ABSTRACT
Querimba Islands, the areas of eastern Africa which lies on the fringes of the formal empire of the Estado da India. Here unofficial Portuguese settlement had taken place, and the captains of Mozambique only had the most precarious authority, exacting an annual rent in kind. The Afro-Portuguese with their slaves made a precarious living from agriculture, protecting themselves within their fortified houses, and trading in ivory and ambergris with the mainland. During the sixteenth century Mozambique Island became one of the most important port-towns of the Estado da India. It was the main stopping place for the naus of the carreira da India and had hospitals, shipyards and a royal fortress which had been begun by João de Castro in 1546. Santos gives the fullest extant description of Mozambique Island as it appeared before the disastrous sieges by the Dutch in 1607 and 1608, which destroyed much of the town.
