought to a close at the end of the 19th century—it may be stated

that Arabized Berbers ruled in North and North-West Africa; Arabized

Turks ruled in North and North-East Africa; Arabized Negroes ruled

on the Niger, and in the Central Sudan; Arabs ruled more directly on

the Nile, and on the Nubian coast; and the Arabs of south Arabia and

of ’Oman governed the East African coast, and eventually carried

their influence, and to some extent their rule, inland to the great

Central African lakes, and even to the Upper Congo.

The Muhammadan colonization of Africa was the first event which

brought that part of the continent beyond the Sahara and Upper

Egypt within the cognizance of the world of civilization and

history. The Arabs introduced from Syria and Mesopotamia an

architecture—“Saracenic”—which was an offshoot of the

Byzantine[47], with a dash of Persian or Indian influence. This

architecture received at the hands of the Berbers and Egyptians an

extraordinarily beautiful development, which penetrated northwards

into Spain and Sicily and in a modified type into Italy, and

southwards reached the Lower Niger, the Upper Nile, the vicinity

of the Zambezi, and the north coast of Madagascar. They gave to

all the northern third of Africa a _lingua franca_ in Arabic, and

besides spreading certain ideas of Greek medicine and philosophy,

they taught the Koran, which admitted all those Berber and Negro

populations into that circle of civilized nations which has

founded so much of its hopes, philosophy and culture on the

Semitic Scriptures. The Arabs, especially of Yaman and ’Oman, were

the means, more or less direct (especially through their seafaring

trade with India), of enlarging the food supply and means of

transport of the negro and negroid, and of conveying to Europe a

few useful African products, such as coffee. They had much to do

with the introduction of the Indian buffalo into Egypt, and the

camel into the Sahara and Libyan deserts, Nigeria and Somaliland.

Similarly they extended the range of the domestic horse and ass,

of goats, and sheep and poultry in Negro Africa. They certainly

introduced the lime and orange, and the sugar cane, and possibly

the banana; though this last may date back to pre-Islamic times,

like wheat and rice.

----------------------------------------------------------------

MUHAMMADAN AFRICA

Plate II.

[Illustration]

Sir H.H. Johnston del^t. W.&A.K. Johnston Limited. Edinburgh &

London

EXPLANATORY NOTE

[yellow] Indicates approximate area over which Islam is the

dominating religion at the present day

(_N.B.—The present area is larger than it has ever been in the

past_)

_Dotted spots of colour illustrate sporadic establishments of

Muhammadanism_

_The Boundaries of most important Muhammadan Empires when at their

greatest extent are shown in coloured lines_

----------------------------------------------------------------

Through their contact with Europeans, Arabs and Arabized Berbers

first sketched out with some approach to correctness the geography

of Inner Africa, and of the African coasts and islands. The direct

and immediate result of this Muhammadan conquest of Africa was the

drawing into that continent of the Portuguese—themselves but

recently emancipated from Muhammadan rule, and still retaining some

conversance with Arabic, a language already used in African and

Eastern commerce from Tangier and the Senegal to Ternate and the

Spice Islands off the coasts of New Guinea. Thanks to this intimate

acquaintance with Muhammadans, and their _lingua franca_, the

Portuguese were now to advance considerably the colonization of

Africa by the Caucasian race.

-----

Footnote 27:

Tawareq is the plural of an Arabic word, Tarqi, a raider.

Footnote 28:

The origin of the name Allah applied by Muhammadans to the Supreme

God. Allah acquired a masculine sense although in its original

form the word was feminine.

Footnote 29:

Jerba, usually called Meninx by the ancients, is supposed to have

been the Island of Lotos-Eaters of Greek mythology.

Footnote 30:

The origin of the name Kairwan has been much disputed. The present

writer, visiting this place some years ago, was told by a native

that the word was the Arab name for a small bustard-like courser

(a bird which the French call Poule de Kairouan), and that, seeing

this bird in large numbers—where it is still to be found—in the

marshy plain on which the city was built, the Arabs gave its name

to the town. Kairwan was chosen as the site for the Muhammadan

capital by the early Arab invaders because it was considered

sufficiently far from the sea-coast to be beyond the reach of

attack from a Byzantine fleet.

Footnote 31:

Count Julian appears to have been a Byzantine governor on the

coast of Morocco, who after the Byzantine downfall to some extent

attached himself to the Romanized Gothic kingdom of Spain.

Footnote 32:

This is the Arab rendering of her name. Dahia meant “queen” and

Al-Kahina “the wise woman” or “prophetess.” This remarkable

personage was from a Berber tribe, the Jorāwa, which had been

converted to Judaism and was partly Jewish in blood.

Footnote 33:

Jewish colonies began to settle in North Africa soon after the

destruction of Jerusalem, or even as far back as the Ptolemaic

rule over Egypt. The Jews were particularly attracted to Tunisia

and Tripoli (the former Carthaginian coast) by their kinship in

race and language with the Phoenicians.

Footnote 34:

The rocky peninsula where Tarik landed was called by the Arabs

Jibl-al-Tarik, a name which subsequently became corrupted by the

Spaniards into Gibraltar.

Footnote 35:

There has been a succession of great cities since prehistoric

times ranging round about or situated on the site of Cairo—an

“inevitable” city site, because it is at the head of the Nile

Delta. Memphis was only 12 miles away, and Heliopolis or On less

than half that distance. Babel or Babylon was built by emigrants

from old Babylon on the Euphrates on the actual site of Cairo in

about 525 B.C. This became a Roman city and was succeeded by the

Arab Al Fostat or Masr.

Footnote 36:

A little more than one-third of the modern population of

Cyrenaica, Tripoli, and Mauretania is of Arab race; but

seven-tenths of the North African population speak Arabic and not

Berber.

Footnote 37:

Prince of the Faithful.

Footnote 38:

From the Arabic _Wahad_, “The One.”

Footnote 39:

It also later on left traces of its temporary occupation on the

island of Jerba, where a fine Spanish fortress remains intact to

this day.

Footnote 40:

Arzila.

Footnote 41:

_Sharif_, plur. _Shorfa_, means in Arabic “nobly born.” The first

Sharifian Arab dynasty ruled Morocco from 788 to 970. Then

followed a long succession of Berber dynasties till 1524, when the

Sa’adi Sharifs from the upper Draa began to rule Morocco. The

third Sharifian Arab dynasty—Filali, from Ta-filal-t—succeeded the

Sa’adi Sultans in the 17th century and still occupies the Moroccan

throne.

Footnote 42:

Timbuktu had been founded by a Tawareq (Berber) tribe about 1100

A.C.

Footnote 43:

or Askia.

Footnote 44:

Now in the hinterland of Algeria, and occupied by the French.

Footnote 45:

Algeria and Tunis were conquered by Turkish pirates, quite as much

from the mild Berber dynasties possessing them as from the Spanish

encroachments. Tripoli was taken from the Knights of Malta.

Gradually all these three Regencies detached themselves from the

Turkish Empire in everything but the mere acknowledgment of

suzerainty; but, in 1835, the Turks abruptly resumed the direct

control of Tripoli and Barka, to which they added Fezzan in 1842.

Footnote 46:

or ’Oman. Maskat is the capital of the principality of ’Oman (a

word which is really pronounced ’ūman) in East Arabia, ruled by an

“Imam” or laicized descendant of a line of preacher-kings or

“Prince Bishops,” leaders of the Ibadite sect of Puritan

Muhammadans, believing mostly that sin was worse than unbelief.

The Ibadites were identical in origin with the N. African Khariji

already described, whose tenets, in the 18th and 19th centuries,

were unconsciously repeated by the followers of Muhammad ibn

Abd-al-Wahhab, the conquering “Wahhabis” of Nejd.

Footnote 47:

The architectural style known as Saracenic made its beginnings in

Inner Syria and Mesopotamia a century or nearly so before the

Muhammadan invasion; and the “Horseshoe Arch” or the arch

prolonged for more than half a circle was invented by Hellenized

Syrians in the sixth century of this era. The “Mahrab” of the

Mosque and some of the doming were added by the Arabs and actually

descend from the symbols of phallic worship.

CHAPTER IV

THE PORTUGUESE IN AFRICA

The mother of Portugal was Galicia, that north-western province of

the present Kingdom of Spain. It was here at any rate that the

Portuguese language developed from a dialect of provincial Latin,

and hence that the first expeditions started to drive the Moors out

of that territory which subsequently became the Kingdom of Portugal.

A large element in the populations of Galicia and of the northern

parts of Portugal was Gothic. The Suevi settled here in considerable

numbers; and their descendants at the present day show the fine tall

figures, flaxen or red hair, and blue eyes so characteristic of the

northern Teuton. Central Portugal is mainly of Latinized Iberian

stock, while southern Portugal retains to this day a large element

of Moorish blood. The northern part of Portugal was first wrested

from the Moors in the 11th century by the bravery of Alfonso V,

Ferdinand I and Alfonso VI, Kings of Leon. Alfonso VI placed it (as

a tributary county) in charge of Henric of Besançon or Burgundy, a

French prince of the Capetian house, who married the illegitimate

daughter of Alfonso VI, and extended the conquered area nearly to

the banks of the Tagus. He became known to the Moors as Errik; and

his warrior son Alfonso I was styled in Moorish history “ibn Errik,”

the “son of Henry.” Alfonso I became the first king of Portugal in

1143, though it is doubtful whether the kingly title was assumed or

recognized till the reign of Henric’s great-great grandson Alfonso

III, by whom in 1250 the southernmost province of Algarve[48] was

conquered. By the middle of the 13th century the Moors had ceased to

rule in the Roman Lusitania. Lisbon, the capital, had been wrested

from the Muhammadans in 1147, thanks to the cooperation of a

crusading force of English, Dutch and Germans, who volunteered the

aid of their ships and fighting men. Most of these Saxon crusaders

settled in Portugal, which at that period even imported Anglo-Saxon

or English architects and craftsmen; and not a few of the later

_conquistadores_ and bold sea-captains of the Lusitanian kingdom

could trace their descent from Teutonic adventurers of the 12th

century.

In course of time the Portuguese, not content with ridding the

western part of the Peninsula of the Moorish invaders, attempted to

carry the war into the enemy’s country, urged thereto by the

irritating attacks of Moorish pirates. In 1415, as already

mentioned, a Portuguese army landed on the coast of Morocco, and

captured the citadel of Ceuta, the Roman Septa. One by one the

Portuguese captured the coast towns of north-west Morocco, till in

the second half of the 16th century the king of Portugal was almost

entitled to that claim over the Empire of Morocco which asserted

itself down to 1910 in the formal setting-forth of his dignities.

Most of these posts were either abandoned some years before or just

after the defeat of the young king “Sebastião o Desejado”—Sebastian

the desired—who at the age of only 23 was defeated and slain by the

founder of the Sharifian dynasty of Morocco on the fatal field of Al

Kasr-al-Kabīr in 1578[49]. Ceuta was taken over by Spain in 1580—was

garrisoned, that is, by Spanish soldiers[50]; the two or three other

Moroccan towns which remained in Portuguese hands after the battle

of Kasr-al-Kabīr, being garrisoned by Portuguese soldiers, reverted

to the separated crown of Portugal in 1640. Of these Tangier was

ceded to England in 1662, Saffi was given up to the Moors in 1641,

other points were snatched by the Moors in 1689, and Mazagan was

finally lost in 1770.

The second son of the king Dom João I (who reigned from 1385 to

1433) and Philippa, daughter of the English John of Gaunt, was named

Henry (Henrique), and was subsequently known to all time as “Henry

the Navigator” from the interest he took in maritime exploration. He

was present at the siege of Ceuta in 1415, and after its capture was

said to have inquired with much interest as to the condition of

Morocco and of the unknown African interior, and to have heard from

the Moors of Timbuktu.

On his return to Portugal he established himself on the rocky

promontory of Sagres, and devoted himself to the encouragement of

the exploration of the coasts of Africa. Under his direction

expedition after expedition set out. First Cape Bojador to the south

of the Moroccan coast was doubled by Gil Eannes in 1434[51]. In

1441-2 Antonio Gonsalvez and Nuno Tristam passed Cape Blanco on the

Sahara coast, and on the return journey called at the Rio d’Ouro or

River of Gold[52], whence they brought back some gold dust and ten

slaves. These slaves having been sent by Prince Henry to Pope Martin

V, the latter conferred upon Portugal the right of possession and

sovereignty over all countries that might be discovered between Cape

Blanco and India. In 1445 a Portuguese named João Fernandez made the

first over-land exploration, starting alone from the mouth of the

Rio d’Ouro, and travelling over seven months in the interior. In the

following year the river Senegal was reached, and Cape Verde was

doubled by Diniz Diaz; and in 1448 the coast was explored as far as

the Gambia river. In 1455-6 Ca’ da Mosto (a Venetian in Portuguese

service) and Uso di Mare (a Genoese) discovered the Cape Verde

Islands, and visited the rivers Senegal and Gambia, bringing back

much information in regard to Timbuktu, the trade in gold and ivory

with the coast, and the over-land trade routes from the Niger to the

Mediterranean. It is asserted by the Portuguese that some years

later two Portuguese envoys actually reached Timbuktu; but the truth

of this assertion is somewhat problematical, since, had they done

so, they would probably have dissipated to some extent the excessive

exaggerations regarding the wealth and importance of the Songhai

capital. In 1460 Diego Gomes reached the river and mountain

peninsula of Sierra Leone; the last named from the incessant rumble

of thunderstorms making the mountain range roar like a lion. In

1462, two years after the death of Prince Henry, Pedro de Sintra

explored the coast as far as Cape Palmas in modern Liberia. By 1471

the whole Guinea coast had been followed to the Gold Coast and on

past the Niger delta, to the Cameroons and as far south as the

Ogowe.

In 1448, under Prince Henry’s directions, a fort had been built on

the Bay of Arguin, to the south of Cape Blanco; and a few years

later a Portuguese company was formed for carrying on a trade with

the Guinea coast in slaves and gold. The first expedition sent out

by this company resulted in the despatch of 200 Negro slaves to

Portugal, and thenceforward the slave trade grew and prospered. It

at first resulted in but little misery for the slaves, who exchanged

a hunted, hand-to-mouth existence among savage tribes in Africa for

relatively kind treatment and comfortable living in beautiful

Portugal, where they were much in favour as house servants. In 1481

the Portuguese, who had been for some years examining the Gold

Coast, decided to build a fort to protect their trade there. In 1482

the fort was completed and the Portuguese flag raised in token of

sovereignty. This strong place, for more than a hundred years in

possession of the Portuguese, was called Saõ Jorge da Mina[53]. In

the same year in which this first Portuguese post was established on

the Gold Coast[54], exploration of the African coast was carried on

beyond the mouth of the Ogowe by Diogo Cam, who discovered the mouth

of the Congo in 1482, and sailed up that river about as far as Boma.

In 1485 Diogo Cam returned with a stronger expedition which sailed

and rowed up the Congo to the mouth of the Mpozo river, just below

the Yellala Falls[55]. Diogo Cam’s discoveries were continued by

Bartolomeu Diaz de Novaes, who, passing along the south-west coast

of Africa, rounded the Cape of Good Hope in stormy weather without

knowing it, and touched land on February 3, 1488, at Mossel Bay,

then again at Algoa Bay, Cape Padrone and the mouth of the Great

Fish river. Here the timorous officers and crew insisted on a return

westwards. On the homeward voyage Diaz beheld and named Cape

Agulhas, and also “Cabo Tormentoso,” the terminal point of South

Africa, which was afterwards christened by Diaz, or by his monarch,

King Joaõ II, “the Cape of Good Hope.”

At this stage in the relation of the founding of the Portuguese

dominion and influence over Africa some mention must be made of the

part played during the 15th century by the Jews settled in Portugal.

Badly as the Christians of Portugal treated the Jews, their

existence in this western kingdom was not unbearable compared with

the ferocious cruelty of the Spaniards; consequently during the 15th

century the Jewish colonies in Portuguese cities increased

considerably, and Jews even rose to a high position in the state. In

return they established printing-presses, advanced education, and

spread a knowledge of geography, astronomy, mathematics, classical

history and medicine which was directly useful to the new school of

Portuguese seamen-explorers, who mostly obtained their nautical

instruments from the Jews. In short the Jews did much to create a

Portuguese Empire beyond the seas; but they were subsequently

treated with the grossest ingratitude and expelled from Portugal in

the early 16th century, thousands of them being deported to Saõ

Thomé in the Gulf of Guinea where they died of malarial fever.

Before the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope by Diaz, the King of

Portugal was convinced of the circumnavigability of Africa from the

Atlantic into the Indian Ocean. Through enterprising Portuguese Jews

(Abraham of Beja and Joseph of Lamego) who had travelled overland

via Egypt and Syria to the Persian Gulf, he had heard that this was

possible[56], and resolved to send two Portuguese officers, Pero de

Covilham and Alfonso de Paiva, to travel to India by way of the Red

Sea, and to find out all they could about the Christian King of

Ethiopia and the Arab settlements on the East coast of Africa, and

whether the King of Portugal might look for allies or friendly

neutrals in this direction. Accordingly, in 1487, de Covilham and

Paiva reached Egypt; and the former journeyed by the Red Sea to

India, while the latter made for Abyssinia, but was killed on the

way, near Suakin. Pero de Covilham, on his return journey from

Southern India, visited the north coast of Madagascar and the

settlement of Sofala, near the modern Beira (S.E. Africa). Thence he

proceeded northwards, calling at all the Arab ports of East Africa

till he once more re-entered the Red Sea. Returning to Cairo he

learnt that his companion, Paiva, had been killed, but he met the

two Jews, Abraham and Joseph. By the last-named he sent back word of

his discoveries to King John II, and then starting off with Abraham

of Beja he visited Mecca and Medina and finally landed at Zeila (N.

Somaliland) and travelled to Abyssinia. The information sent back by

de Covilham decided the despatch of an expedition under Vasco da

Gama to pass round the Cape of Good Hope to the Arab colonies, and

thence to India. Vasco da Gama set out in 1497, and made his famous

voyage round the Cape (calling at and naming Natal on the way) to

Sofala, where he picked up an Arab pilot who took him to Malindi,

and thence to India. On his return journey Vasco da Gama took

cognizance of the island of Mozambique, and visited the Quelimane

river near the mouth of the Zambezi. Numerous well-equipped

expeditions sailed for India within the years following Vasco da

Gama’s discoveries. While India was the main goal before the eyes of

their commanders, considerable attention was bestowed upon the

founding of forts along the East coast of Africa, both to protect

the Cape route to India, and to further Portuguese trade with the

interior of Africa. In nearly every case the Portuguese merely

supplanted the Muhammadan Arabs, who—possibly succeeding Phoenicians

or Sabaeans—had established themselves at Sofala, Quelimane, Sena

(on the Zambezi), Moçambique, Kilwa, Zanzibar, Mombasa, Malindi,

Lamu, and Magdishu. Sofala was taken by Pedro de Anhaya in 1505.

Tristan d’Acunha hoisted the Portuguese flag on Sokotra Island and

at Lamu in 1507, in which year also Duarte de Mello captured and

fortified Moçambique. Kilwa and the surrounding Arab establishments

were seized between 1506 and 1508; and a little later the remaining

places already mentioned on the East coast of Africa were in

possession of the Portuguese, who had also Aden on the south coast

of Arabia, the island of Ormuz on the Persian Gulf, and various

places on the coast of ’Oman, including Maskat. Meantime, for thirty

years, Pero de Covilham remained a prisoner at the Court of the

Emperor of Abyssinia, though treated with the utmost distinction.

Before this period of the world’s history, and from the time of the

earlier crusades, a legend had grown up of the existence of Prester

(priest) Johannes—some Christian monarch of the name of John, who

ruled in the heart of Asia or of Africa, a bright spot in the midst

of Heathenry and Islam. The court of Prester John was located

anywhere between Senegambia and China; but the legend had its origin

probably in the continued existence of Greek Christianity in Dongola

and Abyssinia. Pero de Covilham having at last located Abyssinia,

and an Abyssinian envoy having proceeded to Lisbon in 1507 to invite

an alliance, a Portuguese embassy sailed round the Cape of Good Hope

to the Red Sea and landed (apparently at Masawa) in 1520. With this

embassy were two priests, one of whom (Alvarez) thirty years

afterwards wrote an interesting account of Northern Abyssinia. The

priest-missionaries remained for a long time in Ethiopia; but the

lay-members of the mission returned after a residence of five years,

bringing Covilham away with them. But he died on the way back.

The Turks meanwhile had taken possession of Egypt and Western

Arabia, and became very jealous of Portuguese interference with

Abyssinia and the Red Sea. They stirred up a Somali warrior,

Muhammad Granye, furnished him with artillery, and urged him to

conquer Abyssinia. This Muhammadan Somali from the Danákil country

commenced invading and raiding Abyssinia from 1528. A Portuguese

priest, Bermudez, was sent to Lisbon to beg for assistance. This was

sent by way of India, whence came in 1541 a strong Portuguese fleet

to Masawa. Six months afterwards the fleet landed at Masawa a force

of 450 Portuguese soldiers under Christoforo da Gama. But after

carrying all before them the Portuguese unwisely split their forces.

Muhammad Granye, having received Turkish and Arab reinforcements,

captured Christoforo da Gama’s camp, and put that gallant Portuguese

to death. Ultimately, however, with the help of the remaining

Portuguese, the Abyssinian Emperor defeated Muhammad Granye, who was

himself slain by da Gama’s attendant, Pedro Leon (1542). Portuguese

Jesuit missionaries remained in Abyssinia until 1633 and penetrated

into countries which have only been since revisited by Europeans

within the last few decades. Father Pedro Paez discovered the source

of the Blue Nile in 1615; and Father Lobo visited the same region

and much of S.W. Abyssinia in 1626. Portuguese civilization

distinctly left its mark on Abyssinia in architecture and in other

ways. The very name which we apply to this Empire of Ethiopia is a

Portuguese rendering of the Arab and Indian cant term for

“negro”—_Habesh_—a word of uncertain origin.

From the beginning of the 16th century the Portuguese visited the

coasts of Madagascar, as will be related in the chapter dealing with

that island. They had also discovered in 1507 the Mascarene islands

(named after a sea-captain, Mascarenhas) now known by the names of

Réunion and Mauritius, though they made no permanent settlements on

either. Madagascar, which was first sighted by Diogo Diaz in 1500,

was named the Island of St Laurence.

On the West coast of Africa geographical discovery was soon followed

by something like colonization. The island of Madeira, which had

been known to the Portuguese in the 14th century, was occupied by

them in the 15th, and a hundred years afterwards was already

producing a supply of that wine which has made it so justly

famous[57]. The island of St Helena—afterwards to be seized by the

Dutch and taken from them by the English East India Company—was

discovered by the Portuguese in 1502; and this island also, at the

end of a century of intermittent use by the Portuguese, possessed

orange groves and fig trees which they had planted.

When Diogo Cam returned from the Congo in 1485 he brought back with

him a few Congo natives, who were baptized, and who returned some

years later to the Congo with Diogo Cam and a large number of

proselytizing priests. This Portuguese expedition arrived at the

mouth of the Congo in 1491 and there encountered a vassal chief of

the king of Kongo[58] who ruled the riverain province of Sonyo. This

chief received them with a respect due to demi-gods, and allowed

himself to be at once converted to Christianity—a conversion which

was sincere and durable. The Portuguese proceeded under his guidance

to the king’s capital about 200 miles from the coast, which they

named São Salvador. Here the king and queen were baptized with the

names of the then king and queen of Portugal, João and Leonora,

while the Crown Prince was called Affonso. Christianity made

surprising progress amongst these fetish worshippers, who readily

transferred their adoration to the Virgin Mary and the saints, and

discarded their indigenous male and female gods. Early in the 16th

century the Kongo kingdom was visited by the Bishop of São Thomé, an

island off the Guinea coast, which, together with the adjoining

Prince’s Island, had been settled by the Portuguese soon after their

discovery of the West coast of Africa. The Bishop of São Thomé,

being unable to take up his residence in the kingdom of Kongo,

procured the consecration of a native negro as Bishop of the Congo.

This man, who was a member of the Kongo royal family, had been

educated in Lisbon, and was, I believe, the first negro bishop known

to history. But he was not a great success, nor was the next bishop,

in whose reign in the middle of the 16th century great dissensions

arose in the Kongo church among the native priesthood, which led to

a considerable lessening of Christian fervour. After the death of

the King, Dom Diego, a civil war broke out; and one by one the males

of the royal house were all killed except “Dom Henrique,” the king’s

brother. This latter also died soon after succeeding to the throne,

and left the state to his son, “Dom Alvares.” During this civil war

many of the Portuguese, whom the kings of Kongo had invited to

settle in the country as teachers, mechanics and craftsmen, were

killed or expelled as the cause of the troubles which European

intervention had brought on the Kongo kingdom; but Dom Alvares, who

was an enlightened man, gathered together all that remained, and for

a time Portuguese civilization continued to advance over the

country. But a great stumbling-block had arisen in the way of

Christianity being accepted by the bulk of the people—that

stumbling-block which is still discussed at every Missionary

conference, polygamy. A relation of the king Dom Alvares renounced

Christianity and headed a reactionary party. Curiously enough he has

been handed down to history as _Bula Matadi_, “the Breaker of

Stones,” the name which more than three hundred years afterwards was

applied to the explorer Stanley by the Congo peoples, and has since

become the native name for the whole of the government of the

Belgian Congo.

In the middle of the 16th century Portuguese influence over Kongo

received a deadly blow. That kingdom, which must be taken to include

the coast-lands on either side of the lower Congo, was invaded by a

savage tribe from the interior known as the “Jagga” people, probably

the same tribe as the Ba-Kioko or Ba-jok of Upper Kwango river[59].

The Jaga or Imbangola were powerful men and ferocious cannibals, and

they carried all before them, the king and his court taking refuge

on an island on the broad Congo, not far from Boma. The king of

Kongo appealed to Portugal for help; and that ill-fated but

brilliant young monarch, Dom Sebastião, sent him Franciso de Gova

with 600 soldiers. With the aid of these Portuguese and their guns

the Jaga were driven out. The king, who had hitherto led a very

irregular life for a Christian, now formally married, but was not

rewarded by a legal heir, and had to indicate as his successor a

natural son by a concubine. About this time the king of Portugal

pressed his brother of Kongo to reveal the existence of mines of

precious metals. Whether there are such in the Kongo country—except

as regards copper—has not been made known even at the present day,

but they were supposed to exist at that time; and certain Portuguese

at the Kongo court dissuaded the prince whom they served from giving

any information on the subject, no doubt desiring to keep such

knowledge to themselves. The king of Kongo, Dom Alvares, when the

Jaga had retired, made repeated appeals for more Portuguese priests,

and sent several embassies to Portugal; but Dom Sebastião had been

killed in Morocco, and his uncle, the Cardinal Henrique, who had

succeeded him and who was the last Portuguese king of the House of

Avis, was too much occupied by the affairs of his tottering kingdom

to reply to these appeals. But when Philip II of Spain had seized

the throne of Portugal he despatched a Portuguese named Duarte Lopes

to report on the countries of the Congo basin. After spending some

time in Congoland, Duarte Lopes started to return to Portugal with a

great amount of information about the country, and messages from the

king of Kongo. Unfortunately he was driven by storms to Central

America, and when he reached Spain the king was too busy preparing

the Great Armada to listen to him. Therefore Lopes went on a

pilgrimage to Rome to appeal to the Pope. Whilst staying in Italy,

Lopes allowed a papal official named Filippo Pigafetta to take down

and publish in 1591 his account of the Kongo kingdom, together with

a recital of the Portuguese explorations and conquests in East

Africa.

Although Portuguese priests—Jesuits probably—continued for a little

while longer to visit the kingdom of Kongo, from the end of the 16th

century both Christian and Portuguese influence slowly faded, and

the country relapsed into heathenism, in spite of the strenuous

efforts made by the Popes of the 17th and 18th centuries, who sent

thither Italian, Flemish, and French missionaries. The Portuguese

appear to have excited the animosity of a somewhat proud people by

their overbearing demeanour and rapacity. They held intermittently

Kabinda, on the coast to the north of the Congo estuary, and

occasionally sent missions of investiture to São Salvador to

represent the king of Portugal at the crowning of some new king of

Kongo; and the king of Kongo was usually given a Portuguese name and

occasionally an honorary rank in the Portuguese army. But it was not

till after the middle of the 19th century that Portugal began to

assert her dominion over the Congo countries. France and Britain

during the 18th and nearly all the 19th centuries steadily refused

to recognize Portuguese rule anywhere north of the Loge river in

Angola (south of the Congo Estuary); but Britain in 1884 proposed to

do so under sufficient guarantees for freedom of trade set forth in

a treaty which was rendered abortive by the opposition of the House

of Commons. If this treaty had been ratified it would have brought

under joint English and Portuguese influence the lower Congo,

besides settling amicably Portuguese and British claims in

Nyasaland. The opposition of a knot of unpractical philanthropists

in the House of Commons wrecked the treaty, and gave to the other

powers of Europe an opportunity for interfering in the affairs of

the Congo. The result to Portugal, nevertheless, was that she

secured the territory of Kabinda north of the Congo, and the ancient

kingdom of Kongo south of that river.

Although the Portuguese discovered the coast of Angola in 1490, they

did not attempt to settle in that country until 1574, when, in

answer to an appeal of the chief of Angola (a vassal of the king of

Kongo), an expedition was sent thither under the command of Paulo

Diaz[60]. This expedition landed at the mouth of the Kwanza river,

and found that the chief of Angola who had appealed to the king of

Portugal was dead. His successor received Diaz with politeness, but

compelled him to assist the Angolese in local wars which had not

much interest for the Portuguese. Diaz found in the interior of

Angola many evidences of Christian worship, which showed that

missionaries from the Congo had preceded his own expedition. When

Diaz was at last allowed to return to Portugal, the king (Dom

Sebastião) sent him back as “Conqueror, Colonizer, and Governor of

Angola” with seven ships and 700 men. His passage out from Lisbon in

the year 1574 occupied three and a half months—not a long time at

that period for sailing-vessels. Diaz took possession of a sandy

island in front of the bay which is now known as the harbour of São

Paulo de Loanda. Here he was joined by 40 Portuguese refugees from

the Kongo kingdom. Eventually he built on the mainland of Loanda the

fort of São Miguel, and founded the city of São Paulo, which became

and remains the capital of the Portuguese possessions in South-west

Africa.

For six years perfect peace subsisted between the Portuguese and the

natives; then, afraid that the Portuguese would eventually seize the

whole country, the king of Angola enticed 500 Portuguese soldiers

into a war in the interior where he massacred them. But this

massacre only served to show the splendid quality of Paulo Diaz, who

was a magnificent representative of the old Portuguese type of

Conquistador. Leaving Loanda with 150 soldiers—nearly all that

remained—he marched against the king’s forces near the Kwanza river,

and routed them with great loss, being of course greatly helped in

securing this victory by the possession of muskets and cannon. The

Angolese were defeated repeatedly before they gave up the struggle;

but at length in 1597 the Portuguese had established themselves

strongly on both banks of the river Kwanza. In that year 200 Flemish

colonists were sent out by the king of Spain and Portugal. In a very

short time all were dead from fever. In spite of many reverses,

however, the Portuguese slowly mastered the country south of the

Kwanza nearly as far as Benguela. Portuguese traders and

missionaries probably travelled inland up the Congo as far as the

Bateke country or Stanley Pool. In 1606 an interesting but

unsuccessful attempt was made to open up communication across

south-central Africa between the Kwanza and the Zambezi settlements.

But the explorer never got beyond the King of Kongo’s capital, that

potentate refusing him permission to proceed further into the

interior. Nevertheless, from Portuguese annals it is clear that

numerous venturesome priests and soldiers attempted at this period

to penetrate Darkest Africa, and were never heard of again. What a

subject for romance would be their experiences in these lands, at

that time absolutely free from the influence of the European—a

condition which no longer applied to the natives of Darkest Africa

when Stanley first made known the geography of those regions. For in

the three and a half centuries which had elapsed, even those savages

in the heart of Africa, who possibly knew nothing of the existence

of white men, had nevertheless adopted many of the white man’s

products as necessities or luxuries of their lives, such as maize,

tobacco, sweet potatoes, manioc, papaws, chillies, the pine-apple,

and the sugar cane.

We may here fitly consider the greatest and most beneficial results

of the Portuguese colonization of Africa. These wonderful old

Conquistadores may have been relentless and cruel in imposing their

rule on the African and in enslaving him or in Christianizing him,

but they added enormously to his food-supply and his comfort. So

early in the history of their African and Indian explorations as

about 1510 they brought from China, India, and Malacca the orange

tree, the lemon and the lime, which, besides introducing into Europe

(and Europe had hitherto only known the sour wild orange and the

lime, brought by the Arabs), they planted in every part of East and

West Africa where they touched. They likewise brought the sugar cane

from the Mediterranean and the East Indies and introduced it into

various parts of Brazil and West Africa, especially into the Islands

of São Thomé and Principe and the Congo and Angola countries.

Madeira they had planted with vines in the 15th century; the Açores,

the Cape Verde Islands and St Helena with orange trees in the 16th

century. The cacao tree was introduced into São Thomé in 1822. From

their great possession of Brazil, overrun and organized with

astounding rapidity, they brought to East and West Africa the Musk

duck (which has penetrated far and wide into the interior of

Africa), chili peppers, maize (now grown all over Africa, and

cultivated by many tribes who have lost all tradition of its foreign

origin), wheat (into Zambezia)[61], tobacco, the tomato, pine-apple,

sweet potato (a convolvulus tuber), manioc (from which tapioca is

made), rice (into West Africa), haricot beans and lentils, onions,

guavas, jackfruit, papaws, small bananas, ginger and other less

widely known forms of vegetable food. The Portuguese also introduced

the domestic pig into West Africa, and the domestic cat, possibly

also certain breeds of dogs; in East tropical Africa the horse is

known in the north by an Arab name, in the centre by the Portuguese

word, and in the extreme south by a corruption of the English. Take

away from the African’s dietary of today the products that the

Portuguese brought to him from the far East and far West, and he

will remain very insufficiently provided with necessities and simple

luxuries. I may add one or two dates concerning these introductions

by the Portuguese:—the sugar cane and ginger were first planted in

the island of Principe, off the coast of Lower Guinea about 1520;

maize was introduced into the Congo (where it was called _maza

manputo_) about 1560[62].

In 1621 a chieftainess, apparently of the Kongo royal family, known

as Jinga Bandi, came to Loanda, made friends with the Portuguese,

was baptized, and then returned to the interior, where she poisoned

her brother (the chief or king of Angola), and succeeded him. Having

attained this object of her ambitions, she headed the national

party, and attempted to drive the Portuguese out of Angola. For 30

years she warred against them without seriously shaking their power,

though on the other hand they could do little more than hold their

own. But a much more serious enemy now appeared on the scene. The

Dutch, who took advantage of the union between the Spanish and

Portuguese thrones in 1580[63] to include the Portuguese empire as a

theatre for their reprisals against Spain, made several determined

attempts during the first half of the 17th century to wrest Angola

from the Portuguese. They captured São Paulo de Loanda in 1641, one

year after Portugal had recovered her independence under the first

Bragança king. The Portuguese concentrated on the Kwanza. The Dutch

attempted by several treacherous actions to oust them from their

fortresses on that river. At last, however, following on the

reorganization of the Portuguese empire after 1640, reinforcements

were sent from Brazil to Angola, and a siege of São Miguel took

place. The Portuguese imitated with advantage the Dutch game of

bluff, and by deceiving the besieged as to the extent of their army

they secured the surrender of 1100 Dutch to under 750 Portuguese. In

the preliminary assault on the Dutch at São Paulo de Loanda the

Portuguese lost 163 men. After the recapture of this place they

proceeded methodically to destroy all the Dutch establishments on

the Lower Guinea coast as far north as Loango. In the concluding

years of the 17th century nearly all the remaining Portuguese

missionaries in the kingdom of Kongo[64] migrated to the more

settled and prosperous Angola. In 1694 Portugal introduced a copper

coinage into her now flourishing West African colony—flourishing,

thanks to the slave trade, which was mightily influencing the

European settlement of West Africa.

In 1758 the Portuguese extended their rule northwards from São Paulo

de Loanda into the Ambriz country, where however their authority

continued very uncertain till about 1885. About the same time

Benguela was definitely occupied; and Portuguese influence continued

extending slowly southward until, in 1840, it reached its present

limits by the establishment of a settlement (now very prosperous)

called Mossamedes, almost exactly on the fifteenth parallel of south

latitude[65].

Between 1807 and 1810 attempts were made to open up intercourse with

the Lunda kingdom of the Mwata Yanvo, and thence across to the

colony of Moçambique, but they proved only partially successful. In

1813 and in the succeeding years a renewed vigour of colonization

began to make itself felt in the creation of public works in Angola.

Amongst other 19th century improvements was the bringing of the

waters of the Kwanza by canal to São Paulo de Loanda, which until

then had no supply of good drinking water. The Dutch had attempted

to carry out this, but were interrupted. The Portuguese efforts in

the early part of the last century proved unsuccessful, but in 1887

the canal was at last completed, and it made a great difference to

the health of the town. Portuguese rule inland from Angola waxed and

waned during the 19th century, but on the whole was greatly

extended. Livingstone found Portuguese in 1855 established to some

extent on the upper Kwango, an affluent of the Congo, and for long

the eastern boundary of Angola. From this, however, they had to

retire owing to native insurrections; though now their power and

their influence have been pushed far to the east, to the river

Kasai.

In 1875 a party of recalcitrant Boers quitted the Transvaal owing to

some quarrel with the local government, trekked over the desert in a

north-westerly direction, and eventually blundered across the Kunene

river (the southern limit of Portuguese West Africa) on to the

healthy plateau behind the Shela Mountains. It was feared at one

time that they would set the Portuguese at defiance and carve out a

little Boer state in south-west Africa. About this time, also,

Hottentots much under Boer influence and speaking Dutch invaded the

district of Mossamedes from the coast region; but by liberal

concessions and astute diplomacy, joined with the carrying out of

several important works, like the waggon road (now the railway)

across the Shela Mountains, the Portuguese won over the Boers to a

recognition of their sovereignty, though they have since left the

country and returned to German or British South Africa.

Slavery was not abolished in the Portuguese West African dominions

until 1878; but the slave trade had been ostensibly forbidden in the

first quarter of the 19th century. Prior to that time the slave

trade had brought extraordinary prosperity to the islands of São

Thomé and Principe, to the Portuguese fort on the coast of Dahomé,

and to Angola, all of which countries were more or less under one

government. The abolition of the slave trade however caused the

absolute ruin of Principe (which has not yet recovered), the

temporary ruin of São Thomé (the fortunes of this island have since

revived owing to the cultivation of cinchona and the enormous

extention of the planting of cacao), and the partial ruin of Angola,

which began to be regarded as a possession scarcely worth

maintaining. Brazil (though it had been severed from the crown of

Portugal) did almost more than the Mother Country to revive trade in

these dominions. Enterprising Brazilians such as Silva Americano

came over to Angola in the sixties and seventies of the 19th

century, started steam navigation on the river Kwanza, and developed

many industries. Through Brazilian, United States, and British

influence a railway was commenced in the eighties to connect São

Paulo de Loanda with the rich interior, especially with the coffee

districts on the water-shed of the Congo. Another railway of even

greater importance has been begun by a British company in the

Benguela district south of the Kwanza River. This line starts from

Lobito Bay, near Benguela, and is destined to cross Angola at its

broadest and ultimately reach the copper and gold mines of Katanga

in the Belgian Congo. American and Swiss protestant missionaries

have formed important settlements on the Bailundo uplands. The

magnificent island of São Thomé, just under the Equator, possesses

mountains which rise high into a temperate climate. On these, as

already related, flourishing plantations of cacao, cinchona and

coffee have been established. Public works in the shape of good

roads and bridges have been carried out in many parts of Angola, and

this country is certainly the most successful of the Portuguese

attempts at the colonization of Africa. Unfortunately the “boom” in

cacao (cocoa, chocolate) and the fact that it is a capricious tree,

not easy to acclimatize and only growing to perfection in a few

parts of tropical America and the west coast of Africa, notably São

Thomé, induced the Portuguese government from 1880 onwards to push

the interests of São Thomé at the expense of Angola. A kind of slave

trade under the guise of “apprenticeships” was revived in South and

East Angola, which made its effects felt on the Congo populations as

far inland as the Kasai and Lomami. These apprentices, once landed

in São Thomé (they were regularly bought and sold) never, or hardly

ever, obtained their liberty or received regular pay for their work.

In all other respects they were kindly treated. But this policy led

to native wars and insurrections in the Angola hinterland, and

attracted attention and condemnation in Europe.

In the autumn of 1904 the Portuguese forces in Southern Angola

sustained a disastrous defeat near the Kunene river from the

Kuanyama (Cuanhama) people, a tribe connected linguistically with

the Ovambo and the Ovaherero (Damara). Bantu negroes, speaking

dialects of this Ondonga or Herero group and distantly allied in

racial origin with the Zulu-Kafir stock, inhabit the south of Angola

and are formidable warriors. These disturbances in Southern Angola

have died down since the hinterland of Benguela was opened up to

profitable commerce by the Anglo-Portuguese railway concessionaires

who are building a line from Lobito Bay eastwards to Katanga.

Portuguese rule was extended in 1885 northwards to the southern

shore of the Congo, and over the small territory of Kabinda, which

is separated by a narrow strip of Belgian territory from the Congo

estuary. On the other hand the Portuguese protectorate over Dahomé—a

protectorate which never had any real existence—was abandoned to

France together with its only foothold, São João d’Ajudá[66]. The

Portuguese forts on the Gold Coast had not been held very long

before they were captured by the Dutch at the beginning of the 17th

century. Portugal, in spite of discovering and naming Sierra Leone,

never occupied it; but in varying degree she continued to maintain

certain fortified posts amid that extraordinary labyrinth of rivers

and islands in Senegambia, between the Gambia and Sierra Leone. This

is a district of some 14,000 square miles in extent, to-day

carefully defined, and known as Portuguese Guinea. But in the

seventies of the 19th century it was doubtful whether Portuguese

sovereignty over this country had not been abandoned. England, which

exercised exclusive influence in these waters, attempted to

establish herself in the place of Portugal, but the Portuguese

protested and proclaimed their sovereignty. The matter was submitted

to arbitration, and the verdict was given against England.

Consequently the Portuguese reorganized their colony of Guinea,

which in time was separated from the governorship of the Cape Verde

islands. There was a serious native rising in 1908, but it was

suppressed. In the present condition of Portuguese Guinea, however,

the native tribes are practically independent.

The Cape Verde Islands are a very important Portuguese asset three

hundred miles off the north-west coast of Africa. They have been

continuously occupied and administered since their discovery in the

15th century. They possessed then no population, but are now peopled

by a blackish race descended from Portuguese, Negroes and Moors. In

one or two of the healthier islands are white settlers of Portuguese

blood. Owing to the magnificent harbours which these islands offer

to shipping, especially São Vicente, and their use as a coaling

station, they may yet figure prominently in the world’s history.

Both Ascension and St Helena were discovered and named by the

Portuguese. The first-named was never continuously occupied until

England took possession of it as an outpost of Napoleon’s prison in

1815. St Helena was taken in the early part of the 16th century by

the Dutch, and passed into the hands of the English in the middle of

that century. Another Portuguese discovery was the most southern of

those isolated oceanic islets, Tristan d’Acunha, which bears the

name of its discoverer, but which, so far as occupation goes, has

always been a British possession[67].

On the East coast of Africa Portuguese colonization did not commence

until the 16th century had begun, and Vasco da Gama, after rounding

the Cape, had revealed the existence of old Arab trading settlements

and sultanates between Sofala and Somaliland.

The need of ports of call on the long voyage to India caused the

Portuguese to decide soon after Vasco da Gama’s famous voyage to

possess themselves of these Arab settlements, the more so because

hostilities against the “Moors” were a never-ending _vendetta_ on

the part of Spaniard and Portuguese, while the conquest was at that

date an easy one, as the Portuguese had artillery and the East

African Arabs had none.

By 1520, the Portuguese had ousted the Arabs and had occupied in

their stead Kilwa, Zanzibar, Pemba, Mombasa, Lamu, Malindi, Brava

(Barawa), and Magdishu (Magadoxo), all north of the Ruvuma river.

South of that river they had taken Sofala and Moçambique. Here they

had, it is said, established a trading station in 1503; but

Moçambique island[68] was not finally occupied by them till 1507,

when the existing fortress was commenced and built by Duarte de

Mello. The fort was then and is still known as “the Praça de São

Sebastião.” It had been decided before this that Moçambique should

be the principal place of call, after leaving the Cape of Good Hope,

for Portuguese ships on their way to India; but, when in 1505 the

Portuguese deliberately sanctioned the idea of a Portuguese East

African colony, they turned their attention rather to Sofala as its

centre than to Moçambique. Sofala, which is near the modern Beira,

was an old Arab port and sultanate, and had been for some 1500 years

the principal port on the south-east coast of Africa, from which the

gold obtained in the mines of Manika (Monomotapa, _i.e._ Southern

Rhodesia) was shipped to the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf.

Consequently the first proposed Portuguese settlement on the East

coast of Africa was entitled “the Captaincy of Sofala.” But later on

Moçambique grew in importance, and eventually gave its name to the

Portuguese possessions in East Africa.

The Quelimane river, taken to be the principal exit of the Zambezi

by the Portuguese, was discovered and entered by Vasco da Gama in

the early part of 1498, and was by him called the “River of Good

Indications.” He stayed a month on this river, where there seems to

have been, on the site of the present town of Quelimane, a trading

station resorted to by the Arabs, who were even then settled in

Zambezia. The name Quelimane (pronounced in English Kehmane) is

stated by the early Portuguese to have been the name of the friendly

chief who acted as intermediary between them and the natives, but it

would rather appear to have been a corruption of the Swahili-Arabic

word “Kaliman,” which means “interpreter.”

The first “factory” or Portuguese trading station at Quelimane was

established about the year 1544; and by this time the Portuguese had

heard of the River of Sena (as they called the Zambezi) and of the

large Arab settlement of Sena on its banks. They had further heard

both from Quelimane and from Sofala of the powerful empire of

Mohomotapa[69], and especially of the province of Manika, which was

reported to be full of gold. Having found it too difficult to reach

Manika from Sofala, owing to the opposition of the natives, they

resolved to enter the country from the north by way of Sena, on the

Zambezi; consequently, in 1569, an exceptionally powerful expedition

left Lisbon under the command of the Governor and Captain-General

Francisco Barreto. After a preliminary tour up and down the East

coast of Africa as far as Lamu, and a rapid journey to India and

back, Francisco Barreto with his force, which included cavalry and

camels, landed at Quelimane, and set out for Sena. The expedition

was accompanied, and, to a certain extent, guided by a

mischief-making Jesuit priest named Monclaros, who wished to avenge

the assassination of his fellow-priest, Gonçalo de Silveira,

martyred not long previously in the Monomotapa territories.

Francisco Barreto found on arriving at Sena that there was already a

small Portuguese settlement built alongside an Arab town. These

Arabs appear to have got on very well with the first Portuguese

traders, but they evidently took umbrage at Barreto’s powerful

expedition, and are accused of having poisoned the horses and

camels. What really took place, however, seems to have been that the

horses and camels were exposed to the bite of the Tsetse fly, and

died in consequence of the attacks of this venomous insect. From

Sena, Barreto sent an embassy to the Emperor of Monomotapa, whom he

offered to help against a revolted vassal, Mongase. After receiving

an invitation to visit the emperor, a portion of the Portuguese

force commenced to ascend the right bank of the river Zambezi, but

apparently never reached its destination, because it was so

repeatedly attacked by the hostile natives that it was compelled to

return to Sena. Shortly afterwards there arrived the news of a

revolt at Moçambique, and consequently Barreto, together with the

priest Monclaros, having handed over the command of the expedition

to a lieutenant, entered a canoe, descended the Zambezi to the Luabo

mouth, and from there took passage in a dau to Moçambique. He and

Monclaros subsequently returned to Sena, but Barreto died soon after

his arrival. The Portuguese chroniclers of this expedition write

with considerable bitterness of the Jesuit Monclaros, to whose

counsels most of the misfortunes and mistakes are attributed. The

expedition after Barreto’s death returned to Moçambique, and

attempted later on to enter Monomotapa by way of Sofala, but was

repulsed.

For some time to come further exploration of the Zambezi or of the

interior of Moçambique was put a stop to by the struggle which

ensued with the Turks. Towards the end of the 16th century (in

1584), following on the conquest of Egypt and at the instigation of

Venice, the Turkish Sultan sent a powerful fleet out of the Red Sea,

which descended the East coast of Africa as far as Mombasa, and

prepared to dispute with Portugal the dominion of the Indian Ocean.

The Turks, however, were defeated with considerable loss by the

Admiral Thomé de Sousa Coutinho; and Portuguese domination was not

only strengthened at Zanzibar and along the Zanzibar coast, but was

also affirmed along the south coast of Arabia and in the Persian

Gulf.

At the end of the 16th century the Portuguese had terrific struggles

with the natives in the interior of Monomotapa, behind Kilwa, on the

mainland of Moçambique[70], and in the vicinity of Tete on the

Zambezi; and shortly afterwards appeared the first Dutch pirates in

East African waters, some of whom actually laid siege to Moçambique.

In 1609 there arrived at Moçambique the first Portuguese Governor of

the East coast of Africa, this province having been separated from

the Portuguese possessions in India, and withdrawn at the same time

from the spiritual jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Goa, and placed

under the Prelate of Moçambique. Meantime the efforts to reach the

gold-mines to the south of the Zambezi had been so far successful

that a considerable quantity of gold was obtained not only by the

officers, but even by the private soldiers of the different

expeditions; but the expectations of the Portuguese as to the wealth

of gold and silver (for they were in search of reported silver-mines

on the Zambezi) were considerably disappointed; and later on, in the

17th century, their interest in these East African possessions

waned, largely on account of the poor results of their mining

operations. The Dutch in 1604-7 twice attacked Moçambique, and again

in 1662 sought to obtain possession of the little fortress island.

In the middle of the 17th century, however, a new source of wealth

was discovered—the Slave Trade—which for two hundred years following

gave a flickering prosperity to these costly establishments on the

East coast of Africa. In 1645 the first slaves were exported from

Moçambique to Brazil. This action was brought about by the fact that

the province of Angola had fallen for a time into the hands of the

Dutch, and, therefore, the supply of slaves to Brazil was

temporarily stopped.

In consequence of this, Moçambique and the Zambezi for some years

replaced West Africa as a slave market. In 1649 the English first

made their appearance on this coast; and two years afterwards the

Portuguese were perturbed by the definite establishment of a Dutch

colony at the Cape, and by the establishment of French factories on

the coast of Madagascar—events which are prophetically described by

a contemporary writer as “Quantos passos para a ruina de

Moçambique!”—“So many steps towards the ruin of Moçambique!” At the

same time the Arabs in the Persian Gulf drove the Portuguese out of

Maskat, and towards the end of the 17th century began to attack

their possessions on the Zanzibar coast. By 1698 Portugal had lost

every fortress north of Moçambique; and in that year this, their

last stronghold, was besieged straitly by the Arabs and very nearly

captured. In fact it was only saved by the friendly treachery of an

Indian trader who warned the Portuguese of an intended night attack.

All of these posts on the Zanzibar coast were finally abandoned[71]

by the Portuguese in the early part of the 18th century by agreement

with the Imam of Maskat, who founded the present dynasty of

Zanzibar. In 1752 this fact was recognized by the formal

delimitation of the Portuguese possessions in East Africa at the

time when they were also again removed from any dependency on the

Governor of Goa. In this decree of the 19th of April, 1752, the

government of Moçambique was described as extending over

“Moçambique, Sofala, Rio de Sena (Zambezi), and all the coast of

Africa and its continent between Cape Delgado and the Bay of

Lourenço Marquez (Delagoa Bay).” Hitherto commerce in Portuguese

East Africa had been singularly restricted, and after being first

confined to the Governors and officials of the state, was then

delegated to certain companies to whom monopolies were sold. In 1687

there was a fresh arrival, after a considerable interval, of Indian

traders, who established themselves on the Island of Moçambique; and

by degrees the whole of the commerce of Portuguese East Africa was

thrown open freely to all Portuguese subjects, though it was

absolutely forbidden to the subjects of any other European power,

and considerable anger was displayed when French and Dutch

endeavoured to trade on the islands or on the coast in the province

of Moçambique. In the middle of the 18th century the practice of

sending the worst stamp of Portuguese convicts to Moçambique was

unhappily adopted in spite of the many protests of its governors.

About this same time also there occurred a series of disasters

attributable to the deplorable mismanagement of the Portuguese

officials. The fortresses of the gold-mining country of Manika had

to be abandoned, like Zumbo[72] on the upper Zambezi. The forts on

the mainland opposite Moçambique were captured by an army of Makua;

and the Island of Moçambique itself very nearly fell into the hands

of the negroes of the mainland.

Towards the close of the 18th century, however, occurred a great

revival. In fact, the period which then ensued was the only bright,

and to some extent glorious phase of Portuguese dominion in

South-east Africa. A remarkable man, Dr Francisco Jose Maria de

Lacerda e Almeida (a Brazilian), was made Governor of Zambezia at

his own request, and commenced the first scientific exploration of

southern Central Africa. His journey resulted in the discovery of

the Kazembe’s division of the Lunda empire, a country on the Luapula

and Lake Mweru. It is interesting to note that in 1796, only one

year after the British had seized Cape Town, Dr Lacerda predicted

that this action would lead to the creation of a great British

Empire in Africa, which would stretch up northwards like a wedge

between the Portuguese colonies of Angola and Moçambique. But Dr

Lacerda in time fell a victim to the fatigues of his explorations;

and Portuguese interest in East Africa waned before the

life-and-death struggle which was taking place with France in

Portugal itself. Long prior to this also, in the middle of the 18th

century, the Jesuits had been expelled from all Portuguese East

Africa; and with them had fallen what little civilization had been

created on the upper Zambezi. In fact, it may be said that after

Lacerda’s journey the province of Moçambique fell into a state of

inertia and decay, until Livingstone, by his marvellous journeys,

not only discovered the true course of the Zambezi river, but drew

the attention and interest of the whole world to the development of

tropical Africa.

On all old Portuguese maps, indeed on all Portuguese maps issued

prior to Livingstone’s journeys, there was but scanty recognition of

the Zambezi as a great river. It was usually referred to as the

“rivers of Sena,” the general impression being that it consisted of

a series of parallel streams. No doubt this idea arose from its

large delta; on one or two maps, however, the course of the Zambezi

is laid down pretty correctly from its confluence with the Kafue to

the sea; but the fact cannot be denied that its importance as a

waterway was quite unknown to the Portuguese, who usually reached it

overland from Quelimane and travelled by land along its banks in

preference to navigating its uncertain waters. The Shire was

literally unknown, except at its junction with the Zambezi. The name

of this river was usually spelt Cherim, but its etymology lies in

the Mañanja word _chiri_, which means “a steep bank.” Admiral W. F.

W. Owen, who conducted a most remarkable series of surveying cruises

along the West and East coasts of Africa in the early part of the

19th century, was the first to make the fact clearly known that a

ship of light draught might enter the mouth of the Zambezi from the

sea and travel up as far as Sena.

Livingstone’s great journey across the African continent in the

earlier fifties attracted the attention of the British nation and

Government to the possibilities of this region, so highly favoured

by nature in its rich soil and valuable productions. Livingstone was

appointed Consul at Quelimane, and placed at the head of a

well-equipped expedition intended to explore the Zambezi river and

its tributaries. Prior to this the Portuguese had abolished the

slave trade by law, though slavery did not cease as a legal status

till 1878, and had thrown open Portuguese East Africa to the

commerce of all nations; and undoubtedly these two actions were an

encouragement to the British Government to participate in the

development of Southeast Africa, especially as Livingstone’s

journeys had shown conclusively that the rule of the Portuguese did

not extend very far inland, nor to any great distance from the banks

of the lower Zambezi. The second Livingstone expedition may,

therefore, be regarded as the first indirect step towards the

foundation of the present Protectorate over British Central Africa

(Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia), which dependencies follow to a

great extent in their frontiers the delimitations suggested by Dr

Livingstone at the close of his second expedition.

A jealous feeling, however, arose at the time of Livingstone’s

explorations between Portuguese and British; and considerable

pressure was brought to bear on the British Government to abandon

the results of Livingstone’s discovery. These representations,

together with other discouraging results of British enterprise in

East and West Africa, induced the British Government during the

later sixties and earlier seventies to hold aloof from any idea of

British rule in the interior of the continent. Meantime the

Portuguese were making praiseworthy efforts to develop these

long-neglected possessions. Great improvements were effected, and a

wholly modern aspect of neatness and order was given to the towns of

Quelimane and Moçambique, which in many respects compared a few

years ago favourably with other European settlements on the East

coast of Africa. Large sums were spent on public works; indeed, in

the year 1880, not less than £157,000 was provided by the

mother-country for the erection of public buildings in Portuguese

East and West Africa; and at this period the handsome hospital in

the town of Moçambique was erected, together with a good deal of

substantial road and bridge making. A good many more military posts

were founded; and Zumbo, on the central Zambezi, at the confluence

with the Luangwa, was reoccupied. Nevertheless, Livingstone’s work,

and especially his death, inevitably drew the British to Zambezia.

In 1875 the first pioneers of the present missionary societies

travelled up the Zambezi and arrived in the Shire highlands. In 1876

the settlement of Blantyre was commenced, and the foundations of

British Central Africa were laid. These actions impelled the

Portuguese to greater and greater efforts to secure the dominion to

which they aspired—a continuous belt of empire stretching across the

continent from Angola to Moçambique; and an expenditure exhausting

for the mother-country was laid out on costly expeditions productive

not always of definite or satisfactory results. This policy

culminated in the effort of Serpa Pinto to seize by force the Shire

highlands, despite the resistance offered by the Makololo

chiefs[73], who had declared themselves under British protection.

Thence arose the intervention of the British Government and a long

discussion between the two powers, which eventually bore results in

a fair delimitation of the Portuguese and British spheres of

influence, and the annulling of any inimical feeling between England

and Portugal in their African enterprises. Moçambique proper (_i.e._

the provinces N.E. of the Zambezi) has proved a costly dependency to

the mother-country. From the year 1508 to 1893 there was always

annually an excess of expenditure over revenue, sometimes as much as

an annual deficit of £50,000. In the year 1893, for the first time

since the creation of the colony, a small surplus was remitted to

Lisbon. It is questionable whether this possession will ever prove

profitable to Portugal. At the present day nearly two-thirds of the

trade is in the hands of non-Portuguese (Indians and Europeans). The

bulk of the wholesale commerce between Ibo and Quelimane is carried

on by German, Dutch, and French firms; and the retail trade is

conducted by British Indians, or by natives of Goa and other

Portuguese Indian possessions.

The Chartered Company of “Nyassa” has a virtual monopoly of the

hinterland trade between Lake Nyasa and the Ibo coast, and

administers the country between the Lurio river on the south and the

Ruvuma on the north. In Portuguese Zambezia exists the Zambezia

company with a number of minor concessionaires; and most of these

hold _prazos_ or leases of prescribed areas, in which they have

exclusive trading rights and a virtual mastery over the natives, who

are consequently at times rebellious when exactions of labour in

lieu of or in addition to taxes are levied on them. There is and has

been very little real Portuguese colonization of the Moςambique and

Zambezia provinces. The vicious spirit of the old slave trade days

still taints the local administration. The Angoshe region between

Moςambique Island and the northern vicinity of the Quelimane river

is almost independent of Portuguese authority under powerful

Arab-Negro Muhammadan “Sultans,” who until quite recently shipped

over many dau-loads of slaves to Madagascar.

The chief article of trade in the Moςambique province is

ground-nuts—the oily seeds of the _Arachis hypogæa_, a species of

leguminous plant, the seed-pods of which grow downwards into the

soil. These ground-nuts produce an excellent and palatable oil which

is hardly distinguishable in taste from olive oil, and indeed

furnishes a considerable part of the so-called olive oil exported

from France. This, perhaps, is the reason why the ground-nuts find

their way finally to Marseilles. The india-rubber of Moçambique is

of good quality and fetches a high price in the market. Other

exports are oil-seeds derived from a species of sesamum, copra, wax,

ivory and sugar. Some copper and malachite are exported from the

Nyassa company’s territories north of the Lurio. A few enterprising

people started coffee plantations on the mainland near Moçambique

some years ago; but the local Portuguese authorities immediately put

on heavy duties and taxes, so that the coffee-planting industry was

soon killed. The same thing may be said about the coco-nut palm. At

one time it was intended to plant this useful tree in large numbers

along a coast singularly adapted for its growth; but, owing to the

fact that the local Portuguese Government imposed a yearly tax on

each palm, the cultivation of the coco-nut was given up. The ivory

comes chiefly from Ibo and Cape Delgado, and also from Quelimane,

and is derived from elephants still existing in the Zambezi basin

and in the eastern parts of Nyasaland. Nevertheless, most of the

products above alluded to, with the exception of ivory, are only

furnished by the fertile coast belt; for beyond the twenty-mile

strip of cultivated land which extends more or less down the whole

coast of Moçambique, the interior of the country is dry and arid

except in certain favoured river valleys, and in the splendid

mountain region of Namuli, between Angoshe and the upper Shire

river.

Portuguese influence, though not always Portuguese rule, was carried

southward to the northern shore of Delagoa Bay at the end of the

17th century. Here the settlement of Lourenςo Marquez was founded as

a trading station. At the beginning of the 18th century this

Portuguese station was abandoned; and the Cape Dutch came and built

a factory there, which however was destroyed by the English in 1727.

Nevertheless Portugal continued to assert her claims to Lourenço

Marquez; and when, in 1776, an Englishman named Bolts (formerly in

the employ of the English East India Company), who had entered the

service of Maria Theresa in order to found an Austrian Company to

trade with the East Indies from Flanders, came thither with a large

following composed of Austrian-Italian subjects, and made treaties

with the chiefs of Delagoa Bay, the Portuguese protested and

addressed representations to the Austrian Government. These

protestations would have been of but little avail had not a terrible

outbreak of fever carried off almost all the European settlers. The

Austrian claim was therefore abandoned; and the Portuguese continued

at intervals to make their presence felt there by a quasi-military

commandant or a Government trading establishment. When Admiral

Owen’s expedition visited Delagoa Bay between 1822 and 1824, they

found a small Portuguese establishment on the site of the present

town of Lourenço Marquez[74]. Realizing the importance of this

harbour, and finding no evidence of Portuguese claims to its

southern shore, Captain Owen concluded treaties with the King of

Tembe by which the southern part of Delagoa Bay was ceded to Great

Britain. The Portuguese made an indirect protest by removing the

British flag during Captain Owen’s absence, but the flag was

rehoisted in 1824. Owen’s action, however, was not followed up by

effective occupation, though on the other hand the Portuguese did

nothing to reassert their authority over the south shore of the bay

until, in the sixties, the growing importance of South Africa led

the British to reassert their claims. The matter was submitted to

arbitration, and Marshal MacMahon, the President of the French

Republic, was chosen as arbitrator. His verdict—a notoriously

biassed one—not only gave the Portuguese the south shore of Delagoa

Bay, but even more territory than they actually laid claim to.

Britain had to some extent prepared herself for an unfavourable

verdict by a prior agreement providing that whichever of the two

disputing powers came to possess the whole or part of Delagoa Bay

should give the other the right of pre-emption.

Reading the vast mass of evidence brought forward and preserved in

Blue Books, it seems to the present writer that any dispassionate

judge would arrive at these conclusions: That the Portuguese claim

to the northern shore of Delagoa Bay was valid; but that over the

southern shore of this important inlet they had exercised no

occupation and raised no claim until the arrival of Admiral Owen and

his treaty-making; and that even after the action taken by Admiral

Owen, they did nothing beyond removing the flag he had raised, and

effected nothing in the way of occupation or treaty-making on their

own account. Owen’s procedure was not repudiated by the British

Government, who besides had other rights over the territory in

question inherited from the Dutch. Owen’s intervention was not, it

is true, succeeded by immediate occupation; and the British case

would have been a very weak one judged by the severe rules of the

Berlin Convention of 1884. But then, if Portuguese territory in East

Africa had been delimited by the same severe rules, it would have

been reduced to a few fortified settlements. Great Britain had a

fair claim to the south shore of Delagoa Bay; and the award of

Marshal MacMahon was a prejudiced one, said to have been mainly due

to the influence of his wife, who was ardently in favour of the

Portuguese for a variety of reasons.

In 1887-9 a railway was constructed under a concession by the

Portuguese between Lourenço Marquez (Delagoa Bay) and the Transvaal

border by a group of English and American capitalists, with results

which are set forth in Chapter VII. This railway was seized and

extended by the Portuguese in 1889.

Subsequently to the Delagoa Bay award, the Portuguese made

determined efforts to explore and conquer the South-east coast of

Africa and the countries along the lower Zambezi. To the extreme

north of their Moçambique possessions they had a dispute with the

Sultan of Zanzibar as to the possession of Tungi Bay and the south

shore of the mouth of the river Ruvuma. After their disastrous

struggle with the Arabs in the 17th and 18th centuries, the

Portuguese had defined the northern limit of their East African

possessions as Cape Delgado; and Cape Delgado would have given them

the whole of Tungi Bay, though not the mouth of the Ruvuma. It is

evident that the Sultan of Zanzibar was trespassing as a ruler when

he claimed Tungi Bay, though not when he claimed the mouth of the

Ruvuma. Portugal, losing patience at the time of the division of the

Zanzibar Sultanate between England and Germany, made an armed

descent on Tungi Bay in 1889, and has since held it, though the

Germans withdrew from her control the Ruvuma mouth, which they

claimed as an inheritance of the Sultan of Zanzibar.

The establishment of the British South African Company in 1889 and

the consequent development of Mashonaland and Matebeleland subjected

the Portuguese territories south of the Zambezi to a searching

scrutiny on the part of these merchant adventurers, who laid hands

on behalf of Great Britain on all territory where the Portuguese

could not prove claims supported by occupation or ruling influence.

The strongest temptation existed to ignore Portuguese claims on the

Pungwe river and to push a way down to the sea at Beira; but a

spirit of justice prevailed, and no real transgression of Portuguese

rights was sanctioned by the British Government, or indeed attempted

by the Company. In June, 1891, after several unsuccessful attempts,

a convention was arrived at between England and Portugal, which

defined tolerably clearly the boundaries of British and Portuguese

territories in South-east, South-west, and South-central Africa.

Rights of way were obtained under fair conditions both at Beira and

at Chinde (Zambezi Delta[75]). Since 1891 a friendly feeling has

been growing up between the British and the Portuguese.

The Portuguese have been making steady efforts to bring under

control their richly endowed East African province. For some time

after their settlement with Great Britain they were menaced in the

south by the power of Gungunyama, a Zulu king who ruled over the

Gaza country, and had been in the habit of raiding the interior

behind the Portuguese settlements of Lourenço Marquez and Inhambane.

The Portuguese warred against him for three years without

satisfactory results, until Major Mouzinho de Albuquerque, by a bold

stroke of much bravery, marched into Gungunyama’s camp with a

handful of Portuguese soldiers and took the king prisoner. For this

gallant action he was eventually promoted to be Governor-General of

Portuguese East Africa, and then did something towards bringing

under subjection the turbulent Makua tribes opposite Moçambique.

----------------------------------------------------------------

PORTUGUESE AFRICA

Plate III.

[Illustration]

EXPLANATORY NOTE

[green] _Area of Portuguese Possessions in 1820_

[tan]  ”    ”     ”   _1912_

[red] _Possessions lost or exchanged_

----------------------------------------------------------------

The greater portion of their trans-Zambezian possessions along the

East coast and immediately south of the lower Zambezi and north of

Inhambane and the Sabi River was in 1891 handed over to the

administration of a Chartered Company,—which although theoretically

Portuguese derives its capital mainly from English, French and

Belgian sources, and is mainly managed by Englishmen. This

“Moçambique Company” since its institution has done much to open up

the country; the railway construction however is chiefly due to the

British South African Company, who have constructed a line of

railway from the capital, Beira, to the eastern frontier of Southern

Rhodesia. In addition, under the auspices of the Moçambique Company,

a northern line is being constructed to the Zambezi and across that

river to join the Shire Highlands railway at Port Herald. When this

is finished, Beira, instead of Chinde or Quelimane, will become the

seaport of British Nyasaland.

South of the Sabi River and up to the frontiers of British South

Africa the country is directly ruled by Portugal, the large town of

Lourenço Marquez (Delagoa Bay) being now the supreme capital of the

State of East Africa, as the Moçambique provinces are called. Here

resides the Governor-General, with subordinate officials at

Moçambique, Quelimane, Sena, Zumbo, Tete, Chinde and Inhambane.

The recent revolution in Portugal (1910), and the change from a

monarchy to a republic, have slightly affected the Portuguese

African possessions for the better. Long-standing abuses are being

enquired into, and some remedies are being applied. Yet the

resources of little Portugal are grievously strained in men and

money to maintain rule, law, and order in these vast African

possessions—possessions which stretch from North-west to South-east

Africa and include an area of 794,000 square miles. In 1898, when

the unsettled state of Africa and the rivalry between Britain,

Germany, and France made it advisable to forecast an allotment of

the Portuguese colonies, should they slip from the grasp of Portugal

or be offered for sale, an agreement was entered into between

Britain and Germany partitioning the Portuguese African possessions

into spheres of influence. But it is understood that at a later date

Great Britain, on renewing her old alliance with Portugal,

guaranteed her the undisturbed possession of her colonial dominions.

-----

Footnote 48:

From the Arabic _Al-gharb_ the ‘west,’ the ‘sunset.’ The title of

the Kings of Portugal was “King of Portugal and the Algarves, on

this side and on the other side of the sea in Africa, etc.”

Footnote 49:

This battlefield was on the banks of the river Lukkus, not very

far from the coast port of Al-Araish, the Roman _Lixus_.

Footnote 50:

It was finally ceded to Spain by Portugal in 1668.

Footnote 51:

It had however been known to Italian and Norman navigators a

century earlier. Indeed it is increasingly probable that the

Portuguese as discoverers of West Africa had been preceded a

hundred years earlier by the Genoese, the Catalans and Majorcans,

and the Norman French of Dieppe. A remarkable map of the continent

of Africa was painted in Italy, about 1351, and is now in the

Medicean Library at Florence. It is known as the Laurentian

Portolano and gives the most correct general outline of the whole

continent which had as yet been depicted. For the first time the

great Bight of the Gulf of Guinea is shown, together with the

tongue-like projection southwards of Central and Southern Africa.

There is even the indication of a river where the Congo emerges

into the South Atlantic.

Footnote 52:

Only a long inlet in the Desert coast. At the head of this inlet

was the little island of Kerné (still called Herné by the Moors)

which was once a trading station of the Carthaginians.

Footnote 53:

Nowadays known as Elmina.

Footnote 54:

As will be seen in another chapter, there are traditions of Norman

merchants from Dieppe having established forts or trading stations

along the West African coast in the later years of the 14th

century, especially at “La Mine d’Or”—Elmina—where the Normans

possibly preceded the Portuguese.

Footnote 55:

Mr E. G. Ravenstein deduces 1485 as the date from the details

shown in the coat of arms in the inscription. This inscription was

only discovered on the high rock, near the Mpozo confluence, by a

Swedish missionary in 1906. The inscription begins “Aqi chegaram

os navios do esclarecido Rey Dom Joam ho seg° de Portugall,” and

is followed by the names of Diogo Cam (Cão) and others. See the

_Geographical Journal_ for June, 1908.

Footnote 56:

They described the Arab settlements on the South-East African

coasts and alleged that certain Arab ships had been driven by

stress of weather past the Cape of Good Hope, and had brought back

word of the northward trend of the west coast.

Footnote 57:

The Canary Islands, inhabited by a race of Berber origin, had been

rediscovered (for Greek and Roman geographers knew of them) by

Normans and Genoese in the 14th century. Previous to that they had

already been brought into touch with the Moors of the Moroccan

coast, though they were never Islamized but remained in some

respects in the primitive, stone-age condition which the Berbers

of the mainland had quitted two thousand years before. The men

often went naked; but the race in some respects exhibited a

characteristic Neolithic civilization and was far removed from

savagery. The archipelago was partially conquered by a Norman

adventurer, Jean de Betancourt or Bethencourt; and his title after

passing through many hands was finally claimed by Portugal.

Portugal, however, transferred her rights to Castile in 1479.

Footnote 58:

It is necessary to discriminate in spelling between the river

Congo and Congoland generally and the little kingdom of Kongo

between Stanley Pool and the Atlantic coast. This important native

state, whose legendary founder was a mighty hunter armed with an

iron spear (Kongo) gave its name to the great river, which was

also styled Zaire by the Portuguese from the native term Nzadi.

Footnote 59:

The original name of this tribe, which came from the southern

Congo basin, was “Imbangola.” _Jaga_ was apparently like the Jinga

of old Angola merely the title of their clan-chieftains, _Jok_ or

_Kiokwe_ (as they are called in Lunda) was a nickname meaning

“Hyena.” Their descendants seem still to reside on the river

Kwango behind Angola under the name of Imbangala. The Ba-yaka of

the Northern Kwango are quite distinct.

Footnote 60:

Grandson of the explorer, Bartolomeu.

Footnote 61:

Such wheat as is cultivated in Africa north of 15° N. Latitude is

similar to the European and Egyptian kinds; the wheat introduced

by the Arabs and Portuguese into Zambezia is red wheat, apparently

from India.

Footnote 62:

Duarte Lopes, who records this fact in his description of the

Congo region at the end of the 16th century, gives incidentally or

directly other interesting scraps of information, such as, that

the coco-nut palm was _found_ by the Portuguese growing on the

West coast of Africa. This palm, we know, originated in the

Pacific Archipelagoes or on the Pacific coast of tropical America.

It is possible to imagine that its nuts may have been carried over

the sea to Southern India and thence to Madagascar and the coast

of East Africa, but, inasmuch as the coco-nut palm cannot grow

further south than Delagoa Bay owing to the cooling of the climate

it is not very clear how it reached the tropical West African

coast, unless it was introduced by Europeans. Lopes mentions the

banana for the first time under the name “banana,” a name which

seems to be derived from the Vai and other languages of the Sierra

Leone-Liberia coast. Hitherto this fruit had only been known

vaguely to Europe as the Indian fig or by its Arab name, which was

latinized into _Musa_. The long banana or plantain was of ancient

and widespread cultivation throughout tropical Africa, but the

small banana with stubby fruit seems to have been a recent

introduction from India which has penetrated into few parts of the

interior.

Footnote 63:

Philip II of Spain had the best claim to the Portuguese throne

after the death without heirs of the Cardinal-King Henrique. But

the Portuguese disliked union with Spain and would have preferred

to elect a Portuguese king.

Footnote 64:

In 1621 Pope Paul V sent a mission to the King of Kongo at São

Salvador; and thenceforward, until 1717, the Kongo kingdom was

evangelized by Italian and Belgian Capuchins, and after 1673 by

Belgian Recollets friars. But in 1717 the Capuchins were expelled

by the king’s people. In 1760 Catholic missions were resumed in

Congoland (Loango and Kongo) by French, Italian and Portuguese

missionaries; but these too came to an end by 1800, and for some

eighty years the Kongo kingdom relapsed into complete barbarism.

Footnote 65:

This place was named after the Baron de Mossamedes, a Portuguese

Governor of Angola, afterwards Minister for the Colonies.

Footnote 66:

This fort, by the abortive Congo Treaty of 1884, was to have been

made over to England. Although the Portuguese never in any sense

ruled over or controlled Dahomé, their indirect influence and

their language were prominent at the Dahomean court because

certain Brazilians had during the first half of this century

established themselves on the coast and in the interior as

influential merchants and slave traders. Their descendants now

form a Portuguese-speaking Brazilian caste in Dahomé.

Footnote 67:

Most prominent features, and some countries on the west and south

coasts of Africa from the Senegal round to the Cape of Good Hope

and Moçambique, bear Portuguese names: Cape _Verde_ is “The Green

Cape,” Sierra Leone (_Serra Leoa_) is “The Lionlike Mountains,”

Cape _Palmas_ “The Palm-trees Cape,” Cape Coast is _Cabo Corso_

“The cruising Cape,” _Lagos_ is “The Lakes,” Calabar (_Calabarra_)

is “The bar is silent,” Cameroons is _Camaroẽs_ “prawns,” Gaboon

is _Gabāo_ “The Hooded Cloak” (from the shape of the estuary),

_Corisco_ is “Lightning,” Cape _Frio_ is “The Cold Cape” and

_Angra Pequena_ is “The Little Cove,” and so on. All the prominent

points on the Liberian coast, and most of the Niger mouths, have

Portuguese names.

Footnote 68:

This is a little coral islet about 2 miles long by ¼ mile broad,

situated between 2 and 3 miles from the coast (a shallow bay), in

15 degrees south latitude, where the East African coast approaches

nearest to Madagascar. It commands the Moçambique Channel. Its

native name was probably originally Musambiki. By the neighbouring

East African tribes it is now called Muhibidi, Msambiji, and

Msambiki. It has sometimes been the only parcel of land remaining

in Portuguese hands during the vicissitudes of their East African

empire.

Footnote 69:

A corruption of _Mwene-mutapa_. According to some authorities this

title meant “Lord Hippopotamus,” the hippopotamus on the Zambezi

above Tete being looked upon as a _Totem_ or sacred animal

indicative of the royal clan; but in my personal opinion

_Mwene-mutapa_ is really “Lord of the Mine, or gold mining,”

_mutapo_ or _mtapo_ being a shallow pit dug in clay or sand for

mining, or washing gold.

Footnote 70:

Where they have not yet brought under subjection the Muhammadan

Makua and the Arab half-castes of Angoshe. The chief native foes

of the Portuguese in East Africa at the close of the 16th century

were the Ba-zimba, one of those Zulu-like marauding tribes like

the modern Angoni, which would range over hundreds of miles in a

few months and commit devastations that left their effects for

nearly a century.

Footnote 71:

Except Mombasa, which was retaken and held between 1728 and 1729.

Footnote 72:

Zumbo was given up (though it was never much more than a Jesuit

Mission Station) in 1740.

Footnote 73:

These Makololo chiefs were formerly headmen of Livingstone’s

second expedition, left behind by him on the Cataract Shire to

stiffen the resistance of the timid natives against the Muhammadan

slave raiders.

Footnote 74:

The modern and existing town of that name was not founded till

1867.

Footnote 75:

The use of the Chinde mouth of the Zambezi gives free water

communication between the outer world and Nyasaland, by way of the

Zambezi and Shire rivers.

CHAPTER V

SPANISH AFRICA

The enterprise of Spain in Africa was relatively small, the greater

part of Spanish energy being devoted to founding an empire in the

New World, in the far East, in Italy and Flanders. It was also knit

up politically at first with the Portuguese colonial empire.

Nevertheless Spain has left very distinct marks of her influence on

North-western Africa in both language and culture. This in past

times arose from the Spanish Moors expelled from Spain, but bringing

much Spanish valour, ingeniousness, art, and pride into the life of

Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, and Timbuktu.

When Portugal was commencing to acquire oversea dominions in the

Açores (1437-66), Madeira (1430), and on the coast of Morocco,

Christian Spain was still divided into three kingdoms—Castile,

Aragon and Navarre—and the two former were concentrating their

energies on the destruction of the Moorish kingdom of Granada (not

accomplished till 1492). But the monarchs of Castile and Aragon

became jealous of the oversea expansion of Portugal; and that power

deemed it wise to surrender to Castile in 1479 the Portuguese claim

to the Canary Islands.

The Canary Islands had been partially conquered by a Norman

adventurer, Jean de Béthencourt, in 1402-6, more or less under the

suzerainty of Castile; and the Canary kingdom passed into the hands

of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1476. Prior to the final occupation of

the Spaniards the islands were inhabited by a Berber race of some

antiquity known as the Guanches. These were partly exterminated and

partly absorbed by the Spanish settlers, to whom they were so much

akin in blood that complete race fusion was rendered easy,

especially as the Guanches had not been reached by Muhammadanism.

The Canary Islands were an invaluable stepping-stone for the

trans-Atlantic ventures of the Spanish ships during the first fifty

years of American discovery and colonization. Many Spanish and

Guanche colonists—the Isleños or Islanders—proceeded from this

archipelago of seven islands to the greater Antilles; and there are

plantations and villages to-day in Cuba and Porto Rico which possess

Berber names derived from those of the Guanche prisoners or

colonists who founded them. It took Spain however fifteen years to

conquer the brave and warlike Guanches, a task not accomplished

until 1495. The wonderful scenery, genial climate, and fertile soil

attracted the attention of the British in the 18th century; and one

or two attempts were made to acquire this archipelago, but in face

of the gallant resistance offered by the islanders (it was at

Tenerife that Nelson lost his arm in an attempted landing) British

cupidity was foiled. In 1833 the archipelago was made a separate

government—a province of Spain by itself; but in 1902 a movement for

home rule was severely repressed. The Canary Islands now form

politically part of Spain. They are thoroughly civilized, well

governed and prosperous. The two principal islands, Tenerife and

Grand Canary, are favourite health resorts; and the whole group owes

much to British capital, enterprise and shipping for its industrial

and agricultural development.

At the close of the 15th century the Spaniards followed up their

expulsion of the Moors from Spain by attacking them on the North

coast of Africa. They established themselves at Melilla[76], Oran,

Algiers[77], Bugia, Bona, Hunein, Susa, Monastir, Mehedia, Sfax, and

Goletta[78]. The apogee of Spanish power in North Africa was reached

about 1535, at which time the Spaniards alternately with the Turks

dominated the Barbary States. Then, owing to victory inclining to

the Turkish corsairs[79], the Spaniards’ hold over the country began

to decline. A resolute attempt was made by Charles V in 1541 to take

and hold the town of Algiers, the Spanish having lost Peñon, a rock

fortress overlooking part of the town. This attempt of 1541 (only

less serious than the French expedition of 1880) would probably have

succeeded but for a torrential downpour of rain, which made the

surrounding country impassable to the Spanish guns and cavalry, and

led to a terrible rout. Had Algiers fallen at this time, its capture

might have resulted in a Spanish empire over North Africa. As it

was, this twenty-four hours’ downpour of rain changed the future of

the northern part of the continent, or rather prevented a change

which might have had very far-reaching results. Charles V had

invaded Tunis in 1535 at the appeal of the last sovereign but one of

the House of Hafs, who had been dispossessed by the Turkish pirate,

Khaireddin. Although his intervention was ultimately unsuccessful,

and his _protégé_ was killed and succeeded by his son, who more or

less intrigued with the Turkish corsairs, the Spaniards retained

their hold on Goletta till 1574, the Turks having then definitely

intervened in the affairs of Tunis. The Spaniards surrendered

Goletta to the renegade pirate, Ochiali; and with it went all their

influence over Tunis. An expedition which they had sent to the

island of Jerba, under the Duke de Medina-Cœli and the younger

Doria, ended in a great disaster—a defeat at the hands of the

Moorish pirates who massacred, it is said, not less than 18,000

Spaniards (May, 1560). Their skulls were built into a tower, which

remained visible near the town of Humt Suk till 1840, when the

kindly Maltese settlers on this island obtained permission from the

Bey of Tunis to give Christian burial to the Spanish skulls, which

now are interred in the Christian cemetery at Humt Suk. For brief

intervals the Spaniards held other coast towns[80] of Tunis, but in

retiring from Goletta they withdrew from all further hold over the

Regency.

They finally quitted Oran in 1791, after a terrible earthquake. They

had been turned out of this place in 1708, but recaptured it after a

period of 24 years, and held it for 59 years longer. Spain only

retained down to the present day on the north coast of Morocco the

little island of Melilla[81], the island of Alhucemas, the rock of

Velez de la Gomera, and the rocky promontory of Ceuta. Ceuta (and

Tetwan, which she once possessed) she inherited from Portugal after

a separation had once more taken place between the two monarchies in

1640.

Awakened from the torpor which followed the Napoleonic wars and the

home struggles for constitutional government by the French

activities in Algeria, Spain suddenly seized the Chafarinas

Islands[82] in 1849 so as to forestall the French. On the strength

of some clause in a treaty concluded after the war with the Moors

(1859-60), Spain secured from Morocco the town of Ifni, near Cape

Nun on the Atlantic coast and nearly opposite the Canary Islands,

but made no attempt to occupy it. From the middle of the 19th

century onwards an increasing number of Spaniards, chiefly of the

artisan and peasant class, emigrated from Andalucia to the Oran

coast of Algeria, with the result that Western Algeria to-day

contains a Spanish-speaking population of about 150,000. Yet prior

to the 20th century, Spain, distracted by home affairs and troubles

in Cuba, seemed willing to let Morocco drift beyond her control to

that of England or Germany, until the revival of Spanish industries

and trade and the loss of her colonies in America and the Pacific

decided her to plead with Britain and France that a sphere of

influence should be reserved for Spain on the North Morocco coast.

In 1910-11 the region between Melilla and the Muluya mouth was

brought under Spanish control; and in 1911 Spanish troops occupied

all the important towns on or near the coast between Melilla and

Kasr al Kabīr on the Atlantic, except Tangier (which will probably

be internationalized). Spain in fact will sooner or later annex all

the Rif country of North Morocco. In the south she claims a very

large area between Cape Jubi and the Anti-Atlas mountains.

Spain had allowed her influence over the coast opposite the Canary

Islands (“Santa Cruz de Mar Pequena”) to lapse between the end of

the 16th century and the scramble for Africa which commenced in

1884. At this period an English trading firm with agencies in the

Canary Islands had been established at Cape Jubi, south of the

Morocco border; and British influence for a time dominated the coast

immediately opposite the Canary Islands, and arrested Spanish action

in that neighbourhood. After the scramble for Africa commenced,

however, the Spanish, who were greatly interested in the north-west

coast (for its valuable fisheries in which the Canarian fishermen

were employed), raised their flag in 1885 at an inlet called the Rio

d’Ouro[83], and declared a Protectorate over the Sahara coast

between Cape Blanco and Cape Bojador and for a varying distance

inland. This Protectorate has since been extended farther to the

north beyond Cape Bojador; but the Empire of Morocco theoretically

extends to the south of Cape Jubi to meet the Spanish frontier, the

Moorish Government having bought up the claims of the English

company. The inland boundary of this Spanish Protectorate has

recently been settled as between France and Spain, and comprises an

approximate area of 73,000 square miles, mainly desert, but

extending inland to the Adrar hills. The only establishment of any

importance or size is on the Rio de Oro inlet, not far from the

islet which the Carthaginians once frequented. No doubt before long

the Rio de Oro Protectorate will be fused with the territory which

Spain claims in South-west Morocco.

In 1778 Spain, which had become deeply interested in the slave trade

on the West coast of Africa, on account of the need for a regular

supply of slaves to her South American possessions, obtained from

Portugal the cession of the island of Fernando Pô, and also took

over the island of Anno Bom—the last of this series of equatorial

volcanic islands and the smallest. About the same time the Spaniards

made a settlement at Corisco Bay[84]. The Spanish claims extend some

distance up the river Muni. The boundaries of Spanish Guinea (as it

is called) were settled with the French in 1900-2 and resulted in a

territory of 9800 square miles being allotted to Spain. This very

interesting patch of Equatorial West African Coast is emphatically

the home of the gorilla. It is populated by Bantu negroes, more

especially belonging to the Fang group.

At the end of the 18th century the Spanish island of Fernando Pô was

almost abandoned. When the British undertook to put down the slave

trade off the West African Coast, Fernando Pô became their

head-quarters (in 1829); and for a time they were allowed to

administer it by the Spanish Government, the British representative

or “Superintendent” being made at the same time a Governor with a

Spanish commission. But in 1844 the Spanish decided to resume the

direct administration, and refused to sell their rights to Great

Britain, though overtures were made to that end. Until about 1890

nothing was done to develop the resources of this densely forested,

very fertile, but unhealthy island. From that time onwards, however,

some encouragement was given to negro and European planters. From

the island having been for so long under British control, there is a

large population of English-speaking negroes, and English is

understood in Fernando Pô much better than Spanish. These negroes

are descended from a number of freed slaves from Sierra Leone. The

indigenous inhabitants are a Bantu tribe of short stature and very

lowly culture known as the Bube[85]. This tribe is distantly related

to the people of the northern part of the Cameroons, and speaks an

isolated Bantu dialect. Much development of cacao planting has

recently taken place in Fernando Pô, involving the importation of

foreign negro labourers from Liberia; but the interests of the Bube

natives have been well protected by Spanish Dominican and British

Primitive Methodist missionaries.

-----

Footnote 76:

In 1490.

Footnote 77:

Or the rock, or “Peñon,” overlooking the town, seized and

garrisoned by Cardinal Ximenez in 1509. It was taken by

Khaireddin, the Turkish corsair, in 1530.

Footnote 78:

Held by Spain from 1535 to 1574.

Footnote 79:

The following is a _résumé_ of the history of the first

intervention of Turkey in Barbary. In 1504 Uruj (Barbarossa I), a

pirate of mixed Turco-Greek origin, attracted by the rumours of

American treasure-ships in the western Mediterranean, captured

Algiers (1516) and Tlemsan (1517); but he was defeated and killed

by the Spaniards coming from Oran. His younger brother Khaireddin

(Barbarossa II) appealed to Turkey, which had just (1518)

conquered Egypt, and received from Sultan Selim the title of

Turkish Beglerbeg of Algiers and a reinforcement of 2000 Turks. He

mastered almost all Algeria, was made Admiral of the Turkish fleet

in 1533, captured Tunis in 1534, was driven out by Charles V, and

retired to Turkey in 1535. His successors were sometimes

Sardinian, Calabrian, Venetian, Hungarian renegades; but among the

more celebrated was Dragut, a Turk of Karamania.

Footnote 80:

Susa, Sfax, and Monastir, which were lost to the Turks by 1550.

Footnote 81:

The oldest of her continental African possessions, dating from

1490.

Footnote 82:

The Chafarinas Islands are off the mouth of the Muluya river, near

the Algerian frontier.

Footnote 83:

This Portuguese name becomes in Spanish Rio de Oro.

Footnote 84:

This also, like so many other places on the West coast of Africa,

was named by the Portuguese; _Corisco_ meaning “sheet lightning,”

a name applied to the place because it was first seen during a

violent thunderstorm.

Footnote 85:

Bube is said to be a cant term meaning “male” (from the Bantu

root, _-ume_, _-lume_) and the real name of this race is perhaps

Ediya. This subject is fully treated in the author’s book, _George

Grenfell and the Congo_, which gives a full account of Fernando Pô

and the Bube indigenes.

CHAPTER VI

THE DUTCH IN AFRICA

Although, as will be seen in a succeeding chapter, British seamen

were the first adventurers of other nationalities to follow the

Portuguese in the exploration of the African coasts, the Dutch, as

settlers and colonists, are almost entitled to rank chronologically

next to the Portuguese and Spanish. The Dutch made their first

trading voyage to the Guinea Coast in 1595, 16 years after throwing

off the yoke of Spain. On the plea of warring with the Spanish

Empire, which then included Portugal, they displaced the latter

power at various places along the West coast of Africa—at Arguin, at

Goree (off Dakar, purchased from the natives 1621), Elmina (1637),

and at Saõ Paulo de Loanda about the same time; while they three

times threatened Moçambique on the East coast (1604, 1607, 1662),

and possessed themselves of the island of Mauritius (1598), which

had been a place of call for Portuguese ships. Mauritius, discovered

in 1505 by the Portuguese sea-captain, Mascarenhas (after whom the

“Mascarene” Islands—the Mauritius-Réunion-Rodriguez groups—have been

named), was uninhabited at the time and possessed enormous

quantities of a large and monstrous ground fruit-pigeon, the Dodo,

which the Dutch sailors and their imported herds of swine

exterminated in the course of about a hundred years. On the West

coast of Africa, besides supplanting the Portuguese, the Dutch

established themselves strongly on the Gold Coast by means of 16 new

forts of their own[86], in most cases alongside British settlements,

which were regarded by the Dutch with the keenest jealousy.

Dutch hold on the Gold Coast was responsible for an enormous

increase of the Slave Trade between West Africa and America and is

the reason why such a large proportion of the United States, West

Indian, and Guiana negroes are of Ashanti (Coromanti, Kormantyn) and

Fanti descent; as is evident from their folk-lore, legends and the

linguistic evidence of their dialects. The Dutch were not loath to

mingle their blood with that of the Gold Coast negroes; and their

long occupancy of these forts produced an impression in the shape of

a race of Dutch half-castes, which endures to this day, and

furnishes useful employés to the British Government in many minor

capacities. But after the abolition of the slave trade Dutch

commerce with the Guinea Coast began to wane, and their political

influence disappeared also; so that by 1872 the last of the Dutch

ports had been transferred to Great Britain in return for the

cession on our part of rights we possessed over Sumatra. Meantime

Dutch trade had begun to take firm hold over the Congo and Angola

Coast; and it is possible that, had the cession of the Gold Coast

forts been delayed a few years longer, it would never have been

made, for Holland possesses a considerable trade with Africa, and

there has been a strong feeling of regret in the Netherlands for

some time past at the exclusion of that country’s flag from the

African continent.

But a far more important colonization than a foothold on the

Slave-trade Coast was made indirectly for Holland in the middle of

the 17th century; the Dutch East India Company, desirous of making

the Cape of Good Hope something more than a port of call, which

might fall into the hands of Portugal, France, England, or any other

rival, decided to occupy that important station. The Dutch had taken

possession of St Helena in 1645; but a Dutch ship having been

wrecked at Table Bay in 1648, the crew landed, and encamped where

Cape Town now stands. Here they were obliged to live for five

months, until picked up by other Dutch ships; but during this period

they sowed and reaped grain, and obtained plenty of meat from the

natives, with whom they were on good terms. The favourable report

they gave of this country on their return to Holland decided the

Dutch Company, after years of hesitation, to take possession of

Table Bay. An expedition was sent out under Jan van Riebeek, a

ship’s surgeon, who had already visited South Africa. The three

ships of Van Riebeek’s expedition reached Table Bay on the 6th of

April, 1652[87].

At different periods in the early part of the 16th century the Dutch

had consolidated their sea-going ventures into two great chartered

companies—the Dutch Company of the West Indies, and the Dutch

Company of the East Indies. The West Indian Company took over all

the settlements on the West Coast of Africa, and had the monopoly of

trade or rule along all the Atlantic Coast of tropical America. The

East India Company was to possess the like monopoly from the Pacific

Coast of South America across the Indian Ocean to the Cape of Good

Hope. The head-quarters of the East India Company, where their

Governor-General and Council were established, was at Batavia, in

the island of Java. It was not at first intended to establish

anything like a colony in South Africa—merely a secure place of call

for the ships engaged in the East Indian trade. But circumstances

proved too strong for this modest reserve. The inevitable quarrel

arose between the Dutch garrison at Table Bay and the surrounding

Hottentots. At the time of the Dutch settlement of the Cape all the

south-west corner of Africa was inhabited only and sparsely by

Hottentots and Bushmen; the prolific Bantu Negroes not coming nearer

to the Dutch than the vicinity of Algoa Bay. A little war occurred

with the Hottentots in 1659, as a result of which the Dutch first

won by fighting, and subsequently bought, a small coast strip of

land from Saldanha Bay on the north to False Bay on the south, thus

securing the peninsula which terminates at the Cape of Good Hope.

French sailing vessels were in the habit of calling at Saldanha Bay;

and in 1666 and 1670 desultory attempts were made by the French to

establish a footing there. Holland also about this time was

alternately at war with England or France or both powers. Therefore

the Dutch resolved to build forts more capable of resisting European

attack than those which were sufficient to defend the colony against

Hottentots. Still, in spite of occasional unprovoked hostilities on

the part of the Dutch, they were left in undisturbed possession of

the Cape of Good Hope for more than a hundred years. The English had

St Helena as a place of call (which they took from the Dutch in

1655); and the French had settlements in Madagascar and at

Mauritius, where they succeeded a former Dutch occupation. On the

other hand, the officials of the Dutch Company were instructed to

show civility to all comers without undue generosity; they might

supply them with water for their ships, but they were to give as

little as possible in the way of provisions and ships’ stores. It

was to the interest of both France and England that some European

settlement should exist at the Cape of Good Hope for the refreshment

of vessels and the refuge of storm-driven ships. After several

attempts, which continued down to 1673, to dispossess the English of

St Helena, the Dutch finally surrendered the island to them. They

had also in 1598 taken the Island of Mauritius, and commenced a

definite occupation in 1640. But this island was abandoned in 1710,

and became soon afterwards a French possession. So that the French

at Mauritius on the one hand (and also on the Island of Bourbon, now

called Réunion) and the English on the other at St Helena, had

places of call where they could break the long voyage to and from

India, and were therefore content to leave the Dutch East India

Company in full possession of South Africa.

The Government of the Netherlands East India Company was thoroughly

despotic. It was administered by a Chamber of 17 directors at

Amsterdam, with deputies at Batavia. The Commandant at the Cape, who

was under the orders of Amsterdam and Batavia alternately and might

be overruled by any officer of superior rank who called at his

station in passing, was the slave of the Company and had to carry

out its orders implicitly. He was advised in his local legislation

by an executive council, consisting of a number of officers who

assisted him in the administration, and legislating by means of

proclamations and orders-in-council without any representation of

popular opinion among the colonists, who, however, in time were

allowed to elect members of the Council of Justice or High Court.

After the first three years’ hesitation, strenuous efforts were

directed to the development of agriculture, especially the

cultivation of grain. Wheat was sown in suitable localities, and

vines and willows were planted by the banks of streams on the

hillsides at the back of Cape Town. Nevertheless the colonists were

terribly hampered by restrictions, which made them almost slaves to

the Company. White labour proving expensive and somewhat rebellious,

an attempt was made to introduce negro slaves from Angola and

Moçambique, but they were not a success as field labourers. The

Dutch therefore turned towards Madagascar, and above all, to the

Malay Archipelago; and from the latter especially workers were

introduced who have in time grown into a separate population of

Muhammadan freemen of considerable prosperity[88]. As Dutch

immigrants still held back from settling the Cape with an abundant

population (owing to the greed and despotic meddlesomeness of the

Company), it became more and more necessary to introduce black

labour; and in the first half of the 18th century many negro slaves

were imported from the Gold Coast and from Moçambique. The Cape

became a slave-worked colony, but on the whole the slaves were

treated with kindness; their children were sent to school, and some

attempt was made to introduce Christianity amongst them. The people

really to be pitied, however, were not the imported slaves, but the

Hottentots, who had become a nation of serfs to the Dutch farmers,

and whose numbers began greatly to diminish under the influence of

drink and syphilis, and through their being driven away from the

fertile, well-watered lands back into the inhospitable deserts. In

1682, after the colony had been established 30 years, a census

showed a total of 663 Dutch settlers, of whom 162 were under age or

children. For about the same period few if any attempts were made to

explore the country 100 miles from Cape Town; but the coast from

Little Namakwaland on the west to Zululand on the east had been

examined by the end of the 17th century. Indeed the Bay of Natal was

purchased by a representative of the Netherlands Company in 1689;

but the ship bringing back the purchase deed was lost, and no

further attempt was made to push the claim. In 1684 the first export

of grain to the Indies took place, and in 1688 some Cape wine was

sent to Ceylon. In 1685 and in subsequent years representations were

made to the directors in Amsterdam that the colony consisted mainly

of bachelors, and that good marriageable girls should be sent out.

The result of this appeal was that in 1687 many of the free Burghers

(namely, persons more or less independent of the Company) had been

furnished with wives; and they and their families amounted to nearly

600, in addition to 439 other Europeans, who were mainly employés of

the Company.

In 1685, Louis XIV unwittingly dealt a fearful blow to France in the

revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which resulted in thousands of

French Protestants emigrating to other countries where they might

enjoy freedom of religion. The Protestant Dutch sympathized with the

homeless Huguenots; and the Netherlands Company decided to give free

passages and grants of land to a number of these refugees. By 1689

nearly 200 French emigrants had been landed at the Cape and settled

in the mountain country behind Cape Town. Here, however, they were

not allowed to form a separate community. They were scattered

amongst the Dutch settlers, their children were taught Dutch, and in

a few years they were thoroughly absorbed in the Dutch community;

though they have left ineffaceable traces of their presence in the

many French surnames to be met with amongst the South African Dutch

at the present day (always pronounced however in the Dutch way), and

in the dark eyes, dark hair, and handsome features so often seen in

the best-looking type of Boer. Handsomer men and women than are some

of the Afrikanders it would be impossible to meet with; but this

personal beauty is usually traceable to Huguenot ancestry. The

French settlers taught the Dutch improved methods of growing corn

and wine, and altogether more scientific agriculture. Towards the

latter end of the 17th century the Dutch introduced the oak tree

into the Cape Peninsula and the suburbs of Cape Town, where it is

now such a handsome and prominent feature. All this time the

Hottentots gave almost no trouble. They were employed here and there

as servants; but they attempted no insurrection against the European

settlers, though they quarrelled very much amongst themselves. In

1713 large numbers of them were exterminated by an epidemic of

smallpox. The Dutch had not yet come into contact with the so-called

Kaffirs[89].

Towards the middle of the 18th century the Dutch Company ceased to

prosper, suffering from French and English competition. Already, at

the beginning of the 18th century, its oppressive rule, and the

abuse of power on the part of its governors, who used its authority

and its servants to enrich themselves, resulted in an uprising

amongst the settlers; and although some of these were arrested,

imprisoned, and exiled, the Company gave some redress to their

grievances by forbidding its officials in future to own land or to

trade. Even before this the Company had found it necessary to place

a special official, answering to an Auditor-General and an

independent judge combined, alongside the Commandant or Governor,

directly responsible to the Directors and independent of the

Governor’s authority; but this institution only led to quarrels and

divided loyalty. Amongst the governors there were some able and

upright men; and special mention may be made of Governor Tulbagh,

who ruled without reproach and with great ability for twenty years

(1751-71)[90].

In spite of licences and monopolies, tithes, taxes, and rents, the

Company could not pay its way in Cape Colony. In 1779, it was more

closely associated with the State in Holland by the appointment of

the Stadhouder (or Head of the State) as perpetual Chief Director.

With this change, the Company, partly supported by the State,

managed to continue the direction of its affairs; and there was

possibly some lessening of restrictions, which enabled settlers to

live further afield. Until the beginning of the 18th century a

standing order had forbidden trading between the settlers and the

natives; but this order being abolished, the farmers commenced to

buy cattle from the Hottentots, and the population became more

scattered. In leasing land to the farmers the Company laid down the

rule that clear spaces of three miles should intervene between one

homestead and the next; and this rule brought about a wider

distribution of European settlers than was contemplated in the

Company’s policy.

By the beginning of the 18th century the Dutch settlers had begun to

cross the mountains which lie behind the narrow belt of coast land

that forms a projection into the ocean on either side of the Cape of

Good Hope. Seventy years later the boundaries of Cape Colony on the

north and west were the Berg River and the Zwartebergen Mountains,

and on the east the Gamtoos River. A few years later the pioneers of

colonization had crossed the Berg River, and had established

themselves as far north as the Olifants River, so named because

earlier explorers had seen on its banks herds of hundreds of

elephants. The Orange River was first discovered in 1760; and in

1779 Captain Gordon, a Scotchman in the service of the Dutch

Company, had traced it for some distance down to its mouth, and had

named it after the head of the Dutch State. Hitherto, the Dutch

Government was confined to a narrow coast strip; but in 1785 the

district of Graaf Reinet[91] was formed, and the same name was given

to the village which formed its capital. Then the Dutch boundary

crept up to the Great Fish River, which rises far away to the north,

near the course of the Orange River. This Great Fish River remained

the easternmost boundary of the Colony in Dutch times. To the north

its limits were vague, and in one direction reached nearly to the

Orange River, beyond the second great range of South African

mountains—the Sneeubergen. But beyond the immediate limits of Cape

Colony the Dutch displayed some interest in the fate of South-East

Africa. They opened up a furtive and occasional trade with the

Portuguese coast of East Africa, which at first began for slaves

(numbers of Makua were brought from Moçambique to Cape Town), was

continued for tropical products, and, with many interruptions,

resulted in the establishment at the present day of important Dutch

commercial firms along the Mozambique coast. In 1720, after the

evacuation of Mauritius, an expedition was sent from Cape Colony to

Delagoa Bay, which, though claimed by the Portuguese, had been

abandoned by them at the beginning of the 18th century, so far as

actual occupation was concerned (see p. 110). A fort was built by

the Dutch which was named Lydzaamheid; and tentative explorations

were made in the direction of the Zambezi, from which gold dust was

procured. During ten years of occupation, however, the deaths from

fever were so numerous that the settlement was given up in 1730.

In 1770 the total European population in Cape Colony was nearly

10,000, of whom more than 8000 were free colonists, and the

remainder “servants” and employés of the Company. All this time,

although the prosperity of the Cape increased and its export of

wheat, wine, and live-stock progressed satisfactorily, the revenue

invariably failed to meet the expenditure; and, if other events had

not occurred, the Dutch Company must soon have been compelled by

bankruptcy to transfer the administration of the Cape to other

hands. But towards the close of the 18th century, the Dutch, too

weak to resist the influence of France and Russia, were showing

veiled hostility towards England, with the result that England—which

on the other hand was secretly longing to possess the Cape, owing to

the development of the British Empire in India—declared war against

the Netherlands at the end of 1780. In 1781 a British fleet under

Commodore Johnstone left England for the Cape of Good Hope with 3000

troops on board. Johnstone, however, from storms and other reasons

not so apparent, but possibly due to a certain indecision of mind,

delayed his fleet at Porto Praya, in the Cape Verde Islands; and

news of the expedition having been treacherously imparted to France

by persons in England who were in her pay, Admiral Suffren—one of

the greatest of sea-fighters—surprised the British fleet at the Cape

Verde Islands with a squadron of inferior strength, and gave it such

a sound drubbing that Johnstone was delayed for several months in

reaching Cape Town, where the French had preceded him, and had

landed sufficient men to make a British attack on Cape Town of

doubtful success. Johnstone therefore contented himself in a not

very creditable way with destroying the unarmed Dutch shipping in

the port, and then left Cape Town without effecting a landing. The

result was the garrisoning of Cape Town by a French regiment for two

more years, during which time however another attempt was made by

the British to seize the Cape, which was nearly successful. In the

course of this war, however, England apparently made up her mind

that the possession of the Cape of Good Hope and of Trinkomali in

Ceylon was necessary to the welfare of her Indian possessions, and

did not lose sight of this policy when the next legitimate

opportunity presented itself to make war upon Holland. On the other

hand, the French, though they withdrew their troops in 1783, were

equally alive to the importance of the Cape; and in the great duel

which was to take place between the two nations it is tolerably

certain that South Africa would never have remained in the hands of

the Dutch; if it had not become English it would have been taken and

kept by the French.

About this time the Dutch came into conflict with the Kafirs. This

vanguard of the great Bantu race had been invading southern Africa

almost concurrently with the white people. Coming from the

north-east and north they had—we may guess—crossed the Zambezi about

the 6th century of the Christian Era; and their invasion had brought

about the partial destruction and abandonment of the Sabaean and

Arab settlements in the gold-mining districts of south-east Africa.

The Semitic inhabitants of Zimbabwe and other mining centres had

been driven back to the coast at Sofala. The progress of the black

Bantu against the now more concentrated Hottentots and Bushmen was

then somewhat slower, delayed no doubt by natural obstacles, by the

desperate defence of the Hottentots, the tracts of waterless country

on the west, and internecine warfare amongst themselves. Overlying

the first three divisions of Bantu invaders there came down across

the Zambezi from the districts of Tanganyika the great Zulu race,

akin to the Bechuana-Basuto people who had preceded them, but less

mixed with Hottentot blood, and speaking a peculiar Bantu

language[92]. By the beginning of the 18th century this seventh

wave—as one may call it—of Bantu invasion had swept as far south as

the Great Kei River, and some years later had pushed the Hottentots

back to the Great Fish River. In 1778 they came into direct contact

with the Dutch; and the Governor of the Cape entered into an

agreement with the Kafir chiefs that the Great Fish River should be

the boundary between Dutch rule and Kafir settlement. Nevertheless,

this agreement was soon transgressed by the Kafirs, who commenced

raiding the Dutch settlers. In 1781 the first Kafir war ended

disastrously for the Bantu invaders, who were driven back for a time

to the Kei River. Eight years later they again invaded Cape Colony.

A policy of conciliation was adopted, which ended by the Kafirs

being allowed to settle on the Dutch side of the Great Fish River in

1789.

In 1790 the Netherlands East India Company was practically bankrupt;

and in the following year (when it was computed that the European

population of the Cape numbered 14,600 persons, owning 17,000

slaves) the Dutch Governor was recalled to Europe, and the country

was for a year left in a state of administrative chaos, until two

Commissioners, sent out by the States General, arrived and took over

the government. But the next year these Commissioners went on to

Batavia; and the Burghers of the interior districts became so

dissatisfied with the mismanagement of affairs that they expelled

their magistrates and took the administration of their district into

their own hands, calling themselves “Nationals,” and becoming to

some degree infected with the spirit of the French Revolution.

Meantime, in the same year, 1793, the Dutch Government had joined

England and Prussia in making war upon France. Two years afterwards,

in 1795, the French troops occupied Holland, and turned it into the

Batavian Republic, a state in alliance with France. The Prince of

Orange, hereditary Stadhouder of the Netherlands, fled to England;

and in the spring of 1795 he authorized the British Government to

occupy Cape Colony on behalf of the States General in order to

obviate its seizure by the French. In June 1795 a British fleet

carrying troops commanded by General Craig arrived at False Bay. The

Dutch were not very willing to surrender Cape Town at the first

demand, even though the interior of the country was in revolt

against the Company. Both the officer administering the Company’s

Government and the dissatisfied Burghers sank their differences in

opposition to the landing of the British. The latter were anxious to

avoid hostilities, and therefore spent a month in negotiations; but

on the 14th of July the British forcibly occupied Simons Town, and

three weeks later drove the Dutch from a position they had taken up

near Cape Town. In September 3000 more troops arrived under General

Clarke, and in the middle of that month marched on Cape Town from

the south-east. A capitulation was finally arranged after an attack

and a defence which had been half-hearted. Thenceforth for eight

years the English occupied Cape Town and administered the adjoining

colony. At first their rule was military, just, and satisfactory;

afterwards, when a civilian governor was sent out, a system of

corruption and favouritism was introduced which caused much

dissatisfaction. The British also had made it known that they only

held the colony in trust for the Stadhouder; and this made the Dutch

settlers uncertain as to their allegiance. Meantime, however, the

British administration gave some satisfaction to the settlers by its

policy of free trade and open markets, and by certain reliefs in

taxation; also by the institution of a Burgher Senate of six

members. But the Boers of the interior remained for some time

recalcitrant. The Dutch, moreover, made an attempt to regain

possession of the Cape by dispatching a fleet of nine ships with

2000 men on board, which, however, was made to surrender at Saldanha

Bay by Admiral Elphinstone and General Craig without firing a shot.

Kafir raids recommenced; and the British having organized a

Hottentot corps of police, the other Hottentots who were serfs to

the Dutch rose in insurrection against their former masters. When in

1803 the British evacuated Cape Town, they did not leave the colony

in a sufficiently satisfactory condition to encourage the Dutch

settlers to opt for British rule. From 1803 to 1806 the Dutch

Government ruled Cape Colony as a colony, and not as the appendage

of a Chartered company, which had now disappeared. The Cape ceased

to be subordinate to Batavia, and possessed a Governor and Council

of its own. A check was placed on the importation of slaves, and

European immigration was encouraged. Postal communication and the

administration of justice were organized or improved. In fact, the

Commissioner-General De Mist and Governor Janssens, in the two years

and nine months of their rule, laid the foundations of an excellent

system of colonial government. But the march of events was too

strong for them. The great minister Pitt, in the summer of 1805,

secretly organized an expedition which should carry nearly 7000

troops to seize the Cape. In spite of delays and storms, this fleet

reached Table Bay at the beginning of January, 1806. Six British

regiments were landed 18 miles north of Cape Town. Governor Janssens

went out to meet them with such poor forces as he could gather

together—2000 in all against 4000 British. The result of course was

disastrous to the Dutch, whose soldiers mainly consisted of

half-hearted German mercenaries. On the 16th of January, Cape Town

surrendered; and after some futile resistance by Janssens in the

interior, a capitulation was signed on January 18, and Janssens and

the Dutch soldiers were sent back to the Netherlands by the British

Government.

By a Convention dated August 13, 1814, the Dutch Government with the

Prince of Orange at its head ceded Cape Colony and the American

possession of Demerara to Great Britain against the payment of

£6,000,000, which was made either by the actual tendering of money

to the Dutch Government, or the wiping off of Dutch debts.

On the other hand, the surrender of the Cape to Great Britain

induced the latter power to give back to Holland most of the Dutch

possessions in the East Indies, which we had seized and administered

during the Napoleonic wars. If Holland lost South Africa—which she

had only directly ruled for three years—she was enabled by the

British attitude of self-denial to build up an empire in the East

only second in wealth and population to the Asiatic dominions of

Great Britain.

Yet, in an indirect fashion, Dutch Africa exists still, though the

flag of Holland no longer waves over any portion of African soil as

a ruling power. The old rivalry between the English and the Dutch,

which had begun almost as soon as the Dutch were a free people, and

competitors with us for the trade of the East and West Indies, had

created a feeling of enmity between the two races, which ought never

to have existed, seeing how nearly they are of the same stock, and

how closely allied in language, religion, and to some extent in

history—also how nearly matched they are in physical and mental

worth. Curiously enough, there is far greater affinity in thought

and character between the Scotch and the Dutch than between the

Dutch and the English. The same thriftiness, bordering at times on

parsimony, oddly combined with the largest-hearted hospitality, the

same tendency to strike a hard bargain, even to overreach in matters

of business, and the same dogged perseverance, characterize both

Dutch and Scotch; while in matters of religion, almost precisely the

same form of Protestant Christianity appeals to both; so much so,

that there is practically a fusion between the Dutch Reformed Church

and the Presbyterians. Had Scotchmen been sent out to administer

Cape Colony in its early days, it is probable that something like a

fusion of races might have taken place, and there would have been no

Dutch question to cause dissension in South African politics in the

19th century. The Scotch would have understood the Boer settlers and

their idiosyncracies, and would not have made fun of them or been so

deliberately unsympathetic as were some of the earlier English

governors. Slavery would have been abolished all the same, but it

would have been abolished more cautiously, in a way that would not

have left behind the sting of a grievance. But after Cape Colony had

been definitely ceded to Great Britain, its governors in the early

days were mostly Englishmen, who, though often able and just men,

were at little pains to understand the peculiarities of the Boer

character, and to conciliate these suspicious, uneducated farmers.

Another source of trouble was the influx of British missionaries,

who found much to condemn in the Dutch treatment of the natives,

which resembled that in vogue amongst Britons of the previous

century, before the spirit of philanthropy was abroad. Some of these

missionaries, it is true, were Scotchmen, though belonging to

Protestant sects of more distinctly English character. At any rate,

the missionaries no doubt had so much right on their side in

condemning the Boers for their conduct towards the natives, that

their feelings in this respect overcame their national affinity for

the Dutch. The Boer settler at no time showed that fiendish cruelty

to the natives he was dispossessing which was, and is, so terribly

characteristic of the Spanish colonization of Mexico or northern

South America, or of some of the English, French, and Portuguese

adventurers on the West coast of Africa in the 17th century; but he

was determined to make of the native a serf, and denied him the

rights of a man like unto himself. If the native revolted against

this attitude he was exterminated in a businesslike fashion; but if

he submitted, as did most of the Hottentots, he was treated with

patriarchal kindness and leniency. The Dutch settlers appear from

the first to have dissociated their dealings with the Hottentots

from their ordinary code of morals. It was not thought dishonest to

cheat them, not thought illegal to rob them, not thought immoral to

use their women as concubines. So entirely without scruples were the

Dutch on this last point, that whole races arose, and have since

become nations likely to survive and prosper, whose origin was the

illicit union of Dutch men and Hottentot women. These “bastards,” as

they were frankly called, were well treated by the Dutch; they were

not disowned, were usually converted to Christianity, and were

taught to lead a more or less civilized life and to talk the Dutch

language, which they speak in a corrupt form at the present day. In

short, the morals of the South African Dutch were the morals of the

Old Testament, as were those of Cromwell’s soldiers; and in this and

many other modes of thought the Dutch Afrikanders lived still in the

17th century, whereas the British missionaries were of the early

19th, in the red-hot glow of its as yet disillusioned and somewhat

frothy philanthropy. The Dutch settlers were denounced at Exeter

Hall and on every missionary platform; and the fact that many of the

accusations were true in great measure did not make them more

palatable to the accused.