There is safe entrance to the harbour, the minimum depth in the Cockburn channel being 29 ft. At its mouth, the river is about 2 m. across. Lourenco Marques is the nearest port to the Rand gold mines. It is 8,374 m. from Southampton via Cape Town, and 7,565 m. via the Suez canal. The wharf (cost £500,000), of reinforced concrete, is about a mile long, and can accommodate 12 large steamers at once. There are ir large ware houses, in addition to the transit shed and national warehouse. Telegraph, telephone and railway booking offices are on the wharf ; and a clock gives the official time, a three-hour signalling device giving the time to shipping. The whole wharf area is enclosed and electrically lighted. There are 23 electric cranes, one 6o ton; and three tugs, one for use on the high seas. There are two docks for small craft, and a dry dock which admits vessels up to 1,400 tons (cost £30,000). In 1926, 677 vessels, of tonnage 3,337,454, entered the port. There are regular services of British, Portuguese, German, American, Norwegian and Italian lines. The great bulk of the traffic of the port is that in transit to the Union of South Africa. Over so% of the import trade of Johannesburg is with Lourenco Marques. (For convention regulating this traffic, see PORTUGUESE EAST AFRICA.) Union duties can be paid in Lourenco Marques. In 1926, 279,808 tons of goods were imported through this port into the Union. The port possesses two coaling plants, capable of handling respectively 400 and 600 tons an hour. In 1926, 791,371 tons of coal were handled, for local consumption, export and bunkers. The bunkering trade is growing in impor tance. Great Britain, Portugal and Germany, in this order, have the bulk of the import trade. Most of the imports, being for warded to the Transvaal, figure also as exports. In 1923 goods in transit through the port were valued at £4,806,000, re-exports being worth £1,244,000. Local produce was exported in that year to the value of £789,000. A great proportion of the trade of the town, the forwarding trade especially, is in the hands of British firms. The retail trade and the native trade is very largely in the hands of Indians. The chief articles imported are foodstuffs and liquors, iron, mineral oils, inks and dyes, timber and livestock. These all form part of the transit trade. There is little export trade by sea except in coal, chiefly from the collieries at Middel burg, Transvaal. The chief import for local consumption is wine.
the latter part of 1925 the depreciation of Portu guese currency, and the abolition of the use of sterling currency caused serious difficulties to importers, and led to strikes and other disturbances. The position began to improve in 1926, and by 1928 was stable. For the early history of the town see DELA GOA BAY. The existing town dates from about 185o, the previous settlement having been entirely destroyed by natives. In 1871 the town was described as a poor place, with narrow streets, fairly good flat-roofed houses, grass huts, decayed forts and rusty cannon, enclosed by a wall 6 ft. high then recently erected and protected by bastions at intervals. The growing importance of the Transvaal led, however, to greater interest being taken in Portugal in the port. A commission was sent by the Portuguese Govern ment in 1876 to drain the marshy land near the settlement, to plant the blue gum tree, and to build a hospital and a church. It was not, however, until the end of the 19th century that any marked development took place in the town, and up to 1903 cargo had to be discharged in tugs and lighters. Later, a wooden wharf preceded the present reinforced concrete one. The settle ment was declared a village in 1876, a corporate town in 1887, and in 1907 became the capital of the Province.
In 1873-77 Mr. Burgers, president of the Transvaal, en deavoured, unsuccessfully, to get a railway built from Pretoria to Delagoa bay. Later, Col. McMurdo organized a company which built a line from the coast to the frontier as marked on !maps of 1883, and this railway was opened in 1888. The Portuguese Government insisted that the line must be continued another 5 m. to the frontier as fixed after 1883. This led to disputes, seizure of the line, etc., and a long arbitration. Meantime, however, the railway had been completed and was opened for through traffic to Pretoria on July 8, 1895. In 1906-10 another railway (47 m. long) was built from Lourenco Marques due west to the Swaziland frontier, being a link in a new line to shorten the dis tance by rail between the Rand and the sea by some 6o m.
See also DELAGOA BAY and the authorities there cited. The text of the railway arbitration award was published in French at Berne in 1900. Annual reports on the trade of Lourenco Marques are issued by the British Foreign Office.