d not
punish him. We gave him a passage in our boat, but he left us in the way
to visit his wife, and, "on urgent private business," probably gave up
the service altogether, as he did not come to Kilimane all the time I
was there. It is impossible to describe the miserable state of decay
into which the Portuguese possessions here have sunk. The revenues are
not equal to the expenses, and every officer I met told the same tale,
that he had not received one farthing of pay for the last four years.
They are all forced to engage in trade for the support of their
families. Senhor Miranda had been actually engaged against the enemy
during these four years, and had been highly lauded in the commandant's
dispatches to the home government, but when he applied to the Governor
of Kilimane for part of his four years' pay, he offered him twenty
dollars only. Miranda resigned his commission in consequence. The common
soldiers sent out from Portugal received some pay in calico. They all
marry native women, and, the soil being very fertile, the wives find but
little difficulty in supporting their husbands. There is no direct trade
with Portugal. A considerable number of Banians, or natives of India,
come annually in small vessels with cargoes of English and Indian goods
from Bombay. It is not to be wondered at, then, that there have been
attempts made of late years by speculative Portuguese in Lisbon to
revive the trade of Eastern Africa by means of mercantile companies. One
was formally proposed, which was modeled on the plan of our East India
Company; and it was actually imagined that all the forts, harbors,
lands, etc., might be delivered over to a company, which would bind
itself to develop the resources of the country, build schools, make
roads, improve harbors, etc., and, after all, leave the Portuguese the
option of resuming possession.

Another effort has been made to attract commercial enterprise to this
region by offering any mining company permission to search for the ores
and work them. Such a company, however, would gain but little in the way
of protection or aid from the government of Mozambique, as that can
but barely maintain a hold on its own small possessions; the condition
affixed of importing at the company's own cost a certain number of
Portuguese from the island of Madeira or the Azores, in order to
increase the Portuguese population in Africa, is impolitic. Taxes would
also be levied on the minerals exported. It