preferred to submit to the suzerainty of the distant king of Portugal rather than the local hegemony of Mawewe. All of this accrued to Mzila's benefit. Although the war lasted until 1864, and the capital of the kingdom was moved from the valley of the Limpopo River to Mossurize, north of the river Save, in the current Mozambican province of Manica, Mzila was gradually mastering the art of controlling the Nguni and its vassals. From 1864 onward, he was the undisputed ruler of the Empire of Gaza. With these events, Mundagaz became a potential successor among the princes, and he began a journey that would lead to power. The reign of Mzila (1864–1884) After the war, Mzila devoted himself to the consolidation of his power and the expansion of the Empire of Gaza. He maintained the style of governance of his father, ruling with an iron hand and keeping the habit of walking long distances to keep tabs on all of his domains. The capital remained at Mossurize, and the village of Chaimite, the former capital, became a place of pilgrimage, of memorials devoted to past feats, and a dwelling-place for ancestral spirits. Despite the treaty signed in 1861 and the effective alliance with the Portuguese that had gained him his throne, the warriors of Mzila ran roughshod over the Portuguese colonies at Sofala and Inhambane several times, and a climate of tension developed that did not accord with the formal agreements and Mzila's frequent expressions of friendship and gratitude. Competition among the Europeans Simultaneously, there was increasing competition in the region among the European colonial powers in the region who were vying for control of more African territory. Expeditions of discovery aimed at broadening European colonies Africa were more and more frequent, and there were more and more missionaries and traders visiting the land of Gaza. Lisbon had already started to nourish ambitions of a swath of Portuguese colonies across southern Africa, from Mozambique on the Indian Ocean to Angola on the Atlantic, all of them colored pink, the traditional color of Portuguese possessions on maps of Africa produced in Europe. At the beginning of the 1880s, when the reign of Mzila was approaching its end, competition among the Europeans grew rapidly. Their expeditions into the interior increased in frequency, penetrating more deeply into the territory of Gaza. The pressure on Mzila to permit the mining of minerals also