United States or Egypt ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Difficulty at once arose with reference to the right of passage of these troops, military stores, and in fact a full equipment for warlike purposes. There was not much choice of routes. Those through the Transvaal and through Bechuanaland were closed. The only route left was through the port of Beira.
Although Dom Sancho's kingdom only extended from the Minho to the Tagus, in the early years of the thirteenth century the rich provinces of Beira, and still more of Estremadura, were very thinly peopled: the inhabitants lived only in walled towns, and their one occupation was fighting, and plunder almost their only way of gaining a living.
This course necessitated the passage of belligerent troops across two hundred miles of neutral territory controlled by Portugal as territorial sovereign. Beira, situated about four hundred and fifty miles north of Lorenzo Marques, bears nearly the same relation topographically to British Mashonaland and to British Rhodesia that Delagoa Bay does to the Transvaal and the Orange Free State.
Word Of The Day