Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/280

 chants, is gradually rising above the lower quarters devoted to the shipping interests.

The Zulus of the Lourenço Marques district are described by Mrs. Pringle, who visited the place in 1880, as an exceptionally fine-looking race of quite gigantic stature. "Many of the women are over six feet high, and have such beautifully developed figures, that they would form perfect studies for a sculptor. Nearly all the hoeing and most of the manual labour is done by them. As this must be very hard work, sooner or later it must kill any who are not naturally strong, whereas those who can stand it have all their muscles fully expanded by constant action. Not two of the men or women we met were dressed alike. Some had their hair most elaborately frizzled, and all kinds of feathers stuck into it. Instead of a loin-cloth, they wore wild beasts' skins tied round their waists, with a row of tails dangling from them. Others again had their hair drawn out in fine

strings and plastered with red mud, so that in the distance it looked like a headdress of red coral."

This traveller speaks in depressing terms of the extremely unhealthy climate of Lourenço Marques, described as a perfect hotbed of fever, and so deadly that even horses cannot live there. A station of the Eastern Telegraph Company has been established at Lourenço Marques. But one after another the unfortunate officials in charge of it sooner or later fall victims to the climate. "Now they are trying the experiment of sleeping on board a vessel anchored in the harbour, until they can build a station up on the hill."

Lourenco Marques does not lie on the shore of Delagoa Bay, but occupies the northern bank of an estuary which is developed on the north-west side of this extensive sheet of smooth water. Three rivers have their mouths in this common estuary, which is nevertheless still inaccessible to vessels of the largest size. The mean depth is not more than 16 or 18 feet, rising to 24 or 25 during the spring tides. But for average shipping the harbour leaves nothing to be desired, presenting from east to west an uninterrupted stretch of about 8 miles of good anchor