ABSTRACT
Joao dos Santos was a Dominican missionary who worked in eastern Africa in the last twenty years of the sixteenth century. The two extracts from Santos's description of the Portuguese settlements along the Zambesi and at the fairs show the way in which Portuguese power and influence was spread during the sixteenth century. Antonio Bocarro wrote a final Decada to continue the work of Diogo do Couto. This account demonstrates the exceptional interest that the Portuguese took in ethnography and in seeking to understand how African society worked and can be compared with the much cruder descriptions given by Barbosa and Barros in the previous century. Like his predecessor, he shows great interest in the nature of African society and in particular describes the Monomotapa's court and all the institutions of the Karanga monarchy. Father Francisco Monclaro, who accompanied Francisco Barreto's expedition, commented extensively on the country and the peoples in the areas in which he travelled.
