Note 159 — Chapter XI · THE BRITISH IN AFRICA, II (South and South-Central.)

The African Lakes Trading Corporation (as it is now called) was founded mainly by the energies of the brothers John and Frederick Moir (sons of an Edinburgh doctor) about 1878, as an adjunct to the missionary enterprise in the Shire Highlands. In course of time they established trading stations on Lake Nyasa, and cut a track or rough road over mountains and forest from the north-west corner of Lake Nyasa to the south end of Tanganyika, conveying over this “Stevenson Road” (so called because a Mr James Stevenson, a director of the Company, provided the cost of this undertaking) a little steamer in sections for the London Missionary Society. This steamer, the Good News, was the first to navigate the waters of Tanganyika. The African Lakes Company, being established at the north end of Lake Nyasa, inevitably came into contact with the slave-trading Arabs who had settled there about ten years before. In 1887 the agents of the Company intervened to protect natives from being raided by the Arabs. The Arabs retorted by attacking the white men. Volunteers hastened to their relief from several quarters. Amongst these were two men afterwards to become famous as African governors—Sir Frederick Lugard and Sir Alfred Sharpe. But the Arab question was not definitely settled until the Protectorate had been established for four years (1895). The African Lakes Corporation certainly did the pioneer work of British trade in South Central Africa.