684 



PORTUGAL. 



POSTAL FACILITIES. 



rested and confined on board a vessel-of-war for 

 his act of insubordination. He was tried before 

 the House of Peers in August, and was sentenced 

 to four months' imprisonment. The session 

 was closed on August 13 after the passage of a 

 new military bill and a bill for the taxation of 

 tobacco. The Cortes also approved treaties 

 with France and Germany for the delimitation 

 of the territories of the three powers in Africa. 



Colonies. The Portuguese possessions in 

 Africa, comprising the Cape Verde Islands, 

 Bissao, and other stations on the Guinea coast, 

 Prince's Island and St. Thomas, Ajuda, An- 

 gola, and Mozambique, have an aggregate area 

 of 1,805,550 square kilometres, and about 

 4,136,700 inhabitants. The possessions in Asia 

 and Oceanica, comprising Goa in India, Daman 

 and Din, Timor, and other islands in the In- 

 dian Archipelago, and Macao off the coast of 

 China, are 16,666 square kilometres in extent, 

 and have 848,500 inhabitants. The colonial 

 budget for 1885-'86 makes the revenues of all 

 the colonies 2,746,603 milreis, and the expen- 

 ditures 3,405,936 milreis. There were 62 kilo- 

 metres of railroad in India, while 20 kilo- 

 metres were under construction and 82 kilo- 

 metres authorized. In Angola 410 kilometres 

 were authorized, and in Mozambique 152. 



A protocol that was signed at Lisbon in 1887 

 contains a preliminary arrangement or basis of 

 a treaty, by which China agrees to cede full 

 rights of sovereignty over Macao to Portugal, 

 the latter agreeing on her side to aid the Chi- 

 nese custom-house authorities in the preven- 

 tion of smuggling from Macao by an arrange- 

 ment similar to that made with the British in 

 respect to Hong-Kong. For two centuries Por- 

 tugal has been in full possession of Macao, but 

 has recognized Chinese suzerainty by the pay- 

 ment of an annual tribute of 500 taels until 

 about 1850, when she refused to continue the 

 payments. There was much opposition at 

 Pekin to the proposed treaty, as is invariably 

 the case in regard to the abandonment of any 

 claims of China to suzerain rights. A treaty 

 was at last concluded at Pekin. 



In the beginning of March, 1887, Lieut. Maia, 

 the governor of the Island of Timor, was mur- 

 dered by the natives, and gunboats were sent 

 from Macao to restore order. After the Sultan 

 of Zanzibar had taken possession of Tungi Bay, 

 and his rights to that district had received 

 recognition from England and Germany, Por- 

 tugal asserted a claim to the territory. The 

 Portuguese squadron and a detachment of 

 troops were sent from Mozambique, which capt- 

 ured the Sultan's posts. The corvette " Affon- 

 so d' Albuquerque " and the gunboat u Douro " 

 on February 15, 1887, bombarded the fortress 

 of Tungi and the village of Massingane, after 

 which two detachments of infantry were 

 landed, which took possession of the fortress, 

 capturing flags and three guns, and burned the 

 village. The natives of Mozambique, taking 

 advantage of the absence of the military forces, 

 revolted against the Portuguese authority, and 



sacked several villages on the mainland oppo- 

 site the town of Mozambique. 



In April the Portuguese garrison in Tungi 

 was attacked and driven out by the Sultan's 

 former governor, who raised the flag of Zanzi- 

 bar. Negotiations were subsequently entered 

 upon for the delimitation of the territories of 

 Portugal and Zanzibar, but the Sultan and the 

 Portuguese commissioners failed to come to an 

 agreement. The recommendation of England 

 and Germany that the dispute should be re- 

 ferred to the King of the Netherlands for arbi- 

 tration was not accepted. The Sultan subse- 

 quently consented to abide by the decision of 

 a conference of the English, German, and Por- 

 tuguese representatives that was held at Lisbon 

 in October. 



Portuguese political agents negotiated for a 

 protectorate over the kingdom of Dahomey, 

 and supposed that they had secured a treaty to 

 that effect. When the King of Dahomey heard 

 of it in June, he not only denied that he had 

 accepted a protectorate, but gave orders to 

 have every Portuguese settler in his dominions 

 arrested. 



POSTAL FACILITIES, RECENT I3IPROVFJIENTS 

 IN. A fully equipped postal-car, traveling at 

 the rate of forty miles an hour, with a full 

 complement of clerks to receive and distribute 

 the mail en route, is the best illustration of the 

 advancement made in recent years in postal 

 progress. The mails are no longer taken by 

 the railways as so much freight, to be handled 

 only at certain specified "distributing-offices," 

 when, after the customary sorting and resort- 

 ing, they were again turned into freight and 

 boxed up until the destination was reached. 

 The first railway-post-office journey in England 

 was made on July 1, 1837, on the completion of 

 the line between Liverpool and Birmingham. 

 Although its success was demonstrated at 

 once, nothing was done in the United States 

 until 1860, when a vague experimental effort 

 was made to run a mail-train from New York 

 to Boston, via Hartford and Springfield, by 

 which the southern mails arriving in New York 

 could be forwarded promptly instead of lying 

 over in New York until the following day. 

 In 1861 similar facilities were secured on the 

 railway between New York and Washington, 

 and ten years afterward a plan was suggested 

 by Col. George B. Armstrong, at that time as- 

 sistant postmaster at Chicago, for putting post- 

 office cars on the principal railroads, in which 

 mails could be made up by clerks, while in 

 transit, for offices at the termini and along the 

 lines. The first experiment on Col. Arm- 

 strong's plan was made on the route between 

 Chicago and Clinton on the morning of Aug. 

 28, 1864. The initial trip proving successful, 

 the work was enlarged by the distribution of 

 mail-matter at stations along the route. This 

 was the inauguration proper of the railway- 

 post-office system in the United States in its 

 present form, and differs materially from the 

 plan proposed and partially carried into execu- 



