and had been unchallenged. However, British officials did not accept this interpretation, as Henry O'Neill, the British consul based at Mozambique Island said in January 1884: "There is a field of action open to her (England) in South Africa which only a slight political barrier interposes to shut her out from. We refer, of course, to the area of Portuguese rule. This, it is true, at present is an undefinable area. Portugal has been a colonising power only in name. To speak of Portuguese colonies in East Africa is to speak of a mere fiction—a fiction colourably sustained by a few scattered seaboard settlements, beyond whose narrow littoral and local limits colonisation and government have no existence." To forestall British designs on the parts of Mozambique and the interior that O'Neill claimed Portugal did not occupy, Joaquim Carlos Paiva de Andrada was commissioned in 1884 to establish effective occupation, and he was active in four areas. Firstly, in 1884 he established the town of Beira and Portuguese occupation of much of Sofala Province. Secondly, also in 1884, he acquired a concession of an area within a 180 kilometre radius of Zumbo, which had been reoccupied and west of which Afro-Portuguese families had traded and settled since the 1860s. Although Andrada did not establish any administration immediately, in 1889 an outpost was established beyond the junction of the Zambezi and Kafue River and an administrative district of Zumbo was established. Thirdly, in 1889 Andrada was granted another concession over Manica, which covered the areas both of the Manica Province of Mozambique and the Manicaland Province of Zimbabwe. Andrada succeeded in obtaining treaties over much of this area and establishing a rudimentary administration but he was arrested in November 1890 by British South Africa Company troops and expelled. Finally, also in 1889, Andrada crossed northern Mashonaland, approximately the area of the Mashonaland Central Province of Zimbabwe, obtaining treaties. He failed to inform the Portuguese government of these treaties, so these claims were not formally notified to other powers, as required by the Berlin Treaty. The British government refused to submit any disputed claims to arbitration, and on 11 January 1890, Lord Salisbury sent the British Ultimatum of 1890 to the Portuguese government demanded the withdrawal of the Portuguese troops from the areas where Portuguese and British interests in Africa overlapped. Fixing boundaries The final stage in acquiring territory was to make bi-lateral