In the five hundred years in which he has claimed the shore line of
East Africa from south of Lorenco Marquez to north of Mozambique,
and many hundreds of miles inland, the Portuguese has been the dog
in the manger among nations. In all that time he has done nothing to
help the land or the people whom he pretends to protect, and he
keeps those who would improve both from gaining any hold or
influence over either. It is doubtful if his occupation of the East
Coast can endure much longer. The English and the Germans now
surround him on every side. Even handicapped as they are by the lack
of the seaports which he enjoys, they have forced their way into the
country which lies beyond his and which bounds his on every side.
They have opened up this country with little railroads, with lonely
lengths of telegraph wires, and with their launches and gunboats
they have joined, by means of the Zambesi and Chinde Rivers, new
territories to the great Indian Ocean. His strip of land, which bars
them from the sea, is still unsettled and unsafe, its wealth
undeveloped, its people untamed. He sits at his cafe at the coast
and collects custom-dues and sells stamped paper. For fear of the
native he dares not march five miles beyond his sea-port town, and
the white men who venture inland for purposes of trade or to
cultivate plantations do so at their own risk, he can promise them
no protection.
The land back of Mozambique is divided into "holdings," and the rent
of each holding is based upon the number of native huts it
contains.
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