sometimes experience food shortages. Eager for incriminating evidence that could provide Britain an excuse to take the region from Portugal, he wrote that Lourenço Marques had the potential to become a major participant in the slave trade. The fact that he cited the port's potential to trade slaves, rather than any actual trading, is indicative that the slave trade in Delagoa Bay was still very modest at that time. Owen, upon finding that the Kingdom of Tembi, located on the bay, south of Lourenço Marques, was still unclaimed by a European colonial power, set to claim it for the United Kingdom. In March 1823, he reached an agreement with King Kapell, who ceded his kingdom to the British, saying:"I, King Kepal [Kapell] do declare that I am induced to make this cession by the advice of my chiefs because I find my state too weak to defend themselves against the aggression of either Africans or Europeans."Owen claimed for Britain the land south of the English River (today known as the Espíritu Santo estuary). However, when he visited the bay again in 1824, he found that the Portuguese, disregarding the British treaty, had reached their own treaties with the African natives, and they endeavored (unsuccessfully) to take military possession of the country. Owen was able to take back control of the territory, but it remained disputed. Although the Union Jack flew over the area, the United Kingdom had taken no steps to exercise authority over the territory, while the ravages of Zulus confined the Portuguese to the limits of their fort. The Vatwas, a Nguni-speaking Zulu tribe, had recently migrated to the area, raiding the local villages for food and laying waste to the bay region, with the exception of the southern part. After two years without rain, drought was already causing famine, and compounded by the devastating attacks of the Vatwas, the local African population at the time was suffering from social upheaval. The decade-long turbulence was exacerbated by the social effects of increased slave trading during the late 1820s. Some stability was restored by the 1830s, when the effects of the drought had passed and slave trading declined. By 1829, Lourenço Marques still consisted of a small, fortified trading post, known to locals as Xilunguíne ("Site of Whites"). Prior to 1826, the French, British, and American ships entering the bay traded either with the Portuguese port, or directly with