Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Delagoa Bay

DELAGOA BAY (i.e., in Portuguese, the Bay of the Swampy Land), an inlet on the east coast of South Africa, between 25° 40' and 26° 20' S. lat., with a length from north to south of about 60 miles, and a breadth of about 20. It is protected by a series of islands stretching north from the mainland ; and in spite of a bar at the entrance, and a number of shallows within, it forms a valuable harbour, accessible to large vessels at all seasons of the year. The surrounding country is low and very unhealthy, but the island of Inyak has a height of 240 feet, and is used by the natives as a kind of sanatorium. A river 12 or 18 feet deep, variously known as the Manhissa, the Unkomogazi, or King George s River, enters at the north ; several smaller streams, the Matolla, the Dundas, and the Tembi, from the Lobombo Mountains, meet towards the middle in the estuary called the English River ; and, of greatest import ance of all, the Umzati, which has its head-waters in the Draken Berg of the Transvaal settlement, disembogues in the south. The bay was discovered by the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama in 1498 ; and the Portuguese post of Lorenzo Marques was established not long after to the north of the English River. A Dutch settlement was founded in 1 720 ; but in 1730 it was abandoned. In 1822 Captain Owen, finding that the Portuguese seemed to exercise no jurisdiction to the south of Lorenzo Marques, hoisted the English flag and appropriated the country from the Dundas or English River southwards ; but, when he visited the bay again in the following year, he found the Portuguese governor, Lupe de Cardenas, in posses sion, and expelled him. Between the English and Portuguese Governments the question of possession was left undecided till the claims of the republic of Transvaal brought the subject forward. In 1835 the discontented boers, under Orich, had attempted to form a settlement on the bay; and in 1868 the Transvaalian president, Martin Wessel Petronius, incorporated the country on each side of the Umzati down to the sea. The whole matter in dispute between the three powers was submitted to the arbitration of M. Thiers, the French president ; and on April 19, 1875, his successor Marshal Macmahon declared in favour of the Portuguese. In December 1876 the Lisbon Government sent out an expedition of artizans and military workmen to Lorenzo Marques, with a battery of six guns for the defence of the settlement. See Owen's "Narrative of Voyages," &c., in Journal of Roy. Geogr. Soc. 1833 ; Botelho, Mem. estat. sobre os dominios Portu- guezes na Africa Oriental, 1835 ; Report of the Min. of Marine and the Colonies of Portugal, 1863-64 ; " Baie de Delagoa," in Bulletin de la Société de Géogr. 1873.