Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/375

 bacteria very fatal to human life The line of railroad to the sea at Beira was built to get cattle to market from the fly district, Natal and the Cape having quarantined against cattle in Rhodesia and other districts subject to disease. The line from Bulawayo is seven hundred miles long, and operated through Portuguese territory by special concession. It passes through as interesting a country as we have seen in Africa At seven o'clock in the evening we passed into a swampy country, and mosquitoes became a pest. These were the dangerous mosquitoes, and we fought them viciously. And all day the weather had been oppressively hot At 9:30 we reached Beira, and had to pass our baggage through the custom-house. This ceremony concluded, we went to the Savoy Hotel in what they call a "trolley" here. A narrow-gauge street railway has been laid all over Beira, but cars are not operated either by electric or horse power. Every citizen owns his own car, a small, light affair pushed by negro men. On the principal streets there are three tracks, and there is a system by which traffic is regulated. When we went up-town in a passenger trolley, the hotel porter came along behind, with our baggage on a freight trolley. Freight of every kind is carried to every part of Beira by these street-railway lines, and there are little steam locomotives which handle heavy freight at night. Beira is a Portuguese town, and passing through it at night on a trolley pushed by two negro men, was an unusual experience. When we reached the postoffice, the mail trolleys were unloading, and we were compelled to wait several minutes Reaching the Savoy