This port is admirably adapted for throwing supplies of ammunition, and also useful commodities, into the Zulu country, from which they are carried into the Orange Free State, and the Transvaal Republic, thereby eluding the custom’s dues payable at the Cape of Good Hope and Natal.
A considerable trade of this description is already established by several mercantile houses at the Cape of Good Hope; and, this fact having become known in London and Liverpool, merchants are naturally inquiring what articles of trade are suitable for a port where no duties whatever are levied, and where the returns of ivory, hides, horns, and hoofs are immediate.[1]
As the colony of the Cape of Good Hope pays annually to the Boers 5,000l. (five thousand pounds sterling) as a compensation for the duties levied on commodities passing through that colony to the Orange Free State and Transvaal Republic, it is natural to expect that the revenue of that colony should be protected by obtaining possession of a port at present belonging to no country, and which offers a sore temptation to the Boers, ever on the look-out for an outlet for their productions, without passing through and enriching a country from which they trecked, in consequence of real or imagined wrongs.
From Port St. Lucia, proceeding northwards, we pass a line of coast, of which we absolutely know nothing, until we arrive at Cape Colatto, in latitude 26° 4′ S., and longitude 33° 1′ E.
The whole of this coast is low, and washed by the gulf stream; and is, for the reasons already given in the previous chapter, well adapted for the growth of cotton. Doubtless, some of the Kaffirs of Natal, seeing the great care devoted to the production of this staple of our manufactures in that thriving and industrious little colony, will communicate the intelligence to their countrymen, and eventually it may be brought to the notice of their chiefs. If Panda, the great chief of the Zulus, was once convinced of the benefits which would arise to his people by the cultivation of this plant, we should hear no more of bloody wars and wholesale massacres in his dominions; for he would soon learn that the increase of his people would be an increase of his own wealth and power.
It would be well to try the experiment by presenting Panda with a certain number of pounds of cotton-seed, holding out some great inducement for him to return, at the proper season, a proportionate amount of seed-cotton, which might be easily ginned in the colony. A trade of this sort, once established, would tend greatly to the civilization of the whole Zulu Kaffir race, by which they would, under their own chiefs, be turned to agricultural occupations, affording eventually to Natal a large and immediate supply of labour for the soil, which is all that Natal requires to become the great nucleus of civilization in South Eastern Africa.
On Friday, the 10th of July, 1857, the “Hermes” steamed into Delagoa Bay, known in the history of Eastern Africa as one of the most unhealthy parts of that coast. As we propose investigating the causes of this reported unhealthiness, it will be necessary to describe the bay, and then to examine whether the locality or the visitors are to be most blamed for the great fatality which has taken place amongst those who have visited it.
The Bay of Delagoa, formerly called Formosa Bay, from the security of the anchorage and beauty of the scenery, is a deep inlet of the Indian Ocean, formed by the stream, known in the Atlantic as the Gulf Stream, constantly setting to the southward along the east coast of Africa.
The abrading influence of this current has been arrested in the south part of the bay by the firmer and loftier formation of the country, assisted by the continual deposits brought down to their mouths by the Mapoota and English rivers, which flow into the south side of the bay.
The current having been deflected thus from the mainland, in its easterly set, while returning to the ocean, has formed for itself a channel, by separating a lofty headland from the main and forming of it the island now called Iniack.