possessed almost the whole of East Africa. Such a possession, however, was not won in a night, but rather presupposes, in those old times, without cannon and without powder, centuries of exertion.’ Arabian writers of the ninth and tenth centuries a.d. frequently allude to the gold of Sofala; but to the Western world this country was a blank until Portuguese enterprise again opened it out. John II. of Portugal sent Pedro de Covilham and Alfonso de Payva in 1487 to Cairo to gather information concerning a route to India by the Cape. It is not at all unlikely that Covilham heard from the Arabs reports concerning the gold country behind Sofala; but sufficient evidence to this effect is not forthcoming. He died in Abyssinia, and never returned to Portugal to tell in person his experiences. At any rate, ten years later the Cape was rounded by the Portuguese, and Vasco da Gama in all the ports he called at on the east coast of Africa found Arab traders established, who told him about the gold. The next expedition, under Alvarez de Cahal in 1505, found Sofala, and in its harbour two Arab dhows laden with gold. The Portuguese commander, Pedro de Nhaya, took possession of the town of Sofala in the name of the King of Portugal and garrisoned the old Arab fort there, and with this act began the modern history of this country, about which a veil of mystery had hung from the very beginning of time. That the Arabs were confined to the coast at this period is evident from Duarte Barbosa’s remarks, who wrote in 1514: ‘The merchants bring to Sofala the gold which they sell to the Moors (the name applied to the Arabs by the Portuguese), without weighing it, for coloured stuffs, and beads of Cambay.’ Before discussing the Portuguese accounts of this country, let us linger a little longer amongst the Arabs, and see what we can get from them about the inhabitants of this district and the irruption of the wild Zindj tribes over it, which probably caused the destruction of the earlier civilisation. Zaneddin Omar ibn ’l Wardi’ gives us an account of these Zindj. He wrote in the 336th year of the Hegira, and tells us that ‘their habitations extend from the extremity of the gulf to the low land of gold, Sofala ’t il Dhab,’ and remarks on a peculiarity of theirs, namely, that ‘they sharpen their teeth and polish them to a point.’ He goes on to say: ‘Sofala ’t il Dhab adjoins the eastern borders of the Zindj ... the most remarkable produce of this country is its quantity of native gold, that is found in pieces of two or three meskalla, in spite of which the natives generally adorn their persons with ornaments of brass.’ He also states that iron is found in this country and that the natives have skill in working it, and adds that ‘ships come from India to fetch it.’ This shows us the origin of the skill still possessed by the natives in smelting iron, which has been handed down from generation to generation.