hesitate to enter the Nyassa and Shiré region, hoist her flag and claim the rights of sovereignty, on the ground that she is the first permanent occupant. The fact that she has tangible interests to protect—invested property, missions etc., serves to strengthen her attitude with other European powers. But aside from this she does not intend to let Portugal establish a permanent possession clear across Africa from the Atlantic, at Angola and Benguella, to the mouth of the Zambesi. Such a possession would simply cut the continent in two, and erect a barrier on the east coast to that union of the British African possessions which her foreign diplomacy designs. Moreover, it is fully settled in the mind of Great Britain that the Nile water-way and its extensions through Lakes Albert and Edward Nyanza, Tanganyika, Nyassa, and the Shiré and Zambesi rivers, are hers, even if force has to be applied to make them actually hers.
But it must be said on behalf of Portugal, that she is not resting her rights on the ancient fiction of discovery alone. Her occupancy of the Zambesi region has, of late, become quite distinct and her vested rights have assumed impressive proportions. The management of her affairs are in the hands of Major Alberto da Rocha Serpa Pinto, whose exertions have greatly strengthened the Portuguese claims. His achievements in the way of African exploration give him high rank as a traveler, explorer, scientist and organizer. He was born in 1845 and educated for the Portuguese military service. In 1869 he first went to Africa, where he took part in the campaign against the rebellious chief Bonga, in the region of the Zambesi. He acquitted himself with distinction on the field of battle, and acquired wide repute as an explorer, by ascending the river as far as the Victoria Falls, making many important discoveries on the way, and crossing the African continent from one side to the other.
Upon his return to Portugal, Serpa Pinto was received personally by the King, who was first to greet him when entering the harbor; Lisbon and Oporto were brilliantly illuminated in his honor, and he received many honors and marks of distinction from the sovereign and public bodies.
In November, 1877, Serpa Pinto was again sent to Africa by the
Portuguese Government and the Lisbon Geographical Society in conjunction. He organized a force of fourteen soldiers and fifty-seven carriers, and, starting from Benguella, he penetrated to the interior, traversing the districts of Dombe, Guillenguez, and Caconda, reaching Bihé in March of the following year. He was finally laid low with fever and carried by his faithful followers to the coast. Two of his subordinates, Brito Capello and Ivens, who have since become eminent as explorers, left the expedition in the interior, journeying to the northward to explore the river Quanza, while Serpa Pinto went to the eastward. On his return to Lisbon he was received with evidences of great esteem by the King, and was the object of popular adulation in all quarters. He described the sources of four great rivers heretofore unknown. His discovery of the river Coando, navigable for 600 miles and flowing into the Zambesi, alone placed Major Pinto in the rank of the great African explorers. After remaining in Portugal a few years, Serpa Pinto again returned to Africa, where he has since remained. In 1884, he made another extended journey of exploration, the results of which fully entitled him to the title of the Portuguese Stanley.
Following his discoveries the Portuguese have built a short railroad inland from Delagoa, and have established a system of steam navigation on the Zambesi and Shiré rivers, and opened a large and prosperous trading establishment. The activity recently displayed by the British in southeast Africa has led them to push forward their advantages and seize everything they can lay their hands on while the opportunity offers.
Commenting on this situation the London Times calls it “Major Serpa Pinto’s gross outrage on humanity and intolerable affront to England,” to which an American paper very appropriately replies:—
“Nothing would suit the English better than to have some excuse for wrenching away from little Portugal her possessions on the Dark Continent. England has played the cuckoo so many times with impunity that now it is believed a quickened public conscience will call a halt.
“The merits of this particular case will hardly exert much influence in determining the fate of Portugal in Africa. Left to themselves, England would dispossess Portugal in the twinkling of an
eye, for if Turkey is the sick man of Eastern Europe, Portugal is the national personification of senility in the West. Four or five hundred years ago it was the foremost nation of Europe in point of commercial enterprise. The ships of Portugal were the most adventuresome of any that ploughed the ocean. As long ago as 1419 a bold Portuguese tar, Zarco, skirted along Western Africa, far below the Equator, and later, Vasco de Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope. Like Columbus, he sought the most direct route to India, and what the Genoese missed he found. The country which England is now impatiently eager to steal from Portugal is a part of the reward of that enterprise which revolutionized Oriental trade, and was second in importance to the world only to the discovery of America. It was as if both sought a silver mine, and the one who failed to find what they were after came upon a gold mine. Portugal may not have made very much use of her discovery for herself and her people, but mankind has been immeasurably benefited, and England incalculably enriched. For the latter to now turn around and rob Portugal of her African possessions, in whole or in part, would be poetic injustice. It would be the old fable over again of the farmer who warmed a snake in his bosom only to be bitten by it.”