LORENZO MARQUES, or LOURENc0 MARQUES, the chief place, and indeed the only European settlement, in the district of its own name in the Portuguese province of Mozambique in south-eastern Africa, is situated on Delagoa Bay, at the mouth of the Lorenzo Marques or English River, in 25° 58' S. lat. and 32° 30' E. long. At the time of Mr Erskine's visit in 1871 it was a poor place, with narrow streets, fairly good flat-roofed houses, grass huts, decayed forts, and rusty cannon, enclosed by a wall 6 feet high recently erected and protected by bastions at intervals. In 1878 Governor Castelho returned the white population of all the district (whose area is estimated at 210,000 square miles) as 458, and the natives as from 50,000 to 80,000. A commission sent by the Government in 1876 to drain the marshy land near the settlement, to plant the blue gum tree, and to build a hospital and church, only partly accomplished, its task, and other commissions have succeeded it. In 1878-79 a survey was taken for a railway from Lorenzo Marques to the Transvaal (see Bol. da Soc. de C eogr. de Lisboa, 1880), and the completion of this enterprise will make the settlement (which already possesses the best harbour on the African coast between the Cape and Zanzibar) a place of considerable importance. It became a regular port of call for the steamers of the British India Stearn Navigation Company in 1879, and for those of the Donald Currie line in 1880. Since 1879 it is also a station on the telegraph line between Aden and South Africa. Both Germany and England maintain consular agents in the settlement.

See DELAGOA BAY, vol. vii. p. 40 ; and Lobo de Bulhaes, Les Colonies portugaiscs (Lisbon, 1878).