The Banks Of The River
Continue Mostly Sandy, With Few Trees, Except Some Cocoanut Palms,
Until The Southern End Of The Large Plantation Of Nyangue,
Formed By The River About 20 Miles From Maruru.
Here the country
is more populous and better cultivated, the natives a finer race, and the huts
larger and better constructed.
Maruru belongs to Senor Asevedo,
of Quilimane, well known to all English officers on the east coast
for his hospitality.
"The climate here is much cooler than nearer the sea, and Asevedo
has successfully cultivated most European as well as tropical vegetables.
The sugar-cane thrives, as also coffee and cotton, and indigo is a weed.
Cattle here are beautiful, and some of them might show with credit in England.
The natives are intelligent, and under a good government this fine country
might become very valuable. Three miles from Maruru is Mesan,
a very pretty village among palm and mango trees. There is here a good house
belonging to a Senor Ferrao; close by is the canal (Mutu) of communication
between the Quilimane and Zambesi rivers, which in the rainy season
is navigable (?). I visited it in the month of October,
which is about the dryest time of the year; it was then a dry canal,
about 30 or 40 yards wide, overgrown with trees and grass,
and, at the bottom, at least 16 or 17 feet above the level of the Zambesi,
which was running beneath. In the rains, by the marks I saw,
the entrance rise of the river must be very nearly 30 feet,
and the volume of water discharged by it (the Zambesi) enormous.
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