their homes, certain of getting their wages and being repatriated punctually at the date agreed upon.

There is one persistent delusion concerning the large Portuguese colonies in East and West Africa and in Asia, which requires to be dispelled, not only from the minds of European geographers and politicians, but still more from amongst the Portuguese themselves and that is, that these colonies have not only been as widely extended in former times as they are now, but were even anciently far more extensive, till they were reduced by the rapacity of England. This is an altogether incorrect assumption. As regards Great Britain, she may be said-more unconsciously than consciously to have done much during the last sixty years to create a Portuguese empire beyond the seas. She has never robbed Portugal (as far as I can ascertain) of one square mile of land over which the Portuguese Government ever exercised any sway. It is Holland that from 1598 onwards has been the continual attacker of the Portuguese dominions. This attitude of the Dutch was begun at a time when the Crown of Portugal was merged in the Crown of Spain, and as part of their general campaign against the tyranny of that sovereignty the Dutch did their best to oust the Portuguese from Brazil, just as they took the Guianas from Spain. They forced the Portuguese to evacuate the Congo in the seventeenth century, and endeavoured to take their place there, being defeated, however, by the warlike attitude of the natives in that region. At one time they had conquered nearly the whole of Northern Angola, which was only won back from them by the dogged bravery of the Portuguese. Similarly, they attempted to take Delagoa Bay and Mozambique away from Portuguese occupation. Most of all, they abstracted from Portugal the Island of Ceylon and the Settlement of Malacca, they drove the Portuguese out of Java and Sumatra, and all the Malay Islands except Flores and Timor. In 1859 they compelled the Portuguese to give up their claims to settlement on the Island of Flores, and they have since done their best to cut down as much as possible the Portuguese claims to the northern two-thirds of the Island of Timor. I am not blaming the Dutch, who acted on the general principle that they were stronger than the Portuguese, and that they came, in some sense, as the avenger of wrongs inflicted on the natives by the Portuguese. But the fact remains that the medieval Empire of Portugal was disintegrated by Holland and not by Britain. But for the rise of the British power in India and its frequent alliance with the Crown of Portugal, the Dutch in course of time would have driven the Portuguese out of India as completely as they have expelled them-as a governingpower from Malaysia.

At the beginning of the 'seventies of the last century the

interior frontiers of the Portuguese possessions in East and West Africa were undefined and unoccupied. Portugal had long since abandoned her sixteenth-century sovereignty over the Kingdom of Kongo, and only claimed the coast of Angola from Ambriz to Cape Frio, which point is now in German South-West Africa." Nevertheless it was frequently assumed (on the strength of a few explorations in former times) that the Portuguese power stretched right across the continent to Mozambique. As regards actual facts, however, it only exercised a control over the coast of Angola from Ambriz in the north to the Kwanza River in the south, and beyond the Kwanza River the Portuguese held a few isolated posts, notably Benguela and Mossamedes. The remainder of the country was independent and under powerful native chiefs, who intermittently allowed Portuguese half-caste traders to proceed inland to the Kwango River. In East Africa the Portuguese occupancy of a post on the northern shore of Delagoa Bay, which had occurred at intervals for about 150 years, had been abandoned. There were perhaps small forts and trading stations occupied at Inhambane and Sofala, but south of the Zambezi Portuguese power was scarcely visible as a ruling force, the land being really controlled by Zulu and bastard Zulu tribes, and, to a slight extent, by slave-trading Swahili Arabs. Thanks to the impetus given by Dr. Livingstone, Portugal had strengthened her occupancy of Tete and Sena on the Zambezi, but owing to native rebellions had been unable to occupy the old Jesuit mission post of Zumbo. When Livingstone and Kirk came on the scene it was at least thirty years since even a Portuguese trader in slaves or ivory had seen the shores of Lake Nyasa. There was a strong Portuguese station at Quelimane on the northern extremity of the Zambezi delta, but no sign of Portuguese power in the warlike Angoshe country farther north, nor until the Island of Mozambique was reached. In the 'seventies of the nineteenth century the Portuguese held Mozambique, as they had done (with intervals of Dutch occupation) since the beginning of the sixteenth century, but although they occupied the tiny island they exercised no power whatever over the adjoining mainland, being repelled perpetually by the warlike Muhammadan Makua tribes. North of Mozambique there was practically no government station to be seen till the traveller reached the island of Ibo. In short, forty years ago the Portuguese hold over East Africa was limited to the occupancy of forts at Inhambane, Sofala, Sena, Tete, Quelimane, Mozambique, and Ibo, and between these posts it was actually less safe for a

All Portuguese rights to the coast south of the Kunene River, i.e. about Cape Frio, were forcibly disregarded by the Germans in 1885, just as Germany took from Portugal in 1891 Tungi Bay in East Africa.

Portuguese merchant or explorer to travel than it was for an Englishman or a German; so that the entire exploration of these regions from 1815 onwards was being done by Germans and Englishmen.

The same might be said, with some exceptions after 1877, of the southern half of Angola, adding to the Germans and the English one or two Brazilians and the noteworthy American and French missionaries.

Under the impetus given by England to geographical exploration, the Portuguese awoke to the need for knowing more about their territories in the southern half of Africa, and the expeditions under Serpa Pinto, Capello, and Ivens certainly did much to increase our knowledge of these regions and to revive Portuguese political claims. But the great impetus to the development of Southern Angola came from an invasion of that region by the 'trek' Boers in 1878-80. A large body of feckless, ignorant, irresponsible, brave, hard-working Boers reached the confines of Angola after years of wandering over the Kalahari Desert and Ovampoland. They established themselves on the cool highlands of Wila with their wives and children, their cattle, their waggons, horses, and farming implements. If the Portuguese were not to see this region pass from under their rule they were obliged to meet these 'trek' Boers half-way. From this arise a remarkable opening up of the Hinterland of Mossamedes. In the same way, the interest aroused by the British in the exploration of the Congo led to the acquisition by Portugal (through the good offices of a European Conference) of the Western Congo, while a little later on the definition of the British missionary-trading-andpolitical settlements in South-Central Africa led to the assignment to Portugal of a vast dominion represented to-day by the territories of Nyasa, Mozambique, Zambezia, and that region south of the Zambezi which is divided into the districts of Lourenço Marquez and Inhambane, and the Mozambique Company's concession.*

In India, so far from Great Britain having ousted the Portuguese, she has in the course of the last 150 years enabled Portugal to define and secure a much larger amount of land round about Goa than she previously owned, and has preserved for Portugal the island of Diu and the fort of Damão, which would otherwise have been retaken by the Mahrattas; while the good offices of Britain have been once or twice quietly employed to restrain the too-eager Hollanders from pushing Portugal altogether out of Timor, or the Chinese from capturing Macao.

What is to be the future of the Portuguese colonies, consis

• When the Chartered Company to administer South-East Africa was brought into existence in 1894, it received the very silly name of Moçambique,' being in reality situated some 500 miles south of the region known as Mozambique, and separated from it by the Zambezi.

tent with the conscientious treatment of Portugal by the Great European Powers? The alienation from the Portuguese State of the Azores, Madeira, and the Cape Verde Islands would be—if enforced by Europe-an act of unwarrantable brutality, and one which is wholly unnecessary in the general interests of the world. But in regard to Portuguese Guinea it is of very little use to the country which claims it, but which has done nothing whatever to develop it except for the establishment of a town and Customs station at Bolama. The Portuguese Republic would be wise if it pocketed feelings of silly pride and sold this territory to France. In regard to the islands of Principe and São Thomé there would be no justification in compelling Portugal to part with these, but she must be constrained to adopt measures which shall no longer employ slave labour in disguise to develop their resources. As to Angola, which has about it the makings of a smaller Brazil, what this region wants is a reasonable measure of self-government-a self-government in which the more prominent native chiefs shall be directly interested, and which shall abolish any differential tariff. The local government of Angola should be permitted (as all British colonies are, more or less) to frame its own Customs tariff to suit its own interests, under the one stipulation that no differential or specially favourable treatment shall be accorded to any importer, whether he be Portuguese or the native of any other State. The same regimen should be imposed on those portions of Portuguese East Africa which are to be directly governed by Portugal. But in these last-named regions we find ourselves brought into conflict with many difficult questions.

It is doubtful whether Portugal possesses the necessary resources in men and capital ever to make any great national use of South-East Africa. In Lourenço Marquez (Delagoa Bay) and Inhambane Portugal is simply holding the natural ports of the Transvaal, and however ably she may govern these she will be just as frequent a source of friction and hindrance here as Italy would be to Austria if she were allowed to occupy Trieste and Istria. Here, again, one would seem to see a direction in which without any real injury to national interest Portugal might conclude a lucrative bargain with United South Africa. North of Inhambane comes the large region which is the coast-belt of Southern Rhodesia, and which has been financed, developed, and to a great extent administered by a chartered company-the Mozambique Company - during the last sixteen or seventeen years. Here we have the spectacle of English, French, and Belgian money being used (and subjects being employed) to develop a region which, so far as geography goes, was practically unmapped and unknown by the Portuguese, if we except the journeys of their first explorers in the sixteenth century. By the arrangements of

the charter all the money and much of the intelligence needed to develop this region come from the countries of North-Western Europe, but the executive and judicial officials are Portuguese, the first of whom are paid by the Chartered Company and the second by Portugal herself. The result of this arrangement is friction between these two sets of Portuguese officials; for those who are paid by the Company receive their (high) salaries with unfailing regularity, and are treated as scrupulously as they would be if they were British or French officials; while those who depend on the mother country for their emoluments not only receive small pay, but occasionally fail to get this with punctuality. Consequently there arise jealousy and conflicting policies between executive and judiciary, and the resultant block to administration reduces the other white men working in the country to a mental condition in which anger alternates with despair. Moreover-unhappily-Portugal, as a colonising Power, has until recently been without a conscience. Though the Portuguese are kindly by nature and are often popular with the backward peoples, they never for a moment consider the interests of the races they govern. In past times they carried on an unblushing slave trade; and in the present day, provided their traders and officials can make a little profit, they willingly allow whole native tribes to become degraded and decimated by alcohol. A good deal of the coast territories under the Mozambique Company are injured by the disgraceful abuse on the part of certain Portuguese concessionnaires of the right to distil and retail rum made from the sugarcane, which grows so freely here. All the time that Dutch and English United South Africa is steadily pushing ahead with its anti-alcohol propaganda and endeavouring to keep distilled spirits from the millions of Bantu people under its control, these Portuguese concessionnaires in Gorongoza and elsewhere are flooding South-East Africa with a particularly bad form of rum. This is smuggled into Southern Rhodesia and the Transvaal, and is doing a great deal of harm amongst the natives. Similarly, the American and French missionaries complain of the distillation of spirits from sugar in Angola, and the devastating effects of bad alcohol in that region. The northern part of Portuguese East Africa north of the Zambezi is only saved from a similar evil by the majority of the inhabitants belonging to the Muhammadan faith, a religion which, with all its drawbacks, is praiseworthy for its thirteen hundred years' fight against alcohol.

There are questions connected with the native tribes which I have not space to detail, but which would make it very desirable in the interests of such tribes, as well as of European commerce, that Portuguese Nyasaland and the Ibo province should be sold by Portugal to the German Empire, to form part henceforth of