At 18 years of age he landed in Bahia, where he made a point of announcing to the newspaper Correio Mercantil his new name, in order to remove any confusion with another António Ferreira da Silva.

During the "Sabino Revolt", an autonomist uprising in the State of Bahia that occurred between 6 November 1837 and 16 March 1838, Silva Porto understood that this political instability would hamper business prospects, and decided to return to Angola, where he was employed in a local tavern.

This was a difficult adventure: many of the caravans that left the Benguela coast for Lui, Luanda and Katanga risked robbery, pillaging and negotiating styles of the local chiefs.

[1] His shop was a center of intense activity and commerce; he sold his textiles, small porcelain objects and explosives bought and traded ivory, honey and rubber from the interior, which he meticulously recorded in his journals.

These tomes (14 volumes in all) contained varied descriptions of geography, ethnography and anthropology of his region of Africa, which his old friend Luciano Cordeiro referred to as a "conversation on paper".

After 1854 his activity was incessant, and by 1869 he had made six voyages to Lui and three to Benguela, where he would purchase the local shop Bemposta and remained sedentary, until 1879 when he returned to Belmonte.

When in Belmonte he helped the local mission, providing from his own money for school supplies, food and clothing for their children and remuneration for the teacher.

On 5 March 1889, he was substituted by Justino Teixeira da Silva as Captain-major of Bié, but continued to receive his 100,000 reis per month and the associated honors.

Around 1850, Portuguese exploration of Africa expanded, but Silva Porto's request for a military occupation force was never heard: at that time, Portugal was only interested in developing and colonizing the coast.

In 1877, the Geographic Society had made an appeal to an entitlement for the merchant/explorer (specifically a pension), in order to support his desire to return to Portugal, where he could "die in the Fatherland which he had honorably and dedicatedly served".

Paiva Couceiro arrived in the area of Teixeira da Silva around January 1890, with a contingent of 40 Mozambican soldiers, armed with Snider-Enfield breech-loading rifles, which worried the chief of Bié.

Fearing that the Portuguese were there to construct a fort and occupy his lands, the chief was convinced by Silva Porto that the troops were only passing through the area on the way to Barotseland, and that they would not remain there for long.

But later, in Belmonte, Silva Porto was in good spirits, although Paiva Couceiro did notice that his compound had barrels of gunpowder (which he, laughing, brushed off as full of sand).