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232.
with African labour, A petition-to the Sultan of Zanzibar
was aged by nerchanta, bankers and nix nembora of
Parliament,
(1)
but nothing apparontly cane of the
scheme. Mackinnon had also boon dabbling in East African
schemes from 1877.
As in the'Cougo agitation there was considerable
anti-Portugoae feeling on the part of the missions , and
groups interested in gast Africa. The Portuguese at
Mozambique were beginning to assert their theoretical
claims to the interior` and they alto controlled the
navigation of the Zambesi Avier, the life line to the
Nyasa regions It wan felt that they encouraged alave
trading or at the beat did not actually oppose it, and
that they practised a veiled form of slavery in their
colonies. Percy Anacreon an official at the Foreign Office,
summed up in 18850 the onjectiona of the : cottieh icaiona
to the Portuguese,
º t'.., tboy object so auch to Portuguese
domination that they say they would resist annexation by
force. They mistrust their ofticinla, they object to the
Protestant missions being put under a Catholic power, and
they
,
feel that it in wrong that territories discovered,
(1) L"00 8L/138 Africa : luve Trado i Domoatio and V rioutn
'lay 168,1;
.i avid Lindooy to i'. Q. 23rd May 1885,