QUILIMANE, or Kilimane (the former being the Portuguese spelling), a Portuguese town on the east coast of Africa, at the head of a district of the province of Mozambique, lies 12 miles inland from the mouth of the river Quilimane or Qua Qua, which, an independent stream during the rest of the year, during the rainy season becomes a deltaic branch of the Zambesi, with which it is connected by Mutu, a cross channel or ditch. The town lies on the north bank of the river at a point where it is still about a mile broad, and as many as fifty coasting vessels may be seen at a time in the harbour. Large steamers are obliged to lie off the river mouth till high tide. Almost all the European merchants live in one long acacia-shaded street or boulevard skirting the river, while the Indian merchants or Banyans occupy another street running at right angles. The natives have their hut-clusters hid among the tropical vegetation which begins at the very end of the street and rapidly passes off into the uninvaded swamp-forest. The whole site is low and unhealthy, and the Portuguese have done next to nothing to improve it. The total population is between 6000 and 7000. Quilimane, at one time the capital of the Arab kingdom of Λngoza, was seized by the Portuguese in the 16th century, and became in the 18th and the early part of the 19th the chief slave mart on the east coast of Africa. In modern times it has been the starting point of several exploring expeditions—notably of Livingstone’s up the Zambesi to Lake Nyassa in 1861.