LOURENÇO MARQUES.—THE CHANGES IT HAS SEEN.—HARBOR.—CLIMATE.—RAILWAY
PLANT IMPORTED BY PRESIDENT BURGERS.—ADVANTAGES OF THE DELAGOA BAY ROUTE
TO THE GOLD FIELDS.
Lourenço Marques, the name given by the Portuguese to the town they have
built at the head of Delagoa Bay, is the most southerly point of their
possessions, which have a long coast line extending northwards 1,100
miles. Delagoa Bay, which is one of the finest harbors in the world, was
discovered by the Portuguese in 1544, who realizing its importance at
once took possession and erected a fort and factories. It was early
converted into a penal settlement, which by strict letter of the law it
still remains, although at the present time the authorities at Lisbon
have ceased to use it for that purpose. The white population does not
number I should think more than one hundred souls,[115] and this is
comprised of government officials, officers commanding the garrison,
which is composed of black troops from Mozambique or Goa, merchants and
their clerks, and the staff of the Eastern Telegraph Company. The town
lies quite low, almost level with the beach, and contains a fine
government house (the Governor Senor Antonio de Azevedo Vasconcellos, to
whom I paid my respects, is very popular), several well-built trading
establishments, a handsome church and hospital and a good hotel. The
telegraph station is situated on a bold headland facing, at a
considerable elevation, the Indian Ocean, and commands a splendid view
of the peninsula of Inyack, the Elephant Islands, and the Maputa country
across the Tembi. Delagoa Bay has seen many changes. In 1721 and 1735
the Dutch encroached upon the Portuguese, but had ultimately to retire;
again in 1777 an Austrian trading company, which had established itself
there, was driven out by the Portuguese Governor General who came from
Goa; then in 1796 the place was taken and destroyed by the French. Once
more, in 1833, the fortress was besieged and the town entirely sacked by
Kafirs; after this, in 1850, internal dissensions almost ruined the
place, until at last a threatened annexation by the English led to a
dispute in 1861, which was not decided until Marshal MacMahon, Duc de
Magenta, to whom the question had been referred, decided in favor of the
Portuguese in 1875.
The climate of this part of the coast has always been considered
unhealthy, nearly all the Europeans staying here for any length of time
contracting malarial fever of a rather severe type. This is due to
noxious exhalations from certain swamps which surround one part of the
town, and to the imprisoned air which is wafted across the Tembi
whenever a south wind blows from the Maputa territory. Indeed, most of
the inhabitants suffer from this fever more or less, and have a ghastly,
woe-begone expression, or as one rather humorous observer remarked to
me, “they all look like corpses out for a holiday.”
In walking round the town I came suddenly upon some monuments of the
past, partially buried in sand, which recalled to my memory those words
of Juvenal, where he says, “Monuments themselves memorials need”—for
there was no one there to tell me that the tons of railway material I
saw piled and left to rust and decay, were all that was left by which
the grand railway scheme of President Burgers, and his bright hopes of
the future, could be remembered.
These relics convinced me more than ever that Burgers was a man ahead of
his time, and the present justifies the opinions he formed years ago.
When he went to Europe in 1875 to raise capital to construct the line
from Delagoa Bay to the Drakensberg, all other schemes,[116] Moodie’s
included, having failed, so sanguine was he of the future that although
he obtained only £79,136 of the £300,000 he required, yet he spent
£63,200 in railway material alone. The sequel is now a matter of
history, how on his return he found all in disorder, the government
credit gone, Sekukuni in rebellion, the burghers dissatisfied, and, to
crown everything, he was not so shrewd without being able to see
indications looming in the not far-off future, that the government of
the State would soon be wrested from his grasp.
I also saw the railway embankments about seven miles in length which
were in course of construction by the Portuguese to the Komati River,
near which their territory ends and the Transvaal commences. This work I
was informed was being executed by the Portuguese government with money
which had been deposited by a Colonel McMurdo as security for commencing
the line of which he had got a concession in 1883, but which he had not
begun, and so probably has forfeited.
On my arrival in England early this year, 1887, I came to the conclusion
that this work will now be prosecuted with vigor, as I learned that a
company had been successfully floated to continue the formation of the
line, and rumors were afloat in commercial circles that another company
would at once complete it to Barberton. I have just at hand on going to
the press the following letter from a friend in Barberton in which he
says, “About forty miles of the earthwork of the railway is already
completed. The contractors have found it quite easy to obtain labor.”
The intervening country from Barberton to Pretoria, in the one
direction, and from Kimberley to Pretoria on the other, would then only
remain to complete a grand circular trunk line which would tap every
important district and centre in South Africa. Geographically nothing
could be grander, and as a work of utility few schemes present promise
of greater good to the whole country; as it would be, to my mind, the
salvation of South Africa from native wars and rapacious coast
middlemen, it would prove a great factor in the future amelioration of
the native races,[117] while further it would tend in time to a
confederation of interests in South Africa, “a consummation devoutly to
be wish’d.”
So far as Barberton and the Kaap gold fields are concerned, Delagoa Bay
must be their port of the future, even in spite of the frantic efforts
Natal is now making. It is only necessary to consider for a single
moment the mileage from the different ports to see this. Whereas the
distance from Delagoa Bay is, roughly speaking, only 130 miles, that
from D’Urban, the Port of Natal, is 450, and that from Capetown about
1,300. The ad valorem duty at these ports also contrasts very
unfavorably with the Portuguese port—Capetown collecting 15, Natal 7,
while Delagoa Bay collects 3 per cent. only.
During the last session of the Natal legislative council, with a
hopeless bid to catch the Barberton trade, this sapient body took off
its export duty of 9/ per gallon on spirits, which formerly was a great
article of export, hoping by this suicidal policy, together with sundry
other minor concessions, to retain the trade, instead of, in my opinion,
“making hay while the sun shines,” or in other words getting the most
out of their rum traffic pending the inevitable, when the Delagoa Bay
railway is completed.
There are no engineering difficulties whatever to be overcome on the
Delagoa Bay route until near the approach to Barberton, and these,
engineers tell me, could be easily surmounted. The much-talked-of ascent
of the Lebombo range can also be made by the most insignificant
gradients, and the Komati River can be bridged with facility; so that
there is every probability of the shriek of the railway-whistle being
heard, as once at a public dinner at Barberton I told my hearers, in
less than eighteen months. This, as a matter of course, will materially
promote the development and advancement of the gold fields, the
difficulty and delay attendant upon the importation of machinery will be
removed, and the thorough opening up of the Kaap gold fields will mark
another era in the history of South Africa.
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