Chapter Eight 
PORTUGUESE EAST AFRICA (SOUTH) 
FTER spending the following summer in England, I again 
sailed for the sunny south. At Cape Town I left the ship and 
took the overland route to Lourenco Marques in the southern 
part of Portuguese East Africa. This journey was va Pretoria and 
thence through the eastern Transvaal, passing the southern border 
of the Kruger National Park. This part of Portuguese East comes 
under the direct administration of Portugal through its Colonial 
Office, and. not of a chartered company as was the case with the 
Mozambique Territory further north. 
Lourencgo Marques is an attractive city with fine buildings and 
tree-lined avenues. It has good hotels, golf, and a splendid beach, 
but its chief attraction to thousands of holiday-makers from the 
Union is, I think, that there are no restrictions against drinking, 
dancing, and gambling, or other forms of pleasure. 
Inquiries led me to visit a place on the Umbeluzi River on the 
road from Lourengo Marques to the Transvaal, about thirty miles 
inland, and only twenty miles from the Swaziland border. Here I 
was fortunate in being able to stay with a young couple, a New 
Zealander and his Dutch wife, who were managing a dairy farm. 
The Umbeluzi is a picturesque river which in the dry season is 
very narrow except for intermittent pools. The waters look invit- 
ing enough, but, as in most of the hotter parts of Africa, bathing 
1s not a recognized pastime owing to the presence of crocodiles. 
During my acquaintance with the Umbeluzi, stories concerning 
the activities of these creatures were rife as a number of natives, 
principally women, had been recently devoured when drawing 
water or washing clothes. Even my own native servant’s brother 
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