THE EAST COAST 149 



told that every servant of the Government who 

 is quartered in Mozambique for two years 

 receives a medal — advances and invites you. 

 They are a happy-go-lucky people, these Portu- 

 guese. You may take photographs or make 

 notes, and the custodians of the gate will only 

 smile and roll cigarettes, and ask you to come on 

 the parapet and observe more. Inside there is 

 a great patio, or courtyard, with sullen barrack- 

 rooms built about it. Pigeons flutter peacefully 

 around. You may see them alight on those old 

 cannons, which were the emblems of Mars and 

 the force of arms, as though San Sebastian were 

 St. Paul's Churchyard. Palms bow gracefully 

 to the soft ocean-borne breezes, ships of commerce 

 lie before the cannons' mouths. It is the century 

 of concord. White and black they shoulder 

 arms together; and when one man drops his 

 musket with a loud crash a pigeon will fly 

 questioningly around the drill sergeant, and the 

 exercise will continue. 



There is something pathetic as well as comic 

 about this unworthy masquerade in the grand 

 old fortress of San Sebastian. A drunken marine 

 could not defame St. Helena more. Yet there 

 is necessity for a show of force, however pitiful 

 it may be. Mozambique, through all the roll 

 of years, has maintained something more than 

 a nominal capitalship. Delagoa and Beira have 

 sprung up in the soil of commerce, but the stunted 

 old tree that Vasco da Gama planted for Portugal 

 to the north is still in a sense the stalwart oak 

 of Colonial Government. Here, at any rate, is 

 the Portuguese East African Portsmouth, and 

 the Colonial gaol where hope is denied to all 

 who have not long purses. And so San Sebastian 

 must have a garrison. Portugal sends her sons 



