By 1520, the Portuguese had ousted the Arabs and had occupied in their stead Kilwa, Zanzibar, Pemba, Mombasa, Lamu, Malindi, Brava (Barawa), and Magdishu (Magadoxo), all north of the Ruvuma river. South of that river they had taken Sofala and Moçambique. Here they had, it is said, established a trading station in 1503; but Moçambique island[68] was not finally occupied by them till 1507, when the existing fortress was commenced and built by Duarte de Mello. The fort was then and is still known as “the Praça de São Sebastião.” It had been decided before this that Moçambique should be the principal place of call, after leaving the Cape of Good Hope, for Portuguese ships on their way to India; but, when in 1505 the Portuguese deliberately sanctioned the idea of a Portuguese East African colony, they turned their attention rather to Sofala as its centre than to Moçambique. Sofala, which is near the modern Beira, was an old Arab port and sultanate, and had been for some 1500 years the principal port on the south-east coast of Africa, from which the gold obtained in the mines of Manika (Monomotapa, _i.e._ Southern Rhodesia) was shipped to the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. Consequently the first proposed Portuguese settlement on the East coast of Africa was entitled “the Captaincy of Sofala.” But later on Moçambique grew in importance, and eventually gave its name to the Portuguese possessions in East Africa. The Quelimane river, taken to be the principal exit of the Zambezi by the Portuguese, was discovered and entered by Vasco da Gama in the early part of 1498, and was by him called the “River of Good Indications.” He stayed a month on this river, where there seems to have been, on the site of the present town of Quelimane, a trading station resorted to by the Arabs, who were even then settled in Zambezia. The name Quelimane (pronounced in English Kehmane) is stated by the early Portuguese to have been the name of the friendly chief who acted as intermediary between them and the natives, but it would rather appear to have been a corruption of the Swahili-Arabic word “Kaliman,” which means “interpreter.”