The Port of Dar-es-Salaam (the "Haven of Peace") was made the capital, and from here the principal railway runs into the interior.
From the coast the town is hardly visible, the quiet lagoon on which it is built being so shut in by bluffs; while the entrance is between coral reefs, the passage through which is in some places not much over fifty yards. The harbour is small but is perfectly sheltered, and with its fringe of palms makes a striking picture.
The town is laid out on luxurious lines with wide well-paved streets, an extensive botanical garden, electric light, and a powerful wireless installation. The neighbouring native town is a striking contrast, being squalid in the extreme.
The railway system extends for nearly 1,000 miles, and a line from Dar-es-Salaam to Lake Tanganyika was being pushed on energetically. The territory is eminently suited for the cultivation of tropical agricultural products, and the export of these amounts to roughly £1,800,000 per annum—about equally divided between European and native.
The Germans have done no development themselves for the production of raw material, but the European plantations are huge farms in the lower-lying country; and though on the slopes of Kilima 'Njaro there are small holders, these are in the main Englishmen, Greeks, or British Indians.
The Germans did not grant a full title to land, and intending planters had to buy their land from natives and run the risk that their titles might not be recognised, as the natives' claim to land had not yet been adjudicated—which means, of course, that, as elsewhere, the land had been "confiscated"; though it did not suit German policy immediately to take it out of the hands of the natives.
The products grown on the European plantations by what has passed from actual to semi-slave labour, are principally coffee, rubber, cotton, and sisal hemp. The European products were heavily subsidised.
The natives contribute from the natural resources of the country grain, medicinal herbs, copal, beeswax, hides, wild coffee, wild rubber, palm-oil, copra, and dairy products. They have been encouraged in every way to increase their production of raw materials by brutality and terrorism, which almost depopulated the Ruanda country, and by instruction in the methods of growing and collecting.
A translation in the journal of the African Society quotes Hans Zache in "Dressig jahre Deutsch-Ost-Africa" (Thirty years of German East Africa): "It is a falsely reasoned and falsely proved humanitarianism which seeks to take no cognisance of the education of the native for manual work. Work is provided by the European planters so that the Colony may benefit by increased production, and not least also is it provided for the blessing of the negro."