QUELIMANE, QUILIMANE or KILMANE, a town of Portuguese East Africa, in 18° 1' S., 36° 59' E., 14 m. inland from the mouth of the river Quelimane or QuaQua (Rio dos Bons Signaes). The river during the rainy season becomes a deltaic branch of the Zambezi, with which it is connected by a channel called Mutu. There is ample and deep anchorage, but the entrance is obstructed by a bar, over which there is 9 ft. of water at low tide, and about 26 ft. at high water springs. The town (officially Sao Martinho de Quelimane) is unhealthy. There are 355 Euro peans and 3,403 natives and Indians.
The trade of Quelimane, formerly the only port for the produce of the Zambezi valley, declined after the establishment of Chinde (q.v.), but of recent years the progress of agricultural and indus trial development has been remarkable (see PORTUGUESE EAST AFRICA).
The town has telegraphic communication with the Province, and telephonic communication with the interior. There is a wireless station. It is the starting point of the railway to Mocuba, and a line runs to Maquival, a large prazo belonging to the Zambezia Company. The imports are cotton goods, foodstuffs
and hardware; exports are copra, ground-nuts, sugar, sisal, cotton, sesamum and beans.
The Quilimane river was entered by Vasco da Gama in 1498, who there discovered an Arab settlement. The present town was founded by the Portuguese in the 16th century, and became in the 18th and the early part of the 19th centuries one of the great slave marts. It was the starting-point of Francisco Barreto's expedition to the country of the Monomotapa in 1569, and of David Livingstone's up the Zambezi to Lake Nyasa in 1861. Until 1853 the trade of the port was forbidden to any save Portuguese. The European population, until the last quarter of the 19th century, consisted mainly of convicts from Portugal.
See Delagoa Bay Directory (annually), and South and East Africa Year Book Guide (annually).