Note 635 — PRIMO VIAGGIO INTORNO AL MONDO (continued 2)

The Portuguese occupation of Mozambique dates from 1498, when Vasco da Gama landed at the mouth of the Zambesi. A number of settlements were founded there in the first decade of the sixteenth century. Its present boundaries were fixed by agreement with Great Britain in 1891 and with Germany in 1886 and 1890. It has an area of 310,000 square miles, and has great vegetable and mineral wealth. Slavery was abolished in the colony in 1878. It is governed by a governor-general sent out by Portugal. John Pory in his preliminary translations prefixed to his translation of the history of the converted Moor Leo Africanus (Hakluyt Society edition, London, 1896) says (i, p. 58) that the kingdom of Mozambique was “so called of three small islets, situate in the mouth of the river Meghincate in fowerteene and a halfe or fifteene degrees of southerly latitude, which kingdome in ancient time by Ptolemy was called Promontorium Prassum.” Continuing he says that notwithstanding its unhealthful site, the chief of the three islands, where there was a secure port and where the Portuguese built a strong fort, became the most frequented Portuguese station on the way to the East Indies, and ships often wintered there. This must have been the settlement mentioned by Pigafetta. See also Three Voyages of Vasco da Gama (Hakluyt Society reprint, London, 1879), pp. 80–97.