A large state extending across the southeastern coast of Africa, from Delagoa Bay in the south to the Ruvuma River in the north. Established as a series of Portuguese fortifications under the authority of the Viceroy at Goa in India, it has, with a few exceptions, hugged the coastline for most of it's history - in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, inroads were made into the interior, and it had reached the present territorial size by 1890.