The earliest European to visit the area…

The earliest European to visit the area of present Zambia had been the Portuguese explorer Francisco de Lacerda in the late eighteenth century.

Lacerda led an expedition from Mozambique to the Kazembe region in Zambia (with the goal of exploring and to crossing Southern Africa from coast to coast for the first time), and died during the expedition in 1798.

The expedition was from then on led by his friend Francisco Pinto.

This territory, located between Portuguese Mozambique and Portuguese Angola, had been claimed and explored by Portugal in that period.

Other European visitors follow in the nineteenth century.

The most prominent of these is David Livingstone, who has a vision of ending the slave trade through the "3 Cs": Christianity, Commerce and Civilization.

He is the first European to see the magnificent waterfalls on the Zambezi River in 1855, naming them the Victoria Falls after Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom.

He describes them thus: "Scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight".

Locally the falls are known as "Mosi-o-Tunya" or "thundering smoke" in the Lozi or Kololo dialect. The town of Livingstone, near the Falls, is named after him.