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CHAPTER II.
Historical Account of the Mosambique Setttements—Ignorance of ancient Geographers respecting the Coast—Early Account of it by an Arabian author—Subjection and expulsion of the original Settlers, and establishment of the power of the Portuguese—Their attempts to subdue the Interior baffled by the prudence and vigilance of the natives—Attack upon these settlements in 1589 by the Muzimbo, (supposed to be Galla)—Failure of every effort to convert the Natives to the Catholic Faith. Description of the present state of the Settlements on the River Zambezi—Quilimanci—Tete—Senà—Manica, and the Gold Mines—Mode of carrying on Trade with the Natives in the Interior—Jurisdiction of the Portuguese along the Coast—The former-supposed importance of these Settlements—Their gradually decreasing consequence—Their present degraded State. The discouraging prospect from their external connections—An Account of the Marati or Pirates of Madagascar—The uncommon ferocity of this People—Their Excursions against the Comoro and Querimbo Islands—Consequences of the English Abolition of the Slave Trade on the Commerce of Mosambique—Its present Trade, &c.—Departure of the Marian for the Red Sea.
BEFORE I quit this Settlement, I shall give a short abstract of its history, to which a few remarks on its present situation may with propriety be subjoined, and this, I hope, will not be trespassing too far on the attention of the reader. Previously to the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, and the arrival of the Portuguese in the Eastern seas, the knowledge possessed in Europe, respecting this coast, was extremely unsatisfactory, being almost entirely drawn from the vague accounts of Ptolemy, and the obscure notice of it in the Periplus of the Erythrean sea, a fact that appears evident from a curious map, now before me,[1] which is entirely built on those authorities, and retains all their errors. The Arabs, it is certain, had for centuries before been intimately conversant with both its ports and their value, having established settlements on several points of the continent, and some of the islands adjacent, that gave them the
- ↑ Tabula quarta de Africâ in Geographiâ di Fancesco Berlinghieri Fiorentino—published, according to J. C. Brunet in his Manuel de Libraire, in about 1480.
