216 MOZAMBIQUE 



Eand. It is also pointed out that they return 

 from the mines with so much money that they 

 despise the low pay the planter can offer. This 

 argument loses much of its force by the example 

 of the Mozambique Company's territory where 

 recruiting is not permitted, but where labour is 

 more difficult to obtain than at Inhambane and 

 wages are the same. The principal effect of stop- 

 ping recruiting in Inhambane would be, I think, 

 to send the people back to their gardens, not to 

 the plantations of the white settlers. Before re- 

 cruiting began five hundred people daily thronged 

 the market and streets of Inhambane bringing 

 in hides, groundnuts, bees-wax, and other pro- 

 duce, but this traffic has now come to an end. 



The chief complaint in the district of Lourenzo 

 Marques, where as yet very little agricultural 

 development is taking place, is that the mines 

 keep up the price of wages at a high level ; but 

 this view is difficult to reconcile with the fact 

 that in Inhambane, where approximately an equal 

 number of men are annually recruited, wages are 

 only half those in Lourenzo Marques. If re- 

 cruiting is responsible for high wages in Lourenzo 

 Marques, how is it that high w^ages do not prevail 

 in Inhambane ? We must seek, I think, for other 

 causes; one bein the port, wages always being 

 high in port towns. But the principal cause, 



