Maputo Bay

“ MRS. WILTON. "Pemba Bay is on the coast of Mozambique, which belongs to the Portuguese. The harbor of Mozambique is formed by a deep inlet of the sea. At the entrance are three small islets, which, together with reefs and shoals, render the anchorage perfectly safe in the worst weather. The city stands on an island of the same name, formed of coral, very low and narrow, and scarcely one mile and a half in length. The streets in the city are narrow, although the houses are mostly lofty and well constructed ”

“ Such rough, projecting coral reefs are very dangerous to the best boats, for in a few moments they will frequently grind a hole through [184] her planks, and immediately she sinks in the surf, while those on board find themselves far from the shore. Pushing off, we stood directly eastward to Saparua, four miles distant, and at half-past three entered a small bay, and were at the kampong Haria. This island has quite the form of the letter H, being nearly divided into two equal parts by a deep bay on the south side and another on the north. ”

“ He told me that the best harbour in the island was at a place called Babao on the north side of Kupang Bay; that there were no inhabitants there, but plenty of buffaloes in the woods, and abundance of fish in the sea; that there was also fresh water: that there was another place, called port Sesial, about 20 leagues to the eastward of Laphao; that there was a river of fresh water there, and plenty of fish, but no inhabitants: yet that if I would go thither he would send people with hogs, goats and buffaloes, to truck with me for such commodities as I had to dispose of. ”

“ Even with a competent pilot, Papeetee Bay, is considered a ticklish, one to enter. Formed by a bold sweep of the shore, it is protected seaward by the coral reef, upon which the rollers break with great violence. After stretching across the bay, the barrier extends on toward Point Venus, in the district of Matavia, eight or nine miles distant. Here there is an opening, by which ships enter, and glide down the smooth, deep canal, between the reef and the shore, to the harbour. ”

“ From Matupi, where the principal settlement in New Britain is situated, to the deep bay at Kabaira, fifty miles away, the coast is very beautiful. And, indeed, no one who looks at the lovely grassy downs that here and there show through the groves of waving palm trees stretching from the beach away up to the rising land of the interior could think that such a fair country was the home of a deadly fever ”

“ French travellers and English officers, as well as missionaries, have landed on the east coast and have journeyed up to the Capital: and the character of the country along their route has been fully and frequently described. The eastern coast of the island has hitherto been better known to us than any other portion. The splendid Bay of Diego Suarez; the wooded promontory on the east of Antongil Bay; the colony of Benyowsky and the Isle of Ste. Marie; Foule Point and Tamatave; the lake of Nósibé and the lagoons which follow it; Andevoranto and Máhanóro and Mánanzára ”

“ We first made sail for Mozambique, where Captain Armstrong had to communicate with the governor to arrange a plan for the suppression of the slave-trade. Mozambique belongs to the Portuguese. It is the chief of their settlements on the east coast of Africa. They claim the whole coast from Cape Delgado in the north, situated in about eleven degrees south latitude, to Delagoa Bay, which will be found at about the twenty-sixth degree south latitude ”

“ Along the coast are numerous harbors, large and small, that are or, by dredging, could be made available for commercial purposes. Among these, on the north coast, from west to east, are Bahia Honda, Mariel, Havana, Matanzas, Nuevitas, Nipe Bay, and Baracoa. On the south, from east to west, are Guantanamo, Santiago, Manzanillo, Cienfuegos, and Batabano. At all of these, there are now cities or towns with trade either by steamers or small sailing vessels. Among the interesting physical curiosities of the island are the numerous "disappearing rivers." ”

“ This island was already a great Arab market, trading with the East Indies, when Yasco de Guma discovered it in 1498. The Portuguese had merely to fortify the place in order to secure a station of vital importance on the highway between Lisbon and Goa. Mozambique Island, a coralline rock about two miles long and a few hundred yards broad, partly closes the entrance of the spacious Mossoril Bay, a perfectly sheltered haven from 25 to 60 feet deep, where vessels frequenting these waters find a safe anchorage during the prevalence of the south-east monsoons. ”

“ The island is surrounded by a reef of coral rock, which forms several excellent bays and harbours, some of which have been particularly described, where there is room and depth of water far any number of the largest ships. Port Royal bay, called by the natives Matavai which is not inferior to any in Otaheite, may easily be known, by a very high mountain in the middle of the island, which bears due south from Point Venus. ”

“ Bampton anchored in 9 fathoms, on a muddy bottom, in latitude 7° 55' south. The coast of New Guinea was then seen to extend from N. N. W. 1⁄2 W. to E. N. E.; and the south end of a reef, running off from the western extreme, bore W. by S. 1⁄2 S., two leagues.
The land here forms a large, unsheltered bay; and an opening nearly at the head, bearing N. 1⁄2 E., appeared like the entrance of a considerable river; but an officer, who was sent in a boat to sound, saw breakers stretching across. The soundings were regular, from 9 to 6 fathoms, within a mile or two of the shore ”

“ "The island of Utopia is in the middle two hundred miles broad, and holds almost at the same breadth over a great part of it, but it grows narrower towards both ends. Its figure is not unlike a crescent. Between its horns the sea comes in eleven miles broad, and spreads itself into a great bay, which is environed with land to the compass of about five hundred miles, and is well secured from winds. In this bay there is no great current; the whole coast is, as it were, one continued harbour, which gives all that live in the island great convenience for mutual commerce. ”

“ Now that they see it no more, they have passionate memories of their beloved bay, seen through a frame of rustling leaves from that lofty platform—how it looked in the dawn and sunrise, in the intensely blue noon, in the moonlight nights, and when gales and tempests were abroad, and how it sounded in the hushed darkness when they woke out of their sleep to listen to it—the rhythmic fall of breaking waves on the rocks below, the tremulous boom that filled the air and seemed to shake the foundations of the solid earth. ”

“ This rocky peninsula is truly a very wild and unworldlike little territory, jutting boldly out as it does into the mighty bay of Massachusetts, and commanding a view of its whole extent, from Cape Cod to Cape Anne, together with the many islands, towns, and villages scattered along the coast; whilst in front spreads out the Atlantic Ocean.
To sit within the upper gallery of this house upon the cliff, and watch the rising moon fling her golden bridge from the far horizon's edge, until it seems to rest upon the beach below, is a sight which would be worth something in a poet or a painter's eyes. ”

“ Sunset greeted them when, after a wide circle to the east and south, they cleared the divide of the Contra Costa hills and began dropping down the long grade that led past Redwood Peak to Fruitvale. Beneath them stretched the flatlands to the bay, checkerboarded into fields and broken by the towns of Elmhurst, San Leandro, and Haywards. The smoke of Oakland filled the western sky with haze and murk, while beyond, across the bay, they could see the first winking lights of San Francisco. ”

“ A Sag Harbor ship visited his father’s bay, and Queequeg sought a passage to Christian lands. But the ship, having her full complement of seamen, spurned his suit; and not all the King his father’s influence could prevail. But Queequeg vowed a vow. Alone in his canoe, he paddled off to a distant strait, which he knew the ship must pass through when she quitted the island. On one side was a coral reef; on the other a low tongue of land, covered with mangrove thickets that grew out into the water. ”

“ Cape Cod is the bared and bended arm of Massachusetts: the shoulder is at Buzzard’s Bay; the elbow, or crazy-bone, at Cape Mallebarre; the wrist at Truro; ”

“ Adventure Bay is a convenient and safe place for any number of ships to take in wood and water during the summer months: but in the winter, when the southerly winds are strong, the surf, on all parts of the shore, makes the landing exceedingly troublesome. ”

“ By the year 1670 wooden chimneys and log houses of the Plymouth and Bay colonies were replaced by more sightly houses of two stories, which were frequently built with the second story jutting out a foot or two over the first, and sometimes with the attic story still further extending over the second story. ”

“ All the 20th we were endeavouring to get into Adventure Bay but were prevented by variable winds. ”

“ The chief result of this expedition was the discovery that a widespread elevation of the Pacific islands occurred in late Tertiary times. The Hawaiian, Paumotos, Society, Cook, Nieue, Tonga, Fiji, Ladrone and Caroline Islands all show elevated coral or limestone reefs, but there are no visible indications of elevation in the Marshall or Gilbert Islands where the underlying rock is not lifted above the sea. Makatea in the Paumotos may have been an atoll which was elevated about 230 feet above the sea and with a lagoon-basin in the center sunken about 70 feet below the encircling ridge. ”

“ Southwards the beach is everywhere low and destitute of harbours, whereas farther north the coast is deeply indented with creeks and inlets, while ramifying headlands, continued by islets, stretch far seawards. This striking contrast is explained by the action of the Mozambique current, combined with that of the coral-building polyps. The oceanic stream flows close in shore south of the Rovuma, eating away the foot of the cliffs, striking against the rocky promontories, and sweeping in rapid eddies round every inlet on the seaboard. ”

“ The Makoba are essentially a boatman tribe, being accustomed to their canoes from earliest infancy, and being obliged to navigate them through the perpetual changes of this capricious river, which at one time is tolerably quiet, and at another is changed into a series of whirling eddies and dangerous rapids, the former being aggravated by occasional back-flow of the waters. The canoes are like the racing river-boats of our own country, enormously long in proportion to their width, and appear to be so frail that they could hardly endure the weight of a single human being. ”

“ They are excellent workmen with the axe, and are, I think, less addicted to the use of ardent spirits than the [147] Cayubabas or the Trinitarios. Traders going to San Pedro use the port on the Mamoré instead of going the round by the river Itenez. Their canoes are hauled up on land, and dragged by oxen across the two leagues of pampa between the Mamoré and the Machupa; and when steam navigation on the Mamoré commences, no doubt a corduroy road over this tract would be a great acquisition, so that the town of San Pedro may be accessible during all seasons from the Mamoré. ”

“ Our landing on Mauké was a ticklish business, Like Mangaia, Mitiaro, and Atiu, this island is of mixed volcanic and raised-coral origin—the pinnacle of a submerged peak, ringed with millions of tons of coral, and without any lagoon worthy of the name. The polyps have built a sort of platform around the land, low inshore and highest—as seems usually the case—just before it drops off into the sea. Breaching across the outer ridge, the surf fills a narrow belt of shallows between it and the shore ”

“ Being of such a height it was visible to us from a distance of fifty miles, when nothing was to be seen of the coast itself or of the intervening lowlands. Shortly before dusk we steamed up to the north side of Mozambique Island, and anchored for the night in an open roadstead, whence, on the following morning, we moved into the inner anchorage.
Mozambique Island has been in the possession of the Portuguese since the middle of the fifteenth century. About the year 1505 they commenced to build a large fort on the northern extremity of the island. ”

“ Hundreds of great baobab trees with huge, bottle-like trunks and hundreds of broad spreading mango trees give an effect of tropical luxuriance that is hardly to be excelled in beauty anywhere in the East. Large ships that stop at the island usually wind their course through a narrow channel and land their passengers and freight at the dock at Kilindini, a mile and a half from the old Portuguese town of Mombasa, where all the life of the island is centered. ”

“ As soon as you are through either of these channels, haul in for the shore of Tongataboo, and anchor between it and Pangimodoo, before a creek leading into the lagoon, into which boats can go at half flood.
Although Tongataboo has the best harbour, Annamooka furnishes the best water, and yet it cannot be called good. However, by digging holes near the side of the pond, we can get what may be called tolerable. This island too is the best situated for drawing refreshments from all the others, as being nearly in the centre of the whole group. ”