ABSTRACT
AT the beginning of the last century Europeans knew far less about the East Coast of Africa than they did about the West. Traders of all nations had frequented the coasts of Guinea for three centuries before the attack on the Atlantic Slave Trade began; but the East Coast was left entirely to the Portuguese, whose extensive dominions had been reduced by this date to a string of wretched villages along the coast of the Mozambique Channel. When the Dutch, the French and the British entered the Indian Ocean their eyes had been fixed on the riches of the Far East, on India and the Spice Islands and, in the nineteenth century, on the China Seas. Once their route to the East had been secured, they were perfectly content to leave the Portuguese in Africa undisturbed. Thus it was that, before Captain Owen's great survey in 1823, less was known about this coast than was known about the far more distant lands of Australia and China.
