These restrictions, while giving evidence of Portugal’s efforts to see that the neutrality of the port was respected, did not satisfy the English authorities.  The latter still alleged that no doubt existed as to the fact that Lorenzo Marques was being used by Boer agents as a recruiting station for the Transvaal forces.  It was asserted that large numbers of “men of military stamp” landed daily at Lorenzo Marques from all parts of Europe, and were allowed to proceed to the Transvaal for the purpose of either actually enlisting with the Boers or working the government mines.  It was alleged, too, that a number of these newcomers were “smart looking men,” evidently officers.  The majority, however, were of a low class, mostly penniless adventurers.  On February 2 the report was made to the English authorities that twenty of the better sort, many wearing riding boots and carrying field glasses, had left Lorenzo Marques for the Transvaal, and as tending to throw suspicion upon the purpose of their journey, a Transvaal detective was “most assiduous” in his attentions to them.[10] The influence of the consul of Holland largely defeated all efforts to stop entirely the imperfect fulfillment of the duties of neutrality incumbent upon the port.

[Footnote 10:  London Times, Weekly Ed., Feb. 5, 1900, p. 84, col. 2.]

At other places any attempts to convey prohibited goods into the Transvaal were summarily stopped.  Arms and ammunition which the Boers attempted to land at Inhambane were seized by the Portuguese customs authorities on the ground that they were consigned under a false description.  The consignment was not a large one and the attempt was evidently made as an experiment.  This incident, too, indicates the extremity to which the Transvaal authorities had been reduced by the increased watchfulness at Lorenzo Marques, for the distance from the port of Inhambane to the Transvaal could be covered only by native carriers and required fourteen days for the trip.  The difficulties in evading the customs surveillance at Lorenzo Marques had also been increased by the fact that most of the steamship companies which had at first employed the Dutch consul as their agent had later relieved him of this duty.  But, notwithstanding the continued protests by England, the Hague Government seemed reluctant to take any official notice of the evident partiality of its consular agent.  With reference to the English protests the Administration took the view that while acting as the representative of the Transvaal and Orange Free State during the war Mr. Pott was only fulfilling the duties incumbent upon him in this triple capacity.