The use of the Chinde mouth of the Zambezi gives free water communication between the outer world and Nyasaland, by way of the Zambezi and Shire rivers. CHAPTER V SPANISH AFRICA The enterprise of Spain in Africa was relatively small, the greater part of Spanish energy being devoted to founding an empire in the New World, in the far East, in Italy and Flanders. It was also knit up politically at first with the Portuguese colonial empire. Nevertheless Spain has left very distinct marks of her influence on North-western Africa in both language and culture. This in past times arose from the Spanish Moors expelled from Spain, but bringing much Spanish valour, ingeniousness, art, and pride into the life of Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, and Timbuktu. When Portugal was commencing to acquire oversea dominions in the Açores (1437-66), Madeira (1430), and on the coast of Morocco, Christian Spain was still divided into three kingdoms—Castile, Aragon and Navarre—and the two former were concentrating their energies on the destruction of the Moorish kingdom of Granada (not accomplished till 1492). But the monarchs of Castile and Aragon became jealous of the oversea expansion of Portugal; and that power deemed it wise to surrender to Castile in 1479 the Portuguese claim to the Canary Islands. The Canary Islands had been partially conquered by a Norman adventurer, Jean de Béthencourt, in 1402-6, more or less under the suzerainty of Castile; and the Canary kingdom passed into the hands of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1476. Prior to the final occupation of the Spaniards the islands were inhabited by a Berber race of some antiquity known as the Guanches. These were partly exterminated and partly absorbed by the Spanish settlers, to whom they were so much akin in blood that complete race fusion was rendered easy, especially as the Guanches had not been reached by Muhammadanism. The Canary Islands were an invaluable stepping-stone for the trans-Atlantic ventures of the Spanish ships during the first fifty years of American discovery and colonization. Many Spanish and Guanche colonists—the Isleños or Islanders—proceeded from this archipelago of seven islands to the greater Antilles; and there are plantations and villages to-day in Cuba and Porto Rico which possess Berber names derived from those of the Guanche prisoners or colonists who founded them. It took Spain however fifteen years to conquer the brave and warlike Guanches, a task not accomplished until 1495. The wonderful scenery, genial climate, and fertile soil attracted the attention of the British in the 18th century; and one or two attempts were made to acquire this archipelago, but in face of the gallant resistance offered by the islanders (it was at