THE KEY TO SOUTH AFRICA : DELAGOA BAY (1899)

Publisher's green cloth binding with gilt embossed titles to front panel and spine. Bevelled edges.

xvii + 178pp + 16pp (catalogue). Frontispiece of Rhodes + 11 plates.

Solid binding. Clean pages.

This book IS in fact in Mendelssohn. Volume I pages 781-782

'A comprehensive and detailed account of Lorenco Marquez and Delagoa Bay up to 1898-9. The author seems to have been imbued with the idea that the British would eventually take possession of the port and its surroundings, but no mention is made of the fact that Lord Kimberley declined to purchase the Bay for £12,000, preferring to leave the matter of deciding its ownership to arbitration, which resulted in the maintenance of the Portuguese claims. In a chapter on the early history of the place, it is stated that the town was called Lorenco Marquez after an explorer, whose name was given to the Umbelosi River; later on, however, the older name, "Bahia da Lagoa," was resumed, by which the Bay has been known ever since. The town and harbour are carefully and minutely described, the Portuguese officials coming in for grave censure on account of their apathy and carelessness, of which many instances are related. It is stated that the Lisbon authorities send all their "ne'er-do-wells" to their colonies, which would account for the wretched way in which public matters are managed. In spite, however, of these and other disadvantages, the town appears to have steadily progressed, and, according to the Consular Report of 1897, the death-rate, which at one time was estimated at one-fifth of the population, "will," it is maintained, "soon compare favourably with Durban.'