With these gentlemen we continued our journey to Beira, stopping at a few places of interest on the way.  The country between Salisbury and Beira is flat and marshy, and was, till the advent of the railway, a veritable Zoological Garden as regards game of all sorts.  The climate is deadly for man and beast, and mortality was high during the construction of the Beira Railway, which connected Rhodesia with an eastern outlet on the sea.  Among uninteresting towns, I think Beira should be placed high on the list; the streets are so deep in sand that carriages are out of the question, and the only means of transport is by small trucks on narrow rails.  As may be imagined, we did not linger there, but went at once on board the German steamer, which duly landed us at Lorenzo Marques forty-eight hours later, after an exceedingly rough voyage.

The following day was Sunday, and having been told there was a service at the English Church at 9.30 a.m., we duly went there at that hour, only to find the church apparently deserted, and not a movement or sound emanating therefrom.  However, on peeping in at one of the windows, we discovered a clergyman most gorgeously apparelled in green and gold, preparing to discourse to a congregation of two persons!  Evidently the residents found the climate too oppressively hot for church that Sunday morning.

In the afternoon we were able to see some portions of that wonderful harbour, of worldwide reputation.  Literally translated, the local name for the same means the “English River,” and it is virtually an arm of the sea, stretching inland like a deep bay, in which three separate good-sized streams find an outlet.  Some few miles up these rivers, we were told, grand shooting was still to be had, the game including hippopotami, rhinoceroses, and buffalo, which roam through fever-stricken swamps of tropical vegetation.  The glories of the vast harbour of Delagoa Bay can better be imagined than described.  In the words of a resident, “It would hold the navies of the world,” and some years back it might have been purchased for L12,000.  With the war just over, people were beginning to realize how trade and development would be facilitated if this great seaport belonged to the British Empire.  A “United Africa” was already looming in the distance, and it required but little imagination on the part of the traveller, calling to mind the short rail journey connecting it with the mining centres of the Transvaal, to determine what a thriving, busy place Lorenzo Marques would then become.  During the day the temperature was tropical, but by evening the atmosphere freshened, and was almost invigorating as the fierce sun sank to rest and its place was taken by a full moon.  From our hotel, standing high on the cliff above the bay, the view was then like fairyland:  an ugly old coal-hulk, a somewhat antiquated Portuguese gunboat, and even the diminutive and unpleasant German steamer which had brought us from Beira, all were tinged with silver and enveloped in romance, to which they could certainly lay no claim in reality.