Portuguese East Africa or Mozambique

Complete statistics as to education are wanting. The only secondary school (liceu) in the province is in Lourenco Marques. An elementary commercial course has been instituted in connection with this school. Training schools for native teachers are main tained by the Mission Suisse Romande at Rikatla, near Lourenco Marques; another at Lourenco Marques, is conducted jointly by the Anglican, Swiss and Wesleyan Methodist missions; at Lourenco Marques the Anglican mission trains teachers and evan gelists; and at Kambini, Inhambane district, the Methodist Epis copal Church has a training school. In Nov. 1925, the number of children attending primary schools in Lourenco Marques was 4,766, and those attending the secondary school 65. In Dec. the total number returned as attending primary schools in the province was given as 24,296. Agricultural and industrial schools have been opened in some of the circumscriptions.

By the loth century A.D. the Arabs had occupied the seaboard of East Africa as far south as Sofala, and until the close of the r5th century their supremacy was unchallenged. But in 1498 Vasco da Gama entered the mouth of a river which he called Rio dos Bons Sinaes (River of Good Tokens), as there he first found himself in contact with the civilization of the East. This stream was the Quelimane river, taken by the Portuguese a little later to be the main mouth of the Zambezi. From this river da Gama con tinued his voyage, putting in at Mozambique and Mombasa on his way to India. Hostilities between the Arabs and Portuguese broke out almost immediately. In 2502 da Gama paid a visit to Sofala to make enquiries concerning the trade in gold carried on at that place, and the reports as to its wealth which reached Portugal led to the dispatch in 1505 of a fleet of six ships under Pedro da Nhaya with instructions to establish Portuguese influ ence at Sofala. By 1510 the Portuguese, who had seized and forti fied the port of Mozambique in 1507, were masters of all the former Arab sultanates on the East African coast.

Quest for the Land of Gold.

For 4o years Sofala was their only station south of the Zambezi. Thence they traded with the chief of the "Mocaranga" (i.e., the Makalanga or Karanga) in whose territory were the mines whence the gold exported from Sofala was obtained. This potentate was known as the Mono motapa (q.v.). The efforts made by the Portuguese from Sofala to reach him were unsuccessful. It was probably the desire to penetrate to the "land of gold" by an easier route that led, in 1544, to the establishment of a station on the River of Good Tokens, a station from which grew the town of Quelimane. It was at this period also that Lourenco Marques and a companion entered Delagoa bay and opened up trade with the natives. This was the most southerly point occupied by the Portuguese. In 1569 the

East African dominions, hitherto dependent on the vice-royalty of India, were made a separate government with headquarters at Mozambique.

Francisco Barreto, a former viceroy of India, appointed gov ernor of the newly formed province, was instructed by King Se bastian to conquer the country of the gold mines. Unwisely the route via the Zambezi, and not that from Sofala, was chosen by Barreto. His expedition, including over 1,000 Europeans, started in Nov. 1569, and from Sena marched south. His force was so greatly weakened by deaths and disease that Barreto was obliged to return to Sena, whence he went to Mozambique to put down disorder among the Portuguese there. He returned to Sena in 157c,, only to die a few days after his arrival. His successor, Vasco Fer nandes Homem, made his way inland from Sofala to a region where he saw the ground being worked for gold. The comparative poorness of the mine filled him, it is stated, with disappointment, and he returned to Sofala.

Era of Decline.

The Portuguese for some time failed to make any effective use of their East African possessions. Among the causes of non-success must be reckoned the "Sixty Years' Cap tivity" (1580-1640), when the Spanish and Portuguese crowns were united, and the neglect of Africa for the richer possessions in India and the Far East. A more permanent reason for the non-development of Mozambique province was the character of the government and the settlers. For a series of years the Jesuits and Dominicans were the most energetic sections of the white community. The first Jesuit missionaries began work in the neighbourhood of Inhambane in 1560; in the same year another Jesuit, Goncalo da Silveira, made his way to the zimbabwe (chief kraal) of the monomotapa, by whose orders he and his converts were strangled (March 16, 1561). Mission work was soon after wards begun by the Dominicans and for nearly two centuries the two orders between them had agents spread over the greater part of the country from Mozambique southward. Traces of their influence are still to be found among the tribes. In 1759 the Jesuits were expelled. Three attempts by the Dutch in the 17th century to capture the port of Mozambique were unsuccessful, but in the early years of the 18th century the Arabs wrested from the Portuguese their African possessions north of Cape Delgado. The merchants of Sofala and Mozambique had, since the middle of the 17th century, found a new source of wealth in the export of slaves to Brazil. This trade, due directly to the capture of the ports of Angola by the Dutch (1640-48), continued until nearly the middle of the 29th century, while slavery in the prov ince was not abolished until 2878; and then abolition was largely nominal.