Massangena is a river town in Massangena District of

Gaza Province Gaza is a province of Mozambique. It has an area of 75,709 km2 and a population of 1,422,460 (2017 census), which is the least populous of all the provinces of Mozambique. Xai-Xai is the capital of the province. Inhambane Province is t ...

in south-western

Mozambique Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique, is a country located in Southeast Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west, and Eswatini and South Afr ...

. It lies on the river

Save River (Africa) The Save River, or Sabi River ( Portuguese: ''Rio Save'') is a river of southeastern Africa, flowing through Zimbabwe and Mozambique. The river has its source in Zimbabwe, some south of Harare, then flows south and then east, from the Zimbabwean ...

History

Between 1740 and 1775 there were many attempts by the Portuguese to explore inland by way of travelling up the Save River. The farthest any of these missions got was Massangena. Seven attempts were made to go further in the 1750s and 1760s, and one attempt was made in 1775. All eight of these missions met with disaster. The first mission failed when the many members of the expedition came down with malaria. The second mission stumbled upon numerous

hippopotami The hippopotamus (''Hippopotamus amphibius;'' ; : hippopotamuses), often shortened to hippo (: hippos), further qualified as the common hippopotamus, Nile hippopotamus and river hippopotamus, is a large semiaquatic mammal native to sub-Sahara ...

and many members of the expedition were killed or wounded by the startled animals. The third suffered a similar fate, however, it was crocodiles that befell them. The forth mission failed when torrential downpours in December made travel impossible. The fifth mission, as with the first, failed on account of a severe outbreak of malaria. The fifth expedition, led by Portuguese explorers Manuel Gomes and Agostinho Cabeçadas suffered from a leopard attack in which both of the aforementioned explorers, who were the leaders of the expedition were mauled by the same leopard a few miles northwest of Massangena. The sixth expedition was destroyed when their camp was overrun by an elephant and expedition leader João da Madalena was trampled to death, also a few miles northwest of Massangena. The sixth and seventh expeditions were attacked by the armed bands of the

Tsonga people The Tsonga people () are a Bantu ethnic group primarily native to Southern Mozambique and South Africa (Limpopo and Mpumalanga). They speak Xitsonga, a Southern Bantu language. A very small number of Tsonga people are also found in Zimbabwe ...

and were forced to turn back. And the eighth expedition was struck by a series of disasters, the first of which involving an incident with a

Mozambique spitting cobra The Mozambique spitting cobra (''Naja mossambica'') is a highly venomous species of spitting cobra in the family Elapidae. The species is native to Africa, and it is found in Angola, Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, ...

which rendered the leader of the expedition temporarily blind and one of the bearers severely wounded, and another involving several bearers being killed and wounded by a

hippopotamus The hippopotamus (''Hippopotamus amphibius;'' ; : hippopotamuses), often shortened to hippo (: hippos), further qualified as the common hippopotamus, Nile hippopotamus and river hippopotamus, is a large semiaquatic mammal native to sub-Sahar ...

, also several miles northwest of Massangena. For this reason the area to northwest of Massangena, which is roughly today's

Masvingo Province Masvingo, previously named Victoria, is a province in southeastern Zimbabwe. It has a population of 1.638 million as of the 2022 census, ranking fifth out of Zimbabwe's ten provinces. Established by the British South Africa Company, it was one o ...

Zimbabwe file:Zimbabwe, relief map.jpg, upright=1.22, Zimbabwe, relief map Zimbabwe, officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Bots ...

, was labelled as "desconhecida" and/or "inexplorada" on Portuguese maps by the late 1770s and early 1780s.Florilégio by João Maria Ferreira

References

Populated places in Gaza Province {{mozambique-geo-stub