Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/278

 216 SOUTH AND EAST AFRICA. charge on the public revenue and partly secured on the fixed property of the State. The territory of the South African Republic is divided for administrative pur- poses into sixteen provinces or districts, which are, for the most part, named from their respective chief towns. They are administered by a landrost, a sort of governor and magistrate combined, who is invested with very extensive powers over the native populations. The districts, which before the great development of the gold-raining industry numbered twelve, will be found tabulated in the Appendix. III. — Delagoa Bay. This inlet on the south-east coast of the continent takes its name, not, as has been said, from the fact that it was the last African port of call for Portuguese vessels boimd for Goa and the East Indies, but because it presents the appearance of a lake or lagoon (lagoa). But in any case Delagoa Bay promises one day to acquire great importance as the natural outlet of the whole Limpopo basin and of the States on the South African plateau. The form of the coast-line, and the depth of this land-locked basin, which receives several streams navigable by light craft, give to this Portuguese possession quite an exceptional value, all the more highly appreciated by the shippers of Natal and Cape Colony that south of this splendid estuary there is not a single well-sheltered and commodious haven. Hence, the English colonists, as heirs of the old Dutch navigators who effected a landing here in the year 1720, and as representatives of Captain Owen, who acquired a strip of territory on the coast in 1825, did not fail to claim possession of the bay, which would have been in every way so convenient, and which must have secured for them the unchallenged political and commercial supremacy over the inland States. The priority of possession, however, was contested by Portugal, and in 1875 became a subject of arbitration, and was decided against England by Marshal ^lacMahon, President of the French Republic, to whom the question had been referred by the Governments of London and lasbon. Delagoa Bay was con- sequently restored to the Portuguese province of Mozambique, although from the commercial point of view the judgment might be said to have been given in favour of the Transvaal Republic, because the bay is the natural outlet of that State on the Indian Ocean, while it is the interest of Portugal to attract all the traffic of the plateaux to the port of which she has acquired the possession. But not being yet provided with docks, piers, or other shipping conveniences, and with only a short unfinished line of railway and undeveloped communications, with a thinly peopled, unhealthy, and uncultivated territory, this port has, so to say, nothing at present to depend upon except the prospects of its future prosperity. In fact, the whole district of which it is the capital, from the Maputa to the Limpopo, is an unreclaimed region largely covered with primeval forests, savannahs, and marshy tracts. It has a total area of about 16,000 square miles, with an esti- mated population of eighty thousand, or five to the square mile.