We gathered from his manner that the citizens of
Lorenco Marquez look upon being robbed as a matter too personal and
selfish with which to trouble the police. It was perhaps credulous
of us, as our hotel was liberally labelled with notices warning its
patrons that "Owing to numerous robberies in this hotel, our guests
will please lock their doors." This was one of three hotels owned by
the same man. One of the others had been described to us as the
"tough" hotel, and at the other, a few weeks previous, a friend had
found a puff-adder barring his bedroom door. The choice was somewhat
difficult.
On her way from Lorenco Marquez to Beira our ship, the _Kanzlar_,
kept close to the shore, and showed us low-lying banks of yellow
sand and coarse green bushes. There was none of the majesty of
outline which reaches from Table Bay to Durban, none of the blue
mountains of the Colony, nor the deeply wooded table-lands and great
inlets of Kaffraria. The rocks which stretch along the southern
coast and against which the waves break with a report like the
bursting of a lyddite shell, had disappeared, and along Gazaland and
the Portuguese territory only swamps and barren sand-hills
accompanied us in a monotonous yellow line. From the bay we saw
Beira as a long crescent of red-roofed houses, many of them of four
stories with verandas running around each story, like those of the
summer hotels along the Jersey coast.
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