When we left Natal behind us on the first upward trip I think we all felt like Columbus when he started on his voyage of discovery. The East Coast of Africa was very imperfectly known, and the charts were by no means reliable guides. It was a mercy that in those early days the craft we were navigating were small, and drawing little water, or I fear that there would have been a good few landmarks left by the pioneers. Delagoa Bay, for instance, splendid harbour though it is, was absolutely without a solitary buoy to give a friendly lead, and the land in the immediate vicinity at the entrance is not conspicuous enough to give any definite leading marks. No actual mishap occurred either going in or coming out, but we had enough experience of the various tides to show us that it was no place to take liberties with. Quillemane, which is the port at the mouth of the Zambesi, was also touched at; here again was a river entrance apparently big enough to take in any ship, but there was the same failing--imperfect survey and lack of competent pilotage. Presumably in the future this will be one of the big ports of the world, but at that time it was considered as a place to be avoided at all hazards.
It was a change to get to Mozambique, where there was a harbour with plenty of water, and sufficiently well surveyed to make negotiation easy; it was also a striking-looking place from the sea, with a magnificent old fort built (so report had it) of stone brought from Portugal early in the sixteenth century. The work accomplished by those early navigators and settlers was simply marvellous; it made one wonder why it was that people who had been so enterprising and splendid as explorers should have so terribly deteriorated. May the Gods avert a similar fate for Britain! So far as we could gather the country in the immediate vicinity of the settlement was rich and fertile, but no strong or satisfactory rule had then been established, and the entire place seemed to be marking time.
A strong current sets down the coast past Cape Delgado, but we had fine and favourable weather for the run into Zanzibar. The entrance to the anchorage is narrow in one or two places, but in the absence of buoys the ship could in the daylight be easily conned from aloft between the coral reefs, though that indeed was hardly necessary. But it was not advisable to attempt the narrow passes in the hours of darkness, and consequently the mail steamer bound south usually left before noon. Our first arrival at Zanzibar was on a Sunday, with a temperature of ninety-seven degrees in the shade--not a breath of wind, and the water so clear that the bottom could be seen in ten fathoms. We found H.M.S. _Daphne_ at anchor, and also the B.I. steamer _Punjaub_, which was concerned in the mail contract from Zanzibar northward.