January, 1890
Britain threatens Portugal with an Ultimatum:
Abandon south-east Africa or face a naval
bombardment of Lisbon.
Three centuries earlier, the poet Luís de Camões described the region at issue —
Behold the lake which is the Nile’s source.
And the green Zambezi, too, begins its course.
Further upstream, the river becomes serpentine, twisting itself into a vast swamp, known to Europeans as Elephant Marsh, choked with papyrus, monstrous baobabs, and marabou storks like coffins. Every mud bank has a gang of crocodiles, the air thick with mosquitoes and the nearest horizon a tousled fringe of swamp palms …
could the European Powers go to War
over such a Wilderness?
