Despite its lack of capital and poor trading performance in the first decade of its existence, the African Lakes Company had the ambition of becoming a Chartered company and controlling the route along the Shire River to Lake Nyasa. Accordingly, it made, or claimed to have made, treaties between 1884 and 1886 with local chiefs at the northwest of Lake Nyasa around Karonga, where it had a trading station and approached the British government in February 1886 to be granted a Charter. The company gave up any ambition to control the Shire Highlands in 1886, as local missionaries protested that did not have the capacity to police this area effectively. However, the company claimed the treaties it had made with the chiefs also entitled it to ownership of over 2.7 million acres, amounting to all of what was the North Nyasa District (covering all of today's Karonga, Chitipa and Rumphi District districts). Investigations in 1929 showed that the company's claims were spurious: some supposed treaties had never been made, others were with people who were not chiefs of the areas claimed, and some were obtained by deception. The company was said to have made almost no effort to develop its lands, but had sold off some of it to plantations, and local people were concerned that there would be further sales. By this time of this report, the company had been taken over by the British South Africa Company, which agreed in 1930 to the cancellation of the land title in exchange for the grant of mineral rights over the same area.