May 4 Monday – The Arundel Castle arrived in Delagoa Bay, Mozambique; Sam wrote about briefly going ashore in the port of Lourenço Marques:

Steaming slowing in the stupendous Delagoa Bay, its dim arms stretching far away and disappearing on both sides. It could furnish plenty of room for all the ships in the world, but it is shoal. The lead has given us 3 ½ fathoms several times and we are drawing that, lacking 6 inches.

A bold headland — precipitous wall, 150 feet high, very strong, red color, stretching a mile or so. A man said it was Portuguese blood — battle fought here with the natives last year. I think this doubtful. Pretty cluster of houses on the tableland above the red — and rolling stretches of grass and groups of trees, like England.

The Portuguese have the railroad (one passenger train a day) to the border — 70 miles — then the Netherlands Company have it. Thousands of tons of freight on the shore — no cover. This is Portuguese all over — indolence, piousness, poverty, impotence.

Crews of small boats and tugs, all jet black woolly heads and very muscular. …

We spent the afternoon on shore, Delagoa Bay. A small town — no sights. No carriages. Three ‘rickshas, but we couldn’t get them — apparently private [FE ch LXIV 637-8]. Note: Delagoa Bay, now Maputo Bay, is on the Indian Ocean side of the coast of Mozambique and is over 55 miles long and 20 miles wide.

Parsons writes,

Twain’s first experience of South Africa came in the afternoon of Monday May 4 during shore leave at Lourenço Marques, port of Mozambique. The traveler was impressed by Delagoa bay….He was less impressed by the Portuguese masters. Their capital was small, without sights or conveyances to get about in. Although the Delagoa Bay Railway had been completed the year before, connecting Pretoria with Lourenço Marques and giving the Transvaal a sea outlet, only one passenger train a day crept the seventy miles to the border, where the Netherlands Company took over” [“Traveler in S. Africa” 4].