The Scotch Churches are greatly afraid that their large mission-stations
on Lake Nyassa, in East-Central Africa, will be cut off from civilisation, owing to the demands made by the Portuguese. These stations, and a great trading establishment besides, were founded on the faith of invitations from the British Government, and have flourished to an unusual degree. They are now threatened, on the one hand by the Arab slave-catchers, who are in full energy again, and on the other by the Portuguese, who claim the right of imposing any duties they please on the Zambesi, and of annexing a strip of territory right across Africa. If these claims are allowed, the stations must be broken up ; but Lord Salisbury is unwilling to disallow them, because it is essential for the progress of South Africa to purchase Delagoa, Bay, which the Government of Lisbon will not sell without territorial compensation. The facts were well brought out at a great meeting held on Tuesday at the Westminster Palace Hotel, and the position of the Churches is undoubtedly a most painful and exasperating one. At the same time, we want Delagoa Bay, and the point is, whether some concession could not be discovered which the Portuguese would value more than the right of closing the Zambesi. It can hardly be wise to give them the right of closing the access of the South African Colonies into the interior of Africa. There is war in that matter in the future.
Previous page
