Corpus of Modern Scottish Writing (CMSW) - www.scottishcorpus.ac.uk/cmsw/ Document : 248 Title: David Livingstone's Incomplete Manuscript of His Post-Script to the Preface of a 'Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambezi and its Tributaries' Author(s): Livingstone, David Livingstone P.S. to Preface P.S. the credit which I was fain to award to the Lisbon statesmen for a sincere desire to put an end to the slave trade I regret to find to be totally undeserved. They employed a wordy writer named Lacerda to extinguish the facts adduced by me before the meeting of the “British association for the advancement of science”, at Bath, by a series of papers in the Portuguese Official Journal — and their Minister for Foreign Affairs, , has since devoted some of the scanty funds of his Govern-ment to the translation and circulation of Ms Lacerda's profuse verbiage in the form of an English tract. Nothing is more conspicuous in this official document than the extreme ignorance displayed of the geography of the country of which they pretend not only knowledge but dominion — A vague rumour cited by some old author about two marshes below Murchison's cataracts, is considered conclusive evidence that the ancient inhabitants of a village on the Zambesi found no difficulty in navigating the Shire up what modern people find to be an ascent of 1200 feet in 35 miles of latitude. A broad shallow lake with a strong current which Senhor Candido declared he had visited N.W. of Tette is assumed to be the narrow deep Lake Nyassa without current and about N.E. of the same point — and great offence is taken because the discovery of the main sources of the Nile was ascribed to Speke and Grant instead of F. Lobo & Ptolemy. But the main object of the Portuguese Government is not geographical. It is to bolster up that pretence to power which has been the only obstacle to the establishment of lawful commerce and friendly relationship with the native inhabitants of Eastern Africa. The following work contains abundant confirmation of all that was advanced at Bath, and we may here add that it is the false assumption of power over 1360 miles of coast — from English River to Cape Delgado — where the Portuguese have in fact no authority, which perperpetuates the barbarism of the inhabitants. Interdicting all foreign commerce except at a very few points where they have established custom houses — and where by an enormous and obstructive tariff, and differential duties they completely shut out the natives from any trade except that in slaves. Looking from South to North let us glance at the enormous seaboard which the Portuguese in Europe falsely assert to belong to them, Delagoa Bay has a small fort called Lorenzo Marques but nothing beyond the walls. They have a small strip of land by sufferance of the natives at Inhambane. Sofala is in ruins, and then from Quillimane Northwards for 690 miles, they have only one small stockade protected by an armed launch in the mouth of the river Angox[a] and that is intended to stop foreign vessels from trading there in any thing but slaves. Then at Mosambique they have the little island on which the fort stands, and a strip on the main land three miles long on which they have a few farms, and are only secure from hostility by paying the natives an annual tribute which they call “having the blacks in their pay”. They have also small slaving establish ments at Iboe & Pomba — at the latter place they tried to form a settlement but failed. They pay tribute also to the zulus for the lands they cultivate on the right bank of the Zambese — and the general effect of the pretence to power and obstruction to commerce is to drive the independent native chiefs to the slave trade as the only one open to them. It is well known to the English Government from reliable documents at the Admiralty and Foreign Office that no longer ago than November 1864 two months after the Bath speech was delivered — when the punishment of the perpetrators of an outrage on the crew of the cutter of H M. S. Lyra at Antonio River 45 miles S.W. of Mosambique was demanded by H. M. S Wasp at Mosambique the present Governor General declared that he had no power over the natives there. They have never been subdued and being a fine energetic race would readily enter into commercial treaties with foreigners were it not for the false assertion of power by which the Portuguese with the acquiescence of European governments shut them out from commerce and every civilizing influence. This Portuguese pretence to dominion is the greatest curse to the negro race on the East Coast of Africa and it would soon fall to the ground were it not for the moral support it derives from our own flag. The Emperor Napoleon III disregarded it in the case of the “Charles et Georges” — while it was only by the aid of English sailors that the