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LIBRARY 


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ANCIENT TOMB AT TONGO-NI. 


ZANZIBAR; 


seen | 


CITY, ISLAND, AND COAST. 


BY 


RICHARD F. BURTON. 


IN TWO VOLUMES. 
VOL, 'T. 


LONDON : 
TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18, CATHERINE ST., STRAND. 
1872. 
[All Rights reserved.) 


a . “— ie “, 
STAD a be 


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Pera die 
(O0I00N C106 €: 
COLUM EOC ON NG a 


MCZ LIBRARY j 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY, 
CAMBRIDGE. MA USA 


TO 


THE MEMORY OF MY OLD AND LAMENTED FRIEND, 


—— Gobn Frederich Steinhaeuser 


; (F.R.C.S., ETC. ETC., STAFF SURGEON, BOMBAY ARMY), 
a THIS NARRATIVE OF A JOURNEY, 
IN WHICH FATE PREVENTED HIS TAKING PART, 
ee Is INSCRIBED 


in ; ; 
WITH THE DEEPEST FEELINGS OF AFFECTION AND REGRET. 


op 
+ 


CONTENTS OF VOL. I. 


CHAPTER I. 
PAGE 
PREPARATORY are oe ie “s- Poe aN ae oie 1 
CHAPTER II. 
ARRIVAL AT ZANZIBAR ISLAND ae #: ee “ti ar PAO 
CHAPTER III. 
HOW THE NILE QUESTION STOOD IN THE YEAR OF GRACE 1856 Sn oS 
CHAPTER IV. 
A STROLL THROUGH ZANZIBAR CITY . : 8 a aye Bae ea i: 
CHAPTER V. 
GEOGRAPHICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL . 2 fe af ae ae 22 
SEcT. I. AFRICA, EAST AND WEST—‘ ZANZIBAR’ EXPLAINED—MENOU- 
THIAS—POSITION AND FORMATION—THE EAST AFRICAN CUR- 
RENT—NAVIGATION—ASPECT OF THE ISLAND Py Ke EG 
Il. METEOROLOGICAL NOTES—THE DOUBLE SEASONS, &c. .. 150 
TIT. CLIMATE CONTINUED—NOTES ON THE NOSOLOGY OF ZANZIBAR 
—EFFECTS ON STRANGERS .. o | e: os aw 176 
IV. NOTES ON THE FAUNA OF ZANZIBAR. . ¥ a Pate: 
V. NOTES ON THE FLORA OF ZANZIBAR |. a J i, GES 


VI. THE INDUSTRY OF ZANZIBAR, . gs wt i+ ~» (262 


CONTENTS. 


vill 


CHAPTER VI. 


VISIT TO THE PRINCE SAYYID MAJID.—THE GOVERNMENT OF ZAN- 

ZIBAR .. 403 ae Fe so a a . ig 
CHAPTER VII. 

A CHRONICLE OF ZANZIBAR.—THE CAREER OF THE LATE IMAM,’ 

SAYYID SAID Re th oe Be 
CHAPTER VIII. 


ETHNOLOGY OF ZANZIBAR.—THE FOREIGN RESIDENTS aS ~» BIZ 


CHAPTER IX. hr 


HORSEFLESH AT ZANZIBAR.—THE OUTSKIRTS OF THE CITY, AND . peed 
THE CLOVE PLANTATIONS 53 ty oa 5 she . eae See |.’ 


| “et 

CHAPTER X. he 
ETHNOLOGY OF ZANZIBAR._THE ARABS .. .... ss 96B 
d ‘ ys “» le by t 

’ i a 
CHAPTER XI. ee 
ETHNOLOGY OF ZANZIBAR. —THE WASAWAHILI AND THE SLAVE; 
RAGHS* 1. Sela Ue RRR late a 
ei 
CHAPTER XII, oe 


PREPARATIONS FOR DEPARTURE 


APPENDIX. yak 


THE UKARA OR UKEREWE LAKE 


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PREFACE. 


_—_——_——_ 


I reEL that the reader will expect some allusion to 
the circumstances which have delayed, till 1871, the 
publication of a journal ready to appear in 1860. The 
following letter will explain the recovery of a long report, 
forwarded by me in 1857, under an address, very legibly 
written in ink, upon its cover, to the late Dr Norton 
Shaw, then Secretary Royal Geographical Society of 


Great Britain. 


‘No. 9, of 1865. 
‘ General Department, — 
Bombay Castle, 28th February, 1865. 


S The Under Secretary of State for India, 
London. 
‘Pir; ‘ 
With reference to the packet ad- 
dressed, as per margin, which was 
No. 9, A. sent to you via Southampton from 


The Secretary the Separate Department, by the 
R. Geog. Society, Overland Mail of the 14th instant, 
Whitehall Place, I have the honour to subjoin for 

London. your information copy of a note on 
the subject from the Hon. W. E, 
Frere, dated the 5th idem. 


x PREFACE. 


‘When searching the strong box belonging to the 
Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society yesterday I 
found the accompanying parcel, directed to the Secretary 
Royal Geographical Society, with a pencil note upon it, 
requesting that it might be sent to the Secretary of State, 
Foreign Office. From the signature in the corner, R. F. 
B., I conclude that it must be the manuscript he sent to 
Colonel Rigby at Zanzibar, and which, from some state- 
ments of Mr Burton (to which [I cannot at present refer, 
but of which I have a clear recollection), never reached its 
destination." 

‘I have not been able to discover when or how the 
parcel was received, nor how the Bombay Branch of 
the Royal Asiatic Society was to send it to the Foreign 
Office, except through Government. I therefore send it to 
you, and perhaps you would send it to the Under Secretary 
at the India House, with the above explanation, and re- 
quest that it be sent to its direction. 

I have, &e., 
(Signed) C. RAVENSCROFT, 
Acting Chief Secretary to Government.’ 


* * * * 


It is not a little curious that, as my first report upon 


the subject of Zanzibar was diverted from its destination, 


' Mr Frere’s memory is unusually short. I intrusted the MS. to 
the Eurasian apothecary of the Zanzibar Consulate, and I suspected 
(Lake Regions of Central Africa, vol. 1. chap. i.) that it had come to an 
untimely end. The white population at Zanzibar had in those days 
a great horror of publication, and thus is easily explained how a 
parcel legibly addressed to the Royal Geographical Society had the 
honour of passing eight years in the strong box of the ‘ Bombay 
Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society,’ 


PREFACE. xi 


so the ‘ Letts’ containing my excursions to Sa’adani and 
to Kilwa also came to temporary grief. Annexed by a 
skipper on the West African coast, appropriated by his 
widow, and exposed at a London bookseller’s stall (label- 
led outside, ‘ Burton Original MS. Diary in Africa’), it was 
accidentally left by the buyer, an English Artillery 
officer, in the hall of one of H. M.’s Ministers of State. 
Here being recognized, it was kindly and courteously re- * 
turned to me. The meteorological observations made by 
me on the East African seaboard and at other places dur- 
ing the discovery of the Lakes were also, I would re- 
mark, mislaid for years, deep hidden in certain pigeon- 
holes at Whitehall Place. May these three accidents be 
typical of the fate of my East African Expedition, which, 
so long the victim of uncontrollable circumstance, appears 
now, after many weary years, likely to emerge from the 
shadow which overcast it, and to occupy the position 
which I ever desired to see it conquer. 

The two old documents are published with the 
less compunction as Zanzibar, though increasing in im- 
portance and now the head-quarters of an Admiralty 
Court and of two Mission-Schools, with a printing-press 
and other civilized appliances, has not of late been worked 
out. The best authorities are still those who appeared 
about a quarter of a century ago, always excepting, how- 
ever, the four magnificent volumes, Baron Carl Clare von 
der Decken’s Reisen in Ost-Afrika, in den Jahren 1859 
bis 1861, which I first saw at Jerusalem: there too I had 
the pleasure of making acquaintance with Dr Otto Kersten, 
who accompanied the unfortunate traveller during the 


xil PREFACE. 


earlier portion of his peregrinations, and who has so ably 
and efficiently performed his part as editor. Had a cer- 
tain publisher carried out his expressed intention of intro- 
ducing a resumé of this fine work in English dress to the 
British public, I should have saved myself the trouble 
of writing these volumes: the Reisen, however, in the 
original form are hardly likely to become popular. More- 
over, the long interval of a decade has borne fruit: it has 
given me time to work out the subject, and, better still, to 
write with calmness and temper upon a theme of the most 
temper-trying nature, — chap. xu. vol. II. will explain 
what is meant. Finally, I have something important to 
say upon the subject of the so-called Victoria Nyanza 
Lake. 

I had proposed to enrich the Appendix with extracts 
from Arab and other medizval authors, who have treated 
of Zanzibar, Island and Coast. Such an addition, however, 
would destroy all proportion between the book and its 
subject: I have therefore confined myself to notes on com- 
merce and tariffs of prices in 1857 to 1859, to meteorolo- 
gical observations, and to Capt. Smee’s coasting voyage, 
which dates from January, 1811. The latter will supply 
an excellent birds-eye view of those parts of the Zanzibar 
mainland which were not visited by the Hast African Ex- 


pedition. 


RicHarp F. Burton, 


London, Oct. 15, 1871. 


Fr. Joso DE SANT’ ANGELO. - 
¢ 


finitely less than we do of the shores of the Icy Sea. 


Si ignarus mordax, utere dente tuo.’ 


in 


ZANZIBAR. 
PART I. 


‘Si fueris sapiens, sapientibus utere factis, 


THE CITY AND THE ISLAND. 


BAY GEOG. Soc., vol. 


‘Of a territory within a fortnight’s sail of us, we scarcely know more than we do of 


much of Central Africa, 
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( ISLAND & COAST ) 


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— English Mile's 
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London, Tinsley Brothers. 


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+ 


ZANZIBAR. 


CHAPTER I. 
PREPARATIONS FOR DEPARTURE. 


‘We were now landed upon the Continent of Africa, the 
most desolate, desert, and inhospitable country in the world, 
even Greenland and Nova Zembla itself not excepted. —DErFoE. 


I couLD not have believed, before Experience 
taught me, how sad and solemn is the moment 
when a man sits down to think over and to 
write out the tale of what was before the last De- 
cade began. How many thoughts and memories 
crowd upon the mind! How many ghosts and 
phantoms start up from the brain—the shreds of 
hopes destroyed and of aims made futile; of 
ends accomplished and of prizes won; the fail- 
ures and the successes alike half forgotten! 
How many loves and friendships have waxed cold 


in the presence of new ties! How many graves 
VOL. I. 1 


2 JOIN THE BASHI BUZUKS. 


have closed over their dead during those short 
ten years—that epitome of the past ! 


‘And when the lesson strikes the head, 
The weary heart grows cold.’ 


The result of a skirmish with the Somal of 
Berberah (April 19, 1855) was, in my case, a visit 
‘on sick leave’ to England. Arrived there, I 
lost no time in recovering health, and in volun- 
teering for active Crimean service. The cam- 
paign, however, was but too advanced; all 
‘appointments’ at head-quarters had been filled 
up; and new comers, such as I was, could look 
only to the ‘ Bashi Buzuks,’ or to the ‘ Turkish 
Contingent.’ 

My choice was readily made. There was, 
indeed, no comparison between serving under 
Major-General W. F. Beatson, an experienced 
Light-Cavalry man who had seen rough work in 
the saddle from Spain to Eastern Hindustan ; and 
under an individual, half-civilian, half-reformed 
Adjutant-General, whose specialty was, and ever 
had been, foolscap—titerally and metaphorically. 

In due time I found myself at the Dar- 
danelles, Chief of Staff in that thoroughly well- 
abused corps, the Bashi Buzuks. It were ‘ ac- 
tum agere’ to inflict upon the reader a réchauffe 


“AT ee 


THE BASHI BUZUKS IN THE CRIMEA. 3 


of our troubles,—how the military world de- 
clared us to be a band of banditti, an irreclaim- 
able savagery; how a man, who then called 
himself H. B. M.’s Consul—but who has long 
since incurred the just consequences of his 
misconduct—packed the press, because General 
Beatson had refused him a lucrative contract; 
how we awoke one fine morning to find our- 
selves in a famous state of siege and blockade, 
with Turkish muskets on the land side, and 
with British carronades on the water-front ; and 
how finally we, far more sinned against than 
sinning, were reported by Mr Consul Calvert 
to Constantinople as being in a furor of mutiny, : 
intent upon battle and murder and sudden 
death. These things, and many other too per- 
sonal for this occasion, will fit better into an 
autobiography. 

The way, however, in which I ‘came to 
grief’ (permit me the phrase) deserves present 
and instant record: it is an admirable comment 
upon the now universally accepted axiom, ‘ sur- 
tout, pas de zéle,’ and upon the Citizen-king’s 
warning words, ‘Surtout, ne me faites pas des 
affaires.’ 

The Bashi Buzuks, some 3000 sabres, almost 
all well mounted and better armed, were pertin- 


4 VOLUNTEER FOR KARS. 


aciously kept pitched on a bare hill-side, far 
from the scene of action and close to the Dar- 
danelles country town, that gay and lively Turk- 
ish Coventry, at the Hellespont-mouth. In an 
evil hour I proposed, if my General, who wanted 
nothing better, would allow me, to proceed in 
person to Constantinople and to volunteer offici- 
ally for the relief of the doomed city, Kars. 

Ah, Corydon, Corydon, que te dementia cepit ? 

And I did proceed to Stamb’ul; and I did 
volunteer; and a neat hit, indeed, was that same 
public-spirited proceeding ! 

It would be a lively imagination that could 
conceive the scene of storm which resulted from 
my brazen-faced procedure. The picture has its 
comic side when looked back upon through the 
mellowing medium of three long lustres. The 
hopeful eagerness of the volunteer; the ‘ proper 
pride’ in one’s corps, that had come forward for 
an honourable action; the fluent proof that we 
could convoy rations enough for the gallant and 
deserted Ottoman garrison, diplomatically left 
for months to slow death by starvation; and— 
the blank and stunned surprise at the hurricane 
of wrath which burst from the high authority to 
whose ambassadorial ear the project was en- 
trusted. | 


RENEW EXPLORATION OF AFRICA. 5 


Reported home as a ‘brouillon’ and turbu- 
lent, I again turned lovingly towards Africa— 
Central and Intertropical—and on April 19, 
1856, I resolved to renew my original design of 
reaching the unknown regions, and of striking 
the Nile-sources via the Eastern coast. For 
long ages, I knew, explorers had been working, 
literally, as well as figuratively, agamst the 
stream; and, as the ancients had succeeded by a 
flank march, so the same might be done by us 
moderns. My Ptolemy told me the tale in very 
plain and emphatic terms, and although his 
shore-line shows great inaccuracies, his tra- 
ditions of the interior, derived from mariners of 
Tyre and from older writers, appeared far more 
reliable :—- 

‘He (sei. the Tyrian) says that a certain Dio- 
genes, one of those sailing to India, ... having 
the Troglyditic region on the right, after 25 days 
reached the Lakes whence the Nilus flows, and 
of which the Promontory of the Rhapta is a little 
more to the south.’? 

Amongst my scanty literary belongings on 


1 Georg. lib. i. ix. The concluding words are oy gor 70 
trav ‘Parrwr akporhoiov dduy® vorwreoov. There is no reason 
why Bilibaldus Pirkimerus (Bilibaldi Pirckeymher), Lugd. 
1535, should render it, ‘quibus Rhaptum promontorium paulu- 
lum est Australius.’ 


6 MOTIVES FOR EXPLORING AFRICA. 


our march to the Tanganyika Lake was a paper 
(De Azania Africee littore Orientali, Commen- 
tatio Physiologica, Bonviee, Formis Caroli Gen- 
gil, MDCCCLII.) kindly sent to me by the author, 
Mr George F. de Bunsen. It quoted that same 
passage which was a frequent solace to me 
during our 18 months’ wanderings, and I still 
preserve the pamphlet as a memory. 
Nor had I forgotten Camoens :-— 
‘ And there behold the lakes wherein the Nile 

is born, a truth the ancients never knew ; 

see how he bathes, ’gendering the crocodile, 

th’ Abassian land, where man to Christ is true: 

behold, how lacking ramparts (novel style!) 

he fights heroic battle with the foe. 

see Meroe, island erst of ancient fame, 


Noba amongst the peoples now its name.’ ! 
Lusiad, Canto x. 95. 


1 When the Portuguese counselled the Abyssinians to wall 
their settlements against the Gallas, the former replied like 
Spartans, ‘No; we keep stones to build churches and temples, 
but we defend our country with our arms and hands!’ The 
Coptic ‘Nob’ signifies gold (Ritter Erdkunde, French transla- 
tion, 142), the Camoensian ‘ Noba’ is therefore more correct 
than our modern Nubia, which we find in the monk Burchard 
(a.p. 1250), ‘ Athiopia que hodie Nubia dicitur.’ De Barros 
(1. iii. xii.) prefers ‘a gente dos Nobis.’ I have been tempted 
to add a stanza which is not translated from Camoens. 

95 (a) 
And see the twain from Albion’s chalky shore 
go forth th’ Egyptian mystic veil to rend: 
the farthest font of Nilus they explore, 


THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY. 7 


This is happier and truer to antiquity than 
the doubts of José Basilio da Gama :— 


‘the sombre range 
Virginal, ne’er by foot of man profaned, 
Where rise Nile’s fountains, if such fountains be.’ 
O Uruguay, Canto v. 

I consulted my excellent friend the late Dr 
Barth, of Timbuktu, about followimg the foot- 
steps of pilot Diogenes the Fortunate. He re- 
plied in a kind and encouraging letter, hinting, 
however, that no prudent man would pledge 
himself to discover the Nile sources. The Royal 
Geographical Society benevolently listened once 
more to my desire of penetrating into the heart 
of the Dark Continent. An Expeditionary Com- 
mittee was formed by Sir Roderick I. Murchison, 
the late Rear-admiral Beechey (then President 
of the Society), Colonel Sykes, Chairman of the 
Court of Directors of the Hon. East Indian 
Company, Mr Monckton Milnes (Lord Hough- 
ton), Mr Francis Galton, the South African tra- 
veller, and Mr John Arrowsmith. I did not 
hear, strange to say, till many years had passed, 

those mighty waters whence the rivers trend, 
then, O dire Chance! O Fortune hard and sore! 
of all their fatal labours view the end— 


that lies self-victimed in his natal land, 
this lives afar on friendless foreign strand.’ 


8  DESPATCHED TO EQUATORIAL AFRICA. 


of the active part which Vice-admiral Sir George 
Back, the veteran explorer of the Arctic regions, 
had taken in urging the expedition, and in pro- 
posing me as its head. Had it been otherwise, 
this recognition of his kindness would not have 
come so tardily. | 


The Committee obtained from Lord Claren- — 


don, then H. M.’s Secretary of State for Foreign 
Affairs, the sum of £1000, and it was under- 
stood that the same amount would be advanced 
by the then rulin& Court of Directors. Unfor- 


tunately it was found wanting. I received, how- — 


ever, on Sept. 13, 1856, formal permission, ‘ in 
compliance with the request of the Royal Geo- 
graphical Society, to be absent from duty as a 
regimental officer under the patronage of H. B. 
Majesty’s Government, to be despatched into 
Equatorial Africa, for a period not exceeding two 
years, calculated from the date of departure from 
Bombay, upon the pay and allowances of my 
rank.’ So wrote the Merchant-Sultans. 

I was anxious again to take Lieut. John 


Hanning Speke, because he had suffered with me’ 


in purse and person at Berberah, and because 
he, like the rest of the party, could obtain no 
redress. Our misfortunes came directly from 
Aden, indirectly from England. I had pro- 


DIFFICULTIES AND OBSTACLES. 9 


posed to build a fort at Berberah, and to buy all 
the non-Ottoman ports on the western shores of 
the Red Sea for the trifle of £10,000. In those 
days of fierce outcry against ‘territorial aggran- 
disement’ the Court of Directors looked with 
horror at such a firebrand proposal, and they 
were lost in wonder that a subaltern officer 
should dare to prepare for the Suez Canal, which 
Lord Palmerston and Mr Robert Stephenson 
had declared to be impracticable. Therefore the 
late Dr Buist, editor of the Bombay Times, had 
his orders to write down the ‘ Somali Expedition.’ 
He was ably assisted by a certain Reverend 
gentleman, then chaplain at Aden, who had gained 
for himself the honourable epithet of Shaytan 
Abyaz, or White Devil, while the apathy of the 
highest political authority—the Resident at Aden, 
Brigadier Coghlan—and the active jealousy of his 
assistant, Captain Playfair, also contributed to 
thwart all my views, and to bring about, more or 
less directly, the bloody disaster which befell us at 
Berberah. For this we had no redress. The Right 
Honourable the Governor-General of India, the 
late Lord Dalhousie, of pernicious memory, 
thought more of using our injuries to cut off the 
slave-trade than of doing us justice, although 
justice might easily have been done. After keep- 


10 LIEUT. SPEKE. 


ing us waiting from April 28, 1855, to June 18, 
1857, the spoliator of Oude was pleased to inform 
us, laconically and disdaining explanation, that 
he ‘ could not accede to the application.’ ? 

Nothing could persuade the Court of Di- 
rectors to dispense with the services of Lieut. 
Speke, who had, like myself, volunteered for the 
Crimea, and who, at the end of the War, had re- 
solved to travel for the rest of his leave. I per- 
suaded him to accompany me as far as Bombay, 
trusting that the just and generous Governor, 
the late Lord Elphinstone, who had ever warmly 
supported my projects, and that my lamented 
friend James Grant Lumsden, then Member of 
Council, would enable us, despite official oppos- 
ition at home, to tide over all obstacles. 

I have been prolix upon these points, which 
suggest that the difficulty of reaching the Lunar 
Mountains, or the ‘ Invisos Fontes,’ were in Lon- 
don, not in Africa; that the main obstacles were 


1 The losses of the Somali expedition (not including those 
of the Arab and Somali attendants) were as follows :— 


Lt. Stroyan, I.N. (killed), lost Co.’s Rupees . . 1750 
Lt. Speke (wounded) do. o> a ee. 
Lt. Burton (do.). do. . ee 
Lt. Herne do. . sane 
Shaykh Ahmed do. a 


Total, Company’s Rupees 8420 


ANGLO-INDIAN MISMANAGEMENT. 1] 


not savages and malaria, but civilized rivalry and 
vis inertiz; and that the requisites for success 
were time, means, and freedom from official 
trammels. Hardly had we reached Cairo (Nov. 
6, 1856), and had inspected an expedition fitted 
out by H.H. the late Abbas Pasha, and admira- 
bly organized by the late Marie Joseph Henri 
Leonie de Lauture, Marquis d’Escayrac (gen- 
erally known as Comte d’Escayar de Lauture), 
when an order from the Court of Directors 
summoned me back to give evidence at some 
wretched Court-martial pending on Colonel A. 
Shirley. The document being so worded that it 
could not be obeyed, we—Lieut. Speke and I— 
held on our way. 

And even when outward bound, I again 
got into trouble, without bemg able, as was 
said of Lord Gough, to get out again. A short 
stay at Suez, and the voyage down the Red 
Sea, taught me enough of Anglo-Indian mis- 
management and of Arab temper, to foresee 
some terrible disaster. Again that zeal! In- 
stead of reporting all things couleur de rose, I 
sent under flying seal, through the Royal Geo- 
graphical Society, with whom I directly corre- 
sponded, a long memorandum, showing the true 
state of affairs, for transmission to the home 


12 CENSURED FROM HOME. 


branch of the Indian Government. This ‘med- 
dling in politics’ was ‘viewed with displeasure 
by Government,’ and reminded me of the old 
saying— 

‘Wha mells wi’ what anither does, 

May e’en gang hame and shoe his goose.’ 

The result was a ‘ wig’ received in the heart 
of Africa, and—curious coincidence !—accom- 
panying that sheet of foolscap was a newspaper 
containing news of the Jeddah massacre (June 
15, 1858), and of our farcical revenge for the 
deaths of Messrs Page, Eveillard, and some four- 
teen souls, nearly the whole Christian colony.’ 
It need hardly be mentioned that this catastrophe 
showed the way to others, especially to the three 
days ‘Tausheh’ of Damascus in 1860. 

Fortune had now worked her little worst. 
We had a pleasant passage to Bombay (Nov. 
23, 1856), where affairs assumed a brighter as- 
pect, as we began preparing for the long explor- 
ation. Lord Elphinstone, after an especial re- 
quisition, allowed Lieut. Speke to accompany me. 
He also kindly ordered the Hon. East India 
Company’s sloop of war Elphinstone, Captain 

1 T could not resist the temptation of printing ‘ wig’ and 


newspaper paragraph side by side in the Appendix (ii. 428) to 
my ‘ Lake Regions of Central Africa.’ 


DR J. F. STEINHAEUSER. 13 


Frushard, I.N., to convoy us, knowing how much 
importance Orientals attach to appearances— 
especially to first appearances. My ‘father’ 
Frushard gained nothing by the voyage but the 
loss of his pay ; therefore is my gratitude to him 
the greater. Nor must I forget to record the 
obliging aid of Mr, now Sir Henry L. Anderson, 
Secretary to the Government of Bombay; he 
enabled us to borrow from the public stores a 
chronometer, surveying instruments, and other 
necessaries. 

Judging that a medical officer would be use- 
ful, not only to the members of the expedition, 
but would also prove valuable in lands where the 
art of healing is not held destructive, and where 
Medici are not called ‘ Caucifici et Sanicidee,’ 
Lord Elphinstone also detached the late Dr J. 
F. Steinhaeuser, then staff-surgeon, to accompany 
us. Unfortunately the order came too late. No 
merchantman happened then to be leaving Aden 
for Zanzibar, and during the south-west mon- 
soon native craft will not attempt the perilous 
passage. Nothing daunted, my old and tried 
friend crossed the Straits to Berberah, with the 
gallant project of marching down country to join 
us in the south; nor did he desist till it became 
evident, from his slow rate of progress, that he 


14 LOSS OF DR STEINHAEUSER. 


could not make Zanzibar in time. The journey 
through the North-eastern horn of Africa would 
alone have given a title to Fame. Its danger 
and difficulty were subsequently proved (October 
2, 1865) by the wounding of Baron Theodore von 
Heughlin and by the murder of Baron von der 
Decken, Dr Link, and others of his party.’ 

The absence of Dr Steinhaeuser lost the Hast 
African Expedition more than can be succinctly 
told. A favourite with ‘ natives’ wherever he 
went, a tried traveller, a man of literary tastes 
and of extensive reading, and better still, a spirit 
as staunch and determined as ever attempted 
desperate enterprise,—he would doubtless have 
materially furthered our views, and in all human 
probability Lieut. Speke would have escaped 
deafness and fever-blight, I paralysis and its con- 
sequent invalidism. We afterwards wandered 
together over the United States, and it is my 
comfort, now that he also is gone, to think that 
no unkind thought, much less an unfriendly 
word, ever broke our fair companionship. His 

' Proceedings Royal Geographical Society, May 5, 1866. 
The lamented travellers’ notes have now (1869—70) being pub- 
lished under the title of ‘ Baron Carl Claus von der Decken’s 
Reisen in Ost-Afrika in den Jahren 1859 bis 1861. Bearbeitet 


von Otto Kersten (who accompanied the first expedition). 
London. Asher.’ 


TESTIMONIES TO HIS WORTH. 15 


memory is doubly dear to me. He was one of 
the very few who, through evil as well as through 
good report, disdained to abate an iota of his 
friendship, and whose regard was never warmer 
than when all the little world looked its coldest. 
After long years of service in pestilential Aden, 
the ‘Coal-hole of the East,’ he died suddenly of 
apoplexy at Berne, when crossing Switzerland 
to revisit his native land. At that time I was 
wandering about the Brazil, and I well remem- 
ber dreaming, on what proved to be the date of 
his death, that a tooth suddenly fell to the 
sround, followed by a crash of blood. Such a 
friend, indeed, becomes part of oneself. I still 
feel a pang as my hand traces these lines. 


NOTE. 


‘The Bashi Bazuks, commanded by General Beatson, were 
displaying all the violence and rapacity of their class, little, if 
at all, restrained by the presence of their English officers.’ 
Thus writes Mr John William Kaye in ‘ Our Indian Heroes’ 
(Good Words, June, 1851), for the greater glorification of a 
certain General Neill, whose principal act of heroism was to 
arrest a ‘ Jack-in-Office Station Master.’ Mr Kaye is essenti- 
ally an official writer, but even officia] inspiration should not 
be allowed directly to misstate fact. 


CHAPTER II. 
ARRIVAL AT ZANZIBAR ISLAND. 


‘There is probably no part of the world where the English 
Government has so long had a Resident, where there are always 
some half-a-dozen merchants and planters, of which we know so 
little as of the capital and part of the kingdom of one of the 
most faithful of our allies, with whom we have for half a cen- 
tury (since 1804) been on terms of intimacy.’—TRANSACTIONS 
BompBay Geroa. Soc., 1856. 


On December 2, 1856—fourteen long years 
ago!—we bade adieu to the foul harbour of 
Bombay the Beautiful, with but a single sigh. 
The warm-hearted Mr Lumsden saw us on board, 
wrung our hands with friendly vigour, and bade 
us go in and win—deserve success if we could 
not command it. No phantom of the future cast 
a shadow upon our sunny path as we set out, 
determined either to do or die. I find my jour- 
nal brimful of enthusiasm. ‘ Of the gladdest | 
moments in human life, methinks, is the de- 
parture upon a distant journey into unknown 


A JOURNEY! 17 


lands. Shaking off with one mighty effort the fet- 
ters of Habit, the leaden weight of Routine, the 
cloak of many Cares and the slavery of Home, 
man feels once more happy. The blood flows 
with the fast circulation of childhood. Excite- 
ment lends unwonted vigour to the muscles, and 
the sudden sense of freedom adds a cubit to the 
mental stature. Afresh dawns the morn of life; 
again the bright world is beautiful to the eye, 
and the glorious face of nature gladdens the 
soul. A journey, in fact, appeals to Imagination, 
to Memory, to Hope,—the three sister Graces of 
our moral being.’ ’ 

The 185 days spent in sailing 2400 direct 
miles ‘far o’er the red equator’ were short for 
our occupations. I read all that had been 
written upon the subject of Zanzibar, from 
Messer Marco Miglione to the learned Vincent, 
who always suspected either the existence or the 
place of the absurd ‘ Maravi Lake.’ We rubbed 
up our acquaintance with the sextant and the alti- 
tude and azimuth; and we registered barometer 
and thermometer, so as to have a base for observ- 
ations ashore. The nearest reference point of 
known pressure to Zanzibar was then Aden, dis- 


1 Somewhat boisterous, but true. (Note 14 years after- 


wards.) 
VOL. I, 2 


18 ‘FATHER FRUSHARD’ 


tant above 1000 miles. Under all circumstances 
the distance was undesirable ; moreover, violent 
squalls between the Persian Gulf and Cape 
Guardafui sometimes depress the mercury half 
an inch. I shall again refer to this point in 
Chapter V. 

‘Father Frushard’ was genial, as usual, and 
under his command every soul was happy. We 
ereatly enjoyed the order, coolness, and cleanli- 
ness of a ship of war, after the confusion, the 
caloric, and the manifold impurities of a Red Sea 
passenger-packet. Here were no rattling, heav- 
ing throbs, making you tremulous as a jelly 
in the Caniculi; no coal-smoke, intrusive as 
on a German LHisen-bahn; no thirst-maddened 
(cock-) ‘roaches’ exploring the entrance to man’s 
stomach; no cabins rank with sulphuretted hy- 
drogen; no decks whereon pallid and jaundiced 
passengers shake convulsed shoulders as they 
rush to and from the bulwarks and the taffrail. 
Also no ‘ starboard and larboard exclusiveness’ ; 
of flirting abigails tending portly and majestic 
dames, who look crooked beyond the salvation- 
pale of their own very small ‘set’; no peppery 
civilians rubbing skirts against heedless ‘ grif- 
fins’; nor fair lips maltreating the ‘ hapless letter 
1’; nor officers singing lullabies to their etiol- 


OUR LANDFALL. 19 


ated enfants terribles, and lacking but one little 
dispensation of nature—concerning which Hum- 
boldt treats—to become the best of wet-nurses. 
The ‘ Elphinstone’ belonged not to the category 
‘Shippe of Helle,’ one of whose squadron I have 
described in an old voyage to a certain ‘ Un- 
happy Valley.’ We would willingly have pro- 
longed our cruise with the jovial captain, and 
with the good fellows and gallant gentlemen in 
the gun-room, over many and many a league of 
waves. 

Of course we had no adventures. We saw 
neither pirate nor slaver. The tract seemed de- 
sert of human life ; in fact, nothing met our eyes 
but flying-fish at sea, gulls and gannets near 
shore. The stiff N. Hast trade never quite failed 
us, even when crossing the Line, and the Dol- 
drums hardly visited us with a tornado or two— 
mere off-shore squalls. The good old heart of 
teak, then aged 33 years, made an average of 150, 
and an exceptional run of 200 knots, in 24 hours. 
This was indeed ‘ gay sailing on the bosom of the 
Indian Sea.’ After 16 days (Dec. 18), before the 
solar lamp had been removed, our landfall, a 
long, low strip at first sky-blue and distance- 
blurred, had turned purple, and had robed itself 
in green and gold, with a pomp and a glory of 


20 PEMBA. 


vegetation then new to us. This was Pemba, 
one of the three continental islands composing 
the Zanzibarian archipelago: the Arabs call it 
Jazirat el Khazra (Green Island), and no wonder ! 
Verdant and fresh enough must this huge con- 
servatory, this little and even richer Zanzibar, 
appear to their half-closed ‘ peepers,’ dazed and 
seared by the steely skies and brazen grounds of 
Manga’ (Arabia generally) and Maskat (Mus- - 
cat), and by the dreadful glare and ‘damnable 
blue’ of the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. 
We are soon to visit this emerald isle, therefore 
no more of it at present. 

All had hoped to run in that night, but Fate 
or our evil deeds in the last life otherwise deter- 
mined. ‘The wind fell with the sun, and during 
the five minutes of crepuscule we anchored in 
the sandy bay-strand under Tumbatu Island, 
S.W. of Point Nunguwi (Owen’s Nangowy), the 
north cape of its big insular brother, Zanzibar. 
Like the items of this archipelago generally, it 
is a long cairn-shaped reef of coralline, with its 
greater length disposed N.S. This well-known 
norm of great peninsulas has been explained by 


! Literally rock, rocky ground. Hence the Arabs are called 
Wamanga. Mr Cooley (‘Inner Africa Laid Open,’ p. 61) 
blunders pitiably about this word. 


TUMBATU. 21 


a sudden change in the earth’s centre of gravity, 
which caused the waters to rush furiously from 
the northern hemisphere towards the south pole. 
As usual, the burning suns, the tepid winds, the 
sopping dews, and the copious rains clothe the 
thin soil with an impervious coat of verdure, 
overhanging the salt-waters, and boasting a culti- 
vation that would make spring in green Erin look 
by its side autumn—rusty and yellow-brown. 
We landed, and curiously inspected the 
people of Tumbatu, for we were now beyond 
Semitico-Abyssinian centres, and we stood in the 
presence of another and a new race. They are 
called by the Omani Arabs Makhadim—helots 
or serviles—and there is nothing free about them 
save their morals. Suspicious and fearful, nu- 
merous and prolific, poor and ill-favoured, they 
show all the advantages and the disadvantages of 
an almost exclusive ichthyophagism. Skilful in 
divination, especially by Bao or geomancy, they 
have retained, despite El Islam, curious prac- 
tices palpably derived from their wild ancestry 
of the Blackmoor shore. They repair, for the pur- 
pose of ‘clear-seeing,’ to a kind of Trophonius 
cave, spend the night in attack of inspiration, 
and come forth in the morning ‘ Agelasti, mesti, 
cogitabundi.’ Similarly the Nas-Amun (Nasa- 


22 SPIRITUALISM. 


mone) slept, for insight into futurity, upon their 
ancestral graves. The wild highlanders of the 
East African ghauts have an equally useful den 
in their grim mountains; and on the West 
African coast the Krumen consult the ‘ Great 
Debbil,’ who lives in a hole amongst the rocks of 
Grand Cavalla. The traveller who, pace my 
friends of the Anthropological Society, postulates 
spiritualism or spiritism (as M. Allan Kardec has 
it), will save himself much mystification, and he 
will soon find that every race has had, and still 
has, its own Swedenborg. 

The men of Tumbatu at their half-heathen 
wakes, lay out the corpse, masculine or feminine, 
and treat it in a way which reminds us of Ham- 
let’s (Act v. 1) ‘Where be your gibes now? 
your gambols, your songs?’ <A male friend will 
say to his departed chum— 

‘O certain person! but a few days ago I 
asked thee for cocoa-nut-water and tobacco, 
which thou deniedest to me—enh? Where is 
now the use of them ?’ 

‘Fellow!’ a woman will address the dead, 
‘dost thou remember making fierce love to me 
at such and such a time? Much good will thy 
love do me now that thou art the meat of ugly 
worms !’ 


THE WAKE. 23 


Their abuse is never worse than when lavished 
by a creditor upon a defunct debtor. 

The idea underlying this custom is probably 
that which suggested the Irish wake—a test if 
the clay be really inanimate. Nor would I de- 
spise, especially during prevalence of plague or 
yellow fever, in lands where you are interred off- 
hand, any precaution, however barbarous, against 
the horrors and the shudders of burying alive. 
Certain Madras Hindoos, after filling c¢s mouth 
with milk and rapping its face with a shankh or 
conch-shell, grossly insult, as only the ‘mild 
Hindu’ of Bishop Heber can, all its feminine 
relatives. The practice is also found in the New 
World. The Aruacas (Arrawaks) of Guiana 
opened the eyes of the corpse, and switched them 
with thorns ; smeared the cheeks and lips with 
lard, and applied alternately sweet and bitter 
words. This was a curious contrast to the cus- 
toms of the Brazilian Tupys and the Bolivian 
Moxos, who, according to Yves d’Evreux and 
Alcide d’Orbigny, met every morning to bewail 
their losses, even of their grandfathers and great- 
grandfathers ! 

As darkness came on we saw the sands spark- 
ling with lights, here stationary like glow-worms 
or the corpusant; there flitting about like ignes 


24 FISHING. 


fatui or fire-flies. Such was the spectacle seen 
by Columbus and Pedro Gutierrez (‘ gentleman 
of the king’s bedchamber’) on the memorable 
night when Bahaman Guanahani was discover- 
ed. The fishermen burn dry grass and leaves, 
and the blaze, like the Arabs’ ‘fire of hunting,’ 
which dazzles the eye of the gazelle, attracts 
shoals that are easily speared. Some carried 
torches in canoes: now the flame floated in 
crimpled water, which broke up its reflection 
into a scatter of brilliants ; then it reposed upon 
mirror-like smooths, the brand forming the apex 
of a red pyramid which seemed to tremble with 
life, whilst the boat was buried in the darkness 
of death. And so ‘fishy’ are these equinoctial 
seas, that gangs of old women and children may 
be seen at Pemba, and on the coast, converting 
their body-clothes into nets, and filling pots, 
hand over hand, with small fry. I have seen 
them myself, although a certain critic says, 
“Ne, 

The people of Tumbatu, like the Greeks, 
have their good points. They are skilful pilots 
and stout seamen, diligent in gathering their 
bread from the waters, and comparatively in- 
dustrious, considering their enervating, prostrat- 
ing climate. Their low, jungly ledge wants the 


THE HERESY. 25 


sweet element, compelling them to fetch it from 
Zanzibar—their mainland ; hence travellers have 
described the islet as uninhabited. The people 
are mentioned as Moslems by Yakut (early 13th 
century), and this island of ‘Tambat’ was made 
a refuge for the inhabitants of Languja or Zanzi- 
bar. We inquired in vain about the fort which 
the Arabs are said to have built there. The 
skins of Tumbatu are sooty, the effect, according 
to some, according to others the concomitant, of 
humid heat. The reader must not charge me 
with ‘trimming’ between the rival schools of 
‘race versus climate, the cause of complexion.’ 
Many peoples betray but a modicum of chro- 
matic and typical change. On the other hand, I 
have found an approximation of colour as well as 
of form between the Anglo-American and the 
Luso-Brazilian; and I have enlarged upon this 
chromatic heresy, if heresy it be, in the High- 
lands of the Brazil (Vol. i. chap. xxxviii.). 
Finally, when speaking of the permanence of 
type, it is well to bear in mind that our poor ob- 
servations hardly extend over 2500 years. 

The next morning placed us at the base of 
our operations, and we were on deck with 
Aurora. The stout ship ‘ Elphinstone,’ urged by 
the cool land breeze, slid down the channel, the 


26 THE MPOA-NI, 


sea-river that separates the low-lying and ever- 
green Zanzibar Island from its reflection, the 
Mpoa-ni." We were sensibly affected by the 
difference between the Sawahil, this part of the 
East African sea-board which begins at the Juba 
River, and the grim physiognomy of Somaliland, 
Region of Fragrant Gums, with its sandy horrors 
of Berberah, and its granitic grandeurs of Guar- 
dafui, which popular apprehension refers to 
Garde a vous, and which Abyssinian Bruce, ac- 
cording to Ritter (Erdkunde, 2nd Division, § 8), 


1 This is the ‘Poane’ of ‘O Muata Cazembe’ (p. 328), 
and there rightly translated, ‘Costa de Zanzibar.’ Mr Cooley 
(p. 14, ‘The Memoir on the Lake Regions, &c., reviewed.’ 
London, Stanford, 1864) thus misleads his readers: ‘The 
Cazembe knew the name of only one place on the coast— 
Mpoani, near the Querimba Islands.’ The word literally 
means ‘ on the coast,’ or simply ‘the coast.’ In the Zangian 
dialects the terminative ‘-ni’ has two senses. Now it is a loca- 
tive, signifying on, in, by, or near, as, e.g., Nyumba-ni, ‘at home’ 
(in the house); Mfu’ua-ni, at the place near the Mfu’u 
tree. Then it is almost pleonastic, as Kisiwa-ni, ‘the island,’ 
and Kisima-ni, ‘the well.’ Mpoa-ni, a word in general use, is 
a literal Kisawahili translation of the Arabic Sawahil (plural 
of Sahil), ‘ the shores,’ strictly speaking between Mtangata and 
the Rufiji River. Hence, possibly, the Greeks drew their name, 
‘Avyadoc.’ The latter is usually identified with the modern 
Arabic Sayf Tawil, the long strand, not ‘ bold or declining shore,’ 
as translated by Captain Owen. It extends southwards from 
the Ra’as el Khayl to Ra’as Awaz (Cape of Change) in the 
Barr el Khazain (Ajan or Azania). Of the latter more in Sect. 
1, Chapter V. 


ZANZIBAR. 27 


altered to Gardefan, the Straits of Burial." We 
were in the depths of the ‘dries,’ as they are 
called in West Africa, in the local midwinter, 
yet this land was gorgeous in its vestment when 
others would be hybernating in more than semi- 
nudity. 

Truly prepossessing was our first view of the 
then mysterious island of Zanzibar, set off by 
the dome of distant hills, like solidified air, that 


1 De Barros by a slip of the pen writes (Decades i. 5, 9) 
Guadrafu. I should explain the corrupted ‘ Guardafui’ not 
as usual by ‘Cabo d’Orfui, but as a European version of 
Jurd Hafun,—highland or crest of Hafun. Jurd, in Arabic, 
means the mountain-top, opposed to the Wusut, shoulders or 
half-way slopes, and to the Sahl, or low lands. The modern 
Arabic name of the ancient Aromata Promontarium is Ra’as 
Asir, the captive headland, a term especially applied to the 
projection of land, some 2000 feet high, which, viewed from the 
south, extends farthest seaward to the north-east, as I saw when 
sailing from Zanzibar to Aden. Hafun, supposed to be the 
Mosyllum Promontorium of Pliny and the Opone of Ptolemy, 
the Khakhui of El Idrisi; the Jafuni of El Masudi; the 
Carfuna of other Arab geographers, and the Orfui of the 
moderns, means the surrounded, i.e. by water, because almost 
an island. Lieutenant Crittenden, I.N. (Aden, April 10, 
1848. Transactions of the Bombay Geographical Society), de- 
scribes it as a headland of lime and sandstone nearly square, 
and 600 to 700 feet high. He remarks that after the Elephas 
Mons it is the only point on the coast concerning which there 
can be no mistake. The sites are thus— 


Ras Asir (Guardafui) North Easternmost point of Africa N. lat.11° 50’ 0” Raper(11° 4 4” Norris) 
Ras Hafun, Easternmost point of Africa N. lat, 10° 26 487", (10° 27" der) 


Difference > 1° 23 52” 1° 13’ 16” 
Lieutenant Carless, I.N., makes the difference of meridian arc 0° 4’ 50” 


28 LAZINESS. 


form the swelling line of the Zanzibar coast. 
Earth, sea, and sky, all seemed wrapped in a soft 
and sensuous repose, in the tranquil life of the 
Lotus Eaters, in the. swoon-like slumbers of the 
Seven Sleepers, in the dreams of the Castle of 
Indolence. The sea of purest sapphire, which 
had not parted with its blue rays to the atmo- 
sphere—a frequent appearance near the equator 
—lay basking, lazy as the tropical man, under a 
blaze of sunshine which touched every object 
with a dull burnish of gold. ‘The wave had 
hardly energy enough to dandle us, or to cream 
with snowy foam the yellow sandstrip which 
separated it from the flower-spangled grass, and 
from the underwood of dark metallic green. 
The breath of the ocean would hardly take the 
trouble to ruffle the fronds of the palm which 
sprang, like a living column, graceful and luxu- 
riant, high above its subject growths. The bell- 
shaped convolvulus (Ipomeea Maritima), sup- 
ported by its juicy bed of greenery, had opened 
its pink eyes to the light of day, but was lan- 
guidly closing them, as though gazing upon the 
face of heaven were too much of exertion. The 
island itself seemed over-indolent, and unwilling 
to rise ; it showed no trace of mountain or crag, 
but all was voluptuous with gentle swellings, 


CLOVE GROUNDS. 29 


with the rounded contours of the girl-negress, 
and the brown-red tintage of its warm skin 
showed through its gauzy attire of green. And 
over all bent lovingly a dome of glowing azure, 
reflecting its splendours upon the nether world, 
whilst every feature was hazy and mellow, as if 
viewed through ‘woven air,’ and not through 
vulgar atmosphere. Most of my countrymen 
find monotony in these Claude-Lorraine skies, 
with the pigment and glazing on. I remember 
how in Sind they used to bless the storm-cloud, 
and stand joyously to be drenched in the rain 
which rarely falls in that leather-coloured land. 
Zanzibar, however, must be seen on one of her 
own fine days: like Fernando Po and Rio de 
Janeiro, the beauty can look ‘ugly’ enough 
when she pleases. 

As we drew nearer and vision became more 
distinct, we found as many questions for the 
pilot as did Vasco da Gama of old. Those prim 
plantations which, from the offing, resembled 
Italian avenues of oranges, the tea-gardens of 
China, the vines of romantic Provence, the 
coffee plantations of the Brazil, or the orange- 
yards of Paraguay, were the celebrated clove- 
grounds, and the largest, streaking the central 
uplands, were crown property. We distinctly felt 


30 BAYT EL RA’AS. 


a heavy spicy perfume, as if passing before the 
shop of an Egyptian ‘attar,’ and the sensorium 
was not the less pleasantly affected, after a hard 
diet of briny N.E. Trade. Various legends of 
hair-oil rubbed upon the bulwarks have made 
many a tricked traveller a shallow infidel in the 
matter of smelling the land. But we soon 
learned that off Zanzibar, as off ‘ Mozambic,’ 
the fragrant vegetation makes old Ocean smile, 
pleased with the grateful smell, as of yore. The 
night breeze from the island is cool and heavy 
with clove perfume, and European residents 
carefully exclude the land-wind from their sleep- 
ing-rooms. 

For a little while we glided 8. by E. along 
the shore, where the usual outlines of a city 
took from it the reproach of being a luxuriant 
wilderness. The first was ‘ Bayt el Ra’as, a large 
pile, capped with a dingy pent-house of cajan 
(cocoa leaves), and backed by swelling ground— 
here bared for cultivation, there sprinkled with 
dense dark trees, masses of verdure sheltering 
hut and homestead. Followed at the distance of 
a mile, the Royal Cascine and Harem of Mto-ni, 
the Rivulet.t. Our ancient ally ‘Sayyid Said, 


’ Yet we read of the ‘great river Matoney,’ and of ‘ travel- 
lers crossing the great River Mtony.’ Mto, in the language 


MTO-NI. 31 


Imam of Maskat and Sultan of Zanzibar and the 
Sawahil,’ had manifestly not attempted African 
copies of his palaces in Arabian Shinéz and ~ 
Bat’hah, pavilions with side-wings and flanking 
towers, the buildings half castle half chateau, 
so much affected by the feudal lords of Oman. 
He preferred an Arabo-African modification, here 
valuable for ‘ sommer-frisch.’ 

The demesne of Mto-ni has a quaint manner 
of Gothic look, pauperish and mouldy, like the 
schloss of some duodecimo Teutonic Prince, or 
long-titled, short-pursed, placeless, and pension- 
less German Serenity in the days now happily 
gone by, when the long drear night of German 
do-nothingness has fled before the glorious day- 
break of 1866—1870. We can distinguish upon 
its long rusty front a projecting balcony of dingy 
planking, with an extinguisher-shaped roof, 
dwarfed by the luxuriant trees arear, and by 
the magnificent vegetation which rolls up to its 
very walls. Mto-ni takes its name from a run- 


of Zanzibar, is a river or arivulet; also a pillow. The Qui- 
limani River signifies simply kilima-ni, (water) from the 
mountain. The meaning of Quilimansi (the Obi—Webbe— 
Nile of Makdishu, Webbe Shebayli, of late christened the 
Haines River, and called Quilimancy by De Barros, from a 
settlement now unknown) is still under dispute. It cannot 
grammatically be made to mean ‘ mountain-stream, or a moun- 
tain with streams,’ as Dr Krapf has it. 


32 ‘PASSES OF ZANZIBAR.’ 


nel which, draining the uplands, supplies the 
‘ Palace,’ and trickles through a conduit into the 
sea. We shall presently visit it. 

Entering the coral reef which defends this 
great store-house of Eastern Intertropical Africa, 
I remarked that the lucent amethyst of the 
waters was streaked and patched with verdigris 
green; the ‘light of the waves’ being caused by 
shoals, whose golden sands blended with the blue 
of heaven. The ‘Passes of Zanzibar’ reminded 
me in colouration of the ‘ Gateways of Jeddah,’ 
and as the coral reefs cut like razors, they must 
be threaded with equal care. So smooth was 
the surface within the walls, that each ship, 
based upon a thread of light, seemed to hover 
over its own reflected image. 

And now we could distinguish the normal 
straight line of Arab town, extending about a 
mile and a half in length, facing north, and 
standing out in bold relief, from the varied tints 
and the grandeur of forest that lay behind. A 
Puritanical plainness characterized the scene— 
cathedrals without the graceful minarets of Jed- 
dah, mosques without the cloisters of Cairo, 
turrets without the domes and monuments of 
Syria; and the straight stiff sky-line was un- 
relieved except by a few straggling palms, In 


ARRIVAL. 33 


the centre, and commanding the anchorage, was 
a square-curtained artless fort, conspicuous 
withal, and fronted by a still more contemptible 
battery. To its right and left the Imam’s palace, 
the various Consulates, and the large parallelo- 
erammic buildings of the great, a tabular line of 
flat roofs, glaring and dazzling like freshly white- 
washed sepulchres, detached themselves from the 
mass, and did their best to conceal the dingy 
matted hovels of the inner town. Zanzibar city, 
to become either picturesque or pleasing, must 
be viewed, like Stambul, from afar. 

We floated past the guard-ship, an old 50-gun 
frigate of Dutch form and Bombay build, be- 
longing to ‘His Highness the Sayyid;’ it was 
modestly named Shah Allum (Alam), or ‘ King 
of the World.’ .The few dark faces on board 
bawled out information unintelligible to our 
pilot, and showed no colours, as is customary 
when a foreign cruizer enters the port. We set 
this down to the fact of their being blacks— 
‘careless Ethiopians.’ But flags being absent 
from all the masts, and here, as in West Africa 
and in the Brazil, every ‘house’ flies its own 
bunting, we decided that there must be some 
cause for the omission, and we became anxious 


accordingly. 
VoL. I. 3 


34 BAD NEWS. 


But not for such small matter would the 
H. HE. 1. C.’s ship-of-war ‘ Elphinstone’ have the 
trouble of casting loose and of loading her guns 
gratis. With the Sayyid’s plain blood-red ensign 
at the main, and with union-jack at the fore, 
she cast anchor in Front Bay, and gallantly de- 
livered her fire of 21. Thereupon a gay bunting 
flew up to every truck ashore and afloat, whilst 
the brass carronades of the ‘ Victoria,’ another 
item of the Maskat navy, roared a response of 
22, and, curious to say, did not blow off a single 
eunner’s arms. We had arrived on the fortieth 
or last day of Moslem mourning ; and the mourn- 
ing was for Sayyid Said, our native friend and 
ally, who had for so many years been calling for 
volunteers and explorers, and from whom the 
East African expedition had been taught to ex- 
pect every manner of aid except the pecuniary. 

We lost no time in tumbling into a gig and 
in visiting the British Consulate, a large solid 
pile, coloured like a twelfth-cake, and shaped 
like a claret-chest, which lay on its side, com- 
fortably splashed by the sea. Lieut.-Colonel 
Atkins Hamerton, of the Indian Army, H.B.M.’s 
Consul and H.E.1I.C.’s agent, to whom I was 
directed to report arrival, was now our main- 
stay, but we found him in the poorest state of 


COLONEL HAMERTON. 30 


health. He was aroused from lethargy by the 
presence of strangers, and after the usual hos- 
pitable orders my letters were produced and 
read. Those entrusted to me by Lord Elphin- 
stone, and by his Eminence the learned and be- 
nevolent Cardinal Wiseman, for whom he had 
the profoundest respect, pleased him greatly ; 
but he put aside the missive of the Royal. Geo- 
graphical Society, declaring that he had been 
terribly worried for ‘copy’ by sundry writing 
and talking members of that distinguished body. 

I can even now distinctly see my poor friend 
sitting before me, a tall, broad-shouldered, and 
powerful figure, with square features, dark, 
fixed eyes, hair and beard prematurely snow- 
white, and a complexion once fair and ruddy, 
but long ago bleached ghastly pale by ennui and 
sickness. Such had been the effect of the burn- 
ing heats of Maskat and ‘the Gulf,’ and the 
deadly damp of Zanzibar, Island and Coast. The 
worst symptom in his case—one which I have 
rarely found other than fatal—was his unwilling- 
ness to quit the place which was slowly killing 
him. At night he would chat merrily about a 
remove, about a return to Ireland; he loathed 
the subject in the morning. To escape seemed a 
physical impossibility, when he had only to order 


36 SAYYID MAJID. 


a few boxes to be packed, and to board the first 
home-returning ship. In this state the invalid 
requires the assistance of a friend, of a man who 
will order him away, and who will, if he refuses, 
carry him off by main force. 

Our small mountain of luggage was soon 
housed, and we addressed ourselves seriously to 
the difficulties of our position. That night’s 
rest was not sweet to us. I became as the man 
of whom it was written— 

‘So coy a dams is Sleep to him, 


That all the weary courtship of his thoughts 
Can’t win her to his bed.’ 


After the disaster in Somali-land, I was pledged, 
at all risks and under all circumstances, to suc- 
ceed; and now St Julian, host and patron of tra- 
vellers, had begun to show me the rough side of 
his temper. The Consul was evidently unfit for 
the least exertion. He had in his ‘ godowns’ 
dozens of chests and cases which he had not the 
energy to open. H. H. Sayyid Said had left 
affairs in a most unsatisfactory state. His eldest 
son, the now murdered Sayyid Suwayni, heir to 
Maskat, and famous as an anglophobe, had threat- 
ened to attack Zanzibar; a menace which, as will 
afterwards appear, he attempted to carry out. 
The cadet Sayyid Majid, installed by his father 


TROUBLES. 37 


chief of the African possessions, was engrossed 
in preparations for defence. Moreover, this 
amiable young prince having lately recovered 
from confluent small-pox, an African endemic 
which had during the last few years decimated 
the islanders, was ashamed to display a pock- 
marked face to the ‘ public,’ ourselves included. 
The mainland of Northern Zanzibar about Lamu 
was, aS usual on such occasions, in a state of 
anarchy. Every man seized the opportunity of 
slaying his enemy, or of refusing to pay his 
taxes. An exceptionally severe drought had 
reduced the southern coast of Zanzibar to a 
state of famine. 

Briefly, the gist of the whole was that I had 
better return to Bombay. But rather than re- 
turn to Bombay, I would have gone to Hades 
on that 20th of December, 1856. 


NOTE. 


Since these pages were penned the Bombay 
Gazette of’ November 11, 1870, announced the 
death of H. H. Sayyid Majid, Sultan of Zanzi- 


bar, and the succession of his brother—Sayyid 
Burghush. 


CHAPTER ITI. 


HOW THE NILE QUESTION STOOD IN THE YEAR 
OF GRACE 1856. 


’Aury pev ioe THe wepippurov yOovoc. 
This is the finial of th’ encircling earth. 
Sopn. Putt. 


In this chapter I propose briefly to place 
before the reader the various shiftings of opinion 
touching the Nile Sources, and especially to 
show what had been done for Zanzibar and her 
coast by the theoretical and practical men of 
Europe between A.D. 1825 and the time of our 
landing on the Sawahil, or East African shores. 

The details given to Marinus of Tyre by the 
Arabian merchants, and their verification by the 
obscure Diogenes, together with the notices of 
the African lakes on the lower part of the Upper 
Nile, brought home about a.p. 60 by Nero’s 
exploring Centurions, were never wholly for- 


OLD KNOWLEDGE. ogo 


gotten by Europe, which thus unlearned to 
derive with Herodotus the Nile from Western 
Africa. As the pages of Marco Polo show, not 
to quote the voyage of ‘Sinbad the Sailor,’ 
Arabs and Persians still frequented these shores; 
and the Hindu Banyans, established from time 
immemorial upon the Zanzibar coast, had dif- 
fused throughout India some information touch- 
ing the wealthy land. The veteran geographer 
of Africa, Mr James Macqueen, has comment- 
ed upon the curious fact that the Padmavan 
of Lieut. Francis Wilford (vol. ui. of the old 
Asiatic Researches, ‘Course of the River Cali,’ 
as supposed to be derived from the Puranas) is 
represented by the beds of floating water-lilies 
crossed by Captains Speke and Grant, and upon 
the resemblance between the Amara, or Lake of 
the Gods, with the Amara people on the N. E. of 
the so-called Nyanza Lake. These, however, ap- 
pear to be mere coincidences, or at best the re- 
sults of tales learned upon the coast by the 
Hindu trader. Before leaving Bombay I applied 


* The ‘ Father of History’ evidently held to the theory 
that the modern Bahr el Ghazal (explored of late by Mr 
Petherich and by the unfortunate Tinné family) was the 
head reservoir of the White Nile. Nor is it impossible that in 
long-past ages the lakes or waters in question were fed by a 
watershed whose eastern declivities still discharge themselves 
into the higher basin. 


40 GOOD GEOGRAPHY. 


to that eminent Sanskritist the Rev. J. Wilson, 
D.D., for any notices of East Africa which 
might occur in the sacred writings of the Hin- 
dus. He replied that there were none; and I 
had long before learned that Col. Wilford him- 
self had acknowledged his pandit to have been 
an impudent impostor. 

At the end of the 15th century came the 
Portuguese explorers, with Strabo, Pliny, and 
Ptolemy, in their hands, and followed by a mul- 
titude of soldiers, merchants, and missionaries, 
who invested the intertropical maritime regions 
of Africa, east and west. The first enthusiasm, 
however, soon passed away. The Portuguese 
were supplanted by the Dutch, by the English, 
and by the French ; whilst Ptolemy and the Peri- 
plus were ousted by Pigafetta, Dapper, and other 
false improvers of their doctrines. The Ptole- 
meian Lakes were marched about and counter- 
marched in every possible way. The ‘ Mountain 
of the Moon,’ prolonged across Africa under the 
name Jebel Kumri, really became ‘ Lunatic 
Mountains. The change from good to bad 
ceography is well illustrated by two charts pub- 
lished in 1860, by H. E. the Conde de Lavradio. 
The first is the fac-simile of a map in the British 
Museum, by Diogo Homem, in 1558. It makes 


GOOD GEOGRAPHY. 4l 


the Nile spring from two great reservoirs. But 
the second, bearing the name of Antonio Sances 
(1623), already reduces these lakes to one cen- 
tral Caspian, which sends forth the Nile, the 
Congo, and the Zambeze, and which, greatly 
shrunken, still deforms our maps under the name 
of Marave. Similarly, the ‘Complete System of 
Geography,’ by Emanuel Bowen (1747), places 
the Zambre Lake in S. lat. 4°_11°, the ‘ centre 
from which proceed all the rivers in this part of 
Africa,’ including the Nile. 

How popular the subject continued to be 
may be guessed from the fact that Daniel Defoe 
(1661—17381), cast his African reading into a 
favourite form with him, the ‘Adventures of 
Captain Singleton.’ He lands his hero about 
March, 1701, a little south of Cape Delgado, 
causes him to cross several seas and rivers, the 
latter often flowing northwards, and after a 
year’s wandering, brings him out at the Dutch 
settlements on the Gold Coast. | 

Upon the general question of modern Nile 
literature the curious reader will consult the 
well-studied writings of M. Vivien de Saint- 
Martin. The valuable paper ‘On the Know- 
ledge the Ancients possessed of the Sources of 
the Nile,’ by my friend W. 8S. W. Vaux (Trans- 


49 MESSRS VAUX AND HOGG. 


actions of the Royal Society of Literature, vol. 
vill., New Series), treats of exploration up the 
river, beginning from the Ionian colony, estab- 
lished in the upper river by Psammetichus (circa 
A.c. 600), and extending to the present day. 
The learned article by Mr John Hogg, ‘On some 


oD? 


old Maps of Africa, in which certain of the Cen- 
tral and Equatorial Lakes are laid down in 
nearly their true positions,’* (Transactions of the 


* In 1859 I had written (Journal Royal Geographical 
Society, vol. xxix. 272) ‘The Nyanza, as regards name, posi- 
tion, and even existence, has hitherto been unknown to 
European geographers; but descriptions of this “sea” by 
native travellers have been unconsciously transferred by our 
writers to the Tanganyika of Ujiji, and even to the Nyassa of 
Kilwa.’ Mr Hogg proposes to show that such was not the 
case. But the map by John Senex (1711) throws into one 
three or at least two waters. Mercator (Kauffman) lays the 
‘Garava’ lakelet almost parallel with the Zaflan (Zambeze) 
or Kilwa Lake. Walker (1811) and Lizars (1815) fit in the 
Tanganyika correctly, whilst the Nyassa is wholly incorrect. 

Of the five maps one only, that of John Senex, deserves 
consideration. ‘This great lake placed here by report of 
the negroes,’ alludes, I believe, to legends of the Bahari-ngo 
(the ‘great sea,’ vulgarly, Baringo), of which many East 
African travellers have heard. One Rumu wa Kikandi, a 
native of Uemba, described the water to Dr Krapf as lying 
five days’ journey from Mount Kenia: in the Introduction to 
his last travels (p. xlviii.), however, the enterprising mission- 
ary identifies it with the so-called Nyanza or Ukerewe Lake. 1 
was told of it by the Wakamba at Mombasah in 1857. ‘The 
Pére Léon d’ Avanchers (Bulletin de la Société de Géographie, 
vol. xvii. 164) also collected, when travelling on the Hast 
African coast, in August, 1858, information concerning Baha- 


.y 
=" . 
an 


ACTUAL EXPLORATION. 43 


Royal Society of Literature, vol. vili.), supplies 
a compendium of old cartography. 

I proceed now to the practical part of this 
chapter, namely, the actual visits of inspection 
to Zanzibar, and their results. Until the end of 
the last century, our knowledge was derived 
almost entirely from those ‘domini Orientalis 
Africe,’ the Portuguese. The few exceptions 
were Sir James Lancaster, who opened to the 
English the Orient seas. He wintered at the 
island in 1591; Captain Alexander Hamilton 
(new account of the East Indies, 1688—1723, 
Hakluyt’s Collection, viii. 258); and M. Saulnier 
de Mondevit, commanding the king’s Corvette, 
La Prévoyance. The latter, who, in 1786, visited 
the principal points of Zanzibar, published a 
chart with ‘Observations sur la céte du Zan- 
gueibar’ (Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, vol. 
vi.), and recommended a French establishment 
at ‘ Mongalo.’ 

In February, 1799, Captain Bissel, R.N., com- 
manding H. M.’s ship Orestes, with the Leopard 


ringo, as he writes it. Senex finally disconnects it with the 
Nile, and indeed gives it no drainage at all. 

I cannot but think that Mr Hogg’s learning and research 
have considerably strengthened my position, and that the 
so-called Nyanza Lake was, curious to say, the least known, 
and at the same time the nearest, to European geographers. 


4A SMEE, HARDY, OWEN. 


carrying Admiral Blankett’s flag, touched at the’ 
island for refreshments when beating up against 
the N. EH. monsoon towards the Red Sea. He 
briefly but faithfully described its geography, 
and he laid down sailing directions which to 
this day are retained in Horsburgh. Since then 
many coasting voyages have been made by naval 
officers and others, who collected from natives, 
with more or less fidelity, details concerning the 
inner country. As early as 1811, Captain Smee 
and Lieutenant Hardy were sent by the Bombay 
government to gather information on the eastern 
seaboard of Africa, and they brought back sundry 
novel details (Transactions Bombay Geographi- 
cal Society, 1844, p. 23, &c.).. Between the years 
1822-1826 the whole coast line was surveyed by 
Captain (afterwards Admiral) W. I’. Owen, and by 
his officers, Captains Vidal, Boteler, and others. 
Their charts and plans of the littoral, despite 
sundry inaccuracies, such as placing Zanzibar 
Island five miles west of its proper position, ex- 
cited general attention, and were justly termed 
by a modern author miranda tabularum series. 
During this Herculean labour, which occupied 
three years, some 300 of the officers and crew 
fell victims to the climate of the Coast, to the 
hardships of boat-work, and to the ferocity of 


MORESBY, HART. 45 


the natives. In 1822 Sir Robert Townsend 
Fairfax, Governor and Commander-in-Chief of 
the Mauritius, after a crusade against the slave- 
trade in the dominions of Radama, King of the 
Hovas, commissioned Captain (afterwards Ad- 
miral) Fairfax Moresby, of H. M.’s ship Menai, 
to draft a treaty between England and Maskat 
for limiting the traffic. The mission was suc- 
cessful. The sale of Somalis, a free people, was 
made piracy; and the Sayyid’s vessels were sub- 
ject to seizure by the Royal, including the Com- 
pany’s, cruizers, if detected carrying negroes ‘ to 
the east of a line drawn from Cape Delgado, 
passing south of Socotra and on to Diu, the west 
point of the Gulf of Cambay.’ In 1822, the 
Sayyid’s assent having been formally accorded, 
Captain Moresby left the coast. 

In January, 1834, Captain Hart, of H. M.’s 
ship Imogene, visited Zanzibar, and submitted 
to the Imperial government brief notes, append- 
ing a list of the Sayyid’s squadron then in the 
harbour, with their age, tonnage, armature, and 
other particulars. Still geographers declared 
that Zanzibar was a more mysterious spot to 
England and India than parts of Central Africa 


* This ‘ restrictive treaty’ was published in No. 24 of the 
Bombay Selection (1856), under the head of ‘ Persian Gulf.’ 


46 BOLLAERT, RUSCHENBERGER. 


— 


and the shores of the Icy Sea.* During the 
same year the energetic Mr W. Bollaert ma- 
tured the plan of an expedition, to be conducted 
by himself, from Zanzibar across the continent. 
It was laid before the Geographical Society in 
1837, but it was not carried out, funds being 
deficient. In 1835 the U.S. frigate Peacock 
visited the island during a treaty-making tour, 
and was supplied with all her wants gratis, the 
port officials declaring that ‘H. H. the Sultan 
of Muscat had forbidden them to take any re- 
muneration.’ The surgeon, Dr Ruschenberger 
(Narrative of a Voyage round the World in 
1835—1837), left a realistic description of the 
city in those its best days. He acknowledges 
the hospitalities of ‘ Captain Hasan bin Ibrahim, 
of the Arab Navy,’ superintendent of the ‘ Prince 
Said Carlid.’ The latter was the late Sayyid 
Khalid, then 16 years old. The book, being 
written by a ‘ Dutch-American’ in 1835, is of 
course bitterly hostile to England. We are told 
that the keel of the Peacock, passing between 
Tumbatu Island and Zanzibar, scraped over 
coral reefs not in Owen’s charts—which may be 
true. TLollowed the American Captains Fisher, 
' We must not, however, forget that in ‘‘all-enlightened 


England’ Smollett could complain of the ‘ people at the other 
end of the island knowing as little of Scotland as of Japan.’ 


4 

ry ‘ 

~ 

\ 

4 

: 


ROSS BROWN, CHRISTOPHER. 47 


Drinker, Abbott, and Osgood, and Mr Ross 
Brown, then a young traveller in a trading- 
vessel. He also published a readable account 
of the rising settlement. 

When Admiral Sir Charles Malcolm, a name 
endeared to eastern geographers, was giving 
energy and impulse to exploration in Western 
Asia, the late Lieut. W. Christopher, I. N., com- 
manding the H. E. I. C.’s brig-of-war Tigris, 
was sent to Zanzibar; he made a practical sur- 
vey of the coast, and he touched at many places 
now famous—Kilwa (Quiloa), Mombasah, Brava, 
Marka, Gob-wen (or the Jub River), and 
Makdishu, or Hanir, by the Portuguese called 
Magadoxo. He explored the lower waters of a 
large stream, the Webbe (River) Ganana, or 
Shebayli (Leopard), which he injudiciously 
named the Haines River; and he visited Giredi 
and other settlements till then unknown. He 
wrote (May 8, 1843) a highly interesting and 
comprehensive account of the seaboard, which 
was published in the Journal of the Geographi- 
cal Society (vol. xiv. of 1844). His plans, 
charts, and other valuable memoranda were for- 
warded to the Bombay Government, and the 
enterprising traveller died in July, 1848, at the 
early age of 36, from the effects of a wound re- 
ceived before Multan. 


48 ‘MOMBAS MISSION, 


The honour of having made the first system- 
atic attempt to explore and to open up the Zan- 
zibar interior, is due to the establishment po- 
pularly known as the ‘Mombas Mission;’ its 
energetic members proved that it was possible to 
penetrate beyond the coast, and their discoveries 
excited a spirit of inquiry which led to the 
exploration of the Lake Regions. In 1842 the 
Rev. Dr J. Lewis Krapf, being refused readmit- 
tanee to Shoa, received a ‘ Macedonian call’ to 
East Africa; in other words, he undertook in 1842, 
with the approbation of the Church Missionary 
Society, a coasting voyage to Hast Africa south 
of the line. Having visited Zanzibar Island he 
journeyed northwards (March 1844), and met with 
a kind reception at Mombasah where he accident- 
ally landed ; finally he established his head-quar- 
ters amongst the Wanyika tribe at Rabai Mpia 
near Mombasah, which then became the base of 
his operations. le was joined (June 1846) by 
the Rev. J. Rebmann of Gerlingen in Wiirtem- 
berg, and by Messrs Erhardt and Wagner—the 
latter a young German mechanic, who died shortly 
after arrival. In June 2, 1851, came Messrs 
Conrad Diehlmann and Christian Pfefferle, who 
soon died. They were followed by three me- 
chanics, Hagemann, Kaiser, and Metzler, who 


M. REBMANN. 49 


returned home, and by M. Deimler who retired 
to Bombay. M. Rebmann after visiting Kadiaro 
(Oct. 14, 1847) made in May 11, 1843 the first of 
three important journeys into the ‘ Jagga’ high- 
lands, and discovered, or rather rediscovered, the 
much vexed Kilima-njaro. The existence of this 
mountain bearing eternal snows in eastern inter- 
tropical Africa is thus alluded to in the Suma de 
_Geographia of Fernandez de Enciso (1530) : ‘West 
of this port (Mombasah) stands the Mount Olym- 
pus of Ethiopia, which is exceedingly high, and 
beyond it are the ‘“‘ Mountains of the Moon,” in 
which are the sources of the Nile.’ The discovery 
was confirmed by Dr Krapf, who after visiting 
(also in 1848) Fuga, the capital of Usumbara, 
made two journeys (in 1849 and 1851) into 
Ukambani. During the first he confirmed the 
position of Kilima-njaro, and he sighted an- 
other snowy peak, Kenia, Kegnia, or Kirenia. 
The assertions of the missionaries were vari- 
ously received. M. Vaux was thereby enabled 
to explain a statement in the Metereologica of 
Aristotle, where the first or main stream of the 
Nile is supposed to flow out of the mountain 
called Silver. Dr Beke accepted the meridional 
snowy range, and here placed his Mountains of 
the Moon, a hypothesis first advanced in 1846. 
4 


VOL. I. 


50 MR COOLEY. 


The sceptics were headed by Mr W. D. Cooley, 
who in 1854 had published his ‘ Claudius Ptole- 
my and the Nile.’ He had identified the moun- 
tain of Selene (cea7vy) with the snowy highland 
of ‘Semenai’ or ‘ Samien’ in northern Abyssinia, 
and thus by adopting a mere verbal resemblance 
he had obtained a system of truly ‘ lunatic moun- 
tains.’ Some years before (Journal Royal Geo- 
graphical Society, vol. xv. 1845) appeared his 
paper entitled, ‘The Geography of N’yassi, or the 
great lake of Southern Africa investigated,’ a 
complicated misnomer. The article was written 
in a clear style and a critical tone, showing am- 
ple reading but lacking a solid foundation of fact. 
It began as usual with Pigafetta and de Barros, 
and it ended with Gamitto and Monteiro; the 
peroration, headed ‘ Harmony of Authorities,’ was 
a self-gratulation, a song of triumph concerning 
the greatness of hypothetical discoveries, which 
were soon proved to be purely fanciful. Not one 
man in a million has the instincts of a good com- 
parative geographer, and the author was assured- 
ly not that exceptional man. His monograph 
did good by awaking the scientific mind, but it 
greatly injured popular geography. It unhap- 
pily asserted (p. 15) that ‘in every part of east- 
ern Africa to which our inquiries have extended, 


5 N’YASST,’ 51 


snow is quiteunknown.’ And the author having 
laid down his law bowed before it, and expected 
Fact as well as the Public to do the same; he 
even attacked the text of Ptolemy, asserting that 
the passages treating of the Nile sources and the 
Lunar Mountains were an interpolation of a 
comparatively recent date. In Juneand Novem- 
ber 1863 the late Baron von der Decken, accom- 
panied by Dr Kersten, an accomplished astrono- 
mical observer, ascended some 1300 feet, saw a 
clearly defined limit of perpetual snow at about 
17,000 feet, and by a rough triangulation gave 
the main peak of Kilima-njaro an elevation of 
20,065 feet. Still Mr Cooley, with singular want 
of candour, denied existence to the snow. It 

was the same with his ‘ Single Sea,’ which under 
~ the meaningless and erroneous name ‘ N’yassi’ 
again supplanted Ptolemy’s Lakes, and this want 
of acumen offered the last insult to African 
geography. Thus was revived the day when the 
Arab and Portuguese geographers made the three 
Niles (of Egypt, Magadoxo, and Nigritia) issue 
from one vast reservoir, and thus were the 
school maps of the world disfigured during half 
a generation. ‘The lake also was painfully dis- — 
torted, simply that it might ‘run parallel to the 
line of voleanic action drawn through the Isle de 


52 DR KRAPE. 


Bourbon, the north of Madagascar, and the 
Comoro Islands, and to one of the two lines pre- 
dominating on the coasts of southern Africa 
wherever there are no alluvial flats.’ It abound- — 
ed, moreover, in minor but significant errors, such 
as confounding ‘ Zanganyika,’ a town or tribe, 
with Tanganyika, the name of the Lake. Of 
late years Mr Cooley has once more shifted his 
position, and has declared that he did not intend 
to provide central intertropical Africa between 
‘Monomotapa’ and Angola with a single lake. 
The whole of his paper on the ‘Geography of 
N’yassi’ means that if it mean anything. He is 
hard to find and 
harder to bind—amongst African geographers. 


not, however, the only Proteus 


To conclude this notice of the ‘ Mombas Mis- 
sion,’ Dr Krapf again visited Fuga, where he was 
followed by Mr Erhardt, and finally the two mis- 
sionaries ran down the coast, touched at Kilwa, 
and extended their course to Cape Delgado. In 
August 1855 Dr Krapf, after 18 years’ residence 
in Africa, bade it farewell; he did not revisit it 
except for a few months in 1867, when he acted 
dragoman to the Abyssinian Expedition. In 
January 1856 appeared what has been called the 
‘Mombas Mission Map’ (Skizze nach J. Er. 
hardt’s Original), the result of exploration and of 


MM. ERHARDT AND REBMANN. 53 


notices collected from the natives. It was ac- 
companied by a ‘ Memoir of the Chart of East 
and Central Africa, compiled by J. Erhardt and 
J. Rebmann.’ This production was ‘ remarked 
upon’ by Mr Cooley (Jan. 8, 1856), and in turn 
his remarks were remarked upon by Herr Peter- 
mann. The peculiar feature of the chart was a 
‘monster slug’-like inland Sea extending from 
the line to 8. Lat. 14°,—an impossible Caspian 
some 840 miles long x 200 to 300 in breadth. I 
have already explained that this error arose by 
the fact that the three chief caravan routes from 
the Zanzibar coast abut upon three several 
lakes which, in the confusion of African vocab- 
ulary—Nyassa being corrupted to N’yassi, and 
Nyanza also signifying water—were naturally 
thrown into one. It was, however, to ascertain 
the existence of this slug-shaped article that the 
East African Expedition of 1856—59 was sent 
out. 

The most valuable results of Dr Krapf’s 
labours are his works on the Zanzibarian lan- 
guages, and these deserve the gratitude of every 
traveller and student of African philology. The 
principal are, 

Messrs Krapf’s and Isenberg’s imperfect out- 
line of the Galla language (London, 1840). 


54 PHILOLOGY. 


Messrs Krapf and Isenberg, ‘ Vocabulary of 
the Galla Language,’ London, 1840. 

Tentamen imbecillum Translationis Evangelii 
Joannis in linguam Gallorum, London, 1841. 

Messrs Krapf’s, Isenberg’s, and Miuhleisen- 
_ Arnold’s Vocabulary of the Somali tongue (1848). 

(Three chapters of Genesis translated into the 
‘Soahilee ’ language, with an introduction by W. 
W. Greenhough: printed in the Journal of the 
American Oriental Society, 1847, had appeared 
in the mean time.) 

Gospel according to St Luke translated into 
Kinika, 12mo, Bombay, 1848. 

Gospel according to St Mark translated into 
Kikamba, 8vo, Tiibingen, 1850. 

Outline of the elements of the Ki-suahel 
language, 8vo, Tibingen, 1850. 

Vocabulary of 6 East-African languages, small 
folio, Tubingen, 1850. 

Mr Erhardt’s vocabulary of the Enguduk 
Tloigob or Masai tongue, Svo, Ludwigburg, 1857. 

Besides these there are (1860) in MSS., 1. the 
entire New Testament (Kisawahili). 2. A com- 
plete Dictionary of Ki-suahili. 3. The Gospel 
according to St Matthew (Kikamba). 4. Matthew 
and Genesis in Galla, &c., &e., &e. 

Dr Krapf’s last work, a relation historique, 


M. MAIZAN. 55 


appeared in 1860 (Travels, Researches, and Mis- 
sionary Labours, &c., &c., with an Appendix by 
Mr P. G. Ravenstein, F.R.G.S. London, Triibner 
and Co.). I venture to suggest that he might 
reprint with great advantage to African students 
his various journals, scattered through the num- 
bers of the ‘Church Missionary Intelligencer.’ 
We want them, however, printed textually, with 
explanatory notes embodying subsequent inform- 
ation. 

Meanwhile the difficulties of East African 
exploration were complicated by a terrible disas- 
ter. M. Maizan, an Ensigne de Vaisseau, re- 
solved to explore the inner lake regions via the 
Zanzibar coast, and in 1844 his projects were 
approved of by his government. After the rains 
of 1845 he landed at the little settlement Bag- 
amoyo, and when barely three days from the 
seaboard, he was brutally murdered at the vil- 
lage of Dege la Mhora, by one P’hazi Mazungéra, 
chief of the Wakamba, a sub-tribe of the Waza- 
ramo. The distinguished hydrographer Captain 
Guillain was sent in the brig of war Le Decou- 
édic, to obtain satisfaction for this murder, and 
the following sentence concludes his remarks 
upon the subject (Chap. 1, pp. 17—20); ‘Tout 
ce que je veux, tout ce que je dois me rappeler de 


56 CAPTAIN GUILLAIN. 


Maizan, c’est quil était intelligent, instruit, cour- 
ageux, et quil a péri misérablement a la fleur de 
Page (set. 26) au début d’une enterprise ou il 
aurait pu rencontrer la gloire. I have also 
described (Lake Regions of Central Africa, 1. 
Chap. 3), from information collected on the spot, 
the young traveller’s untimely end; and itis still 
my opinion that the foul murder was caused 
more or less directly by the Christian merchants 
of Zanzibar. Dr Krapf’s account of the cata- 
strophe (Travels, p. 421) abounds in errors. Cap- 
tain Guillain was also sent on a kind of bagman’s 
tour, a hawker carrying echantillons of French 
cloth and other produce offered to the Arab mar- 
ket. Mayotta having been ceded in 1841 by the 
Sakalawa chief, Andrian Souli, to the French 
government, which occupied it militarily in 1843, 
the first idea was to make of it a second and a 
more civilized Zanzibar. The coasting voyages 
and afew short inland trips were thought worthy of 
being published in three bulky volumes (Docu- 
ments sur l’Histoire, la Géographie, et la Com- 
merce de l’Afrique Orientale, recuellis et rédigés 
par M. Guillain, &c.; publi¢s par ordre du Gou- 
vernement. Paris, Bertrand). The additions to 
Captain Owen’s survey are unimportant, but the 
French officer has diligently collected ‘ documents 


DR BEKE. | 57 


pour servir,’ which will be useful when a history 
of the coast shall be written. The worst part of 
the book is the linguistic; a sailor, however, 
passing rapidly through or along a country, can 
hardly be expected to learn much of the language. 

Meanwhile an important theory concerning 
the Nile Sources was published by my friend, Dr 
Charles T. Beke. He had surveyed and explored 
(Nov. 1840—May 1843) the Abyssinian plateau 
and the lowlands near the Red Sea, and he had de- 
termined the water-parting of the streams which 
feed the Nile and the Indian Ocean (Journal Royal 
Geographical Society, vol. xii). Whilst Ritter 
(Erdkunde) and other geographers made the 
White River rise between N. lat. 7° and 8° and even 
11°, whilst Messrs Antoine d’Abbadie and Ayrton 
were searching for the Coy Fountains in Enaria 
and Kaffa (N. lat. 7° 49 and E. long. 36° 2’ 
9”) ; and whilst Mr James Macqueen located ‘ the 
sources of the chief branch of the Bahr-el-abiad 
in about N. lat. 3°’ (Preface xxiv. Geographical 
Survey of Africa, London, Fellowes, 1840), and ‘at 
no great distance from the equator’ (Ibid. 235), 
Dr Beke announced at the Swansea meeting of 
the British Association, that he would carry the 
Caput Nili to S. lat. 29—8° and E. long. 34°; 
moreover that he would place it ‘at a compara- 


58 DR BIALLOBLOTSEY. 


tively short distance from the sea coast, within 
the dominions of the Imam of Maskat.’ Rightly 
judging the eastern coast to be the easiest road 
into central intertropical Africa, Dr Beke, then 
secretary to the Geographical Society of London, 
collected a subscripion for exploring the Nile 
Sources, via Zanzibar, and sent out Dr Friedrich 
Bialloblotsky to attempt the discovery. This 
Professor of Hebrew and literary man presented 
in February 1849 his credentials to H. M. the 
Sayyid and to Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton. The 
latter, backed by Dr Krapf, sent back the explorer 
to Egypt, without allowing him even to set foot 
upon the East African shore, and he was justified 
in so doing. The recent murder of M. Maizan 
had thrown the coast into confusion, the assassin 
was at large, and the motives which prompted 
the deed were still actively at work within the 
Island of Zanzibar. Dr Bialloblotsky could 
speak no eastern tongue, at least none that was 
intelligible in 8. Africa; he was completely un- 
trained to travel, he collected ‘meteoric’ dust 
during a common storm at Aden—magno cum risu 
of the Adenites ; he did not know the difference 
between a sextant and a quadrant, and he asked 
Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton what a young cocoa- 
nut was. 


DR BEKE. 59 


Dr Beke, in his character of ‘ Theoretical Dis- 
coverer of the Nile Sources,’ has published the 
following studies. 

‘On the Nile and its Tributaries,’ a state- 
ment of his then novel views (Oct. 28, 1846, 
and printed in the Journal Royal Geographical 
Society, vols. xvii., xviii. of 1847-8). ‘The 
Sources of the Nile: being a General Survey of 
the Basin of that River, and of its Head-streams, 
with the History of Nilotic Discovery ’ (London, 
Madden, 1860). The appendix contains a sum- 
mary of Dr Bialloblotsky’s projected journey. 

‘Qn the Mountains forming the eastern side 
of the Basin of the Nile, and the origin of the 


3 


designation, ‘‘ Mountains of the Moon,” applied 
to them.’ This paper, being refused by the Royal 
Geographical Society, was read (August 30, 1861) 
before the British Association at Manchester. 

‘Who discovered the Sources of the Nile?’ 
A letter to Sir Roderick I. Murchison (Mad- 
den, Leadenhall-street, 1863). 

‘On the Lake Kura of Arabian Geographers 
and Cartographers.’ This paper argues that 
the equatorial Lake Kura-Kawar, drawn by 
an Arab, and published in Lelewel’s ‘ Geo- 
graphie du Moyen Age,” 
and marshes of N. lat. 9°. 


represents the lakes 


60 NEW NILE SOURCE. 


Dr Beke, it appears, doubly deserves the 
title ‘ Theoretical Discoverer of the Nile Sources.’ 
He has lately transferred the Caput from S. lat. 
2°—3° to S. lat. 10° 30’'—11°, and from E. long. 
34° to EH. long. 18°—19°, making the stream pass 
through 43° of latitude, and measuring diagon- 
ally one-eighth of the circumference of the 
globe. (‘Solution of the Nile Problem,’ Athe- 
neeum, Feb. 5,1870). The Nile is thus identified 
with the Kasai, or Kassavi, the Casais of P. J. 
Baptista (the Pombeiro), the Casati of Douville, 
the Casasi of M. Cooley, the Cassabe of M. J. R. 
Graca, the Kasaby of Mr Macqueen, and the 
Kasye or Loke of Dr Livingstone. These ‘ New 
Sources’ are in the ‘primeval forests of Olo- 
Vihenda and Djikoe or Kibokoe (the Quiboque 
of the Hungarian officer Ladislaus Magyar), in 
the Mossamba Mountains, about 3800 miles from 
the coast of Benguela. Mr Keith Johnston, jun. 
believes that the Lufira-Luapula river is the 
lower course of the Kassavi or Kassabi, which is 
usually made to rise in S. lat. 12°, near the 
Atlantic seaboard, and after flowing N. E. and 
N. as far as about S. lat. 8°, to turn eastward 
instead of continuing to the N. W. and W. He 
makes it, however, the true head of the Congo, 
not of the Nile. 


SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. 61 


Amongst minor explorations, I may mention 
that of Mr Henry C. Arcangelo, who in 1847 
ascended the Juba or Govind River. It is, 
however, doubtful how far his explorations ex- 
tended. He was followed in 1849 by Captain 
Short. In November, 1851, a party of three 
Moors or Zanzibar Arabs landed at ‘ Bocamoio’ 
(the Bagamoyo roadstead village where M. 
Maizan disembarked), travelled with 40 carriers 
to the Lake ‘Tanganna’ (Tanganyika), crossed 
it in a boat which they built, visited the Muata 
Cazembe, and reached, after six months, the Por- 
tuguese Benguela. The late Mr Consul Brand 
communicated, through the Foreign Office, this 
remarkable journey, in which Africa had been 
crossed, with few difficulties, from sea to sea, 
and it excited the attention of the Royal Geo- 
eraphical Society (Journal, vol. xxiv. of 1854). 

In 1852 Sir Roderick I. Murchison pro- 
pounded his theory of the basin-shaped struc- 
ture of the African interior. This was an 
important advance upon the great plateau of 
Lacépéde (Mémoire, etc., dans les Annales du 
Musée de |’Histoire Nat., vi. 284), and it abol- 
ished the gardens and terraces of Ritter (Erd- 
kunde, le Plateau ou la Haute Afrique). About 
the same time Col. Sykes recommended that an 


62 COLONEL SYKES. 


expedition be sent from Mombasah to explore the 
‘Arcanum Magnum,’ opining that the discovery 
of Kilima-njaro and Kenia had limited the area 
of the head-waters between S. lat. 2°—4° and E. 
long. (G.) 32°—386°, almost exactly the southern- 
most position of the Nyanza Lake. In March, 
1855, Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton forwarded con- 
cise but correct notices, ‘ On various points con- 
nected with the H.M. Imam of Muskat,’ which 
was published in the Bombay Selections (No. 
24). In Dec. 10, 1855, followed Mr James Mac- 
queen’s paper on the ‘ Present state of the Geo- 
graphy of some parts of Africa (read at the 
Royal Geographical Society, April 8 and June 
10, 1850), with ‘Notes on the Geography of 
Central Africa,’ taken from the researches of 
Livingstone, Monteiro, Graca, and others (Jour- 
nal Royal Geographical Society, vol. xxvi. 109). 
They show great critical ability. The map ac- 
companying the memoir separated the ‘ Tangan- 
yenka’ from the Nyassa Lake; moreover, it 
disposed the greater axes of these several waters 
as they should be, nearly upon a meridian.’ 
Maps still suffered from that incubus the N’yassi 
or Single Sea, stretching between 8. lat. 7°—12°, 
and distorted by its ‘historien géographe’ from 
the N.S. position occupied by the half-dozen lakes 


MR MACQUEEN. 63 


which compose it* to a N. W. and S. E. rhumb. 
As afterwards appeared, Mr Macqueen had con- 
fused the Tanganyika and Nyanza waters by 
placing the centre of the former in long. (G.) 
29°. This, however, was not suspected when 
my excellent and venerable friend gave me the 
rough proofs of his paper, which travelled with 
me into Central Africa. Mr Macqueen has also 
done good by editing (Journal Royal Geographi- 
cal Society, vol. xxx.) the Journeys of Silva 
Porto with the Arabs from Benguela to Ibo and 
Mozambique, and by other labours too numerous 
to be specified. 

A pause in Hast African exploration followed 
the departure of Dr Krapf. M. Erhardt, whose 
project of entering via Kilwa was not supported, 
had joined his brother missionaries in India. 
M. Rebmann alone remained at Rabai Mpia. 


* The ‘Nyassi’ is, in fact, a general reservoir into which are 
thrown the Lakes Tanganyika, the Nyassa, the Shirwa, and the 
four smaller waters, the Liemba, the Bangweolo, the Moero of 
the great river Chambeze, and the Liemba drained by the 
Lufira-Luapula stream. The latter, lying between \S. lat. 
‘10°—12°, have lately been reported by Dr Livingstone (Map 
of the Lake Region of Eastern Africa, showing the Sources of 
the Nile recently discovered by Dr Livingstone, with notes, 
&c., by Keith Johnston, jun. (Johnston); and we havea Sketch 
Map of Dr Livingstone’s recent Explorations—Eine Karten- 
skizze, &c. From Dr Petermann’s Geographische Mittheilun- 
gen, Part V., for May, 1870 (Gotha, Perthes). 


64 NOTE. 


And whilst under H. H. Abbas Pasha a large 
and complete Egypto-European expedition was, 
after the old fashion, organized to ascend the 
stream, ‘ad investigandum caput Nili’ (Seneca, 
Nat. Queest. vi. 8), the new and practicable route 
from the Zanzibar coast seemed to have been 
clean forgotten. 

During this lull we landed, as the reader has 
been told in the last chapter, upon the African 
isle ‘ Menouthias.’ 

NOTE. 

I may be excused in here alluding to an as- 
sertion often repeated by the ‘ Geographer of 
N’gassi,’ in his Memoir on the ‘ Lake Regions of 
East Africa reviewed ’ (London, Stanford, 1864). 
He makes me ‘ the easy dupe of the most trans- 
parent personal hostility, which wore the respect- 
able mask of the Royal Geographical Society,’ 
and he assures me that I left England ‘indoc- 
trinated’ as to what lake or lakes I should find 
in Central Africa, and so forth. 

This fretfulness of mortified vanity would not 
have been noticed by me had it not been so un- 
fair to the Royal Geographical Society. In the 
preface of my Memoir (pp. 4—8, Journal Royal 
Geographical Society, vol. xxix.), I was careful 
to print all the instructions of the Expedi- 
tionary Committee, and I only regretted that 
they were not more detailed. It is absurd to as- 


a at 65 


sert of a traveller that he ‘visited the lake re- 
sions with a confirmed inclination to divide the 
lake.’ What interest can he have in bringing 
home any but the fullest and most exact details ? 
The petty differences between himself and the 
Royal Geographical Society, which Mr Cooley 
assumes all the world to know, were utterly un- 
known to me when [I left England in 1856; and, 
ereatly despising such things, I have never since 
inquired into the subject. Returning home in 
1859, I learned with surprise that the ‘Com- 
parative Geographer’ still stood upon his ‘ Single 
Sea,’ and considered any one who dared to make 
two or three of it his personal enemy. That 
such should be the mental state of a gentleman 
who has not, they say, taken leave of his wits, 
was a phenomenon which justified my wonder ; 
nor could I believe it till the pages of the 
Atheneum proceeded top give me proof positive. 
It is melancholy to see a laborious literary man, 
whose name might stand so high, thus display 
the caput mortuum of his intellect. 


P.S. Another mortuary notice! My good 
old friend Mr Macqueen has also passed away 
at a ripe age, leaving behind him the memory of 
a laborious and useful life, especially devoted to 
the cause of Africa and the Africans. 


VOL. I. 5 


CHAPTER IV. 


A STROLL THROUGH ZANZIBAR CITY. 


‘E dahi se foi 4 Ilha de Zanzibar, que he aquém de Mombaca 
vinte leguas e tao pegada a terra firma que as ndos que passa- 
rem per entre ellas, hao de ser vistas. Dr Barros, 1, vii. 4. 


AnD first of the Port. 

Zanzibar harbour is a fine specimen of the 
true Atoll, barrier or fringing reef, built upon a 
subsiding foundation, probably of sandstone. The 
original lagoon, charged with sediment and 
washings from the uplands, must have burst 
during some greater flood, and split into narrow 
water-ways the one continuous coralline rim. 
The same influences may account for the gaps 
in the straight-lined reef whose breach gave a 
name to Brazilian Pernambuco. 

The port varies in depth from 9 to 138 


fathoms, with overfalls, and the rise of the tide 


is 13 feet. Here the Hormos Episalos (statio 
fluctuosa, or open roadstead of the Periplus, 


ISLETS. 67 


chap. 8) has been converted into a basin by the 
industry of the lithophyte. These ants of the 
ocean have built up an arc of 
‘Sea-girt isles, 
That, like to rich and various gems, inlay 
The unadorned bosom of the deep.’ 

There is a front harbour and a back bay. 
The latter enables ships landing cargo to avoid 
the heavy swell of the N.E. monsoon. The two 
are separated by Ras Changani'—Sandy Point. 
The name, corrupted to Shangany, has attached 
itself in our charts to the whole city. 

These coral-based islet clumps are readily 
made in these seas. The rough ridges of a 
‘wash,’ where currents meet, are soon heaped 
with sea-weed, with drift-wood, and with scatters 
of parasitical testaceze, which decaying form a 
thin but fruitful soil. Seeds brought by winds, 
waves, and birds then germinate; and matter, 

1 Changa (large sands), in the plural Michanga, sands (of 
great extent). Mchanga (sand generally), at Mombasah and 
on the coast which preserve the older dialect, becomes 
Mtanga, and means a sandy place. The islanders of Zanzibar, 
for instance, will say Nti (the land or earth), the continentals, 
Nchi: these prefer Ku Changanyika (to meet together), those 
Ku Tanganyika. Foreigners often confound chya with jya, and 
pronounce, for instance, Msijyana for Msichyana—a lass. The 


Arabs, who cannot articulate the ch, convert it into their familiar 
sh, e. g. Ku Shimba for Ku Chimba (to dig). 


68 CHAMPANTI. 


animal as well as vegetable, is ever added tilla 
humus-bed is formed for thick shrubbery and 
trees. Unless deposition and vegetation con- 
tinue to bind the rock, it is lable to be under- 
mined by the sea, when it forms banks danger- 
ous to navigation. 

Dr Ruschenberger, repeated by a modern 
traveller, informs us that there are ‘four minor 
reefs, looking like great arks, whose bows and 
sterns hang bushing over the waters.’ As all 
the plans show, there are five. The northern- 
most link of the broken chain is Champani (not 
‘Chapany’), the Isle des Francais of French 
charts. It became a God’s-acre for Europeans, 
whose infidel corpses here, as at Maskat, and in 
ancient Madeira before the days of Captain 
Cook, had during less latitudinarian times the 
choice of the dunghill of the cove, or of a hole 
in the street. Formerly it was frequented by 
turtle-fishers and egg-seekers: ‘ black Muhogo,” 
however, has been scared away by visions of fever- 
stricken, yellow-faced ghosts rising ghastly from 
the scatter of Christian graves. The bit of sandy 
bush, distinguished from its neighbours by ab- 
sence of tall trees, is frequented (1857) by naval 
and commercial Nimrods, with ‘ shooting irons ’ 


* Manioc, often erroneously written Mahogo. 


KIBONDIKO. 69 


and ‘smelling dogs,’ curs with clipped ears and 
shorn tails, bought from bumboat men: en bon 
chasseurs, they shoot the Sayyid’s little antelopes 
which troop up expecting food; and sometimes 
these sportsmen make targets of certain buff- 
coloured objects imperfectly seen through the 
bushes. The mouldering sepulchres in their 
neglected clearings make the prospect of a last 
home here peculiarly unsavoury, almost as bad 
as in Brazilian Santos. Yet there are traditions 
of French picnics visiting it to eat monkey—a 
proceeding which might have been interrupted 
en ville. 

Westward the line of natural breakwaters is 
prolonged by Kibondiko, Le Ponton, or the Hulk. 
A mere mass of jungle, it has never been utilized. 
The eye, however, rests with pleasure upon the 
sheet of sparkling foam tumbling white over its 
coralline outliers, backed by dark purple-blue 
distance, and fronted by tranquil, leek-green 
shoal water. Connected with its neighbour by a 
reef practicable at low tides, it is separated from 
Changu, or Middle Island, by ‘ French channel,’ 
deep enough for men-of-war. The shoals about 
it supply a small rock-oyster. The crustacea, 
however, is uncultivated, and amongst Moslems 
it is escargot to the typical John Bull. 


70 BAWI. : 


The most important is Bawi or Turtle Island, 
a low, dry bank, slightly undulated, with a beau- 
tifully verdant undergrowth, fringed and tasseled 
with the tallest cocoas. The Chelonian (K’hasa) 
of the East coast, eaten in April and May, by no 
means equals that of Fernando Po or of Ascen- 
sion; moreover, here no man is master of the 
art and mystery of developing callipash and cal- 
lipee. Turtle, cooked by a ‘ cook-boy,’ suggests 
the flesh of small green Saurians (Susmar), which 
the haughty Persians of Firdausi thus objected 
to their Semitic neighbours— 


‘Can the Arab’s greed thus have grown so great, 
Irom his camels’ milk and his lizards’ meat, 
That he casts on Kayyanian crowns his eye P 
Fie on thee ! thou swift-rolling world, O fie!’ 

The tortoise-shell, so often mentioned in the 
Periplus as an export from Menouthias (chap. 
xv.) and Rhapta (chap. xvii.), has until lately 
been neglected. Like Bombay Calabar, and our 
Isle of Dogs in the olden time, the few acres of 
Turtle Island were used to ‘keep antelopes, 
goats, and other beasts of delight,’ while vicious 
baboons were deported to it from the city. 
Below it is the celebrated ‘ Harpshell Bank,’ now 
mercilessly spoiled. Southernmost is Chumbi 
Island, alias La Passe, which, mistaken for the 


CHUMBI. 71 


Turtle, has caused many a wreck. These mis- 
haps are not always accidental. One day Lieut.- 
Colonel Hamerton saw, through his glass, the 
master of a Frenchman deliberately stow himself 
and his luggage in the gig, put off, and leave his 
ship to run her nose upon the nearest reef. 
These islands form the well-known ‘ Passes,’ 
channels intricate with lithodom-reefs and mol- 
lusk-beds. They number four, namely, the 
northern or English Pass, between Champdani 
and Zanzibar; the N. W. or French Pass, between 
Kibondiko and Changu; the great or middle, be- 
tween Changu and Badawi; and the western, 
south of Bawi. The principal entrance was 
buoyed by the late Sayyid, but these precautions 
soon disappeared. Within the line of break- 
waters is the anchorage, which may be pro- 
nounced excellent; ships ride close to shore in 
7 to 8 fathoms, and the area between the islets and 
the island may be set down at 3°8 square miles. 
It presents an animated scene. Mosquito fleets 
of ‘ngarawa’ or monoxyles cut the wavelets 
like flying proas, under the nice conduct of the 
sable fishermen, who take advantage of the calm 
weather. The northerners from about Brava 
_ have retained the broad-brimmed straw hat, 
big as an average parasol. Like that of Mala- 


72 NATIVE CRAFT. 


bar, Morocco, and West Africa, it was adopted 
by their Portuguese conquerors. The machua 
or ‘little boats’ of the Lusiads, which De Barros 
calls ‘Sambucos,’* are still the same, except that 
a disproportioned sail of merkani (American 
domestics), based upon a pair of outriggers, now 
supplies the primitive propeller, 
‘Vhumas folhas de palma bem tecidas.’ 

The outrigger is rarely neglected. Here and 
there a giant shark shoots up from the depths, 
and stares at the fishermen with a cruel, fixed, 
and colourless eye, that makes his blood run 
cold. Only the poorest of poor devils will ven- 
ture into a ‘dug-out,’ which is driven before 
the wind or paddled with a broad, curved, spoon- 
like blade. ‘These Matumbi, or hollowed logs, 
form a curious national contrast with the 
launches and lighters that land European mer- 
chandise; ponderous and solid squares, their 
build shows nothing graceful or picturesque. 

The N. E. monsoon is now (December) doing 
its duty well, and bringing various native craft 


' T have described (Pilgrimage to El Medinah and Meccah) 
the modern Sambuk of the Red Sea, and find the word ‘Son- 
bok’ in the French translation of Ibn Batutah. Sir Gardner 
Wilkinson quotes Atheneus, who makes the ‘Sambuca’ (a 
musical instrument) ‘resemble a ship with a ladder placed 
over it.’ 


THE MTEPE. 73 


from Madagascar, Mozambique, the minor islands 
of the Indian Ocean, Bombay and Guzerat, the 
Somali coast, the Red Sea, Maskat, and the 
Persian Gulf. Numbering 60 to 70, they anchor 
close in shore—O Semites and Hamites, won- 
drously apathetic!—where the least sea would 
bump them to bits. About half a mile outside 
the ‘ country shipping,’ ride, in 5 to 6 fathoms, 
half a dozen square-rigged merchantmen — 
Americans, French, and Hamburgers; Eng- 
land is not represented. What with bad water, 
and worse liquor, the Briton finds it hard to 
live at Zanzibar. All are awaiting cargoes of 
copal and ivory, of hides, and of the cowries 
which we used to call ‘ blackamoor’s teeth.’ 

The quaintest and freshest local build is to 
us the Mtepe, which the Arabs call Muntafiyah.' 
This lineal descendant of the Ploaria Rhapta 
(Navicule Consutz, Periplus, chap. 16), that 
floated upon these seas 20 centuries ago, is a 
favourite from Lamu to Kilwa. ‘The shell has 
a beam one-third of its length, and swims the 
tide buoyantly as a sea-bird. This breadtli, com- 
bined with elasticity, enables it to stand any 


* It is written Mutaifiyah in the Arab Chronicle of Momb- 
_asah History, translated and included in Captain Owen’s work 
(Voyages to Africa, vol. i. 416, Arabia, etc., London, Bentley, 
1833). 


e 


74 THE BADAN. 


amount of grounding and bumping, nor is it 
ever beached for the 8. W. monsoon. I¢ is 
pegged together, not nailed, and mostly, as the 
old traveller says, ‘ sewn, like clothes, with 
twine.’ The tapering mast, raking forwards, 
carries any amount of square matting, by no 
means air-tight, and the stern is long and pro- 
jecting, as if amphisbeenic. The swan-throat of 
the arched prow is the cheniscus of the classical 
galley-stem. Necklaced with strips of hide and 
bunches of talismans, it bears a red head; and 
the latter, as in the ark of Osiris and in the 
Chinese junk, has the round eyes painted white, 
-—possibly, in the beginning holes for hawsers. 
The ‘Mtepe’ carries from 12 to 20 tons, and 
can go to windward of everything propelled by 
wind. 

The Badan, from Sur, Sohar, and Maskat, has 
a standing plank-covering, and being able to 
make 11 knots an hour is preferred by passen- 
gers, Arab loafers, and sorners, one being al- 
lowed per ton in short trips. Descried from 
afar through the haze, her preposterous sail has 
caused the Zanzibarites to fly their flags in 
anticipation of home news; nearer, the long, 
narrow, quoin-shaped craft, with towering stern- 
post and powerful rudder, like the caudal fin of 


THE DAU. 75 


some monstrous fish, presents an exceptional 
physiognomy. The uncouth Arab Dau (dow) 
dates probably from the days of the Pheenicians, 
and is found all over the Indian Ocean. She 
ranges from 50 to 500 tons, and her sharp pro- 
jecting bow makes her deck nearly a quarter 
longer than the keel, giving her, when under 
weigh, a peculiar stumbling, shambling, totter- 
ing gait. ‘The open poop is a mass of immense 
outworks, and there is the normal giant steer- 
ing-tackle, often secured only by lashings: a sin- 
gle mast is stepped a little ahead of amidships; 
it rakes forward, as is the rule of primitive craft, 
and it supports a huge square sail of coarse 
material. The Kidau (small dow) is similar, but 
with open stern-cabins; it is generally sewn 
together with coir or rope of cocoa fibre, and 
caulked with the same. The bottom is paid 
over with a composition of lime and shark’s-oil, 
which, hardening under water, preserves the 
hull from sea-worms. Thus sheathed, ships 
which have made two feet of leakage become 
tight as if newly coppered. Similarly, the Irish 
fishermen coat their craft with marl and oil. 
Tale and tallow are employed in different parts 
of Europe: and the Chinese use a putty of oil 
- and burnt gypsum; according to others, a com- 


76 THE ‘GRAB’ 


position of lime and resin of the Tongshu-tree 
applied over the oakum of bamboo (Astley, 
4, 128). 

The ‘Grab’ (properly ‘Ghurab,’ meaning a 
raven) is an overgrown Pattimar. A model of 
the latter craft, primitive and Hindu, was sub- 
mitted to the British public during the Great 
Exhibition. Rigged barque-like, it is wondrous 
ark-like and uncouth. Baghlahs (she-mules) and 
Ganjas (Ghancheh), from Cutch, are old tubs 
with low projecting prows and elevated sterns, 
elaborately carved and painted. Low down in the 
fore, their lean bows split like giant wedges the 
opposing waves, which hiss and seethe as they fly 
past in broad arrow-heads. Dangerous in heavy 
seas, these coffins are preserved by popular pre- 
judice for the antique and by the difficulty of 
choosing other models. Add sundry Batelas, 
with poop-cabinets, closed and roomy, some 
with masts struck, others ready to weigh anchor 
—I am not writing, gentle reader, a report on 
Moslem naval architecture—and you have an 
idea of the outlandish fleet, interesting withal, 
which bethrongs the port of Zanzibar. 

The much-puffed squadron of the late Sayyid, 
stationed during his life at Mto-ni, and now 
being divided amongst the rival heirs, flanks 


THE SQUADRON. 77 


with its single and double tiers of guns these 
peaceful traders, of whom, by-the-by, some are 
desperate pirates. The number is imposing; 
but the decks have no awnings against the 
weather, the masts are struck and stripped to 
save rigging, the yards lie fore-and-aft upon the 
booms, the crews consist of half-a-dozen thievish, 
servile ‘sons of water’ (M’ana Maji); rats and 
cockroaches compose the live stock; the am- 
munition is nowhere, and though the quarter 
and main decks are sometimes swept, everything 
below is foul with garbage and vermin. The ex- 
teriors are dingy ; the interiors are so thoroughly 
rotted by fresh water that the ships are always 
ready to go down at their anchors. The whole 
thing is a mistake amongst Arabs, who are fitted 
only for a ‘ buggalow,’ or at best a‘ grab.’ The 
late Sayyid once attempted English sailors, who 
behaved well as long as they did what they 
pleased, especially in the minor matters of ’baccy 
and grog; but when the dark-faced skipper 
began loud speaking and tall threats, they incon- 
tinently thrashed him upon his own quarter- 
deck, and were perforce ‘ dismissed the service.’ 
Every captain in the R. N. Maskat, besides im- 
_ pudently falsifying the muster-rolls, will steal 
the fighting-lanterns, the hammocks, and other 


78 H, M’S CONSULATE. 


articles useful at home; whilst the care-takers 
sell in the bazar, junk, rope, and line; copper 
bolts, brass-work, and carpenter’s chests bearing 
the government mark. When a ship is wanted 
an Arab Nakhoda (here called Nahoza), a Mu- 
allim or sailing-master, and a couple of Suk- 
kanis (pilots), are sent on board with a crew 
composed of a few Arab non-commissioned 
officers and ‘able seamen,’ Baloch, Maskatis, and 
slaves. The commander, who receives some 50 
dollars per lunar month, kills time with the 
cognac bottle; the sailing-master (7 dollars) 
dozes like a lap-dog in his own arm-chair on the 
quarter-deck ; and the seamen do nothing, Jack 
helping Bill. One of these vessels sent to Eng- 
land a few years ago lost, by want of provisions 
and bad water, 86 out of its crew—100 men; 
and can we wonder at it? A single small screw- 
steamer, carrying a heavy gun, and manned and 
commanded by Europeans, would have been 
more efficient in warfare, and far more useful in 
peace, than the whole squadron of hulks. It is, 
however, vain to assure the Arab brain that mere 
number is not might; and, indeed, so it is when 
people believe in it. 

The high and glassless windows of H. M.’s 
Consulate enable us to prospect the city. Zan- 


ZANZIBAR CITY. 79 


zibar, in round numbers 6° south of the line, 
occupies the western edge and about the midway 
length of the coral reef that forms the island. 
The latter is separated by a Manche or channel 
from the continent, a raised strip of blue land, 
broken by tall and remarkable cones all rejoicing 
in names still mysterious enough to flutter the 
traveller’s nerves. The inclination of the island 
from N.N.W. to S8.S8.E. shelters the harbour 
from the Indian Ocean, whilst the bulge of 
the mainland breaks the force of dangerous 
Hippalus, the 8.W. monsoon. The minimum 
breadth of the Manche is 16 geographical miles ; 
from the Fort to the opposite coast there are 24, 
and from the bottom of Menai Bay 35. The 
Periplus gives to the Menouthian Channel about 
300 stadia, in round numbers 30 geographical 
miles: 600 common stadia correspond, within a 
fraction of the real measurement, with a degree 
of latitude (1°=,,, of the earth’s circumference). 
Marinus of Tyre and Ptolemy, however, unduly 
reduced the latter to 500 stadia. 

Zanzibar city is built upon a triangular spit, 
breaking the line of its wide, irregular, and shal- 
low bay. The peninsula is connected with the 

island by an isthmus some 300 yards wide, and it 
_ is backed by swamp and lagoon, bush and forest. 


80 ON THE SHORE. 


Are-shaped, with the chord formed by the sea- 
frontage, and the segment of the circle facing 
landwards, its greatest length ‘is from N.E. to 
S.W., and it is disposed beachways, like the sea- 
ports of Oman. The front is a mere ‘ dicky,’ a 
clean show concealing uncleanness. Instead, 
however, of a neat marine parade and a T-shaped 
pier, the foreground is a line of sand fearfully 
impure. Corpses float at times upon the heavy 
water; the shore is a cess-pool, and the younger 
blacks of both sexes disport themselves in an ab- 
sence of costume which would startle even Mar- 
gate. Round-barrelled bulls, the saints of the 
Banyans, and therefore called by us ‘ Brahmani,’ 
push and butt, by way of excitement, the gangs of 
serviles who carry huge sacks of cowries, and pile 
high their hides and logwood. Others wash and 
scrape ivory, which suggested to a young travel- 
ler the idea that the precious bone, here so plenti- 
ful, is swept up by the sea. At night the front 
often flares as if on fire. The cause is lime-burn- 
ing on the shore, in small, round, built-up heaps. 

Another evil, arising from want of quay and 
breakwater, is that the sea at times finds its way 
into the lower parts of the town. The nuisance 
increases, as this part of the Island appears to be 
undergoing depression, not an uncommon pro- 


POPULATION. 81 


cess in fictile madrepore formations. Off Chan- 
gvani Point, where in 1823 stood a hut-clump and 
a mosque, four fathoms of water now roll. The 
British Consulate, formerly many yards distant 
from the surf, must be protected by piles and rub- 
ble. Some of the larger houses have sunk four, 
and have sloped nine feet from terrace to ground, 
owing to the instability of their soppy founda- 
tions. The ‘ Tree-island’ of our earliest charts 
has been undermined and carried away bodily by 
the waves; whilst to the north the sea has en- 
croached upon Mto-ni, where the Sayyid’s flag- 
staff has four times required removal. On the 
other hand, about 15 years ago, the ‘ Middle 
Shoal’ of the harbour was awash; now it is high 
and dry. 

In 1835 Dr Ruschenberger éstimated the 
census of Zanzibar at 12,000 souls, of whom two- 
thirds were slaves. In 1844 Dr Krapf proposed 
100,000 as the population of the island, the 
greater number living in the capital. Captain 
Guillain, in 1846, gave 20,000 to 25,000, slaves 
included. JI assumed the number, in 1857, as 
25,000, which during the N.E. monsoon, when a 
large floating population flocks in, may rise to 
40,000, and even to 45,000. The Consular re- 
| port of 1849 asserts it to be ‘about 60,000.’ 


VOL. I. 6 


82 THE WEST END. 


The city is divided into 18 quarters (Mah- 
allat), each having its own name; and when 
travellers inform us that it is called ‘ Hamuz,’ 
Moafilah, or Baur, they simply take a part for 
the whole.’ The west-end boasts the best houses, 
chiefly those which wealthy natives let to 
stranger merchants. The Central, or Fort quar- 
ter, is the seat of government and of commerce, 
whilst few foreigners inhabit the eastern extrem- 
ities, the hottest and the most unhealthy. The 
streets are, as they should be under such a sky, 
deep and winding alleys, hardly 20 feet broad, 
and travellers compare them with the threads of 
a tangled skein. In the west-end a pavement of 
Chunam, or tamped lime, is provided with a 
cutter, which secures dryness and cleanliness— 


! The quarters, beginning from Changani, the most western, 
are, the Baghani, which contains the English Consulate; the 
Mnazi-Moya to the south, with a grave-yard, and a bazar 
where milk and grain are sold; the Fuga adjoining it, the Zamba- 
rani, the Kajifichemi, the Kunazemi, and the Nambo to the south- 
east ; the Gurayzani, containing the fort ; and the Furdani with 
the Custom House; the Kipondah, where the French Consulate 
is ; the Ziwani (Mitha-pani of the Hindus) further to the south ; 
the Suk Muhogo, where manure and fish are sold; the Me- 
lindi, or Melindini, occupied by Hindus, and boasting a bazar ; 
and lastly the Mnawi, the Kokoni, and the Fungu extend to the 
easternmost quarter, the Malagash, where the Lagoon, an inlet 
of the sea, bounds the city. I did not hear any of the three 
names mentioned in the text; they are probably now obsolete. 


THE EAST END. 83 


it is the first that I have seen in an African 
city. As we go eastward all such signs of civili- 
zation vanish; the sun and wind are the only 
engineers, and the frequent green and black 
puddles, like those of the filthy Ghetto, or Jews’ 
quarter, at Damascus, argue a preponderance of 
black population. Here, as on the odious sands, 
the festering impurities render strolling a task 
that requires some resolution, and the streets 
are unfit for a decent (white) woman to walk 
through. J may say the same of almost every 
city where the negro element abounds. 

As in the coast settlements of the Red 
Sea and of Madagascar, the house material is 
wholly coral rag, a substance at once easily 
worked and durable—stone and lime in one. 
The irregularity of the place is excessive, and it 
is by no means easy to describe its peculiar phy- 
siognomy. The public buildings are poor and 
mean. The mosques which adorn Arab towns 
with light and airy turrets, breaking the mono- 
tony of square white tenements, magnified claret- 
chests, are here in the simplest Wahhabi form. 
About 30 of these useful, but by no means orna- 
mental, ‘meeting-houses’ are scattered about 
the city for the use of the ‘established church.’ 
; They are oblong rooms, with stuccoed walls, and 


84 THE MOSQUE. 


matted floors; the flat roofs are supported by 
dwarf rows of square piers and polygonal 
columns; whilst Saracenic arches, broad, pointed, 
and lanceated, and windows low-placed for con- 
venience of expectoration, with inner emargina- 
tions in the normal shape of scallops or cres- 
cents, divide the interior. Two Shafei mosques, 
one called after Mohammed Abd el Kadir, the 
other from Mohammed el Aughan (Afghan), 
have minarets, dwindled turrets like the steeples 
of Brazilian villages; another boasts of a diminu- 
tive cone, most like an Egyptian pigeon-tower ; 
and a fourth has a dwarf excrescence, suggesting 
the lantern of a light-house. The Shiahs, who 
are numerous, meet for prayer in the Kipondah 
quarter, and the Kojahs have a ruined mosque 
outside the city. 

The best houses are on the Arab plan familiar 
to travellers in Ebro-land and her colonies. The 
type has extended to France and even to Galway, 
where we still find it in the oldest buildings. A 
dark narrow entrance leads from the street, and 
the centre of the tenements is a hypeethral quad- 
rangle, the Iberian Patio or Quintal. "We miss, 
however, the shady trees, the sweet flowers, and 
bright verdure with which the southern Euro- 
-pean and the Hispano-American beautify their 


a 


THE HOUSE. 85 


dwellings. Here the ‘Dar’ is a dirty yard, 
paved or unpaved, usually encumbered with piles 
of wood or hides, stored for sale, and tenanted by 
poultry, dogs, donkeys, and lounging slaves. A 
steep and narrow, dark and dangerous staircase 
of rough stone, like a companion-ladder, con- 
nects it with the first floor, the ‘ noble-quarter.’ 
There are galleries for the several storeys, and 
doors opening upon the court admit light into 
the rooms. Zanzibarian architecture, as among 
‘Orientals’ generally, is at a low ebb. ‘The 
masonry shows not a single straight line; the 
arches are never similar in form or size; the 
floors may have a foot of depression between the 
middle and the corners of the room; whilst no 
two apartments are on the same level, and they 
seldom open into each other. Joiner’s work and 
iron-work must both be brought from India. 

The ‘azotéas’! flat roofs, or rather terraces, 
are supported by mangrove-trunks, locally called 
‘Zanzibar rafters,’ and the walls, of massive 
thickness, are copiously ‘chunam’d.’ Here the 
inmates delight to spread their mats, and at 
suitable seasons to ‘ smell the air.’ Banda or ban- 
dini, pent-roofed huts of plaited palm-leaf (ma- 


* The Iberian name (in Arabic cull, El Sat’h) of the flat 
roof-terrace, borrowed from the dry lands of Western Asia. 


86 THE DOOR. 


kuti or cajan) garnish the roofs of the native 
town. Europeans do not patronize these look- 
outs, fires being frequent and the slaves danger- 
ous. Some foreigners have secured the comfort 
of a cool night by building upper cabins of 
planking, and have paid for the enjoyment in 
rheumatism, ague, and fever. 


Koranic sentences on slips of paper, fastened 


to the entrances, and an inscription cut in the 
~ wooden lintel, secure the house from witchcraft, 
like the crocodile in Egypt; whilst a yard of 
ship’s cable drives away thieves. The higher the 
tenement, the bigger the gateway, the heavier 
the padlock, and the huger the iron studs which 
nail the door of heavy timber, the greater is the 
owner’s dignity. All seems ready for a state of 
siege. Even the little square holes pierced high 
up in the walls, and doing duty as ventilators, 
are closely barred. As heat prevents the use 
of glass in sleeping-rooms, shutters of plain or 
painted plank supply its place, and persiennes 
deform the best habitations. The northern Buro- 
pean who sleeps for the first time in one of these 
blockhouses fairly realizes the first sensations 
of a jail. Of course the object is defence, there- 
fore the form is still common to Egypt and Zan- 
zibar, Syria and Asia Minor. 


as 


eee 


THE ROOM. 87 


Arabs here, as elsewhere, prefer long narrow 
rooms (40 feet x 15 to 20), generally much 
higher than their breadth, open to the sea- 
breeze, which is the health-giver ; and they close 
the eastern side-walls against the ‘fever-wind,’ 
the cool, damp, spicy land-draught. The Sala 
or reception-hall is mostly on the ground- 
floor. It contrasts strongly with our English 
apartments, where the comfortless profusion and 
confusion of furniture, and where the undue 
crowding of ornamental ornaments, spoil the 
proportions and ‘put out’ the eye. The pro- 
tracted lines of walls and rows of arched and 
shallow niches, which take the place of tables 
and consoles, are unbroken save by a few 
weapons. Pictures and engravings are almost 
unknown; chandeliers and mirrors are confined 
to the wealthy; and the result, which in Eng-— 
land would be bald and barn-like, here sug- 
gests the coolness and pleasing simplicity of an 
Italian villa—in Italy. A bright-tinted carpet, 
a gorgeous but tasteful Persian rug for the dais, 
matting on the lower floor, which is of the usual 
chunam; adivan in old-fashioned houses; and, in 
' the best of the modern style, half a dozen stiff 
chairs of East Indian blackwood or China-work, 
compose the upholstery of an Arab ‘palazzo.’ 


88 THE FORT. 


In the rooms of the few who can or will afford 
such trifles, ornaments of porcelain or glass- 
ware, and French or Yankee knicknacks fill 
the niches. Of course the inner apartments are 
more showily dressed, but these we may not ex- 
plore. 

About half way down the front of the city 
we debouch upon the ‘Gurayza’ or fort. The 
material is the usual coral-rag, cemented with 
lime of the same formation, rudely burnt, and 
the style as well as the name (Igreja—Lcclesia) 
recall to mind the Portuguese of the heroic 
sixteenth century. It is one of those naive, cre- 
nelated structures, flanked by polygonal towers, 
each pierced for one small gun, and connected 
by the comparatively low curtains, in which our 
ancestors put their trust. A narrow open space 
runs round it, and it is faced by a straight-lined 
detached battery, commanding the landing, and 
about 12 yards long. The embrasures of this 
outwork are so close that the first broadside 
would blow open the thin wall; and the score 
of guns is so placed that every bullet striking 
the fort must send a billet or two into the men 
that serve them. A ‘place darmes,’ about 50 
feet wide, divides the two, and represents the 
naval and military arsenal—two dozen iron car- 


a 


THE FORT. 89 


ronades lying piled to the right of the first 
entrance, and as much neglected and worm- 
eaten as though they belonged to our happy 
colony, Cape Coast Castle. Amongst the guns 
of different calibre we find a few fine old brass 
pieces, one of which bears the dint of a heavy 
blow. They are probably the plunder of Hor- 
muz or of Maskat, where the small matter of 
a ‘piece of ham wrapped up in paper ’? caused, 
in the middle of the seventeenth century, a 
general massacre of the Portuguese.’ 

The gateway is the usual intricate barbican. 
Here in olden times, after the prayers of el Asr 
(3 p.m.) the governor and three judges, patri- 
archs with long grey beards, unclean white robes, 
and sabres in hand, held courts of justice, and 
distributed rough-and-ready law to peaceful 
Banyans, noisy negroes, and groups of fierce 
Arabs. The square bastion projecting from the 
curtain now contains upper rooms for the Ba- 
loch Jemadar (commandant). The ground-floor 
is a large vestibule, upon whose shady masonry- 
benches the soldiery and their armed slaves 
lounge and chat, laugh and squabble, play and 
chew betel. On the left of the outer gate is a 


* Chap. 7. Captain Hamilton’s ‘ New Account of the East 
Indies.’ 


90 THE JAIL. 


Cajan shed, where native artists are setting up 
carriages for the guns whose lodging is now the 
hot ground. The experiment of firing a piece 
was lately tried; it reared up and fell back- 
wards, smashing its frail woodwork and killing 
two artillery ‘ chattels.’ 

Travellers have observed that a launch could 
easily dismantle this stronghold. It was once, 
the legend runs, attacked and taken by a single 
‘Jack,’ for the honour of whose birthplace 
Europe and America vainly contend. Deter- 
mined to liberate two brother-tars from the 
ignoble bilboes, he placed himself at the head of 
a party consisting of a Newfoundland dog. He 
fell upon the guard sabre au poing, and, left 
master of the field, he waved his bandanna in 
vinous triumph from the battlements. Sad to 
relate, this Caucasian hero succumbed to Hamitic 
fraud. The discomfited slaves rallied. Hold- 
ing along rope, they ran round and round the 
enemy, till, wound about like a windlass or a 
silk cocoon, he was compelled to surrender at 
discretion. 

The interior of the fort is jammed with 
soldiers’ huts, and divided into courts by ricketty 
walls. Here, too, is the only jail in Zanzibar. 
The stocks (Makantarah), the fetters, the iron 


DF hid 


THE PRISONER. 91 


collars, and the heavy waist-chains, do not pre- 
vent black man from conversationizing, singing 
comic songs, and gambling with pebbles. The 
same was the case with our gruel-houses— 
‘Kanji-Khanah,’ vulgd ‘ Conjee-Connah ’ — in 
British India. The Sepoys laughed at them and 
at our beards. The Bombay Presidency jail is 
known to Arabs as El Bistan (El Bostan, the 
Garden), because the courts show a few shrubs, 
and with Ishmaelites a ‘Bistan’ has ever an 
arriere pensée of Paradise. But the most mutin- 
ous white salt that ever floored skipper would 
‘squirm’ at the idea of a second night in the 
black-hole of Zanzibar. Such is the Oriental 
beau-ideal of a prison—a place whose very name 
should develope the goose-skin, and which the 
Chinese significantly call ‘hell.’ 

In my day foreigners visited the prison to see 
its curio, a poor devil cateran who had beaten 
the death-drum whilst his headman was tor- 
turing M. Maizan. An Arab expedition sent 
into the interior returned with this wretch, de- 
claring him to be the murderer in chief, and for 
two years he lay chained in front of the French 
Consulate. Since 1847 he was heavily ironed to 
a gun, under a mat-shed, where he could neither 
stand up nor lie down. The fellow looked fat 


92 THE SALT MARKET. 


and well, but he died before our return from the 
interior in 1859. 

Below the eastern bastion of the ‘ Gurayza’ 
is the most characteristic spot in Zanzibar city, 
the Salt Market, so called from the heaps of 
dingy saline sand offered for sale by the Maskati 
Arabs and the Mekranis. Being near the Cus- 
tom House, it is always thronged, and like the 
bazars of Cairo and Damascus it gives an ex- 
aggerated idea of the population. There are be- 
sides this three other ‘Suk.’ The Suk Muhogo, 
or Manioc market, to the south of the city, 
supplies the local staff of life. It is the sweet 
variety of Jatropha, called in the Brazil Aypim, 
or Macacheira, and known to us as white cas- 
sava: it will not make wood-meal, called xar’ 
2§0yy, farinha, the flour. The poisonous Manioc 
(Jatropha Manihot) must be soaked in water, or 
rasped, squeezed, and toasted, to expel its dele- 
terious juice, which the Brazilian ‘ Indians,’ and 
the people of the Antilles, convert by boiling into 
sugar, vinegar, and cassareep for ‘ pepper-pot ’— 
I heard of this ‘black cassava’ in inner East 
Africa. The Suk Muhogo sells, besides the 
negro’s daily bread, cloth and cotton, grain and 
paddy, vegetables, and other provisions. The 
shops are the usual holes in the wall, raised a 


ae 


THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 93 


foot above the street, and the owners sit or 
squat, writing upon a knee by way of desk, with 
the slow, absorbing reed-pen and the clotted 
clammy fiuid called ink. Behind, and hard by, 
is the fish-market, which is tolerably supplied 
between 4 and 6 p.m.—in the morning you buy 
the remnants of the last day. Further eastward, 
in the Melindini quarter, is the Suk Melindi, 
where the butchers expose their vendibles. As 
in most hot countries, the best articles are here 
sold early, at least before 7 a.m. A scarcity of 
meat is by no means rare at Zanzibar, and some- 
times it has lasted four or five months. 

In the Furzani quarter, eastward of and close 
to the salt bazar, stands the Custom House. 
This is an Arab bourse, where millions of dollars 
annually change hands under the foulest of 
sheds, a long, low mat-roof, supported by two 
dozen rough tree-stems. Jrom the sea it is con- 
spicuous as the centre of circulation, the heart 
from and to which twin streams of blacks are 
ever ebbing and flowing, whilst the beach and the 
waters opposite it are crowded with shore-boats, 
big and small. Inland, it is backed by sacks and 
bales, baskets and packages, hillocks of hides, 
old ship’s-tanks, piles of valuable woods, heaps 
of ivories, and a heterogeneous mass of waifs and 


94 THE PALACE. 


strays; there is also a rude lock-up, for ware- 
housing the more valuable goods. A small ad- 
jacent square shows an unfinished and dilapi- 
dated row of arches, the fragments of a new 
Custom House. It was begun 26 or 27 years 
ago (1857), but Jayaram, the benevolent and 
superstitious Hindu who farmed the customs it 
is said for $150,000 per annum, had waxed fat 
under the matting, and was not sure that he 
would thrive as much within stone and lime. 
This is a general idea throughout the nearer 
East. The people are full of saws and instances 
concerning the downfall of great men who have 
exposed themselves to the shafts of misfortune 
by enlarging their gates or by building for them- 
selves two-storeyed abodes. But the hat it seems 
has lately got the better of the turban, and there 
will be a handsome new building, half paid by 
the Prince and half by his farmer of Customs. 
An open space now leads us to the finest 
building in the city, the palace of the late Say- 
yid, which we visit in a future chapter. I may 
remark that it is the workhouse style, though 
hardly so ignoble as that of H. Hellenic Ma- 
jesty; but at Zanzibar the windows are. far 
higher up, and the jail-like aspect is far more 
pronounced. Beyond it commences the east-end, 


M. COCHET, M. BERARD. 95 


and here lives my kind friend M. Cochet, Consul 
de France. He came, expecting to find civiliza- 
tion, whist in the evening, ladies’ society, and 
the pianoforte: he had been hoaxed in Paris 
about Colonel Hamerton’s daughters. He is 
thoroughly disgusted. Even the Consular re- 
sidence is the meanest of its kind. No wonder 
that M. Le Capitaine Guillain was ‘ froissé 
dans son amour-propre national’ when he en- 
tered it. 

Far better, and more open to the breeze, is 
the house of the hospitable M. Bérard, agent to 
Messrs Rabaud Fréres, of Marseille. The one 
disadvantage of the site is the quantity of Kho- 
pra, or cocoa-nut meat, split and sun-dried. It 
evolves, especially at night-time, a noxious gas, 
and the strongest stomachs cannot long resist 
the oily, nausea-breeding odour which tarnishes 
silver, and which produces fatal dysentery. The 
Zanzibar trade, with the exception of cloves, is 
not generally aromatic. Copal, being washed in 
an over-kept solution of soda, smells not, as was 
remarked to the ‘ Dragon of Wantley,’ like bal- 
sam. And ton upon ton of cowries, strewed in 
the sun, or piled up in huge heaps till the mol- 
luse decays away, can hardly be deemed Sabzean 
or even commonly wholesome. 


96 ‘BLACK TOWN,’ 


To our right, in rear of the fronting ‘ dicky,’ 
and at both flanks of the city, is the native town, 
——a filthy labyrinth, a capricious arabesque of 
disorderly lanes, and alleys, and impasses, here 
broad, there narrow; now heaped with offal, 
then choked with ruins. It would be the work 
of weeks to learn the threading of this planless 
maze, and what white man would have the heart 
to learn it? Curiosity may lead us to it in 
earliest morning, before the black world returns 
to life. During the day sun or rain, mud or 
dust, with the certain effluvia of carrion and 
negro, make it impossible to flaner through the 
foul mass of densely crowded dwelling-places 
where the slaves and the poor ‘pig’ together. 
The pauper classes are contented with mere sheds, 
and only the mildness of the climate keeps them 
from starving. ‘The meanest hovels are of palm- 
matting, blackened by wind or sun, thatched 
with cajan or grass, and with or without walls 
of wattle-and-dab. They are hardly less wretched 
than the west Ireland shanty. Internally the 
huts are cut up into a ‘but’ and a ‘ben,’ and 
are furnished with pots, gourds, cocoa rasps, low 
stools hewn out of a single block, a mortar 
similarly cut, trays, pots, and troughs for food, 
foul mats, and kitandahs or cartels of palm-fibre 


THE HUT. 97 


rope twisted round a frame of the rudest carpen- 
ter’s work. The better abodes are enlarged boxes 
of stone, mostly surrounded by deep, projecting 
eaves, forming a kind of verandah on poles, and 
shading benches of masonry or tamped earth, 
where articles are exposed for sale. The win- 
dows are loop-holes, and the doors are miracles 
of rudeness. Lastly, there are the wretched 
shops, which supply the few wants of the popula- 
tion. 

We are now at the mouth of the Lagoon, 
which, at high tides, almost encircles the city. 
I am told that of late years the natives have 
built all round this backwater. In 1857 the 
Eastern or landward side was bush and plant- 
ation. As the waters retired they left behind 
them a rich legacy of fevers and terrible dis- 
eases; especially in the inner town, a dead flat, 
excluded from the sea breeze, and exposed to the 
pestiferous breath of the maremma. 

Ships anchoring off this inlet soon stock 
French Islet. The whalers and American and 
Hamburg vessels, that prefer Changani Point 


and the west end of the city, often escape with- 


out a single case of sickness. Similarly at Ha- 
vannah, crews exposed to breezes from the Man- 


grove swamps have lost half their numbers by 
VOL. I. 7 , 


98 DRINKING WATER. 


yellow fever ; and the history of our West Indian 
settlements proves, if proof be required, how 
fatal is night exposure. 

Zanzibar, city and island, is plentifully sup- 
plied with bad drinking water. Below the old 
sea-beach, and near the shore, it is necessary only 
to scrape a hole in the soft ground. Throughout 
the interior the wells, though deep, are dry 
during the hot season, and the people flock to the 
surface-draining rivulets. West Africans gener- 
ally will not drink rain-water for fear of dysen- 
tery; and so with us—when showers fell in 
large drops men avoided it, or were careful to 
consume it soon lest it should putrefy. The 
purest element is found at Kokotoni, a settlement 
on the N. W. coast of the island, and in the 
Bububu, a settlement some five miles north of 
the. city, where Sayyid Suleyman bin Hamid, 
once governor of Zanzibar, had a small establish- 
ment, and where Hasan bin Ibrahim built.a large 
house called Chuweni or Leopard’s Place. So at 
Sao Paulo de Loanda the drinking water must 
be brought from the Bengo river. The best near 
the city is from a spring which rises behind the 
royal Cascine, Mto-ni. Here the late Sayyid 
built a stone tank and an aqueduct 2000 yards 
long, which, passing through his establishment, 


THE WELL. 99 


came out upon the beach. Casks could then be 
filled by the hose, but soon the masonry channel 
got out of repair, and sailors will not willingly 
drink water flowing through a dwelling-house. 

The produce of the town greatly varies. Some 
wells are hard with sulphate and carbonate of 
lime, whilst others are salt as the sea itself; and 
often, as in Sind and Cutch, of two near together 
one supplies potable and the other undrink- 
able water. A few to the south of the city 
are tolerably sweet. The pits are numerous, 
and a square shaft, usually from 12 to 15 
feet deep, may be found at every 40 or 50 yards. 
There are no casings; the edges are flush with 
the filthy ground about them, and the sites must 
frequently be changed, as the porosity of the 
coral rock and the regular seaward slope direct 
the drainage into them. Similarly, nearer home 
the bright sparkling element is not unfrequently 
charged with all the seeds of disease. When 
rain has not fallen for some time the water be- 
comes thick as that of a horsepond, and when 
allowed to stand it readily taints. I could 
hardly bear to look at the women as they filled 
with cocoa-shells the jars to be carried off upon 
their heads. 

Formerly Europeans were not allowed, for 


100 CASK FILLING. 


religious reasons, to ship water from the wells 
near the town. Also, cask-filling was carried 
on at low tide, to prevent the supply of the 
Mto-ni being brackish, and the exhalations of the 
black mud were of course extra-dangerous. It 
is no wonder that dysentery and fever resulted 
from the use of such a ‘necessary.’ The French 
frigate Le Berceau, after watering here, was 
visited by the local pest, and lost 90 men on her 
way home. Even in January, the most whole- 
some month, Lieut. Christopher had 16 deaths 
amongst his scanty crew. In this case, however, 
the lancet, so fatal near the Line, and the deadly 
Zerambo, or toddy-brandy, were partly to blame. — 
As early as 1824 Captain Owen condemned the 
supply of Zanzibar, as liable to cause dysentery. 
It has this effect during and after heavy rains, 
unless allowed to deposit its animal and ve- 
getable matter. During the second visit of 
H. M. 8. Andromache, in August, 1824, Com- 
mander Nourse and several of his officers spent 
one night in a country house, after which the 
former and the greater number of the latter 
died. The water, as well as the air, doubtless 
tended to cause the catastrophe. In the dry 
season the element sometimes produces, accord- 
ing to natives and strangers, obstinate costive- 


FEVER. 101 


ness. Between Zanzibar and the Cape, five 
brigs lost collectively 125 men from fever, dysen- 
tery, and inflammation of the neck of the vesica; 
whilst others were compelled to start their casks, 
and to touch at different ‘aguadas’ en route. 
Hence skippers learned to fear and shun Zan- 
zibar. During her 14 months’ exploration of 
the island and the coast the Ducouédic lost 16 
men; and to keep up a crew of 122 to 128, no 
less than 226 hands were transferred to her 
from the naval division of Bourbon and Mada- 
gascar. Hach visit to Unguja was followed by 
an epidemic attack. Formerly as many as seven 
whalers lay in harbour at one time; now (1857) 
they prefer to water and refresh at Nossi-beh, 
Mayotta, and especially at the Seychelles, a free 
port, with a comparatively cool and healthy 
climate, where supplies are cheap and plentiful. 
Besides the lagoon and the water nuisances 
there is yet another. The drainage of the Zan- 
zibar water-front is good, owing to the slope of 
the site seaward. But at low tides, and after 
dark, when the sulphuretted hydrogen is not 
raised from the sands by solar heat, a veil of 
noxious gas overhangs the shore, whose whole 
length becomes exceedingly offensive. This is 
caused by the shironi (latrinz) opening upon 


102 DRAINAGE. 


the water edge. ‘ Intermural sepulture’ is also 
here common, though not after the fashion of 
West African Yoruba; and the city contains 
sundry unenclosed plots of ground, in which 
dwarf lime-plastered walls, four to five feet long, 
fancifully terminated above, and showing, in- 
stead of epitaph, a china saucer or bits of por- 
celain set in the stone, denote tombs. 

Drainage and cleanliness are panaceas for 
the evils of malaria where tropical suns shine. 
Drainage of swamps and lagoons can improve 
S’a Leone, and can take away the stink from 
South African barracks. Zanzibar city, I con- 
tend, owes much of its fatality to want of drain- 
age, and it might readily be drained into com- 
parative healthiness. But the Hast African Arab 
holds the possibility of pestilence and the pro- 
bability of fever to be less real evils than those 
of cutting a ditch, of digging a drain, or of open- 
ing a line for ventilation. The Dollar-hunters 
from Europe are a mere floating population, ever 
looking to the deluge in prospect, and of course 
unwilling to do every man’s business, that is— 
to drain. 

Such was Zanzibar city when I first walked 
through it. Though dating beyond the days of 
Arab history, and made, by its insular and cen- 


ee > 


THE MISSIONS. 103 


tral situation, the depot of the richest trade in 
Eastern Africa, its present buildings are almost 
all modern. At the beginning of this our 
nineteenth century it consisted of a fort and a 
ragged line of huts, where the ‘Suk Muhogo’ 
now stands. Dr Ruschenberger (1835) satisfied 
himself that ‘the town of Zanzibar and its in- 
habitants possess as few attractions for a Chris- 
tian stranger as any place and people in the 
wide world.’ As late as 1842 this chief em- 
porium of a most wealthy coast boasted but five 
store-houses of the humblest description, and 
the east end was a palm plantation. Since my 
departure the city, as the trade returns show, 
has, despite unfavourable political circumstances, 
progressed. A Catholic mission, sent by France, 
has established an hospital, and two schools for 
boys and girls, and the English Central African 
_ Mission has followed suit. These establishments 
must differ strangely from the normal thing— 
the white-bearded pedagogue, hugging his bones 
or rocking himself before a large chintz-covered 
copy of the Koran, placed upon a stand two feet 
high, so as to be above man’s girdle, and, when 
done with, swathed in cloth and stowed away. 
A change, too, there must be in the pupils; 
formerly half a dozen ragged boys, some reciting 


104 THE PEOPLE. 


with nasal monotonous voices sentences to be 
afterwards understood by instinct, others scrap- 
ing the primitive writing-board with a pointed 
stick. 

We will now return to the centre of attrac- 
tion, the Salt Bazar, and prospect the people. 
The staple material is a double line of black 
youth and negresses sitting on the ground, with 
legs outstretched like compasses. At each apex 
of the angle is a little heap of fruit, salt, sugar, 
sun-dried manioc, greasy fritters, redolent fish, 
or square ‘fids’ of shark-flesh,’ the favourite 
‘kitchen’ with Wasawahili and slaves; it brings 
from Maskat and the Benadir a gott so high 
that it takes away the breath. These vendors 
vary the tedium of inaction by mat-making, plait- 
ing leaves, ‘ palavers,’ and ‘ pow-wows,’ which 
argue an admirable conformation of the articu- 
lating organs and a mighty lax morality. Sellers, 
indeed, seem here to double the number of 
buyers, and yet somehow buying and selling 
goes On. 

Motley is the name of the crowd. One officer 
in the service of THis Highness stalks down the 


1'The Arabs here call the shark ‘jarjur,’ the Wasawabili 
p hapa. Ido not know why Captain Guillain (i. 391) says, 
‘le requin, nommé par les Arabs lebah—’ Lebah is the Somali 
name for a lion. mw Hie 


THE ARAB. 105 


market followed by a Hieland tail, proudly, as 
if he were lord of the three Arabias. Negroes 
who dislike the whip clear out like hawk-fright- 
ened pigeons. A yellow man, with short, thin 
beard, and high, meagre, and impassive features, 
he is well-dressed and gorgeously armed. Ob- 
serve that he is ‘ breek-less’: trowsers are ‘ un- 
Arab,’ and unpopular as were the servile braccze 
amongst the Romans. The legs, which, though 
spare, are generally muscular and well-turned, 
appear beneath the upper coat, which falls to the 
knee. He adheres to the national sandals, thick 
soles of undyed leather, with coloured and 
spangled straps over the instep, whilst a narrow 
thong passes between the big toe and its neigh- 
bour. ‘The foot-gear gives him that peculiar 
strut which is deemed dignified, and if he has a 
long walk before him—a very improbable con- 
tingency—he must remove his chaussure. I 
never yet saw a Huropean who could wear the 
sandal without foot-chafing. 

Right meek by the side of the Arab’s fierce- 
ness appears the Banyan, the local Jew. These 
men are Bhattias from Cutch in western India ; 
unarmed burghers, with placid, satisfied coun- 
tenances, and plump, sleek, rounded forms, sug- 
vesting the idea of happy, well-to-do cows. Such 


106 THE BANYAN. 


is the effect of a diet which embraces only bread, 
rice, and milk, sweetmeats, vegetables, and clari- 
fied butter. Their skins are smoother and their 
complexions are lighter than the Arabs’; their 
features are as high though by no means so thin. 
They wear the long mustachio, not the beard, and 
a Chinese pig-tail is allowed to spring from the 
poll of the carefully shaven head. These top-knots 
are folded, when the owners are full-dressed, 
under high turbans of spotted purple or crim- 
son stuff edged with gold. The latter are com- 
plicated affairs, somewhat suggesting the oldest 
fashion of a bishop’s mitre ; bound round in fine 
transverse plaits, not twisted like the Arabs’, and 
peaked in the centre above the forehead with a 
manner of horn. Their snowy cotton.coats fit 
close to the neck, like collarless shirts; shawl- 
girt under the arms, they are short-waisted as 
the dresses of our grandmothers; the sleeves 
are tight and profusely wrinkled, being nearly 
double the needful length, and the immaculate 
loin-cloth displays the lower part of the thigh, 
leaving the leg bare. Their slippers of red 
leather are sharp-toed, with points turning up- 
wards and backwards, somewhat as in the 
knightly days of Europe. 

Another conspicuous type is the Baloch mer- 


THE BALOCH. 107 


cenary from Mekran or Maskat. <A comely, 
brown man, with regular features, he is dis- 
tinguished from the Arab by the silkiness and 
the superior length of his flowing beard, which is 
carefully anointed after being made glossy with 
henna and indigo. He adheres to his primitive 
matchlock, a barrel lengthened out to suit the 
weak powder in use, damascened with gold and 
silver, and fastened to the frail stock by more 
metal rings than the old French ‘ Brown Bess’ 
ever had. The match is about double the thick- 
ness of our whipcord, and is wound in many a 
eoil round the stalk or stock. A curved iron, 
about four inches long, and forked in the upper 
part to hold the igniter, plays in a groove cut 
lengthways through the wood and the trigger, a 
prolongation of the match-holder, guides the fire 
into the open priming-pan. When the match is 
not immediately wanted it is made fast to a bat- 
ten under the breeching. (A parenthesis. Were 
1 again to travel in wet tropical lands, I should 
take with me two flint-guns, which could, if 
necessary, be converted into matchlocks. Of 
_ course they would shoot slow, but they would 
not want caps, and they would prove serviceable 
when the percussion gun and the breech-loader 
would not.) This mercenary carries also two 


108 ISHMAEL. 


powder-gourds, one containing coarse material 
for loading, the other a finer article, English, if 
possible, for priming. He is never without flint, 
steel, and tinder; and disposed about his person 
are spare cartridges in reed cases. His sabre is 
of the Persian form; his dagger is straighter and 
handier than that of the Arab; and altogether 
his tools, hike his demeanour, are those of a dis- 
ciplined, or rather of a disciplinable, man. 

The wildest and most picturesque figures are 
the half-breeds from the western shores of the 
Persian Gulf—lght brown, meagre Ishmaels 
and Orsons, who look like bundles of fibre 
bound up in highly-dried human skin. Their 
unkempt elf-locks fall in mighty masses over un- 
clean, saffron-stained shirts, which suggest the 
‘night-gown’ of other days, and these are ap- 
parently the only articles of wear. Their straight, 
heavy swords hang ever ready by a strap passing 
over the left shoulder; their right hands rest 
lovingly upon the dagger-hafts, and their small 
round targes of boiled hippopotamus hide—one 
of the ‘industries’ of Zanzibar—apparently await 
immediate use. Leaning on their long match- 
locks, they stand cross-legged, with the left foot 
planted to the right of the right, or vice versa, 
and they prowl about like beasts of prey, as they 


THE KHOJAHS. 109 


are, eyeing the peaceful, busy crowd with a 
greedy cut-throat stare, or with the suspicious, 
side-long glance of a cat o’ mountain. 

These barbarian ‘Gulf Arabs’ differ singu- 
larly from the muscular porters of Hazramaut, 
in whose Semitic blood there is a_ palpable 
African mixture. They hobble along in pairs, 
like the Hammals of Constantinople, carrying 
huge bales of goods and packs of hides suspended 
from a pole, ever chaunting the same monoton- 
ous grunt-song, and kicking out of the way the 
humped cows that are munching fruit and vege- 
tables under the shadow of their worshippers, 
the Banyans. Add half a dozen pale-skinned 
‘Khojahs,’ tricky-faced men with evil eyes, treach- 
erous smiles, fit for the descendants of the ‘ As- 
sassins,’ straight, silky beards, forked after the 
fashion of ancient Rustam, and armed with 
Chinese umbrellas. Complete the group by throw- 
ing in a European — how ghastly appears his 
blanched face, and how frightful his tight garb ! 
—stalking down the streets in the worst of tem- 
pers, and using his stick upon the mangy ‘ pariah 
dogs’ and the naked shoulders of the ‘ niggers’ 
that obstruct him. At times the Arabs, when 
their toes or heels are trampled upon, will turn 
and fiercely finger their daggers; but a fear 


110 THE SLAVE. 


which is by no means personal prevents their 
going further. 

Such is the aristocracy of the land. As in all 

servile societies, every white man (i.e. non-negro) 
is his white neighbour’s equal; whilst the high- 
est black man (i.e. servile) ranks below the lowest 
pale-face. 
_ Far more novel to us is the slave population, 
male and female. What first strikes every 
stranger is the scrupulous politeness and the 
ceremonious earnestness of greetings when 
friends meet. The idea of standing in the broil- 
ing sun to dialogue as follows is not a little re- 
markable : 

A. Yambo (pronounced Dyambo) or Hali 
gana P—The state! 

B. Yambo Sana—My state is very (good). 

A. Siyambo (or amongst the Arabized Wasa- 
wahfli, Marhaba)—Right welcome! | 

B. Hast thou eaten and slept ? 

A. I have made my reverential bow ! 
B. Yambo? 

A. Siyambo Sana! 

B. Like unto gold? 

A. Like unto gold! 

B. Like unto coral ? 

A. Like unto coral! 


| 
: 
; 
a 
i 


POLITENESS. 111 


. Like unto pearl ? 
. Like unto pearl ! 
. The happiness—Kua-heri! (farewell !). 
. In happiness let us meet, if Allah please ! 
Hem! 
. Hem! (drawn out as long as possible). 
The fact is they are going about ‘ Ku amkia,’ 


moby by hh by 


to salute their friends, and to waste time by run- 
ning from house to house. Even freemen gener- 
ally begin their mornings thus, and idle through 
the working hours. 

The males tie, for only garb, a yard of cotton 
round the waist, and let it fall to the knees; 
bead necklaces and similar trash complete the 
costume. Like all negroes they will wear, if 
possible, the shock-head of wool, which is not 
pierceable by power of any sun; and they gradu- 
ally unclothe down to the feet, which, requiring 
most defence, are the least defended—‘ Fashion ’ 
must account for the anomaly. To the initiated 
eye the tattoo distinguishes the vast confusion of 
races. The variety of national and tribal marks, 
the stars, raised lumps and scars, the beauty- 
slashes and carved patterns, further diversified 
by the effects of pelagra, psoris, and small-pox, 
is a Chinese puzzle to the new-comer. Domestic 
slaves, bearing their burdens on the head, not on 


112 THE SLAVE GIRL. 


the shoulder, are known by a comparatively 
civilized aspect. They copy their masters, and 
strangers remark that the countenance is cheer- 
ful and not destitute of intelligence. The Bozals, 
or freshly-trapped chattels, are far more original 
and interesting. See those Nyassa-men, with 
their teeth filed to represent the cat or the croco- 
dile, chaffing some old Shylock, an Arab dealer in 
human flesh and blood; or those wild Uzegura- 
men, with patterned skins and lower incisors 
knocked out, like the Shilluks to the west of the 
Nile, scowling evilly, and muttering curses at 
the Nakhuda (skipper) from Sur, the professional 
kidnapper of their kind. 

The ‘fairer’ half of black world is not less 
note-worthy. There is the tall and sooty-skinned 
woman from Uhiao, distinguished by the shape 
of her upper lip. A thorn-pierced hole is en- 
larged with stalks of green reed till it can admit 
a disk of white-painted wood nearly as big asa 
dollar. The same is the system of the Dors, the 
tribe dwelling north of the equator and west of 
the Nile; their lip-plates equal the thick end of 
a cheroot; and the ‘ pelele’ of the southern re- 
gions is a similar disk of bamboo, ivory, or tin, 
which causes the upper lip to project some two 
inches beyond the nose-tip, giving it an anserine 


THE ‘SPOONBILL.’ 113 


proportion. In the elder women the ornament is 
especially hideous. Asa rule, the South Ameri- 
can ‘ Indians’ pierce for their labrets the lower 
lip, evidently the more unclean fashion — no 
wonder that kissing (should I say osculation ?) is 
unknown. Yet even amongst the Somal, if you 
attempt to salute a woman—supposing that you 
have the right—she will draw back in horror from 
the act of incipient cannibalism. Often the lip- 
disk is absent, and then through the unsightly 
gap a pearly tooth is seen to gleam, set off by the 
outer darkness of ‘Spoonbill’s’ skin. This woman, 
broad-shouldered and thick-waisted, is almost as 
stalwart as her Mhids, whose tattoo (chale) is a 
single line forked at both ends:’ in others the 
cuticle and cutis are branded, worked, and raised 
in an intricate embroidery over all the muscular 
trunk. An abnormal equality of strength and 
stature between the sexes prevails amongst many 


1 Uhiao is the I4o of Mr Cooley, who calls the people 
M’yau (Mhido) and Miyao (Wahiao). They are the ‘ Monjou’ 
of Salt, and the Mujao of the Portuguese. M. Macqueen (On 
the Geography of Central Africa) says, ‘ The inhabitants on the 
west side of the Lake are called Yoah, and are Mohammedans.’ 
They are still pagans. Capt. Guillain (1, 390) remarks, ‘ Les 
historiens Portuguais nous paraissent avoir donné au pays le 
nom que les indigenes donnent a ses habitants. Moudjaou, 
ou plutdt Moniao et, par contraction, M’ido signifie un homme 
du pays de Tao.’ Uhiao would be the country ; Mhido and 
Wabhido (singular and plural), its people. 

VOL, I. 8 


114 THE HALF-CASTE. 


African tribes, especially the agricultural, where 
women are the workers. The same may be ob- 
served in parts of North Britain and of northern 
Europe. The difference in this matter between 
the Teutonic and the Latin races never struck 
me so strongly as when seeing German families 
land at Rio de Janeiro. 

The half-caste Zanzibar girl enviously eyes 
the Arab woman, a heap of unwashed cottons on 
invisible feet, with the Maskat masque exposing 
only her unrecognizable eyeballs. The former 
wears a single loose piece of red silk or che- 
quered cotton. Her frizzly hair is twisted into 
pigtails ; her eyelids are stained black ; her eye- 
brows are lengthened with paint ; her ear-rims 
are riddled with a dozen holes to admit rings, 
wooden buttons, or metal studs, whilst the slit 
lobes, distended by elastic twists of coloured 
palm-leaf, whose continual expansion prodigi- 
ously enlarges the aperture, are fitted with a 
painted disk, an inch and a half in diameter. 
The same device was practised (according to the 
missionary Gumilla) by the Aberne tribe of the 
Orinoco. If pretty, and therefore wealthy, she 
wears heavy silver earrings run through the shell 
of the ear; her thumbs have similar decorations, 
and massive bangles of white metal adorn, like 


‘SMALL FRY,’ 115 


manacles and fetters, her wrists and ancles. One 
wing of her nose is bored to admit a stud—even 
the patches of Europe were not more barbarous. 
The Zanzibarian slave girl shaves her head 
smooth, till it shows brown and shiny like a 
well-polished cocoa-nut; and she drags along 
her ‘ hopeful ’—she has seldom more than one— 
a small black imp, wholly innocent of clothing. 
The thing already carries on its head a water- 
jar bigger than its own ‘ pot-belly,’ and it screams 
Na-kuja (I come!) to other small fry disporting 
itself more amusingly. 


CHAPTER V. 


GEOGRAPHICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL. 


‘To my surprise, the information concerning Zanzibar and the N. E. 
coast of Africa. geez: scarcely contains meagre phrases destitute of 
precision.’—(Col. Sykes’ Journal, R. G. 8., vol. xxi. 1853.) He for- 
gets that entering from the coast is like jumping from the street into 


the window.—(R. F. B.) 


SECTION 1. 


Africa, East and West—* Zanzibar’ explained—Menou- 
thias—Position and Formation—The Hast African Current— 
Navigation—Aspect of the Island. 

It is an old remark that Africa, the con- 
tinent which became an island by the union of 
the twin seas in the year of grace 1869, despite 
her exuberant wealth and her wonderful powers 
of reproduction, is badly made—a trunk without 
limbs, a monotonous mass of painful symmetry, 
wanting opposition and contrast, like the uni- 
form dark complexion of her sons and of her 
fauna—a solid body, like her own cocoa-nut, 


INTERTROPICL AFRICA. 117 


hard to penetrate from without, and soft within ; 
an ‘individual of the earth,’ self-isolated by its 
savagery from the rest of the world. This is 
especially true of intertropical Africa. 

The western coast was, until the last four 
eenturies, cut off from intercourse with mankind 
by the storm-lashed waters of the northern ap- 
proach; and to the present day the unbroken 
seaboard, so scanty in good harbours, and the 
dangerous bars and bores which defend the 
deadly river mouths, render it the least pro- 
gressive part of the old world. 

The more fortunate north-eastern and sub- 
tropical shores were enabled by their vast cré- 
vasse, the Red and riverless Sea, to communicate 
with Western Asia, whilst the rich productions, 
gold and ivory, tortoise-shell and ambergris, the 
hot sensuous climate—which even now induces 
the northern sailor to ship in the fatal West 
African squadron—and the amene scenery of the 
equatorial regions, invited, during pre-historic 
ages, merchants, and even immigrants, from 
rugged Persia and sterile Arabia. 

Between the two upper coasts, eastern and 
western, there is, as might be expected, great 
similarity of grim aspect. The northern sea- 
boards offer, for the space of a thousand miles, 


118 THE DESERTS. 


the same horrid aspect; deceitful roadsteads and 
dangerous anchorages, forbidding lines of chalky 
cliff and barren brown sandstone bluff; flat 
strands and white downs, hazed over by the 
spray of desert sand; and lowlands backed by 
maritime sub-ranges, masses of bald hill and 
naked mountains, streaked with dry wadis and 
water-courses, that bear scatters of dates and 
thorns, and which support miserable villages of 
tents or huts. The fierce and wandering tribes, 
Berber, Arab, and Arabo-African—an especially 
‘crooked and perverse generation,’—are equally 
dangerous to the land traveller and to the ship- 
wrecked mariner. 

As sterile and unlovely for the same cause— 
the absence of tropical rains—are the southern 
regions of the great Nineteenth Century Island. 
Good harbours are even rarer than in the north, 
and the seas about the Cape of Hope, sweep- 
ing up unbroken from the South Pole, are yet 
more perilous. The highlands fringing the south- 
ern and eastern coasts arrest the humid winds, 
and are capable of supporting an extensive popu- 
lation; but the interior and the western coast, 
being lowlands, are wild and barren. The South 
African or Kafir family, which has overrun this 
soil, is still for the most part in the nomade 


EQUATORIAL AFRICA. 119 


state, and its ‘evident destiny’ is to disappear | 
before the European colonist. 

The central and equatorial land, 34° deep, 
including and bordering upon the zone of almost 
constant rain, is distinguished by the oppressive 
exuberance of its vegetation and by the con- 
sequent insalubrity of its climate. The drain- 
age of the interior, pouring with discoloured 
efflux to the ocean, in large and often navigable 
channels, subject to violent freshes, taints the 
water-lines with deadly malaria. The false coasts 
of coralline or of alluvial deposits—a modern 
formation, and still forming—fringed with green- 
capped islets, and broken by sandy bays and by 
projecting capes, are exposed to swells and roll- 
ers, to surf and surge, to numbing torrents and 
chilling tornadoes, whilst muddy backwaters and 
stagnant islets disclose lagoon-valves or vistas 
through tangled morass, jungle, and hardly 
penetrable mangrove-swamp. This maremma, 
the home of fever, is also the seat of trade, but 
the tribes which occupy it soon die out. 

The true coast has already risen high enough 
above the waters to maintain its level; and the 
vegetation—calabashes, palms, and tamarinds— 
offers a contrast to the swampy growth below. 
Inland of the raised seaboard are high and 


120 EAST AND WEST COAST. 


jungly mountains and coast-range or ghaut, in 
many parts yet unvisited by Europeans. Beyond 
these sierras begins the basin-shaped plateau of 
Central Equatorial Africa. The inhabitants are 
mostly inland tribes, ever gravitating towards 
the coast. They occupy stockaded and barri- 
caded clumps of pent-houses or circular tents, 
smothered by thicket and veiled, especially after 
the heavy annual rains, with the ‘smokes,’ a 
dense white vapour, moisture made visible by 
the earth being cooler than the saturated air.’ 

I have elsewhere remarked (The Lake Re- 
gions of Central Intertropical Africa; Abeokuta 
and the Camaroons Mountains, &c.) the striking 
geological contrast between the two equatorial 
coasts, eastern and western. The former, south 
of the Guardafui granites, offers to one proceed- 
ing inland from the ocean a succession of coral- 
lines, of sandstone and of calcaires, which appear 
to be an offset from the section of that great 
zone forming the Somali country. The west- 
ern coasts, after quitting the basalts and lavas 


‘Dr Livingstone (Zambezi Expedition, x. 213) confounds 
these African ‘smokes’ with the blue hazy atmosphere of the 
‘Indian summers’ in America, often the result of grass-burn- 
ing and prairie fires. During an August on the Syrian coast 
and a December in the Brazil, I have seen the African ‘smokes ’ 
as well developed as at Fernando Po. 


Se re 


PRODUCTIONS. 131 


of the Camaroons, are composed chiefly of the 
granites and syenites with their degradations 
of schiste, gneiss, and sandstone. Similarly, 
in the great Austro-American continent, one 
shore, that of the Brazil, is granitic, whilst the 
other, Chili, mainly consists of the various por- 
phyries. 

The negroes and negroids of both these in- 
hospitable coasts, an undeveloped and not to be 
developed race—in this point agreeing with the 
fauna and flora around them—are the chief ob- 
stacles to exploration, and remarkably resemble 
each other. The productions of the east and 
west are similar. The voracious shark swims 
the seas, turtles bask upon the strands and 
islets, and the crocodile and hippopotamus haunt 
the rivers. The forests abound in apes and mon- 
keys, and the open plains support the giraffe, the 
antelope, and the zebra, hog and wild kine (Bos 
Caffir and B. Brachyceros), herds of elephants and 
scatters of rhinoceros. The villagers breed goats 
and poultry. In the healthier regions they have 
black cattle and sheep, whilst one tribe has 
acclimatized the ass. The exceeding fertility of 
the rain-drenched plains gives an amazing lux- 
uriance to cassava and rice, maize, and holeus, 
cotton, sugar-cane, and wild indigo, banana, 


122 COAL. 


lime and orange, ground-nuts and coffee. The 
hills and torrent-beds yield gold and copper, 
antimony, and abundance of iron. On both 
sides of the continent there are rich deposits 
of the semi-mineral copal. Coal was found by 
the Portuguese at Téte and in the Zambeze Val- 
ley, as related in Dr Livingstone’s First Expedi- 
tion (Missionary Travels, &c., xxxi. 633-4). 
His second prolonged the coal-field to beyond 
the Valley of the Rufuma (Rovuma) river (xxi. 
440), and it will probably be found to extend 
still further. 

Dr Krapf declares (Travels, &c., p. 465) that 
he discovered coal, ‘the use of which is still 
unknown to the Abessinians,’ on the banks of 
the Kuang, a river said to rise in the Dembea 
Province, near Lake Tsana (Coloé Palus). 
Finally, to judge from the analogy of the South 
American continent, the valuable mineral will 
yet be struck near the western coast, south of 
the equator. 

From time immemorial, on both sides of 
Africa, the continental Islands, like Aradus and 
Sidon, Tyre and Alexandria, have been favourite 
places with stranger settlers. They have proved 
equally useful as forts, impregnable to the wild 
aborigines, and as depdts for exports and imports. 


‘ZANZIBAR’ 123 


Second to none in importance is Zanzibar, and 
the future promises it a still higher destiny. 
And first, of the name, which does not occur 
in Strabo, Pliny, or the Periplus. The log-book 
attributed to Arrian, of Nicomedia, calls the whole 
shore, ‘Continent of Azania;’ probably an adapta- 
tion, like Azan,and even Ajan, of the Arabic, Barr 
el Khazain, or the Land of Tanks,’ the coast 
between Ra’as Hafun and Ra/’as el Khayl. So 
Pliny (vi. 28 and 34) speaks of the ‘Azanian Sea’ 
as communicating with the ‘Arabian Gulf.’ 
Ptolemy, however (I. 17, sec. iv. 7), has the fol- 
lowingimportant passage: ‘immediately following 
this mart (Opone) is another bay, where Azania be- 
gins. At its beginning are the promontory Zin- 
gis (Styys5, Zingina promontorium), and the tree- 
topped Mount Phalangis.’ The name may have 
extended from the promontory to the coast, and 
from the coast to the island. Dr Krapf speaks 
of a tribe of the ‘Zendj’ near the Rufiji river, 
but I could not hear of it. It is easy to show - 
that the Pelusian geographer’s Opone is the bay 
south of Ra’as, or Jurd Hafun. Like Pomponius 
* Dr Krapf (112, Missionary Travels) tells us ‘the Somali 
coast, from Cape Guardafui southwards, is designated by the 
Arabs “Dar Ajam,” not “ Ajan” or “Azan,” as the maps 


wrongly have it, because no Arabic is spokeninit.’ Dar Ajam 
is, I believe, a modern and incorrect phrase. 


124 ‘ZANZIBAR,’ 


Mela, Ptolemy evidently made his great point de 
départ the Aromata Promontorium et emporium 
in Barbarico sinu (Cape Guardafui), and he placed 
it N. lat. 6° 0° 0”, instead of N. lat,“ 
This error threw the whole coast 6° (in round 
numbers, more exactly 5° 50°) too far south, 
and made the world doubt the accurate position 
of the Nile lakes. Thus, to his latitude of Opone 
N. 4° add 5° 50’, and we have N. lat. 9° 50’, the 
true parallel of Hafun being N. lat. 10° 26. 
Amongst late authors we find the word Zan- 
zibar creeping into use. The Adulis inscrip- 
tion (4th century) gives ‘Zingabene’; and its 
copier, the Greek monk Cosmas Indicopleustes, 
who proved the globe flat (6th century), calls the 
‘unnavigable’ ocean beyond Berberia, the ‘ Sea 
of Zenj,’ and the lands which it bathes ‘ Zingi- 
um.’ It is found in Abu Zayd Hasan, generally 
known as Hunayn bin Ishak (died a.p. 878) ; in 
El Mas’udi, who describes it at some length 
(died A.D. 957); in El Bayruni (11th century), 
and in the learned ‘ Nubian Geographer,’ the 
Sherif El Idrisi (a.p. 1153). Marco Polo (A.D. 
1290), who evidently wrote his 37th chapter 
from hearsay, makes Zanzibar a land of blacks ; 
and, confounding insula with peninsula (in 
Arabic both being Jezireh), supplies it with a 


‘ZANZ.’ 125 


circumference of 2000 miles, and vast numbers 
of elephants. The India Minor, India Major, 
and India Tertia of the medizeval Latin travellers 
are the Sind, Hind, and Zinj of the Arabs. Ibn 
Batuta (A.D. 1830, 1831), the first Arab traveller 
who wrote a realistic description of his voyage, 
has accurately placed Kilwa, which he calls 
‘Kulua,’ in the ‘land of the Zunuj.’ Finally, 
we meet with it in El Nowayri, and in Abulfeda, 
the ‘ Prince of Arab Geographers,’ who both died 
in the same year, A.D. 1331. 

The word Zanj (<)> corrupted to Zinj, 
whence the plural ‘ Zunuj,’ is evidently the Per- 
sian Zang or Zangi (<%;), a black, altered by 
the Arabs, who ignore the hard Aryan ‘Gaf’ (<7), 
the ‘G’ in our gulf. In the same tongue bar 
means land or region—not sea or sea-coast—and 
the compounded term would signify Nigritia 
or Blackland. In modern Persian Zangi still 
means a negro, and D’ Herbelot says of the 
‘Zenghis’ that ‘they are properly those called 
Zingari,' and, by some, Egyptians and Bohe- 

t My learned and accomplished friend, Dr R. 8. Charnoch 
(The Peoples of Transylvania: Londen, Triibner, 1870, p. 28), 
agrees with D’Herbelot, and from Zangi derives the racial 
gipsy names Czigany, It. Zingari, Var. Cingani, Zingara, Cingari, 


Port. Ciganos, G. Zigeuner. But the Zangi were and are ne- — 
groes, Wasawahili, whereas the gypsies never were. 


125 PERSIAN NAVIGATORS. 


mians.’ Scholars have not yet shown why the 
Arab, so rich in nomenclature, borrowed the 
purely Persian word from his complement the 
‘Ajam.’ They have forgotten that the Persians, 
who of late years have been credited with the 
unconquerable aversion to the sea which belongs 
to the Gallas and the Kafirs, were once a maritime 
people. ‘The indifference or rather the aversion 
of Persians to navigation’ (M. Guillain, i. 34, 
35) must not be charged to the ancient ‘ Furs.’ 
Between A.D. 531—579, when Sayf bin Dhu 
Yezin, one of the latest Himyarite rulers, wanted 
aid against the Christian Abyssinians, who had 
held southern Arabia for 72 years, he applied to 
Khusrau I., better known as ‘Anushirawan, the 
23rd king of the. Sassanian dynasty, which 
began with Ardashir Babegan (A.D. 226), and 
which ended with Yezdegird III. (a.p. 641), 
thus lasting 415 years. The ‘Just Monarch’ 
sent his fleet to the Roman Port’ (Aden), and 
slew Masruk. In his day the Persians engrossed, 
by means of Hira, Obollah, and Sohar, the rich 
tracts of Yemen and Hindostan; while Basrah 
(Bassorah) was founded by the Caliph Omar, in 
order to divert the stream of wealth from the 
Red Sea, a diversion which will probably soon be 
repeated. In a.p. 758 the Persians, together 


‘ EMOZAYDIS,’ 127 


with the Arabs, mastered, pillaged, and burnt 
Canton. Much later (17th century) Shah Abbas 
claimed Zanzibar Island and coast as an appa- 
nage of the suzerainty of Oman. 

East Africa still preserves traditions of two 
distinct colonizations from Persia. The first is 
that of the ‘ Emozaydiys,’ or ‘ Emozeides’ 
(Amm Zayd), who conquered and colonized the 
sea-board of East Africa, from Berberah of the 
Somal to Comoro and Madagascar, both in- 
cluded. A second and later emigration (about 
A.D. 1000) occupied the south Zanzibarian coast, 
and ruins built by the ‘Shirazian dynasty 
which still lingers, are shown on various parts of 
the sea-board. Of these Persian occupations 
more will be found in the following pages. (Part 
1, Chap. 1, and Part 2, Chap. 2.) 

Persia has left nothing of her widely ex- 
tended African conquests but a name. In mo- 
dern days she has become more and more a 
non-maritime power. She has wholly retired 
from the coast; and Time, who in these lands 
works with a will, presently obliterated almost 
every trace of the stranger. A. few ruins at 
Aden and Berberah, and the white and black 
sheep of Ormania (Galla-land) and of Somali land, 
are almost the only vestiges of Persian presence 


128 PERSIAN REMAINS. 


north of the Equator. On the Zangian main- 
land wells sunk in the rock, monuments of a 
form now obsolete; mosques with elaborate 


minarets and pillars of well-cut coralline ; forti- 


fied positions, loopholed enclosures, and ruined 
cities whose names have almost been forgotten, 
are the results of the civilization which they 
brought with them southwards. 

The limits assigned by the Arab geographers 
to the ‘Land of the Zinj’ are elastic. While 
some, as Yakut, make it extend from the mouths 
of the Jub River (8. lat. 0° 14’ 30”) to Cape Cor- 
rientes (8. lat. 24° 7 5”) and thus include Sofala ; 
others, with El Idrisi, separate from it the latter 
district, and unjustly make its southern limit 
the Rufiji River (S. lat. 7° 38’), thus excluding 
Kilwa. It should evidently extend to Mozam- 
bique Island (S. lat. 15° 2’ 2”), where the Wasa- 
wahili "meet the ‘Kafir’ races. The length 
would thus be, in round numbers, 15°—900 geo- 
graphical miles, whilst the breadth, which is every- 
where insignificant, can hardly be estimated. 

The Arabs, who love to mingle etymology 
with legend and fable, derive the word ‘ Zanzi- 
bar ’ 
plorers, ‘Zayn za’l barr!’ (fair is this land!), 
Similar stories concerning Brazilian Olinda and 


from the exclamation of its pleased ex- 


yrs 


SAWAAHIL. 129 


Argentine Buenos Aires are well known. ‘El 
Sawahil,’ the shores, evidently the plural of Sa- 
hil, is still applied to the 600 miles of maritime 
region whose geographical limits are the Jub 
River and Cape Delgado (S. lat. 10° 41° 2”, and 
whose ethnographic boundaries are the Somal 
and the ‘ Kafir’ tribes. Others derive it from 
El Suhayl, the beautiful Canopus which, sur- 
rounded by a halo of Arab myth, ever attracts 
the eye of the southing mariner. ‘The ‘ Wasawa- 
_ hili,’* or slave tribes, are fancifully explained by 


; Foreigners—Arab, Persian, and Indian,—call them Sa- 
wahili. They call themselves Msawahili in the singular, and 
Wasawahili in the plural, always accenting the penultimate 
syllable. In the Zangian tongues a prefixed M is evidently an 
abbreviation of Mti, a tree, e. g. Nazi, a cocoa-nut, Mnazi, a 
cocoa-nut tree, or of Mtu, a man. Before a vowel it is eupho- 
niously exchanged to Mu, e. g. Muarabu, an Arab. The 
plural form is Wa, a contraction of Watu, men. ‘ Wa’ also is 
the sign of the personal, or rather of the rational animate plural 
opposed to ‘ Ma,’ and must not be confounded with the possess- 
ive pronoun ‘ Wa,’ of. Mr Cooley (Memoir of the Lake Re- 
gions, &c., Reviewed, Stanford, 1864), asserts that ‘Wa mtu,’ 
‘of a man,’ becomes by rejection of the singular prefix, ‘ Watu,’ 
men (des hommes):’ consequently it is an error to call the 
coast people Wamrima and the mountaineers Wakilima. 
If so, it is an error made by every Kisawahili-speaking man. 
There are, however, tribes, for instance the Rabai and the Do- 
ruma, that do not prefix the normal ‘ W4, to form a plural. A 
prefixed ‘ Ki,’ possibly contracted from ‘ kitu,’ a thing, denotes 
the language, e. g. Kisawahili: it also acts diminutive, e. g. 
Kigito, a little mto, or river ; and it appears to have at times an 


adjectival sense. Opposed to it is ‘Ji,’ an augmentative form, 
VOL. I. 


130 THE ISLAND. 


‘Sawwa hilah,’ he ‘ played tricks,’—rascals all. 

The coast races who, like their neighbours the 
Somal, have their own African names for places, 
call Zanzibar Island by the generic term Kisiwa 
—insula. It is thus opposed to Mpoa-ni, the 
coast, and to Mrima, the mainland.' The latter, 


e. g. Jito,a big mto. U, possibly derived from an obsolete 
root which survives in the Kinyika ‘ Uatu’ (a place), denotes 
the country, e. g. Uzaramo, Usagara, and Uzungu—Europe the 
land of the Wazungu. Some names arbitrarily refuse this 
locative, for instance, Khutu, Karagwah, Sanga, Bondei, and 
others: we never hear Ukhutu, and so forth. ‘U’ isalsoa 
sign of abstract words, e. g. Mzuri, a handsome man; Uzuri, 
beauty ; Mtajiri, a merchant; Utajiri, merchandise; Refu, 
long; Urefu, length. I may here remark that Captain Speke’s 
analysis of Uzaramo and Usagara into U-za-ramo and U-sa- 
gara, the country of Ramo and Gara, making them ‘obviously 
triple words,’ is wholly inadmissible. The root of national and 
tribal names, whatever it may be, is used only exceptionally 
amongst the Zangian races. Upon this point I shall presently 
offer a few observations. 

1 Captain Guillain (vol. i. p. 107, et passim) is correct 
upon the subject of the word ‘Mrima.’ Mr Cooley (Memoir 
on the Lake Regions, &c., p. 8) informs us that ‘ Wam- 
rima’ (the mainland people) signifies ‘of the mainland; 
forit is a mistake to suppose that Mrima is but a dialectic 
variation of Mlim4 (read, Mlima) hill, in its primary sense, 
cultivable ground; it is, in truth, a corruption of the 
Arabic word Mar4’im, signifying the land to the west, or 
under the setting sun. When the early Portuguese navi- 
gators told us that the Querimba Islands were peopled by 
the Morimos, we must understand by this name the people of 
the mainland.’ 

This is an excellent illustration of how dangerous a thing is 
a smattering of philology. The ‘Arabic word Mardim’ is 
absolutely unknown to the Arabs of Zanzibar. It is evidently 


THE ‘MRIMA,’ 131 


however, is properly speaking limited to the 
maritime uplands between Tanga and the Pan- 


Gans 


coined out of the dictionary from a) observayit occiden- 


tem solem.’ I would also ask how ‘ Comazinghi is Arabic ?’ 
(Geography, art. 15). Similarly, we find (Journal Royal Geo- 
graphical Society, xix. 190) the Somali ‘ Aber’ (error for Habr) 
derived from the Arabic (Hebrew ?) Bar, and explained by Bent 
(sons), when it really signifies mother or old woman. 

It may be noted that in the Kisawahili of Zanzibar, Mrima 
is applied to the coast generally, especially between Mtangata 
and the Rufiji River, and it is mostly synonymous with the 
Arabs’ ‘ Bar el Moli,’ whereas Mlima means a mountain. From 
the latter comes the diminutive Kilima, a hillock, also synon- 
ymous in composition with the French mont. It enters into 
many East African proper names, e.g. Kilima-njaro, Kilima-ni, 
&e. 

I cannot agree with Messrs Norris and Beke, despite 
their authority as linguists, in stripping the national and racial 
names of their inflections, e. g. Sagara for Usagara, Zaramo 
for Uzaramo. Mr Cooley is equally wrong in stating that the 
‘Sawahily and the Arabs write Nika, Zeramu,and Gogo. The 
Arabs may, the Wasawahili do not, thus blunder. Captain Guil- 
lain, I have remarked, is no authority. He confounds (vol. i. 
p- 231) the land of Wak-wak (the Semitic Gallas) with the South 
African Wamakua ; and, worse still, with the ‘Vatouahs.’ And 
(vol. i. p. 281) he writes the well-known ‘Abban’ of the Somal, 
‘Hebban.’ He also unduly neglects the peculiar initial quiescent 
consonant M, e.g. (i. p. 456) ‘ Foumo’ for ‘Mfumo.’ The bare 
root-word, I repeat, is never used by the people, who always 
qualify it by a prepositive. This, in our language Brit or 
Brut may be the monosyllabie upon which Briton and 
British are built, but it is evidently barbarous to employ 
it without suffix. In the Zangian tongues the prefixes are 
clearly primitive words; nouns, not as the Rev. J. L. Doehne 
explains them in his Zulu-Kafir Dictionary (Cape Town, 1857), 
‘ pronouns, in the present state of the language, used as nominal 
forms compounded with other words. 


132 ‘ MENOUTHIAS. 


gani river. Zanzibar city is Unguja (pronounced 
Ungudya, not Anggouya). The word appears in 
an ancient settlement on the eastern coast of the 
island, and the place is still called Unguja Mku, 
Old Unguja. Some still call it Lunguja, appa- 
rently an older form. We find ‘ Lendgouya’ 
in the Commercial Traveller Yakut (early 
thirteenth century); but ‘Bandgouia’ (Abd el 
Rashid bin Salih el Bakui, A.p. 1403) is clearly 
a corruption. 

Finally, Zanzibar has been identified by pa- 
leeogeographers with the Ptolemean Mevou§ies or 
Mevoubectas (iv. 9), and with the Mevoufias of the 
Periplus (Geog. Greeci Minores of R. Muller, 
Paris, 1855), in some copies of which Menouthe- 
sias also occurs. Its rivals, however, for this 
honour are Pemba, Mafiyah (the Monfia of our 
maps) and Bukini, the northern and north- 
western parts of Malagash or Madagascar.’ 
Ptolemy, it may be observed, places the two im- 
portant sites, Menouthias and Prasum (or Pras- 
sum) in a separate chapter (iv. 9), whereas his 
principal list of stations is in Book iv. chapter 7. 
He lays down the site of Menouthias in $8. lat. 


‘© What Booken (Bukini) means I do not know.’ Wake 
on the Madecasses. Journal, Anthrop. Soc. No. 28, xxxi., Dr 
Krapf (Kisudheli Grammar, p. 106) uses Bukini as Madagascar 
generally. 


MENOUTHIAS. 133 


12°, and nearly opposite the Lunar Mountain, 
and the Lakes whence the Nile arises (S. lat. 12° 
30°). The mouth of the Rhapta river and Rhapta, 
the metropolis of Barbaria, are in 8. lat. 7°, the 
Rhapta promontory is in S. lat. 8° 20° 5”, and 
the Prasum promontory in S. lat. 15°. By ap- 
plying the correction as before, we have for Me- 
nouthias S. lat. 6° (the capital of Zanzibar being 
in S. lat. 6° 9° 6”); for the Lakes, 6° 30’, which 
would nearly bisect Tanganyika; for Rhapta 
river and city, 8S. lat. 1° (or more exactly, 8. lat. 
1° 10°); the mouth of the Jub river being in §. 
lat. 0° 14° 30’; the Rhapta promontory in S. 
lat. 2° 30°, corresponding with the coast about 
Patta; and finally, for Prasum 8. lat. 9° 10’— 
Cape Delgado being in S. lat. 10° 41’ 12.” 

The account given of Menouthias in the Peri- 
plus (written between a.p. 64, Vincent, and A.D. 
210, Letronne’) is that of an eyewitness: ‘ After 
two nychthemeral days (each of 100 miles) 
towards the west [here the text is evidently 
corrupt | comes Menouthias, altogether insulated, 
distant from the land about 300 stadia (30 geo- 


* Captain Guillain (vol. i. 121—189, et passim) contends, 
and with much show of reason, that the Periplus was written 
after the days of Ptolemy (a.p.139 and a.p. 161). ‘Tant de 
lacunes dans l’ceuvre du grand géographe grec, ne semblent-elles 
pas assigner 4 son travail une place toute naturelle entre les 
écrits de Marin de Tyr et le Périple ?’ 


134 RHAPTA. 


graphical miles), low and tree-clad. In it are 
many kinds of birds and mountain tortoises 
(land turtle?). It has no other wild beasts 
but crocodiles (iguanas), and these do not injure 
man. There are in it sewn boats and monoxyles 
(canoes), which they use for salt-pans [here the 
text is defective] and for catching turtle. In 
this island they trap them after a peculiar 
fashion with baskets (the modern wigo) instead 
of nets, letting them down at the mouth of stony 
inlets’ (chap. i. 15). 

The next chapter informs us: ‘ From which 
(island) after two runs (each 50 miles)’ lies the 
last emporium of the continent of Azania, called 
Ta Rhapta, thus named from the before-men- 
tioned sewn-together vessels. In it are much 
ivory and tortoise-shell. The men, who in this 
country are of the largest size, live scattered (in 


‘The daily run (\ *) of native craft varies from 40 to 


50 knots per diem, and 50 may be assumed as an average. 
Captain Guillain estimates it higher, from 48 tu 60. Abulfeda 
gives the Majra or édpdpocg vuxOnpépoc, 100 Hashemi miles = 
170 of our geographical miles, here too high a rate unless aided 
by currents. Other Arab authors propose 100,000 paces = 100 
Roman or Arab miles= 80 geographical miles. The pilot 
Theophilus (Ptol. i. 9) rated the day and night run in these 
seas at 1000 stadia = 100 miles, or two Ptolemeian degrees ; 
the Pelusian geographer having, 1 have said, reduced the 
degree to 500 instead of 600 stadia. 


Ri 


i 
‘sc? 


RHAPTA. : 135 


the mountains ?), and each tribe in its own place 
is subject to tyrants’ (‘tyranneaulx’ or petty 
chiefs). 

Here, then, we have Rhapta 33 leagues (100 
miles = 1° 40°) beyond Menouthias. Captain 
Guillain (Prem. Partie, p. 115) would make the 
former correspond with the debouchure of the 
Oufidji river (Rufiji or Lufiji), in S. lat. 7° 
50°. But the Periplus, unlike Ptolemy, alludes 
only to a port, not to a river mouth, nor 
does the coast-line here show any promontory. 
Others have proposed Point Puna (S. lat. 7° 2’ 
42”), the south-western portal of the Zanzibar 
manche, near the modern trading port of Mbu- 
amaji, which in former ages may have been 
more important. D’Anville, Vincent, and De 
Froberville boldly prefer Kilwa (in round num- 
bers 8. lat. 9°), which is distant 157 geographical 
miles from the southernmost point of Zanzibar, 
and I think they are right. It is safer in such 
matters to suspect an error of figures and of 
distances than of topography, especially where 
the geographical features are so well marked 
and cannot be found in other places. Computa- 
tions of ancient courses and log-books can have 
little value except when they serve to confirm 
commonly topographical positions. Kilwa has 


136 GEOGRAPHY OF ZANZIBAR. 


ever been a central station on the Zanzibar coast, 
and the slaves brought from the interior are still 


remarkable for size. Moreover, as Dr Beke well — 


observes (Sources of the Nile, p. 69), ‘ In attempt- 
ing to fix in the map of Africa the true position 
of Ptolemy’s lakes and sources of the Nile, we 
must discard all notions of their having been 
determined absolutely by means of astronomical 
observations, special maps of particular localities, 
or otherwise, and regard them simply as derived 
from oral information, and as laid down relatively 
to some well-known point or points on the 
coast.’ | 

Zanzibar, the principal link in the chain of 
islets which extends from Makdishu (Magadoxo), 
in the Barr el Benadir or Haven-land, to Cape 
Corrientes, is a long narrow reef, with the major 
axis disposed from N.N.W. to 8.8. E., and 
subtending a deep bight or bend in the coast, 
justly enough called the Barbaric Gulf. The 
length is 48°25 geographical miles from Ra’as 
Nunguwi, the northern (8. lat. 5° 42° 8” Raper), 
to Ra’as Kizimkaz, the southern, extremity (S. 
lat. 6° 27’ '7” Raper). The breadth is 18 miles 
from the Fort in E. long. 39° 14° 5” Raper’s cor- 
rection, to the continental coast in EH. long. (G.) 


1 See Part IT. chap. 11. 


‘Ate @ 


THE FORMATION OF ZANZIBAR. 137 


39° 32° 5’. French travellers assume a max. 
length of 83 kilométres, and a max. breadth of 
33. The capital (S. lat. 6° 9° 6”) corresponds 
in parallel with the Pernambucan province to 
the west and with Java and central New Guinea 
to the east. ‘The corrected longitude (laid down 
by Captain Smee in 1811 as E. lat. 39° 15’) gives 
a difference of Greenwich time 2” 36™ and 56*. 
From Southampton round the Cape the run 
is usually laid down at 8500 miles, via Suez 
6200. The Lesseps Canal has shortened the dis- 
tance from Marseille by 2000 leagues, and thus 
has placed Zanzibar within 1600 leagues of the 
great port —in fact, about the distance of the 
Gaboon ex-colony. 

The formation of the island is madrepore, 
resting upon a core or base of stratified sand- 
stone grit, disposed in beds varying from 1:5 to 
3 feet thick. The surface gently inclines towards 
the sea, and the lines of fracture run parallel 
with the shores. Three distinct formations oc- 
cur to one crossing the breadth.’ The first is a 


1 Dr Ruschenberger, I know not on what authority, says 
that the island is undulated and crossed by three principal 
ridges, whose most elevated points are 500 feet high. My in- 
formation, derived from hearsay, however, not from actual 
inspection, assures me that the waves of ground are disposed 
north and south. 


138 FORMATION. 


band of grit-based coralline, which runs meridion- 
ally, and is most remarkable on the eastern side. 
This portion, featureless and thinly inhabited, is 
protected from the dangerous swell and the fury 
of the Indian Ocean by a broad reef and scat- 
tered rocks of polypidoms. The band thins out 
to the north and south: in the centre, where it 
is widest, the breadth may be three to four miles, 
and the greatest height 400 feet. The coral-rag 
is mostly white and of many shapes, like fans, 
plants, and trees: the most usual form is the 
mushroom, with a broad domed head rising from 
a narrow stem. The texture is exceedingly re- 
ticulated and elastic; solid masses, however, 
occur where neighbouring rocks meet and bind— 
hence the labyrinth of caverns, raised by secular 
upgrowth and preserving the original formation. 
The ground echoes, as in voleanic countries, hol- 
low and vault-like to the tread; the tunnels are 
frequently without issue for drainage, and when 
the rain drips in, the usual calcareous pheno- 
mena, stalactites and stalagmites, appear. Many 
of these caves are found on the coast as well as 
on the island. The carbonate of lime is very pure, 
and contains brown or yellow-white crystals. 

A stony valley, sunk below the level of both 
flanks, is said to bisect the island from north 


FORMATION. 139 


to south. Into this basin fall sundry small 
streams, the Mohayra and others, which are lost 
through the crevices and caverns, and in the 
cracks and fissures of the grit. There are 
other drains, forming, after heavy downfalls, 
swamps and marshes, whence partly the great 
insalubrity of the interior. The western part of 
Zanzibar, with its wealth of evergreen vegetation, 
appears by far the most fertile. It is a meri- 
dional band of red clay and sandy hills, running 
parallel with the corallines of the eastern coast. 
Here are the most elevated grounds. I found 
the royal plantation Sebbé or Izimbane, 400 feet 
(B.P.) above sea-level, or a little higher than the 
Bermudas. The least productive parts are those 
covered with dark clay. Heavy rains deposit 
arenaceous matter upon the surface, and the 
black humus disappears. On this side of the 
island also many streamlets discharge into the 
sea, bearing at their mouths mangrove beds, 
whose miasmas cause agues, dysenteries, diar- 
rhoeas, and deadly fevers. 

The rule established by Dampier and quoted 
by Humboldt directs us to expect great depth 
near a coast formed by high perpendicular moun- 
tains. Here, as in the rest of the Zanzibarian 
archipelago, the maritime line, unlike the west 


140 THE WINDWARD COAST. 


Atlantic islands Tenerife and Madeira, is com- 
posed of gently rolling hills. Yet seven fathoms 
are often found within a stone-throw of the 
land, whilst the encircling ledges are steep-to, 
marked in the charts im and im. Evidently, then, 
the corallines are perched upon the summits of a 
submarine range which rises sharp and abrupt 
from abysmal hollows and depressions. As usual 
too in such formations, the leeward shore line of 
the island, where occur the lagoon entrances, is 
more varied and accidented than the eastern. 


At Pemba this feature will be even more re- 


markable. 

The windward coast, in common with many 
parts of the continental seaboard, suffers espe- 
cially from June to August from the Ras de 
Marée (Manuel de la Navigation et la Céte occi- 
dentale de Afrique), a tide race, supposed to 
result from the meeting of currents. It is a line 
of rollers neither far from nor very near the 
shore. The hurling and sagging surf is described 
to resemble the surge of a submarine earth- 
quake ; and the strongest craft, once entangled 
in the send, cannot escape. It would be useful 
to note, as at West African Lagos, the greater or 
less atmospheric pressure accompanying the phe- 
nomenon, and to seek a connection between it 


. y ihe 


THE CURRENT. 141 


and the paroxysms of the neighbouring cyclone 
region. At all times sailors remark the ‘short- 
ness’ of the waves and the scanty intervals be- 
tween their succession. ‘This peculiarity cannot 
be explained in the usual way by shoals and 
shallow water causing a ground-swell. 

With respect to the great East African ocean- 
current, which has given rise to so many fables 
gravely recorded by the Arab geographers,’ the 
best authorities at Zanzibar are convinced, and 
their log-books prove, that both its set and drift, 
like the Brazilian coast-stream, are in the present 
state of our knowledge subject to the extremes 
of variation. The charts and Horsburgh lay it 
down as a regular S.W. current; and so it is in 
the southern, whilst in the northern part it is 
hardly perceptible. Between Capes Guardafui 
and Delgado it flows now up then down the 
coast ; here it trends inland, there it sets out to 
sea. Dr Ruschenberger relates that on Sept. 1, 


1 The Bahr el Kharab, or Bad Sea, the mountains El Mu- 
lattam (the lashed or beaten), El Nidameh (of repentance), and 
El Ajrad (the noisy) ; the Mountains of Magnet, and the ‘ Blind 
Billows’ and ‘ Enchanted Breakers’ which, says El Masudi, 
make the Omani sailor of the tribe of Azd sing— 


‘O Berberah and Jafuni (Ra’as Hafun), and thy warlock waves ! 
Jafuni and Berberah and _ their waves are these which thou 
seest !’ 


142 THE CURRENT. 


1835, his ship, when south of Zanzibar, was 
carried 50 miles in 15 hours, and was obliged to 
double the northern cape. The same happened 
to Captain Guillain in August 1846, when he 
lost five days. This resulted from the superior 
force of the 8.W. monsoon, which often drives 
vessels to the north 30 to 40 miles during the 
day and night. Lieut. Christopher (Journal, 
Jan. 5, 1843) reported it to be variable and vio- 
lent, especially close in shore, and observed that 
it frequently trends against the wind. It is 
usually made to run to the 8.W. between De- 
cember and April, at the rate of 1:3 miles per 
hour, from Ra’as Hafun to Ra’as Aswad, and 
two to three miles per hour between Capes 
Aswad and Delgado. Shipmasters at Zanzibar 
have assured me that when this coastal current 
covers three knots an hour there is a strong 
backwater or counter-flow, which, lke the 
Gulf-stream, trends to the north, and against 
which, with light winds, native vessels cannot 
make way. This counter-current has extensive 
limits ; usually it is considered strongest between 
Mafiyah and Pomba. ‘The ship St Abbs, con- 
cerning which so much has been said and writ- 
ten of late years, was wrecked in 1855 off St 
Juan de Nova of the Comoro group (S. lat. 


NAVIGATION. 143 


17° 3° 5”), and pieces of it were swept up to 
Brava (N. lat. 1° 6’ 8”), upwards of 1000 miles. 
The crew is supposed still to be in captivity 
amongst the Abghal tribe ; and in 1865 an Arab 
merchant brought to Zanzibar a hide marked 
with letters which resembled NF BN. A writer 
in the Pall Mail opined the letters to be ‘ Wasm’ 
or tribal brands, justly observing that ‘all the 
Bedawin have these distinguishing marks,’ but 
forgetting that he was speaking of the analpha- 
betic Somal, to whom such knowledge does not 
extend. As we might expect, the Mozambique 
stream, south of Cape Delgado, always flows 
southerly with more or less westing. The rate is 
said to vary from 20 to 80 miles a day. 

Our hydrographical charts are correct enough. 
to guide safely into and out of port any ship- 
master who will sound, and can take an angle. 
As, however, the navigation is easy, so accidents 
are common. Any land-lubber could steer a 
ship from Bombay to Karachi (Kurrachee), and 
yet how many have been lost! Often, too, it is 
in seamanship as in horsemanship, when the best 
receive the most and the heaviest falls. In May 
1857 the Jonas, belonging to Messrs Vidal, was 
sunk by mistaking Chumbi Island for its neigh- 
bour Bawi. Three or four days afterwards the 


144 NAVIGATION. 


Storm King of Salem, Messrs Bertram, ran 
aground whilst hugging Chumbi in order to dis- 
tance a rival. The number of reefs and shoals 
render it always unadvisable to enter the port at 
night, and in the heaviest weather safe riding- 
eround is found between Zanzibar Island and 
the continent. 

Vessels from the south making Zanzibar in 
the N.E. monsoon, the trade-wind of December 
to March, leave Europa Island to the west, and 
the Comoro group and 8. Juan de Nova on the 
east. Keeping well in mid-channel, they head 
straight for Mafiyah. They hug Point Puna, 
avoiding Latham’s Bank,’ and they work up by 
Kwale and the Chumbi Island. Ships from the 
north have only to run down the mid-channel, 
between Pemba and the continent, and then to 
pass west of Tumbatu. Those sailing southward 
from Zanzibar at this season pass along-shore, 
down the Mozambique Channel. Vessels from 
the south making Zanzibar in May to September, 
the height of the 8.W. monsoon—the anti-N.H. 
trade—sail up the same passage. They must be- 
ware of falling to leeward; and those that neg- 


! At Latham’s Isle was found guano, which Captain Cogan, 
I.N., obtained permission to export. In 1847, however, it was 
washed away by a ‘ Ras de Maree.’ 


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NZIBAR FROM THE SEA. ~ 


ASPECT OF ZANZIBAR. 145 


lect ‘lead and look-out’ are ever liable to be 
carried northwards to Pemba by the counter- 
current before mentioned, which may, however, 
now be a wind-current. At this season ship-mas- 
ters missing the mark have sometimes made 3° to 
4° of easting, and have preferred beating down to 
Mafiyah and running up again, rather than face 
the ridicule of appearing vié the northern pass- 
age. Those leaving the Island in the 8.W. 
monsoon stand north up channel, well out in 
Ki. lon. 9° 42’ to 43’, beat south of Cape Del- 
gado, pass between the Comoro group and the 
‘mainland, and thus catch the Mozambique gulf- 
stream. The brises solaires blow strongest off 
Madagascar in June and July. They fall light 
in August and September. 

The aspect of Zanzibar from the sea is that 
of coralline islands generally—a graceful, wavy 
outline of softly rounded ground, and a surface 
of ochre-coloured soil, thickly clothed with foli- 
age alternating between the liveliest leek-green 
and the sombrest laurel, the only variety that 
vegetation knows in this land of eternal verdure. 
Kiverywhere the scenery is similar; each mile of 
it is a copy of its neighbour; and the want of 
variety, of irregularity, of excitement, so to 
speak, soon makes itself felt. Zanzibar ignores 


VOL. I. 10 


(146 ASPECT. 


the exhilaration of pure desert air, and the exalt- 
ation produced by the stern aspect of mountain 
regions or by a boundless expanse of Pampa and 
Sahara. Without a single element of sublimity, 
soft and smiling, its sensuous and sequestered 
scenery has no power to spur the thought, to 
breed an idea within the brain. The oppressive 
luxuriance of its growth combined with the ex- 
cess of damp heat, and possibly the abnormal 
proportion of ozone, are the most unfavourable 
conditions for the masculine. The same is the 
case in Mazanderan, Malabar, Egypt, Phoenicia, 
California, and other Phre-kah—lands of the sun. 
And the aspect of that everlasting, beginning- 
less, endless verdure tends, as on the sea-board 
of the Brazil, to produce sensations of melancholy 
and depression. We learn at last to loathe thee, 


‘ gay green, 
Thou smiling Nature’s universal robe!’ 


Landing upon the island, you find a thin 
strip of bright yellow sand separating the sea 
from a curtain of vegetation, which forms a con- 
tinuous wall. In some parts madrepore rock, 
looped and caverned by the tide, and covered 
with weeds and testaceze, whose congeners are 
fossilized in the stone, rises abruptly a few feet 
above the wave. At other places a dense growth 


ASPECT. 147 


of tangled mangrove jungle exposes during the 
ebb a sheet of black and sticky mire, into which 
man sinks knee-deep. The regularity of the out- 
line is broken by low projecting spits and by 
lagoons and backwaters, which bite deep into the 
land. Their pestilential, fatal exhalations veil 
the low grounds with a perpetual haze, and the 
excess of carbon is favourable to vegetable as it 
is deleterious to animal life. 

Passing over the modern sea-beach, with its 
coarse grasses, creepers, and wild flowers—mostly 
the Ipomzea—and backed by towering trees, 
cocoas, mangos, and figs, we often observe in 
the interior distinct traces of an old elevation, 
marked by lines of water-worn pebbles and by 
coarse gravels overlying greasy blue clay. This 
is the home of the copal. Beyond it the land rises 
imperceptibly, and breaks into curves, swells, 
and small ravines, rain-cut and bush-grown, 
sometimes 40 feet deep. The soil is now a re- 
tentive red or yellow argile, based upon a detritus 
of coralline, hardened, where pressed, into the 
semblance of limestone, or upon a friable sand- 
stone-grit of quartz and silex. The humus 
of the richest vegetable substance, and excited 
by the excess of humidity and heat, produces in 
abundance maize, millet, and various panicums ; 


148 VEGETATION. 


tomatoes and naturalized vegetables, muhogo 
(the cassava), and Palma Christi; coffee, cot- 
ton, and sugar-cane; clove, nutmeg, and cin- 
namon trees; foreign fruits, like the Brazilian 
Caji, the passion-flower and the pine-apple; the 
Chinese Leechi; bananas and guavas, the Ra- 
phia and the cocoa, twin queens of the palms; 
limes and lemons, oranges and shaddocks, the 
tall tamarind, the graceful Areca, the grotesque 
calabash and Jack-tree, colossal sycamores and 
mangos, whose domes of densest verdure, often 
60 feet high and bending, fruit-laden, to the 
earth, make our chesnuts, when in fullest dress, 
look half-naked and in rags. 

The uplands, especially in the western part of 
the island, are laid out in Mashamba or plant- 
ations, whose regular lines of untrimmed clove- 
trees are divided by broad sunny avenues. Here 
and there are depressions in the soil, where heavy 
rains slowly sinking have nursed a tangled growth 
of reeds and rushes, sedge and water-grass. 
About the Mohayra and the Bibibi—the prin- 


cipal of the worapo: wacoro of the Periplus— . 


mere surface-drains, choked with fat juncaceze 
and with sugar-cane growing wild, there is a 
black soil of prodigious fertility, whose produce 
may, so to speak, be seen to grow. This sounds 


‘MANGROVE HEAVINESS.’ 149 


like exaggeration; but I well remember, at 
Hyderabad, in Sind, that during the inundation 
of the Indus we could perceive in the morning 
that the maize had lengthened during the night, 
and the same is the case with certain ‘toad- 
stools’ and fungi in the Brazil. 

Upon this waste of rank vegetation the sun 
darts an oppressive and malignant beam. In 
the driest season the ‘mangrove heaviness’ of 
the western coast and the cadaverous fcetor 
announce miasma; after the rains the landscape 
is redolent of disease and death. 

The cottages of small proprietors and slaves 
strew the farms. They are huts of wattle and 
rufous loamy dab, to which large unbaked bricks — 
of red clay are sometimes preferred. The usual 
cajan pent-roof forms deep dark eaves, propped 
by untrimmed palm-boles. These dwellings are 
unwholesome, because none boast of a second 
storey; they are not even built upon piles, and 
thus their sole defence against the surrounding 
malaria is the shrubbery planted by nature’s 
hand. Sickness seems generally, both in the 
island and on the continent, to follow turning 
up fresh soil, and the highlands are often more 
subject to miasma than the lowlands. 

The lines of communication consist of mere 


150 VEGETATION. 


footpaths, instead of the broad roads required 
for the ventilation of the country. When the 
produce of the land is valuable the lanes are 
lined with cactus, milk-bush (euphorbia), and 
succulent plants, whose foliage shines with me- 
tallic lustre. Set in little ridges, the hedge-rows 
of pine-apple, with its large pink and crimson 
fruit, passing, when ripe, into a reddish-yellow, 
form a picturesque and pleasant fence. At a 
distance from the town the paths become rough 
and solitary. Nearer, they are well beaten by 
negroes of both sexes and all ages, carrying fuel 
or baskets of fruit upon their heads, or bringing 
water from the wells, or loitering under shady 
trees to cheapen the cocoa-nut, manioc, and 
broiled fish, offered by squatting negresses for 
their refection. 


SECTION 2. 
Meteorological Notes—The Double Seasons, &c. 


THE characteristic of meteorology at Zanzi- 
bar, as generally the case in the narrow equa- 


METEOROLOGY. 151 


torial zone, is the extreme irregularity of its 
phenomena. Here weather seems to be all in 
confusion ; hardly two consequent years resemble 
each other. In 1853-4, for instance, the seasons, 
if they may so be called, were apparently in- 
verted ; heavy showers fell during the dries, and a 
drought occupied the place of the wet monsoon. 
Sometimes the rains will begin with, this year 
(1857) they ended with, a heavy burst. Now 
April is a fine month, then the downfall will last 
through June. 

I may also remark one great difference of 
climate between the eastern and western coasts 
of intertropical Africa. Whilst Zanzibar is super- 
satured with moisture, Angola, on the same 
parallel, is a comparatively dry, sandy, and sun- 
burnt region. Kilwa, upon the eastern coast, and 
in 8. lat. 8° 57’, isdamp and steamy. S. Paulo de 
Loanda, upon the opposite shore (S. lat. 8° 48’), 
suffers from want of water. We find the same 
contrast in the South American continent. The 
middle Brazil is emphatically a land of rains, 
whilst Peru and Chili require artificial irrigation 
supplied by melted snow. Evidently the winds 
charged with moisture, the N. E. and S. BE. 
trades and their modifications, discharge them- 
selves upon the windward sides of continents: 


152 THE THERMOMETER. 


especially when these are fringed with cold 
sierras, which condense the vapour and render 
the interior a lee land. 

In 1847 the Geographical senior of Bombay 
sent a barometer to Zanzibar, and requested that 
a meteorological register might be kept. Their 
wishes were not immediately carried into effect ; 
but after a time the Eurasian apothecary in 
charge of the Consulate filled up in a rude way 
during nine months a weather-book, with observa- 
tions of the barometer, of two thermometers 
attached and unattached, of wet and dry bulbs, 
of evaporation and of rainfall. In the Journal 
of the Royal Geographical Society (xxii. of 
1853), Colonel Sykes published a ‘record, kept 
during eleven months in 1850, of the indications 
of several intertropical instruments at Zanzibar,’ 
unhappily without those of pressure.* 

The result of nine months’ observations is that ° 

‘The temperature of the island as observed by French — 


travellers is— 


Max. (April 6 a.m. 2 morn.) 89° (F'.)—Colonel Sykes—88° (F. in shade) 
Min. (October, midnight and 6 A.M.) 73° ditto 73° 
Mean temperature of the year 79° 15 ditto 79°90 (extreme range 18°-190) 


The following are the results of the evaporating dish :— 


Total of Greatest in one Least in 


month, day of month. one day, 

inches, inches, inches, 
January, 1857 .... 2°36 eee 0°09 Aice 0°04 
February ,, .... 219 eae 0°10 Poa 0°05 
March 5s laeoleer ge aap bin 0°09 axetale 0°06 
April Jo. Saltetene WOnd saute 0:10 etre 0°03 


‘ o . 
R sae 


THE BAROMETER. 155 


the thermometer shows a remarkably limited 
range of temperature and an extreme variation 
of only 18°—19°. A storm, however, will make 
the mercury fall rapidly through 6°—7°. The 
climate is far more temperate than the in- 
experienced expect to find so near the equator. 
Tt is within the limits of the true Trades. 
The land and sea breezes laden with cool mois- 
ture blow regularly, and the excessive humidity 
spreads a heat-absorbing steam-cloud between 
sun and earth. The medium _ temperature 
of January is 83° 30°; of February, the hottest 
month, 85° 86° (according to Colonel Sykes 83° 
40°); and of March, 82°50’. This high and little- 
varying mean then gradually declines till July, 
the coolest month (77° 10’). The mean average 
of the year is 79° 15’'—90’. In September and 
October the climate has been compared with 
that of southern Europe. On the other hand, 
the atmosphere supports an amount of moisture 
unknown to the dampest parts of India. 

The barometer, so near the equator, is almost 
uniformly sluggish and quiescent. Its range 
diurnal and annual is here ata min. It seldom, 
except under varying pressure of storms or tor- 
nadoes, rises or falls above or below 30 inches 
at sea level, anda few tenths represent the max. 


154 VARIATION. 


variation. It must be observed, however, on both 
eoasts of Africa, within 6°—7° of the Line, this 
instrument requires especial study for nautical 
purposes. Here it is an imperfect indicator, 
because, affected from great distances, it rises 
without fine weather and it falls without foul. 
At Zanzibar the case of a whaling captain is 
quoted for wasting in vain precautions nearly 
two months. Moreover, sufficient observations 
have not yet been accumulated in the south- 
ern hemisphere. Where there is so little ex- 
pansion in the mercurial column the convexity 
and concavity of the column-head must be care- 
fully examined with a magnifying-glass, and by 
a reflecting instrument the smallest change 
could be correctly measured. The trembling of 
the aneroid needle, sometimes ranging through 
a whole inch during the gusts of the highly elec- 
trical tornado, also calls for observation. The 
sympiesometer is held to be even more sensitive 
than the mercurial barometer, especially before 
storms, and ignorance of its peculiarity has often 
‘frightened a reef in’ at unseasonable times. 
The same was found to be the case, in high lati- 
tudes, by Lieut. Robertson, R.N., when sailing 
under Captain Ross (1818), between N. lat. 51° 
39° and 76° 50’. 


METEORS. 155 


Observations with the altitude and azimuth 
determined the variation of the needle in 1857 
to be between 9°—10° (W.). If this be correct, 
it is gradually easting. In 1823 Captain Owen 
found it to be 11° 7 (W.).* So, upon the oppo- 
site coast, the variation laid down in our charts 
of 1846 as 20° (W.) has gradually declined to 
between 18° 30’ and 19° (W.). 

Of exceptional meteoric phenomena I can 
speak only from hearsay, no written records ex- 
isting upon the island. A single earthquake is 
remembered. In the early rains of 1846, at 
about 4 P.M., a shock, accompanied by a loud 
rumbling sound, ran along the city sea-front, 
splitting the Sayyid’s palace, the adjacent mosque, 
and the side-walls of the British Consulate, in. a 
direction perpendicular to the town. It was 
probably the result of igneous disturbance below 
the coralline, and it tends to prove that the island 
was originally an atoll: some, however, have 
explained it by a land-slip. Three meteors are 
known since 1848. In December of that year 
a ball of fire was visible from windows facing 
the north; it disappeared without a report. 
The most remarkable was a bolis, which, about 


* The Consular report of 1859 gives Captain Owen’s vari- 
ation. 


156 STORMS. 


6 P.M. on October 25, 1855, took a N.W. by W. 
path, burned during ten or eleven minutes, and 
frightened the superstitious burghers into fits. 
Water-spouts commonly appear during the month 
of April, and in the direction of the mainland: 
the people disperse them by firing guns. 

Frost and snow are of course unheard of at 
Zanzibar, and hail, not uncommon in the inte- 
rior, never (?) falls upon the island or the coast. 
During the wet season generally, especially when 
the heats are greatest, the hills of Terrafirma are 
veiled with clouds, and sheet-lightning plays 
over the horizon. The islanders assure the 
stranger that storms of thunder and lightning 
are rare, and that few accidents happen from the 
electric fluid. M. Alfred May, for instance, de- 
clares that thunder is heard only three or four 
times a year. The same is said in West African 
Yoruba, in parts of the Brazil, and even in 
Northern Syria—Damascus, for instance. It 
would be curious to inquire what produces this 
uniform immunity under climatic conditions so 
different. At Zanzibar, however, the phenome- 
non is irregular as the seasons. I was told of 
several deaths by the ‘thunderbolt,’ and in the 
year 1857 the S.W. monsoon was ushered in 
almost daily by a tempest. Lieutenant-Colonel 


a 


TORNADOS. 157 


Hamerton, when sailing about the island, lost by 
lightning his Baloch Sarhang (boatswain) ; he 
himself felt a blow upon the shoulder like that 
of a falling block. No blood appeared upon the 
side, but it was livid to the hip, and for some 
days the patient was decidedly ‘shaky.’ Some 
explained his escape by his wearing flannel; 
others by his standing near the davits of a long- 
boat, which were twisted like wax by the electric 
fluid. 

The mainlands of Zanzibar and of Mozam- 
bique are subject, as might be expected, to 
tornados, which much resemble those of the 
West African coast. Accompanying the forma- 
tion and the dispersion of the nimbus, they are 
often violent enough to. wreck small craft. 
Caught in a fine specimen, I was able to observe 
all the normal phenomena,—the building up of 
the warning arch, the white eye or gleam under 
the soffit, the wind blowing off shore, the appar- 
ent periodicity of throbs, and the frantic rage of 
the short-lived squall. The cyclones and hurri- 
canes of the East Indian Islands rarely extend to 
Zanzibar. During 14 years there was but one 
tourbillon strong enough to uproot a cocoa-tree. 
It passed over the city about midnight, over- 
throwing the Mabandani or roof-sheds, and it was 


158 DEW. 


followed by a burst of rain. Colonel Sykes (loco 
cit.) remarks, philosophically explaining the 
why, ‘Another peculiar feature in the climato- 
logy of Zanzibar is that there is seldom any dew 
experienced.’ The reverse is the case, as might 
be known by the strength of the nightly radia- 
tion. Captain Guillain (i. 2, 72) declares that 
the rosées which accompany the rains are suffi- 
cient for watering the ground, and observes (p. 
94), I presume concerning those who remain in 
the open air, ‘ Rester a terre entre huit heurs du 
soir et le lever du soleil c’est s’exposer a une 
mort trés probable, sinon certaine.’ The sunset, 
never followed by twilight, is accompanied by a 
sudden coolness which, as in equatorial, and 
even sub-tropical regions generally, causes a rapid 
precipitation of vapour. The dews are cold and 
clammy, and the morning shows large beads in 
horizontal streaks of moisture on perpendicular 
surfaces. I often remarked the deposition of 
dew when light winds were blowing; of course 
it did not stand in drops, but it wetted the cloth- 
ing. This I believe is an exception to the 
general rule. At sunset the old stager will not 
sit or walk in the open air, although, as in Syria, 
he will expose himself to it at nine or ten p. m., 
when the night has acquired its normal temper- 


DOUBLE SEASONS. 159 


ature. As in the west coast squadron, so here, 
there is an order that all men on deck after sun- 
set must wear their blanket-coats and trowsers, 
and many an unfortunate sailor has lost his life 
by sleeping in the streets, thus allowing the dew 
to condense upon his body while under the in- 
fluence of liquor. Experienced travellers have 
taught themselves, even in the hottest seasons of 
the hottest equinoctial regions, to air the hut 
with a ‘bit of fire’ before sundown and sunrise, 
and it is doubtless an excellent precaution 
against ‘ chills.’ 

Zanzibar Island, lying in S. lat. 6°, has the 
sun in zenith twice a year: the epochs being 
early March and October; more exactly, March 
4 and October 9. Hence it has two distinct 
summers; the first in February, the second in 
September. It has double rains; the ‘Great 
Masika’ in April to June, and the ‘ Little Ma- 
sika’ in October to November. It has two 
winters; the shorter in December, and in July 
the longer, which is much more marked than the’ 
former. There are only three months of N.E. 
trade (Azyab)' to nine of S.E. and S.W. (Kausi). 


' Azyab is the classical Arab term for Cecias (Kaikias) the 
N.E. wind—according to Firuzabadi it is the S.E.; Sciron, the 
N.W., is the Arab‘ Sharsh’; Lips, the 8.W., is ‘Labash’; and 
Euros, the 8.E., ‘ Sh’luk’ (scirocco, which is in many places a 


160 THE TRADE WINDS. 


The regularity of these seasons is broken by a 
variety of local causes, and there is ever, I re- 
peat, the normal instability of equinoctial cli- 
mates. Theory appears often at fault upon these 
matters. A fair instance is Mr Cooley’s assertion, 
that about Kilima-njaro the ‘rainy season is also 
the hot season.’ Theoretically, of course, the 
period of the sun’s northing and of the great 
rains should be, north of the equator, the hot 
season ; but where tropical downfalls are heavy, 
the excessive humidity intercepting the solar 
rays, and the valleys and swamps refrigerated by 
the torrents, make the rainy season the cold 
weather. From June to September the natives 
of Fernando Po (N. lat. 4°) die, like those of 
eastern intertropical Africa, of catarrh, quinsey, 
and rheumatism. Even in India the Goanese call 
the rains ‘o inverno,’ and Abba Gregorius makes 
the wet weather the winter of Abyssinia. About 
Kilima-njaro the hot and dry season opens with 
the end and closes with the beginning of the hot 


monsoon. 
The natives of Zanzibar distribute the year 


due east wind). The N.E. is still commonly called ‘ Barrani’; 
in vulgar Arabic, however, men would say, Bayn el Shimal 
w’el Gharb. At Zanzibar the east wind 18 called by the Was- 
hawahili Za ji—of above, and the west Phepo Mande or Um- 
ande—of dew or mist. 


THE KASKAZI. 161 


into five seasons. A far simpler division here 
applicable, as in Western India, is made by those 
local trades the monsoons, between whose two 
unequal lengths are long intervals of calms and 
of variable winds. These are the Mausim or 
N.E. monsoon, and the Hippalus or 8.W. 

1. The Kaskazi or Kazkazi (vulgarly Kiz- 
kazi), to which the Arabs limit the term El 
Mausim (Monsoon), is ¢he season during which the 
_Azyab (4;!) or N.E. trade blows. The wind 
begins about mid-November; from mid-Decem- 
ber to mid-February its strength is greatest, and 
it usually ends about mid-March. In 1857, 
however, the Kaskazi opened with light showers, 
and continued in full force till March 24; usually 
the last vessels from Cutch and Bombay enter 
port about March 10. This is the first of the 
two hot seasons, and midsummer may be placed 
in February and March. A fine, cool sea-breeze 
from the N.E. usually prevails between 8 a.m. 
and late in the afternoon. When it is absent the 
weather is sultry and oppressive, the northerner 
feels suffocated; the least exertion brings on 
profuse perspiration, and the cuticular irritation 
produces boils and ‘prickly heat.’ The nights 
are close and stifling enough to banish rest and 


sleep. As has been shown, the thermometer 
VOL. I. 11 


162 GREATER RAINS. 


does not stand high, but the frequent flashes of 
sheet-lightning playing over the northern and 
western sky show a surcharge of electricity. The 
public health would suffer severely but for the 
frequent cooling showers which, especially at the 
end of the Kaskazi, are succeeded by several 
days of pleasant weather. This is the agricul- 
turist’s spring. Sesamum, holcus, rice, and other 
cereals, are sown upon lands previously burned 
for manure. It is the traveller’s opportunity 
for visiting the interior of the island and the 
worst parts of the coast, but—‘ bad is the best.’ 
2. The Msika (or Masika) Mku, Greater rain 
or rains. About the end of March the change of 
monsoon is ushered in by heavy squalls from the 
S.E. and by tornados blowing off land. Presently 
the Hippalus breaks, and extends from early 
May into October. In May native craft make 
India after a run of 20 to 25 days; after the end 
of August they rarely attempt the voyage. This 
Kausi or Hippalus is usually called 8.W. mon- 
soon, but it has mostly an eastern deflection, 
possibly modified by the westerly land-breezes. 
The Arabs divide it, as will be seen, into three 
portions. First, the Kaus proper,’ in Kisawa- 


* I can only suggest that this term is borrowed from the 
zodiacal sign Sagittarius. 


THE RAINS. 163 


hili Kausi (_ ...,3), from mid-April to early August, 
the period of the greatest strength. Second, Ki- 
pupwe or first winter—July and early August ; 
and third, the Dayman, which ends the Kausi. 
Presently appear the rains which have fol- 
lowed the northing sun. The same observation 
was made by the Austrian mission on the White 
River in N. lat. 4° 30’. On the coast we can dis- 
tinctly trace their progress. In 1857 the down- 
fall began in Feb. 15, at Usumbara (S. lat. 5°), 
where the clouds are massed and condensed by 
a high plateau, leading to lofty, snow-capped 
mountains. In 1854 I found that the rainy 
season opened at Berberah of the Somal (N. lat. 
10° 25’) on April 15; and in early June they 
reach Bombay (N. lat. 18° 53’). Concerning the 
movement of the wet season in inner intertropi- 
cal Africa I have already written in the Journal 
of the Royal Geographical Society (xxix. 207). 
The heaviest rains at Zanzibar Island begin 
the wet season about mid-April, and last 30 to 
4() days; they do not end, however, till early 
June. Some observers remark that the fall is 
greatest at low water and during the ebb-tides 
of the Syzygies. It is, however, rare to have a 
week of uninterrupted rain, as in eastern India 
and sometimes in the Brazil. The discharge is 


164 RAINFALL. 


exceedingly uncertain. Some years number 85 
inches, others 108. During the first eight months 
of 1857 and the last four months of 1858, we find 
a total of 120-21 inches. In 1859 it reached 167, 
doubling the average of Bombay (76°55), and 
nearly trebling that of Calcutta (56°83). We 
may compare these figures with those of Europe 
and the United States. England has 31:97 
inches; France, 25:00 ; Central Germany, 20-00; 
Hungary, 16°93; Boston, 38°19 (about the 
same at Beyrut in Syria); Philadelphia, 45-00; 
and St Louis, Mo., 31°97. Of these 167 inches 
(1859), 104°25 fell during the Msika Mku. The 
number of wet days ranges from 100 to 130 per 
annum. According to the people, rain has 
diminished of late years ; perhaps it is the result 
of felling cocoas, and of disforesting the land for 
cloves. In 1857, the Great Msika was preceded 
by a few days of oppressive heat, which ended 
(March 24) in a highly electrical storm, like 
those which usher in the rains of western India, 
and suddenly the cool 8.W. began to blow. For 
some time we had daily showers, now from the 
N.E., then from the 8.W., with high winds and 
loud thunderings; the rains, however, did not 
show in earnest before April 10. 

The islanders like the Msika to open with 


—_  s ee 


IRREGULARITIES. 165 


showers strong enough to bind the land, but 
not so violent as to carry off the manure de- 
posited by the year’s decayed vegetation. After 
this the water should fall-in heavy ropy tor- 
rents, with occasional breaks of sunshine and 
fine weather; when this lasts thirty days, and 
is succeeded by frequent showers, good crops 
are expected. The downfall is heavier in the 
interior of the island than about the city, which, 
situated upon a point, escapes many a drench- 
ing. It must, however, be borne in mind that 
the phenomena of the rains, like those of the 
sea and air, are essentially irregular. In some 
seasons there will be only half-a-dozen rainy 
afternoons; in others as many rainy mornings. 
There are years of great drought, and there are 
seasons when the sun does not appear for six 
weeks in succession. Usually heavy rain is not 
expected after 11 a.M., and showers are rare 
after 2 P.M. As I subsequently remarked in the 
east African interior—the Fluminenses of the 
Brazil still preserve the tradition—there is a 
curious regularity and periodicity in the hours of 
downfall, often extending over many days. This 
phenomenon may have done much towards creat- 
ing the ‘ rain-doctor.’ 

During the Msika the horizon is obscured, 


166 ‘SMOKES.’ 


dangerously indeed for ships: the wind veers 
round to every point of the compass; the sky 
is murky and overcast; huge purple nimbi, like 
moving mountains, float majestically against the 
wind, showing strong counter-currents in the 
upper aérial regions. From afar the island ap- 
pears smothered in blue mist, and often the cloud- 
rock splits into two portions, one of which makes 
for the coast. Even during the rare days of 
sunshine the distances, owing to the con- 
tinuous humidity, are rarely clear, and the ex- 
halations make refraction extensive. A high 
tension of vapour isthe rule. For the first three 
hours after sunrise the land is often obscured by 
‘smokes,’ a white misty fog, often deepening to | 
a drizzling rain; this lasts until 10 a.m., about 
which time the sea-breeze begins to blow. 

The Msika is much feared by the native 
population, and the interior of the island be- 
comes a hot-bed of disease. "The animal creation 
seems to breathe as much water as air. The 
want of atmospheric weight, and consequently of 
pressure upon the surface of the body, renders 
the circulation sluggish, robs man of energy, and 
makes him feel how much better is sleep than 
waking. Europeans, speaking from effect, com- 
plain that the ‘heavy’ air produces an unnatural 


DAMPNESS. 167 


drowsiness—it is curious to see how many of 
our popular books make humidity increase the 
weight of the atmospheric column. During this 
season the dews of sunset are deemed especially 
fatal to foreigners. At times the body feels 
cold and clammy when the thermometer sug- 
gests that it should be perspiring: super-satura- 
tion is drawing off the vital heat. The lungs are 
imperfectly oxygenized, and, in general belief, 
positive is exchanged for negative electricity. 
The hair and skin are dank and sodden; indeed, 
a dry cutis is an unattainable luxury. Iron 
oxydizes with astonishing rapidity; shoes ex- 
posed to the air soon fall to pieces; mirrors are 
clouded with steam; paper runs and furniture 
sweats; the houses leak; books and papers are 
pasted together; ink is covered with green fur; 
linens and cottons grow mouldy, and Prasaererns 
stiffen and become boardy. 

This excess of damp is occasionally varied by 
the extreme of dryness. The hot wind repre- 
sents the Khamasin of Egypt, the Sharki (or 
Sh’luk) of Syria, the Harmattan of west Africa, 
and the Norte of the southern Brazil, Para- 
guay, and the Argentine Confederation. At such 
times the air apparently abounds in oxygen and 
in ozone. Cotton cloth feels hard and crisp ; even 


168 THE SEASONS. 


the water is cooled by the prodigious evapora- 

tion. Books and papers curl up and crack, and 
strangers are apt to suffer from nausea and 
fainting fits. 

3. The Kipupwe, first winter or cold season 
—July and early August. The bright azure of 
_ the sky, the surpassing clearness of the water, 
and the lively green colours of the land, are 
not what we associate with the idea of the 
‘disease of the year.” The Kausi or S.W. mon- 
soon still blows, but in this second or post- 
pluvial phase its strength is diminished. As 
on the western coast the mornings are misty, 
the effect of condensation and of excessive 
evaporation, the sun pumping up vapour from 
the rapidly desiccating ground; but about four 
hours after sunrise a strong sea-breeze sets in, 
giving a little life and elasticity to the ex- 
hausted frame. When the ‘doctor’ fails the 
heat is oppressive, and the sunsets are often 
accompanied by an unpleasant closeness. The 
beginning of the Kipupwe is held to be univer- 
sally sickly. The Hindus, who declare that all 
cold coming from the south is bad, suffer from 
attacks of rheumatism and pneumonia. ‘The 
charms of the season induce Europeans to de- 
spise the insidious attacks of malaria: they 


THE LITTLE RAINS. 169 


commit imprudences and pay for them in severe 
fevers. The rare but heavy showers that now fall 
are termed ‘Mcho;’ they separate the greater 
from the lesser Msika. 

4. Dayman (in Kisawahili Daymdani) ends 
the Kausi or 8S. W. monsoon, and extends 
through August and part of October. Though 
the sun is nearly perpendicular the air is cooled 
by strong south-westerly breezes. At this time 
yams, manioc, and sweet potatoes grow, making 
it a second spring, whilst the harvest of rice and 
holcus assimilates it to the temperate autumn. 

5. The Vuli (Fuli)’ or Msika Mdogo, second 
rains or Little Msika. This season lasts but 
three weeks, beginning shortly after the sun 
has crossed the zenith of Zanzibar in the south- 
ern declination, and embracing part of October 
and November. It is not considered a healthy 
time by the islanders. The autumnal rains are 
sometimes wanting upon the continent, and the 
land then suffers as severely from drought as 
northern Syria does when the ‘ former rain’ fails. 
After the Vuli reeommences the Kaskazi, and the 

* V and F are often interchanged, as Mpumbafu (a fool), 
and Mfulana (a youth), for Mpumbavu and Mvulana. Gene- 
rally the Arabs of Oman and other incorrect speakers prefer 


the latter, and the Wasawahili the former, a sound which does 
not exist in Arabic. 


170 UNHEALTHY TIMES. 


N. E. trade again blows. The sun is distant, the 
thermometer does not range high, yet the tem- 
perature of houses sheltered from the breeze 
becomes overpowering, and without the ‘ doctor’ 
the city would hardly be habitable. At times 
the Trade freshens to a gale that blows through 
the day. The Hindus suffer severely from this 
‘Baora’ (blast), and declare that it brings on 
fits of ‘Mridi’ (refroidissement), here held dan- 
gerous. During the whole of the Azyab mon- 
soon the people prefer hot sun and a clear, which 
is always a slightly hazy-blue, sky. They dis- 
like the clouds and heavy showers called Mvua* 
ya ku pandia, or harvest rains, which are brought 
up at times by the N. N. West wind. On the 
other hand, when the Kausi or 8. West monsoon 
blows, they hold an overcast sky the best for 
health, and they dread greatly the ‘rain-sun.’ 
The peasants take advantage of the dryness, and 
prepare, by burning, the land for maize, sesa- 
mum, and rice. | 
The Wasawahili, like the Somal and many 
other races, have attempted to conform the 
lunar with the solar year, a practice which may 


‘ Or Mbua, the B and V being confounded, like F and V. 
Similarly, in the Prakrit dialects of Indra, vikh becomes bikh 
(poison). 


a, 


THE MONTHS. 171 


date from the days when the Persians were rulers 
of the Zanzibar coast. They also give their own 
names to the lunar months of the Moslem ; and, 
curiously enough, they begin the year, not with 
Muharram, but with the ninth month (Shaw 
wal), which they call ‘Mfunguo Mosi,’ or First 
Month. The next, Zu’l Ka’adeh, is Mfunguo 
Mbili, Second Month, and so on till Rajab, Shaa’- 
ban (or Mlisho) and Ramazan, which retain 
their Arab names." Amongst the Somal, five 
months, namely, from the second to the fifth, are 
known by the old Semitic terms. The month, as 
amongst all savage and semi-civilized tribes, be- 
gins with sighting the moon; and the Wasawahili 
reckon like the Jews, the modern Moslems, and 
the Chinese, 12 of 29 and 30 days alternately. ‘The 
complete number of months with God’ being, 
says the Koran, ‘ twelve months,’ good followers 
of the Prophet ignore the Ve-adar, second or em- 
bolical Adar, which the Hebrews inserted after 
every third year, and retain their silly cycle of 
354 days. The Wasawahili add 10 to 12 days 
to the Moslem year, and thus preserve the or- 
derly recurrence of the seasons. ‘The sage in 


1 This is ignored by Captain Guillain (Appendix, vol. i1.), 
who makes the Wasawahili retain all the names of the Arab 
months. 


172 NEW YEARS DAY. 


charge of the local almanac.is said to live at 
Tumbatu: he finds his New Year’s Day by look- 
ing at the sun, by tracing figures upon the 
ground, and by comparing the results with Arab- 
ic calendars. Their weeks begin, as usual with 
Moslems, on Friday (Ejima for Juma), the Sa- 
turday being Juma Mosi, or one day after Friday, 
and so forth. Thursday, however, is Khamisi. 
This subdivision of time, though suggested by the 
quarters of the earth’s satellite, is known only to 
societies which have advanced toward civilization. 
Thus in Dahome we find a week of four days; 
and even China ignores the seven-day week. 
‘The universal festivals,’ says the late Pro- 
fessor H. H. Wilson (Essays on the Religion of 
the Hindus, ii. 155), ‘are manifestly astronom- 
ical, and are intended to commemorate the revo- 
lutions of the planets, the alternations of the 
seasons, and the recurrence of cyclical intervals 
of longer or shorter duration.’ The Nau-roz 
(j5)5:) or New Year’s Day, here, as in Syria, 
locally pronounced Nay-roz, was established in | 
ancient Ariana, according to Persian tradition, by 
Jamshid, King of Kings, in order to fix the 
vernal equinox.' It is the Holi of the Hindus, 


1 In 1870, for instance, it was kept in Syria on the 11th of 
‘ Adar’ (March), old style, and on Adar 23rd, new style. 


THE EMBOLISMAL DAYS. 173 


and after the East has kept this most venerable 
festival for 3000 years, we still unconsciously 
celebrate the death and resurrection of the 
eternal sun-god. The Beal-tinne is not yet for- 
eotten in Leinster, nor is the maypole wholly 
obsolete in England. As early as the days of 
the Kuraysh, there was an attempt to reconcile 
the lunar with the solar year, and the Nau-roz, 
though palpably of Pagan origin, has been 
adopted by all the maritime peoples professing 
El Islam. Even the heathen-hating Arab bor- 
rowed it for his convenience from the Dualists 
and Trinitarians of Fars and Hindustan. Hence 
the eras called Kadmi and Jelali. In this 
second solar zra the Nau-roz was transferred by 
the new calendar from the vernal equinox to 
Sept. 14, a.p. 1079, and was called Nau-roz i 
Mizan (.,\2.0 j)). Amongst the Wasawahili it 
is known as Siku Khu ya Mwaka, the Great 
Day of the year. 

For the purpose of a stable date, necessary 
both to agriculture and to navigation, and also 
for the determination of the monsoons, the 
people who ignore the embolismal month, and 
who have no months for the solar year, add, I 
have said, 10 to 12 days to each lunar year, the 
true difference being 16 days 9 hrs. 0 min. and 


174 SUPERSTITIONS. 


11°7 secs. Thus the contrivance is itself rude; 
moreover the Wasawahili often miscalculate it. 
Between A.D. 1829 and a.pD. 1879, it would fall 
on 28-29 August. In 1844 they made it com- 
mence at 6 p. m., August 28, immediately after 
full moon: in 1850-2 they began it on August 
27, and in 1856 in August 26.’ 

Sundry quasi superstitious uses are made of 
the 10 embolismal days following the Nau-roz. 
Should rains—locally called Miongo—fall on the 
first day, showers are prognosticated for the tenth ; 
if on the second, the twentieth will be wet; and 
so forth till the tenth, which if rainy suggests 
that the Kausi or 8.W. monsoon will set in 
early. The seasons of navigation are thus reck- 
oned. ‘The Vuli rains are supposed to begin 
30 days, counting from the twentieth, after Nau- 


! According to Captain Guillain, in 1846-7 it corre- 
sponded with August 29 (the New Year’s Day of Abyssinia and 
Egypt in 1844); in 1848 with August 28; and in 1850, 51, 
52 with August 27. He was also informed that the Vuli 
began 20 days after the Nau-roz, and lasted 30 (Sept. 20 to 
Oct. 20), that the Msika (which he writes Mouaka) begins 90 
days after the 110th (Dec. 20 to March 20), and that the 
Mcho’o commences 20 days after the 280 (June 10 to July 1). 
That author, moreover, remarks that as the new Persian calen- ‘ 
dar adds to every century 22 days, instead of our 24 days, the 7 
Nau-roz thus falls behind ours 48 hours in each hundred 
years. Thus between 1829 and 1879, the New Year’s Day 
should occur between the 28th and 29th August. 


PROVERBS. 175 


roz. On the eightieth (some say the ninetieth) 
day are expected thunder, lightning, and heavy 
rains at the meeting of the monsoons (mid- 
November), and so forth. Possibly this may be 
a reflection of the Hindu idea which represents 
the Garbhas to be the fetuses of the clouds, and 
born 195 days after conception. With us the 
people mark the periods by saints’ days. The 
Bernais say— 


Aprés le jour de la Sainte Luce, 
Les jours s’allongent le saut d’une puce. 


The Escuara proverb declares— 


Sanct Seimon etu Juda, 
Negua eldu da. 
(‘ At St Simon and St Jude, water may be viewed.’) 


The basis of the following calculation is 
thoroughly Kisawahilii— 


S’el pleut le jour de Saint Médard, (June 8) 
Il pleut quarante jours plus tard. 


~ . 
Nor is our popular doggrel less so— 


Saint Swithin’s Day, if thou dost rain, 
For forty days it will remain. 
Saint Swithin’s Day, if thou be fair, 
For forty days ’twill rain nae mair. 
The Wasawahili also calculate their agricul- 
tural seasons from the stars called Kilfmia, a 


name probably derived from Ku lima, to plough. 


176 MORTALITY. 


I believe them to be Pleiades, but my sudden de-— 
parture from the coast prevented my making 
especial inquiries. When this constellation is in 
the west at night the peasants say, ‘ Kilimia, if it 
sets during the rains, rises in fair weather,’ and 
vice versa. Also Kilimia appearing in the east is — 
a signal for the agriculturist to prepare his land. 


SECTION 3. 


Climate continued-—Notes on the Nosology of Zanzibar— 
Effects on Strangers. 


THE climate of Zanzibar Island is better 
than that of the adjacent continent. Here many 
white residents have escaped severe fever; but 
upon the coast the disastrous fate of Captain 
Owen’s surveyors, the loss of life on board our 
cruisers, and the many deaths of the ‘Mombas 
Mission,’ even though, finding the sea-board 
dangerous, they built houses on the hills which 
lead to the mountain region of Usumbara, prove 
that malaria is as active in eastern as in western 
Africa. Colonel Hamerton once visited the 


MORTALITY. 177 


Pangani river during the month of August: of 
his 19 men, three died, and all but one suffered 
severely. Perhaps we should not find a similar 
mortality in the present day, when the lancet has 
been laid aside for the preventive treatment by 
quinine and tonics. It has, however, been as- 
serted that the prophylactic use of the alkaloid, 
which was such a success in western Africa, did 
not prove equally valuable on the eastern coast. 
Yet Zanzibar, with its double seasons and its 
uniformly heated and humid atmosphere, accords 
ill, even where healthiest, with the irritable tem- 
perament of northern races. Here, contrary to 
the rule of Madagascar, the lowlands over which 
the fresh sea-breeze plays are the only parts 
where the white stranger can land and live; the 
interior is non habitabilis estu. Lieut.-Colonel 
Hamerton, called upon in March, 1844, by Sir 
George Arthur, governor of Bombay, to report 
upon the island, wrote in September of the same 
year, ‘The climate of the [insular] coast is not 
unhealthy for Europeans, but it is impossible for 
white men to live in the interior of the island, 
the vegetation being rank and appearing always 
to be going on; and generally fever contracted 
in the interior is fatal to Europeans.’ Colonel 


Sykes (loco cit.) questions this assertion as being 
VOL. I. 12 


178 HEALTH AT ZANZIBAR. 


‘contrary to all other testimony.’ Every tra- 
veller, however, knows it to be correct. As in 
the lovely climates of the Congo River and the 
South Sea Islands, corporal lassitude leads to in- 
dolence, languor, and decline of mental energy, 
which can be recovered only by the bracing 
influence of the northern winter. Many new 
arrivals complain of depressing insomnia, with 
alternations of lethargic sleep: I never enjoyed 
at Zanzibar the light refreshing rest of the de- 
sert. Yet the island is a favourable place for 
the young African traveller to undergo the in- 
evitable ‘seasoning fever, which upon the coast 
or in the interior might prove fatal. The high- 
lands, or the borders of the great central basin, 
are tolerably healthy, but an invalid would find 
no comforts there—hardly a waterproof roof. 
He should not, however, risk after recovery a 
second attack, but at once push on to his goal ; 
otherwise he will expend in preparation the 
strength and bottom required to carry out his 
explorations. With a fresh, sound constitution, 
he may work hard for three years, and even 
if driven home by ill health he may return in 
comparative safety within a reasonable time. 

No European, unless thoroughly free from 
organic disease, should venture to remain longer 


-_ 
~ 


HEALTH AT ZANZIBAR. 179 


than three or four years at Zanzibar: the same 
has been observed of Baghdad, and of the Eu- 
phrates valley generally. Lurking maladies will 
be brought to a crisis, and severe functional de- 
rangements are liable toreturn. The stranger is 
compelled to take troublesome precautions. He 
may bathe in cold water, sweet or salt, but he 
must eschew the refreshment of the morning 
walk: during the rains, when noxious mists 
overhang the land, the unpleasant afternoon is 
the only safe time for exercise. Flannel must 
always be worn despite the irritability of the 
ever-perspiring skin : even in the hottest weather 
the white cotton jackets and overalls of British 
India are discarded for tweeds, and for an 
American stuff of mixed cotton and wool. 
Extra warm clothing is considered necessary as 
long as the ‘mugginess’ of ‘ msika-weather’ 
lasts. Sudden exposure to the sun is considered 
dangerous, and the carotid, jugular, and tem- 
poral arteries must be carefully protected from 
cold as well as from heat. Hard work, either of 
mind or body, is said to produce fever as surely 
as sitting in draughts or as wearing insufficient 
clothing. The charming half-hour following 
sunset is held dangerous, especially in hot 
weather; yet most tantalizing is the cool deli- 


180 DIET. 


cious interval between the burning day and the 
breathless night. Natives of the country rarely 
venture out after dark: a man found in the 
streets may safely be determined to be either a 
slave or a thief—probably both. 

Directions for diet are minute and vexatious. 
The stranger is popularly condemned to ‘lodg- 
ing-house hours ’—breakfast at 9 a.M., dinner at 
3 P.M., tea at 8 P.mM., bed at 10 p.m. He is told 
also to live temperately but not abstemiously, 
and never to leave the stomach too long empty. 
I should prescribe for him, contrary to the usual 
plan, an abnormal amount of stimulants, port 
and porter, not claret nor Rhine-wine. It is 
evident that where appetite is wanting, and 
where nourishing food is not to be obtained, the 
‘ patient ’ must imbibe as much nutriment as he 
safely can. In these lands a drunkard outlives 
a water-drinker, despite Theodoret, ‘vinum bibere 
non est malum, sed intemperanter bibere perni- 
ciosum est’; and here Bacchus, even ‘ Bacchus 
uncivil,’ is still ‘Bacchus the healer.’ As usual 
old stagers will advise a stranger recovering 
from fever to strengthen himself with sundry 
bottles of port, and yet they do not adopt it as a 
preventive—‘ experto crede Ricardo.’ The said 
port may be Lisbon wine fortified with cheap 


atl 


BACCHUS THE HEALER. 181 


spirits, liquorice, and logwood—in fact, what is 
regimentally called ‘ strong military ditto ;’ yet 
I have seen wonders worked by the much-de- 
based mixture. Again, Europeans are told to 
use purgatives, especially after sudden and strong 
exercise, when the ‘bile is stirred up.’ As an 
amateur chronothermalist—thanks to my kind 
old master, the late Dr Dickson—I should sug- 
gest tonics and bitters, which often bring relief 
when the nauseous salts and senna aggravate the 
evil. Also, inall debilitating countries, when the 
blood is ‘ thin,’ laxatives must be mild, otherwise 
they cause instead of curing fever; in fact, 
double tonics and half purgatives should be the 
rule. Above all things convalescents should be 
aided by change of air, if only from the house of 
sickness to that of a neighbour, or to a ship in 
port. The most long-lived of white races are 
the citizens of the United States: they are 
superior to others in mental (or cerebral) energy ; 
they are men of spare, compact fibre, and of 
regular habits; they also rarely reside more than 
two or three years at a time on the island. On 
the other hand, the small French colony has lost 
in 15 years 26 men: they lived imprudently, 
they drank sour Bordeaux, and when attacked 
with fever they killed themselves by the abuse of 


182 AGUE AND FEVER. 


quinine. Swallowing large doses upon an empty 
stomach, they irritated the digestive organs, and 
they brought on cerebral congestion by ‘heroic 
practice ’ when constipated. 

According to the Arabs and Hindus of Zan- 
zibar, ague and fever are to be avoided only by 
perspiring during sleep under a blanket in a 
closed room—a purgatory for a healthy hot- 
blooded man in this damp tepidregion. I found 
the cure-almost-as-bad-as-the-disease precaution 
adopted by the Spanish colonists at my salu- 
brious residence—Fernando Po, West Afriea. 
Only two officers escaped ‘ chills,’ and they both 
courageously carried out the preventive system: 
on the other hand, it was remarked that they 
looked more aged, and they appeared to have 
suffered more from the climate, than those who 
shook once a month with ‘rigors.’ ‘There is 
certainly no better prescription for catching ague 
than a coolth of skin during sleep: having 
purchased experience at a heavy price, it is my 
invariable practice when awaking with a chilly 
epiderm to drink a glass of water ‘cold with- 
out,’ and to bury myself for an hour undera pile 
of blankets. Every slave-hut has a cartel or 
cot, and the savages of the coast, like those of 
the Upper Nile, carry about wooden stools for 


EUROPEAN WOMEN. 183 


fear of dysentery. I have mentioned how our 
sailors dig their graves. 

So much for the male sex. European 
women here, as in the Gulf of Guinea, rarely 
resist the melancholy isolation, the want of 
society, and the Nostalgia—Heimweh or Home- 
sickness—so common, yet so little regarded in 
tropical countries. Under normal circumstances 
Equatorial Africa is certain death to the Eng- 
landerm. I am surprised at the combined 
folly and brutality of civilized husbands who, 
anxious to be widowers, poison, cut the throats, 
or smash the skulls of their better-halves. The 
thing can be as neatly and quietly, safely and 
respectably, effected by a few months of Afri- 
can air at Zanzibar or Fernando Po, as by the 
climate of the Maremma to which the enlight- 
ened Italian noble condemned his spouse. 

The nosology of Zanzibar is remarkable for 
the prevalence of urinary and genital diseases ; 
these have been roughly estimated at 75 per 
cent. Syphilis spreads wide, and where pro- 
miscuous intercourse is permitted to the slaves it 
presents formidable symptoms. The ‘black 
lion,’ as it is popularly called—in Arabic El Tayr 
or El Faranj; in Kisawahili, Bubeh, Kiswendi, 
or T’ hego—will destroy the part affected in three 


184 DISEASES. 


weeks: secondaries are to be feared; noses dis- 
appear, the hair falls off, and rheumatism and 


spreading ulcers result. Gonorrhcea is so com- 


mon that it is hardly considered a disease. Few 
strangers live long here without suffering from 
irritation of the bladder, the result, it is said, of 
hard lime-water: and the common effect of a 
cold or of stricture is severe vesical catarrh. 
Sarcocele and hydrocele, especially of the left 
testis, according to the Arabs, attack all classes, 
and are attributed to the relaxing climate, to 
unrestrained sexual indulgence, and sometimes 
to externalinjury. These diseases do not always 
induce impotence or impede procreation. The 
tunica vaginalis is believed to fill three times: 
as in elephantiasis the member is but a mass of 
flesh, a small meatus only remaining. The 
deposition of serum is enormous; I have heard 
of six quarts being drawn off. The natives 
punctuate with a heated copper needle, and 
sometimes thus induce tetanus: Europeans add 
injections of red wine and iodine. The latter is 
also applied with benefit in the early stage to 
sarcocele ; and both complaints have yielded, it 
is said, to the galvanic current. Strangers are 
advised at all times to wear suspensory band- 
ages. 


ELEPHANTIASIS. 185 


Elephantiasis of the legs and arms, and 
especially of the scrotum, afflicts, it is caleu- 
lated, 20 per cent. of the inhabitants: Arabs 
and Hindus, Indian Moslems and Africans, how- 
ever dissimilar in their habits and diet, all suffer 
alike. Itis remarked that the malady has never 
attacked a pure white, European or American: 
perhaps the short residence of the small number 
accounts for the apparent immunity. Similarly, 
in the Brazil I have never seen a European 
stranger subject to the leprosy, or to the goitre, 
so prevalent in the great provinces of Sao Paulo 
and Minas Geraes. The Banyans declare that a 
journey home removes the incipient disease, or 
at least retards its progress: it recurs, however, 
on return to Zanzibar. The scrotum will often 
reach the knees; I heard of one case measur- 
ing in circumference 41 inches, more than the 
patient’s body, whilst its length (83 inches) 
touched the ground. There is no cure, and the 
cause is unknown. The people attribute it to 
the water, and possibly it may spring from the 
same source which produces goitre and bron- 
chocele. 

Syphilitic and scorbutic taints appear in 
ulcers and abscesses. The helcoma resembles 
that of Aden: it generally attacks the legs and 


186 ULCERS. 


feet, the parts most distant from the centre of 
circulation ; the toes fall of, and the limb be- 
comes distorted. Phagedenic sores are most 
common amongst the poor and the slaves, who 
live on manioc, fruit, and salt shark often putrid. 
Large and painful phlegemonous abscesses, attack- 
ing the muscular tissue, occasion great consti- 
tutional disturbance : they heal, however, readily 
after suppuration. Scabies, yaws (Frambeesia), 
psoriasis, and ‘craw-craw,’ inveterate as that of 
Malabar or the Congo River, commonly result 
from personal uncleanliness, unwholesome food, 
and insufficient shelter and clothing. That 
frightful malady Lupus presents pitiable ob- 
jects. 

The indigenous diseases which require men- 
tion are fevers, bowel-complaints, and pulmon- 
ary affections. 

Fevers at Zanzibar have been compared with 
Aaron’s rod; at times they seem to swallow up 
every other disease, and generally they cause the 
greatest amount of mortality. As at Muham- 
reh, and on the swampy margins of the Shat el 
Arab (Persian Gulf), the constitution worn out, 
and the equilibrium of the functions deranged 
by moist heat and sleeplessness, especially during 
and after the heavy rains of the 8. West mon- 


FEVER. 187 


soon, thus relieve themselves. Persians and 
northern Asiatics are even more liable to attacks 
than Europeans; and, as in Egypt, rude health 
is rare. Some Indian Moslems have fied the 
country, believing themselves bewitched. Arabs 
born on the island, and the Banyans, who seldom 
suffer much from the fever, greatly dread its 
secondary symptoms. The ‘hummeh,’ or inter- 
mittent type, is remarkable for the virulence and 
persistency of the sequele, which the Arabs call 
‘Nazlah’ (metastasis), or defluxion of humours 
—‘ dropping into the hoofs’ as the grooms say. 
Cerebral and visceral complications, with de- 
rangements of the liver and spleen, produce 
obstinate diarrhceas, dysenteries, and a long dire 
cohort of diseases. Men of strong nervous 
diathesis escape with slight consequences in the 
shape of white hair, boils, bad toothaches, 
neuralgias, and sore tongues. The weak lose 
memory, or virility, or the use of a limb, the 
finger-joints especially being lable to stiffen; 
many become deaf or dim-sighted, not a few are 
subject to paralysis in its various forms, whilst 
others, tormented by hepatitis, constipation, and 
disorders of the bowels and of the digestive 
organs, never completely recover health. In 
this country all attribute to the moon at the 


188 FEVER. 


‘springs’ what we explain by coincidence and 
by the periodicity of disease. For months, and 
possibly for years, the symptoms recur so regu- 
larly that even Europeans will use evacuants 
and quinine two or three days before the new 
and full moons. In such cases, I repeat, change 
of climate is the best aid to natura curatrix. 
The malignant typhus is rare at Zanzibar: it 
raged, however, amongst the crew of a French 
ship wrecked on the northern end of the island, 
when the men were long exposed to priva- 
tions and over-fatigue. Intermittents (ague and 
fever) are common as colds in England. They 
are mild and easily treated;’ but they leave be- 
hind during convalescence a dejection and a 
debility wholly incommensurate with the appar- 
ent insignificance of the attack, and often a 


1 In some cases an emetic will cut short the enemy. The 
allopathic remedies are evacuants, cooling lotions applied to 
the head, and sulphate of quinine (4 to 12 grains three or four 
times per diem), with appropriate treatment for complications. 
Calomel and tartar emetic must be avoided on account of their 
depressing effects. Liquor arsenicalis and the Tinctura 
Warburgii (Warburg’s Drops), which is said to have failed in 
yellow fever, have cured malignant, inveterate, and chronic 
cases. The Persians at one time in Zanzibar. besieged Colonel 
Hamerton’s door for this‘ Ab-i-hayyat ’—water of life. The 
invaluable wet sheet and the Turkish bath were unknown at 
Zanzibar in 1857. 


jy, 


-* 


FEVER. 189 


periodical neuralgia, which must be treated with 
tonics, quinine, and chiretta. 

The bilious remittent is, par excellence, the 
fever of the country, and every stranger must 
expect a ‘seasoning’ attack. It was inordin- 
ately fatal in the days when, the lancet being 
used to combat inflammation, the action of the 
heart was never restored. Our grandfathers, 
however, bled every one for everything, and 
for nothing: there were old ladies who showed 
great skill in ‘ blooding’ cats. In 1857 men had 
escaped this scientific form of sudden death, but 
the preventive treatment so ably used on the 
West coast of Africa had not been tried. ‘The 
cure at Zanzibar was an aperient of calomel - 
and jalap. Castor oil was avoided as apt to cause 
nausea. Quinine was administered, but often in 
quantities not sufficient to induce the necessary 
chinchonization, and the inexperienced awaited 
too long the period of remission, administering 
the drug only during the intervals. Diaphore- 
tics of nitrate of potash, camphor mixture, and 
the liquor acet. ammon. were used to reduce 
the temperature of the skin. The most distress- 
ing symptom, ejection of bile, was opposed by 
saline drinks, effervescing draughts, diluted 
prussic acid, a mustard plaister, or a blister. 


190 FEVER. 


The hair was shaved or closely cut, and evapor- 
ating lotions were applied to the head. The 
extreme restlessness of the patient often called 
for a timid narcotic; in these days, however, the 
invaluable hydrate of chloral, Sumbul and chlo- 
rodyne were unknown, and soporifics were used, 
as it were under protest, being believed to cause 
constipation. xtreme exhaustion was not vi- 
eorously attacked with medical and other stimu- 
lants; and thus many sank under the want of 
ammonia and wine. I have since remarked the 
same errors of treatment in the West African 
coast; the patient was often restricted to the 
acidity-breeding rice water, arrowroot, and simi- 
lar ‘slops.’ When he pined for brandy and 
beef-tea, the safe plan of consulting his in- 
stincts was carefully ignored. 

In strong constitutions the initiatory attack 
of remittents is followed after a time by the 
normal intermittent, and the traveller may then 
consider himself tolerably safe. In some Indian 
- cases ague and fever have recurred regularly for 
a whole year after the bilious remittent. 

The bilious remittent of Zanzibar is preceded 
by general languor and listlessness, with lassi- 
tude of limbs and heaviness of head, with chills 
and dull pains in the body and extremities, and 


FEVER. 191 


with a frigid sensation creeping up the spine. 
Then comes a mild cold fit, succeeded by flushed 
face, full veins, an extensive thirst, dry, burning 
heat of skin, a splitting headache, and nausea, 
and by unusual restlessness, or by remarkable 
torpor and drowsiness. The patient is unable to 
stand; the pulse is generally full and frequent, 
sometimes thready, small, and quick; the bowels 
are constipated, and the tongue is furred and dis- 
coloured; appetite is wholly wanting. During 
my first attack, I ate nothing for seven days; 
and despite the perpetual craving thirst, no 
liquid will remain upon the stomach. Through- 
out the day extreme weakness causes anxiety and 
depression ; the nights are worse, for restlessness 
is aggravated by want of sleep. Delirium is 
common in the nervous-bilious temperament. 
These symptoms are sometimes present several 
days before the attack, which is in fact their 
exacerbation. A slight but distinctly marked 
remission often occurs after the 4th or 5th hour 
—in my own case they recurred regularly be- 
tween 2 and 3 A.M. and P.m.—followed by a cor- 
responding reaction. When an unfavourable 
phase sets in, all the evils are aggravated ; great 
anxiety, restlessness, and delirium wear out the 
patient; the mind wanders, the body loses all 


192 PEVER. 


power, the ejecta become offensive ; the pulse is 
almost imperceptible ; the skin changes its dry 
heat for a clammy cold; the respiration grows 
loaded, the evacuations pass involuntarily ; and 
after perhaps a short apparent improvement, 
stupor, insensibility, and sinking usher in death. 
On the other hand, if the fever intends yielding to 
treatment, it presents after the 7th day marked 


signs of abatement ; the tongue is clearer, pain 


leaves the head and eyes, the face is no longer 
flushed; nausea ceases after profuse emesis of 
bile, and a faint appetite returns. 

After the mildest attacks of the Zanzibar re- 
mittent, the liver acts with excessive energy: 
sudden exercise causes a gush or overflow of bile, 
which is sufficient to bring on a second attack. 
‘The debility, which is inordinate, may last for 
months. It is often mereased by boils, which 
follow one another in rapid succession, and which 
sometimes may be counted by scores. Besides 
the wet cloth, the usual remedy to cause granul- 
ation, and to prevent the sore leaving a head, is 
to stuff it with camphor and Peruvian bark. 
When boils appear behind the head, the brain is 
sometimes affected by them, and patients have 
even sunk under their sufferings. 'The recovery, 
indeed, as in the case of the intermittent type, 


FEVER. 193 


is always slow and dubious, relapses are feared, 
and for six weeks there is little change for the 
better ; the stomach is liable to severe indiges- 
tion; the body is emaciated, and the appetite is 
excessive, or sickly and uncertain. The patient 
suffers from toothaches and swelled face, catarrh, 
hepatitis, emesis, and vertigo, with alternations of 
costiveness and the reverse. As I have already 
said, change of air and scene is at this stage 
more beneficial than all the tonics and prevent- 
ives in the pharmacopeia. Often a patient 
lying apparently on his death-bed recovers on 
hearing that a ship has arrived, and after a few 
days on board he feels well. 

Diarrhoea and dysentery are mostly sporadic ; 
the former, however, has at times attacked 
simultaneously almost every European on the 
Island. It is generally the result of drinking 
bad water or sour wine, of eating acescent or 
unripe fruit, and of imprudent exposure. Dy- 
sentery is especially fatal during the damp and 
rainy weather. It was often imprudently treated 
with mere astringents, and without dae regard 
to the periods of remission, and to the low form 
which inevitably accompanies it. As in remit- 
tents, the patient was weakened, and his stomach 


was deranged, with ‘slops,’ when essence of 
VOL, I. 13 


194 BOWEL COMPLAINTS. 


meat was required. The anti-diarrhcea or anti- 
cholera pill of opium, chalk, and catechu has 
been fatal wherever English medicine has ex- 
tended; witness the Crimean campaign, where 
the bolus killed many more than did the bullet. 
A complication, rarely sufficiently considered, is 
the hepatic derangement, from which almost all 
strangers must suffer after a long residence in 
the Tropics. At Zanzibar some Europeans were 
compelled to give up breakfasting, to the mani- 
fest loss of bulk, stamina, and muscular strength 
—vomiting after the early meal, especially when 
eaten with a good appetite, was the cause. Yet 
it was a mere momentary nausea, and when the 
mouth had been washed no inconvenience was 
felt. 

Catarrh and bronchitis are common in Feb- 
ruary and in the colder months of July and 
August. Of endemic pulmonary diseases, pneu- 
monia, asthma, and consumption — the latter 
aggravated by the humid atmosphere—are fre- 
quent amongst the higher classes, especially the 
Arab women debilitated by over-seclusion. The 
incidental maladies are tropical rheumatisms, 
colics, heemorrhoids, and rare attacks of ophthal- 
mia, simple, acute, and purulent. Heemorrhoids 
are very common both on the Island and the 


SMALL-POX. 195 


coast; the people suffer as much as the Turks 
in Egypt without wearing the enormous bag- 
trowsers which have been so severely blamed. 

Of the epidemics, the small-pox, a gift of 
Inner Africa to the world, is fatal as at Goa or 
Madagascar. Apparently propagated without 
contact or fomites, it disfigures half the popula- 
tion, and it is especially dangerous to full-blooded 
Africans. About three years ago (1857) a Mas- 
kat vessel imported a more virulent type. Shortly 
before my arrival, numbers had died of the con- 
fluent and common forms, and isolated cases 
were reported till we left the Island. All classes 
were equally prejudiced against vaccination. 
The lymph sent from Aden and the Mauritius 
was so deteriorated by the journey that it pro- 
bably never produced a single vesicle (1857). 

Until 1859 cholera was unknown even by 
name. Col. Hamerton, however, declared that 
in 1835 hundreds were swept off by an epidemic, 
whose principal symptoms were giddiness, vomit- 
ing and purging, the peculiar anxious look, 
collapse, and death. It did not re-appear for 
some years; but in a future chapter I shall no- 
tice the frightful ravages which it made on the 
East African coast at the time of my return from 
the interior. 


196 CHOLERA. 


Hard water charged with lime and various 
salts, combined with want of vegetables, renders 
constipation a common ailment at Zanzibar. 
Amongst the rich it mostly arises from indolence, 
and from the fact that all are greatly addicted 
to aphrodisiacs. ‘The favourite is a pill com- 


posed of 3 grains of ambergris, and 1 grain of | 


opium, the latter ingredient in the case of an 
‘Afimi’ (opium-eater) must be proportioned to 
his wants. 

‘Doctors’ in my day were unknown at Zan- 
zibar. Wormerly, two Indians practised; since 
their departure the people killed and cured 
themselves. Amongst Arabs, and indeed Mos- 
lems generally, every educated man has a smat- 
tering of the healing art. H.H. the late Sayyid 
was a ‘hakim’ of great celebrity. A physician 
is valuable on the Island; throughout the African 
interior he is valueless in a pecuniary sense, as 
every patient expects to be kept and fed. The 
midwives are usually from Cutch; Arabs, how- 
ever, rarely consent to professional assistance. 
The Prince kept in his establishment two sages 
femmes from Maskat. 


Sr 


FAUNA’ OF ZANZIBAR. 197 


SECTION 4. 
Notes on the Fauna of Zanzibar. 


Tue list of Zanzibarian Fauna and Flora is 
not extensive. In the plantations the Komba or 
Galago abounds, and there is a small and pretty 
long-tailed monkey (cercopithecus griseo-viridis) 
with black face, green back, and grey belly: 
it is playful and easily tamed. This, as well as 
a large species of bat, is pronounced delicious by 
curious gourmands. ‘The French ‘tigre’ and the 
English ‘panther’ (Felis Serval) is a leopard 
about 18 inches high, and of disproportionate 
length, with a strong large arm; the upper part 
of the skull vanishes as in the cheeta, and the 
throat is so thick that no collar will keep its 
place. ‘This felis is destructive in the interior of 
the Island; and in parts of the Continent the 
people fear it more than they do the lion: it is 
trapped in the normal cage, and is speared with- 
out mercy. Two kinds of civets (Viverra ci- 
vetta, and V. genetta). one small, the other bigger 


198 FAUNA. 


than a Persian (Angora) cat, are kept confined, 
and are scraped once a week for their produce. 
As in all Arab towns, the common cat abounds ; 
it has a long tail and ears, a wild look, and a 
savage temper. This Asiatic importation is 
never thoroughly domesticated in Africa, and 
seems always aspiring to become a ‘ cat 0’ moun- 
tain’: on the West coast it is difficult to keep 
cats in the house after kittening. The feline 
preserves its fur in Zanzibar Island: at Mom- 
basah there is or was a breed more grotesque 
than the Manx, and completely bald like the 
Chinese dog. The so-called ‘ Indian badger’ 
(Arctonyx collaris, Cuv.) digs into the graves and 
devours the dead. The rodents are grey squir- 
rels, small rabbits (?), large rats, some of peculiar 
but not of unknown species, and mice, probably 
imported by the shipping. The ‘ wild boars’ are 
pigs left by the Portuguese : strangers mistak- 
ing the tusks often describe them as ‘ horned’ 
(cheropotamus). The Saltiana antelope is com- 
mon: it smells strongly of musk, and its flesh 
resembles the rat’s. | 

A fine large fish-hawk, with gold-fringed eye 
and yellow legs, bluish-black plume, and grey 
neck-feathers, haunts the Island and the coast: 
the other raptores are the brown kites (Ff. 


FAUNA. 199 


chilla), the scavengers of Asia and Africa. As 
at Aden, so here, there are no common crows or 
sparrows; the place of the former is taken by the 
African species (corvus scapulatus), with white 
waistcoat, popularly called the ‘parson crow,’ 
and the latter appears in the shape of the Java 
variety, which, introduced about thirty years ago 
(1857) by Captain Ward, a Salem ship-captain, 
has multiplied prodigiously. Green birds, like 
Amedavats, muscicapz of sorts, especially the 
‘king-crow’ of India, here called ‘ Drongo,’ 
abound; and visitors, like the French savant on 
the Dead Sea, speak of a humming-bird, a purely 
New World genus, probably mistaking for it a 
large hawk-moth. ‘The parroquet resembles the 
small green species of India: it is tamed and 
taught to talk. Zanzibar cannot boast of the 
Madagascar parrot, a plain, brown, thick-bodied 
bird, celebrated for distinct articulation.’ Mar- 
tens do not build at Zanzibar (?): they halt at 
the Island in their migrations ; and one kind, it 
has been remarked, never remains longer than 
four to five days. After the rains the lagoons 
are covered with wild-duck, mallard, and wid- 
geon. The snipe (jack, common, and solitary), 


‘Mr Lyons M‘Leod says (vol. ii. 347) that a ‘very hand- 
some jet-black parrot’ is to be procured there. 


200 FAUNA. 


a bird which everywhere preserves its fine game 
flavour, is found on the Island and in the central 
Continent. Sandpipers (charadrius hiaticula) run 
on the beach, and the waters support various 
kinds of cranes, gulls, and terns. 

When fewer ships visited the port, the sand- 
spit projecting from ‘Frenchman’s Island’ was 
covered with bay-turtle’ (chelone esculenta or 
Midas), which the negroes were too indolent or 
ignorant to catch. The iguanas or harmless 
crocodiles (ovdéva 08 aviowrwy adixotow) of the 
Periplus, have not yet been killed out of Zan- 
zibar—and there are several species.” Until lately 
the true crocodile was found in a small sweet 
stream about eight miles south of the town, and 
the monsters swarm in every river of the mainland. 

Snakes are neither numerous nor deadly: 
possibly the climate, as in Ireland and Ber- 
muda, is too damp for them. I heard of a 
python’ resembling that of Madagascar and 

' The yedovn dpe, or mountain-tortoise of the Periplus 
(chap. i. 15), may have been a turtle or terrapin. A small 
quantity of tortoise-shell is sold on the island by Malagashes 
(Madagascarians) and Comoro men. 

2 The iguana abounds on the West Coast of Africa, and in 
the Bonny River, where the huge hideous lizard is Ju-Ju—ob- 
noxious to the honours of divinity. 


3So Dr Roschenberger mentions at Zanzibar a coluber 
called boa-constrictor, and peculiar to America. 


FAUNA. 201 


India; it is 18 feet long, and thick as a man’s 
thigh. Its favourite habitat is in sugar-cane 
patches near water, and it is occasionally fatal to 
a dog. There are water-snakes in the harbour, 
like those once supposed to be peculiar to West- 
ern India. The people speak of a green ‘ whip- 
snake ’— vaguest of terms—whose vertebre ap- 
pear through the skin, and there are the usual 
legends of a venomous tree-serpent which can 
shoot itself ike an arrow. The pagan Mganga 
or Medicine-man ties above the snake-wound a 
circle of wire with two small bits of wood 
strung upon it. This, he says, prevents the 
venom ascending; and doubtless the ligature is 
for half an hour or so effective. The people 
have ‘ Fiss’ or serpent-stones, which suggest the 
Irish murrain-stones. Englishmen of undoubted 
character have recounted cures effected by this 
remedy, which was so mysterious before capillary 
attraction robbed it of its marvel. 

There is a variety of small tiliquee, and of 
large black earth-lizards. One species, with 
melancholy chirrup and unpleasant aspect, sup- 
plies the people with Herodotean tales. It is, 
they say, a hermaphrodite, and its flanks are 
torn by its young during parturition. The 
chameleon also suffers from the popular belief 


202 FAUNA. 


that it kills men with its breath. Scorpions are 
small, and not so common as in the interior: 
the animal is mashed and applied as a poultice 
to its own wound, which may derive some benefit 
from the moisture. Centipedes haunt houses 
that are not cleaned and whitewashed, and milli- 
pedes abound in every plantation. 

The fish supply is variable’ as the climate. 
Sometimes it is excellent; at other times none 
but the poorest will eat it, and there are many 
species considered always poisonous.” It is most 
abundant in the 8. West monsoon, when small 
fry may be caught in the still waters of the har- 
bour. Sharks are large and numerous, especially 
near Chumbi (La Passe) Island, where all the 
best fish is netted ; but these tigers of the sea do 
not injure the bathers on the beach. Though 
the shark is easily hooked in the very harbour, 
many cargoes of its salted meat are annually 
imported from Oman. The liver-oil is used to 
anoint the body : and when Europe requires a 


‘I have not seen the ‘Fishes of Zanzibar,’ published in 
1867 by Lieut.-Col, Playfair, H.M.’s Consul, and Dr Giinther 
(Van Voorst, 1, Paternoster Row). 

* The eel-shaped fishes with green bones have the reputa- 
tion of causing stomach-pains and vomiting. I may observe 
that the Oriental mind readily connects venom and verdant 
colours. 


WHALING. 203 


succadeneum for huile de morue, I shall recom- 
mend to her this shark-oil as an article of supe- 
rior nauseousness. 

The whale fishery reminds us of what it was 
on the Brazilian coast a centuryago. The mam- 
mals are sometimes found in soundings, and a 
wounded sperm-whale lately entered Zanzibar 
harbour. In May, June, and July, ships of 200 
to 600 tons visit the waters south of Mafiyah 
Island ; if the capricious leviathan be not found 
there and then, it is waste time to cruise about. 
In July, and at the beginning of the N. East 
monsoon, schools migrate up the coast in search 
of food as far as the Red Sea. From 30 to 
60 lbs. of ambergris have been brought in one 
year to the island, and a little of it is exported 
to Europe. This high-priced article (1 lb. = 
£14) is taken from the rectum of the spermaceti 
whale : it seems to have caused constipation and 
disease, and the oil drawn from these fish is 
yellow and bad. The Arabs burn it in pastiles, 
and use it not only internally but externally like 
musk. Old travellers report that the Somal 
taught camels to hunt for it by the scent, in the 
same way as pigs learn to find truffles; and the 
tale has been told to modern travellers. The main 
virtue of ambergris is probably its heavy price. 


204 FISH. 


The celebrated ‘Sir’ (Seer) fish, a corruption 
from Shir Mahi (2 .5), or ‘tiger fish,’ so 
called on account of its armature, known to the 
Arabs as Kunad (ots) and in parts of India 
termed ‘ Surma,’ appears, for about a fortnight, 
at Zanzibar during its period of migration north- 
wards in May and June. There are also ‘ pom- 


frets,’ scates, soles which are small and not 


prized, and red and grey mullet, excellent in 
July, August, and September. The remora and 
the flying-fish enter the harbour; the hippo- 
campus is known; there are mangrove-oysters, 
‘oysters growing on trees’—a favourite subject 
with all old and with many new African travel- 
lers—and a small well-flavoured, rock oyster, a 
favourite relish with Europeans, caught about 
Chumbi Island. I saw no lobsters, so common in 
the Camaroons river of Western Africa. The 
sands abound in Medusz, or jelly-fish, and in a 
large cray-fish, which the Arabs consider whole- 
some for invalids: it makes a rather insipid 
salad, but it is excellent when dressed after the 
fashion of the Slave Coast. The receipt is 
worth giving, and may be found useful in 
England. The meat, taken out after boil- 
ing, is pounded and mixed with peppers and 
seasoning. It is then restored to the shell, the 


wt 


ICHTHYOLOGICAL MARVELS. 


bS 


0: 


whole is baked in the oven, and, served up 
piping hot, it forms an admirable ‘whet.’ An- 
other kind of shell-fish is indeed a ‘soft crab;’ 
when cooked it seems to melt away, no meat 
remaining within : a third, also soft, is red even 
before being boiled. On every unfrequented 
strip of sand or weed small crabs gather in thou- 
sands ; most of them have only one large claw, 
and their colours are a brilliant pink, pearly 
white, violet, and tender red. 

The seas are little explored (1857), and there 
are legends of ichthyological marvels which re- 
mind us of European romantic zoology. I 
was told by Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton of a fish, pos- 
sibly one of the Mureenidee, measuring nine feet 
long by three in diameter: the shape was some- 
what like a leech, both extremities being similar; 
the ribs resembled, but were rather flatter than, 
those of a bullock, and the flesh had the appear- 
ance of beef. A specimen, he said, had lately 
been brought from Kipombui, a small harbour ~ 
opposite Zanzibar ; the prey, however, is always 
cut up as soon as caught. This reminds us of 
the ‘full-sized devil-fish’ of the West Indian 
seas. The Arabs describe a monstrous polypus, 
with huge eyes and arms 10 feet long: they de- 
clare that it has entangled bathers and pulled 


206 ICHTHYOLOGICAL MARVELS. 


them down close to shore. It is, in fact, the 
‘piuvre,’ so famed of late; and since I left Zanzi- 
bar a French illustrated newspaper showed one 
of these horrors grappling with a man of war’s 
gig. Thus Oppian described a fish that smothered 
mariners with its monstrous wings, and drew 
them under water wrapped in a lethal embrace. 
Nieuhoff (Brazil, 1640) mentions a ‘ lamprey’ at 
Pernambuco that ‘snatched all that fell in this 
way (both men and dogs that swam sometimes 
after the boat) into the water.’ Finally, Carsten 
Niebuhr (Arabia, chap.i. p. 140. 1762) declares 
that ‘the cuttle-fish is dangerous to swimmers 
and divers, of whom it lays hold with its long 
claws; these do not wound, but produce swelling, 
internal pains, and often an incipient paralysis.’ 

Sponge is found in abundance, but when dry 
it decays. Fine conchological collections were 
chiefly made in former years. The merchants 
spoiled the market by supplying whole cargos for 
watch-dials and for polishing porcelain. Slaves 
still fasten their canoes to the several banks in 
the roadstead, and find in the transparent waters 
the murex and other prized specimens. The 
harp-shell and ‘ double-harp’ are found upon the 
softer sands enveloped in the folds of their own- 
ers; thus parasites cannot ruin their beautiful and 


COWRIES. 207 


brilliant hues. The ‘ Kheti,’ or common cowrie, 
is picked up when the tide is out in vast quan- 
tities by the coast people, from Ra’as Hafun to 
Mozambique. Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton was 
fortunate enough in those early days to obtain 
two specimens of the Cyprea Broderipii, or 
orange-cowrie, with a stripe down the dorsum. 
Exaggerated ideas of its value had been spread, 
and it was reported that £500 had been offered 
for a single shell. The cowrie trade of Zanzibar 
was begun by M. E. P. Herz, of Hamburg. He 
made a daring speculation, and supplanted in 
Western Africa the rare and expensive Hindo- 
stan shell by the coarse, cheap Cypreea of this 
coast. During the last century the Portuguese 
used to export cowries for Angola from the Rio 
das Caravelhas, in Brazilian Porto Seguro. The 
success of M. Herz’s investment opened a mine 
of wealth. M. Oswald (senior), afterwards Prus- 
sian Consul-general at Hamburg, commenced as 
half-owner of a small vessel which shipped 
cowries at Zanzibar, and traded with them for 
palm-oil at Appi Vista, Whydah, Porto Novo, 
and lastly Lagos, on the Slave Coast. As the sack 
was bought for $0.50 to $1.44, and sold for $8 
to $9, the trip cleared $24,000 (£4800), paid half 
in coin, half in ‘ oil;’ and the single vessel soon 


208 COWRIES. 


increased to three. The owner was an excellent 
ship-master, who carefully supplied his employées 
with maps, charts, and sailing directions. He 
died in 1859, leaving a self-insuring fleet of 18 
sail. In 1863 his sons had raised the number - 
to 24, and they kept up large establishments at 
Lagos and Zanzibar. 

The retail cowrie trade was solely in the hands 
of Moslems; the Banyans would not sanction 
the murder of their possible grandmothers. On 
the Continent, as on the Island, the shells are 
sunned till the fish dies and decays, spreading a 
noxious fcetor through the villages. The collec- 
tion is then stored in holes till exported to Zan- 
zibar. There the European wholesale merchant 
garbles, washes, and stows away the shells in bags 
for shipment. They are sold by the ‘ Jizleh,’ a 
weight varying according to the size of the shell: 
from 3 to 3.50 sacks would be the average. The 
price of the Jizleh presently rose to $7, to $8, 
and in 1859 it was about $9. Seven vessels were 
then annually engaged in carrying cargoes from 
Zanzibar to Lagos and its vicinity. This rude 
money finds its way to Tinbuktu (Timbuctoo) 
and throughout Central Africa, extending from 
the East to places as yet unvisited by Europeans. 
Of late years, however, the increased metallic 


MULTITUDE OF PESTS. 209 


currency has caused the cowrie trade to fall off, 
and the steady rate of decrease shows that shell 
money is doomed. 

Here, as in Western India, the rains bring 
forth a multitude of pests. The rooms when 
lighted at night are visited by cockroaches and 
flying ants; scarabei and various mantide; 
moths and ‘death’s heads’ of marvellous hideous- 
ness. Giant snails (achatinee), millepedes, and 
beetles crawl over the country, and the firefly 
glances through the shade. Mosquitos are said 
not to be troublesome, but in an inner room I 
found curtains necessary ; the house-fly is a tor- 
ment to irritable skins. Fleas, and the rest of 
the ‘piquante population,’ are most numerous 
during the north-east monsoon. The bug, which 
was held to be an importation, is now thoroughly 
naturalized upon the Island ; in the interior it is 
as common as in the cities of Egypt and of Syria, 
where a broken rafter will discharge a living 
shower. I could not, however, hear anything of 
the ‘ Pasi bug,’ which, according to Dr Krapf, 
causes burnings, chills, and fever. He made it 
to rival the celebrated Meeanee ‘(Muganaj) bug, 
the Acarus Persicus, whose exceedingly poisonous 
bite was supposed to be fatal. In the Lake 
Regions of Central Africa (1.371) I have con- 


VOL. I. 14 


210 ANTS. 


jectured that the word is a corruption for Papazi, 
a carrapato, or tick. So Dr Krapf writes in the 
German way ‘Sansibar’ for Zanzibar. 

The ants in Zanzibar, as in the Brazil, require 
especial study, and almost every kind of tree ap- 
pears to have its peculiar tenantry. Upon the clove 
there is a huge black pismire whose nip burns like 
fire; as it has a peculiarly evil savour, tainting 
even the unaromatic ‘bush,’ it is mashed and 
stuffed up the nostrils as a cure for snake-bites. 
The Copal is colonized by a semi-transparent gin- 
ger-coloured formica, whose every bite draws 
blood, and the mango-leaf is doubled up by a 
smaller variety into the semblance of a bird’s nest. 
The horrible odour in parts of the bush, which 
young African travellers attribute to malaria and 
which often leads them to suspect the presence of 
carrion, generally proceeds from ants : I remarked 
this especially when visiting Abeokuta and other 
places in West Africa. ‘Throughout the interior 
‘drivers,’ as they are sensibly termed on the 
Guinea Coast, visit the huts in armies, and soon 
clear them of all offal. A small black ant attacks 
meat, and the best way to procure a clean skele- 
ton is to expose the body near its haunt; beware, 
however, of cats and dogs. As in Africa gener- 
ally, the termite is a plague; this small animal 


TSETSE. 211 


greatly obstructs civilization by the ravages 
which it commits upon books and manuscripts. 
Few, if any, domestic animals are aborigines 
of the Island, and of those imported none thrive 
save Bozal negroes and asses. Cattle brought to 
Zanzibar die after the first fortnight, unless pro- 
tected from sun, rain, and dew, and fed with dry 
fodder. The fatality resulting from the use of 
green meat leads here, as in the Conean and at 
Cape Coast Castle, to the impression that the 
grass is poisonous. At some places in the main- 


land, Pangani for instance, cattle will not live 
this is certainly the effect of tsetse. At Cape 
~ Coast Castle horses always die; at Accra they 
survive, if not taken away from the sea-board: 
in 1863, during a short march through the 
country, I found an abundance of the tsetse, or 
‘ spear-fly.’ . The specimens sent by me to Eng- 
land were lost with other collections in the ill- 
fated ‘Cleopatra.’ As has lately been shown, the 
tsaltsal of Bruce is mentioned in Deut. xxviii. 
42, in Isa. xviii. 5, and in Job xli. 7. The word 
is translated fish-spear, harpoon, locust; but it 
is not proved that tsaltsal and tsetse are the same 
fly, and the similarity of the two words may be 
the merest coincidence. The Banyans of Zanzi- 
bar, who, having no local deity hike their more 


212 SHEEP. 


favoured brethren of Aden and Maskat, keep 
catile for religious purposes, never sell their 
beasts, and energetically oppose their being 
slaughtered. Bullocks cost from $8 to $16, 
and are generally to be bought. | 
Sheep are principally the black-faced Somali, 
with short round knotted tails, which lose fat 
from rich grazing: in their own desert country 
they thrive upon an occasional blade of grass 
growing between the stones. The excessive 
purity of the air doubtless favours assimilation 
and digestion, and as the diet of the desert Arabs 
proves, life under such circumstances can be sup- 
ported by a minimum of food. I believe that in 
early times the Persians introduced this animal 
into Somali and Galla-land. The Wakwafi, who 
are rich in black cattle, contemptuously call 
their Galla neighbours ‘ Esikirieshi,’ or ‘ short- 
tailed sheep,’ from the article forming their only 
wealth. The Somali muttons are the cheapest, 
averaging from $1 to $3. There is also a 
‘Mrima’ race, with rufous. ginger - coloured, 
hairy coats, and lank tails like dogs: others, 
again, have a long, massive caudal appendage 
like Syrian or Cape wethers. ‘These cost $2 to 
$5, and are considered a superior article. The 
most expensive are from the Island of Angazfjah, 


GOATS. 213 


or Great Comoro, and they are often worth from 
$8 to $9. Asarule, Zanzibar mutton, like that 
of the Brazil, is much inferior to beef, and pre- 
sents a great contrast with the celebrated ‘ gram- 
feds’ of India. 

Caponized goats in these regions are larger, 
fatter, and cent. per cent. dearer than sheep: I 
have heard of $15 to $16 being paid for the 
Comoro animal... The meat is preferred to 
mutton: my objection to it is the want of dis- 
tinct flavour. Yet goats are always offered as 
presents in the interior. Some-of the bucks 
brought from the Continent have a peculiarly 
ungoatly appearance, with black points and dark 
crosses upon their tan-coloured backs and 
shoulders, and with long flowing jetty manes 
like the breast hair of a Bukhti or Bactrian 
camel. They must be kept out of the sun, and 
fed on vetches as well as grass, otherwise they 
will die during the rains from an incurable 
nasal running. 

A stunted Pariah dog is found upon the 
Island and the Continent: here, as in Western 
Africa, it is held, when fattened, to be a dish fit 
for a (Negro) king. Some missionaries have 
tasted puppy stew — perhaps puppy pie—and 
have pronounced the flesh to be sweet, glutinous, 


214 DOGS. 


and palatable. The horse is now a recognized 
article of consumption in Europe; the cat has 
long served its turn, as civet de lapin, without 
the honours of publicity; and the day may come 
when ‘ dog-meat’ will appear regularly in the 
market. I have often marvelled at the preju- 
dices and squeamishness of those races who will 
eat the uncleanest things, such as pigs, ducks, 
and fowls, to which they are accustomed, and 
yet who feel disgust at the idea of touching the 
purest feeders, simply because the food is new. 
It is indeed time to enlarge the antiquated 
dietary attributed to the Hebrew lawgiver, and 
practically to recognize the fact that, in the 
temperates at least, almost all flesh is wholesome 
meat for man. 

European dogs at Zanzibar require as much 
attention as white babies, but these die whilst 
those live. They must be guarded from heat 
and cold, sun and rain, dew and wind. Their 
meals must be light and regular, soup taking 
the place of meat. They must be bathed in 
warm water, their coats should be carefully 
dried, they are sent to bed early, and their 
smallest ailments require the promptest treat- 
ment with sulphur, ‘oil,’ and other specifics, 
otherwise they will never live to enjoy the hon- 


DOGS. 215 


ourable status of péres et méres de familles. 
The great object is to breed from them as soon 
as possible, and the Creoles thrive far better 
than even the acclimatized strangers. Arabs 
have been known to pay $50 for a good foreign 
watch-dog, hoping thus to escape the nightly 
depredations of the half-starved slaves. They 
are kind masters, great contrasts to the brutally 
cruel Negro, whose approximation to the lower 
animals causes him to tyrannize over them. On 
the West Coast of Africa the black chiefs often 
offer considerable sums for English dogs; but 
none save the lowest ‘palm-oil rough’ would 
condemn the ‘ friend of man’ to this life of vile 
African slavery. It is really pathetic to meet 
one of these unfortunate exiles in the interior, 
where a white face is rarely seen: the frantic 
display of joy, and the evident horror at being 
left behind, have more than once made me a 
dog-stealer. 

At Zanzibar, as upon the Continent, fowls 
may be bought in every village, the rate being 
6 to 12 for the dollar, which a few years ago pro- 
cured 36. They are lean, for want of proper 
food; ill flavoured, from pecking fish ; and miser- 
ably small, the result of breeding in—the eggs 
are like those of pigeons. Yet they might be 


216 FOWLS. 


greatly improved; the central regions of Africa 
show splendid birds, with huge bodies and the - 
shortest possible legs. This variety is found in 
the Brazil; and at Zanzibar the mixture of blood 
has produced a kind of bantam with a large 
foot. The black-boned variety of poultry, and 
that with the upright feathers—the ‘frizzly 
fowl’ of the United States—are also bred here. 
Capons are manufactured by the blacks of Ma- 
yotte and Nosi-béh (Great Island). How is it 
that the modern English will eat hens, when 
their great grandfathers knew how to combine » 
the flavour of the male with the tenderness of 
the female bird ? 

Peacocks are brought, as in the days of the 
Ophir trade, from Cutch. Madagascar sends 
hard, tasteless geese and common ducks, and 
Mozambique supplies turkeys which are here 
eaten by Arabs. <A local superstition prevents 
pigeon-breeding in the house: the birds are | 
found wild on the opposite coast, but Moslems 
will not use them as food. The Muscovy duck, 
an aborigine of the Platine Valley, has of late 
years been naturalized—it is a favourite with 
Africans, who delight in food which gives their 
teeth and masticatory apparatus the hardest and 
the longest labour. The only gallinaceous bird 


FOWLS. 217 


which Africa has contributed to civilization, the 
Guinea-hen, here called the ‘ Abyssinian cock,’ 
is trapped by slaves upon the mainland, and is 
brought to the Island for sale. As might be ex- 
pected so near their mother-country, there are 
seven or eight varieties of this valuable fowl, 
and until late years some of the rarest and the 
most curious have been unwittingly used for the 
table. In every part of the Arab world the 
Guinea-fowl has a different name: in Syria, for 
instance, it is called Dik el Rumi (not Dik el 
Habash) or Roman (Greek) cock, a term gener- 
ally given to the turkey. It is curious on a coast 
of estuaries and great river-mouths that the 
flamingo was not seen by us. 


218 FLORA OF ZANZIBAR. 


SECTION 5. 
Notes on the Flora of Zanzibar. 


THe prosperity of Zanzibar, the Island, has 
hitherto depended upon the cocoa and the clove- 
tree. The former grows in a broad band around 
the shore: on the Continent it follows the streams 
as far as 60 miles inland. In Zanzibar the 
Arab saying that ‘cocoa and date cannot co- 
exist,’ is literally correct; near Mombasah 
town, however, there is a fruit-bearing phoenix, 
and on the promontory, fronting the fort, there 
is a plantation of small stunted trees. Every- 
where on the Pangani river we found the 
‘brab,’ a wild phoenix, as the word derived 
from the Portuguese ‘brabo,’ corrupted from 
‘bravo,’ or rather in the feminine (palma) 
‘brava,’ suggests; and it would appear that the 
cultivated variety might be induced to thrive. 
The country was almost denuded of the cocoa to 
make room for cloves, when the late Sayyid 

threatened confiscation to those who did not 


THE COCOA. 219 


plant in proportion of one to three. There are 
now (1857) extensive nurseries in the Mashamba 
(plantations), and as this palm bears after six or 
seven years, it soon recovered its normal status. 
Many trees are prostrated by gusts and torna- 
dos: the Hindus replant them by digging a hole, 
and hauling up the bole with ropes made fast to 
the neighbouring stems—this simple contrivance 
is here unknown. 

The Wasawahili have many different names 
for the nut, viz. Kiddka, too green when it falls 
to the ground for any use but fuel; Dafa, 
or Kitdle, when the milk is drinkable, the 
husk is burned, and the shell is made into a 
ladle (maghraf); the Korédma, when the meat 
is fit to eat, and Nazi,’ the full-grown nut 
ready for oil-making. This most useful of plants 
supplies, besides meat, wine and spirits, syrup 
and vinegar, cords, mats, strainers, tinder, fire- 
wood, houses and palings, boats and sails — 
briefly, all the wants of barbarous life. Every 
part of it may be pressed into man’s service, 
from the sheath of the first or lowest leaf, used 
as a sieve, to the stalk of the young fruit, which, 


1 Nazi, in Kisawahili, is the fruit, Mn4zi the tree: in this 
case the initial letter is evidently a contraction of Mti, a tree. 
The name for the sun-dried meat, ‘kobra, is borrowed from 
the Hindustani ‘ khopra.’ 


220 THE COCOA. 


divested of the outer coat, is somewhat like our 
chestnut. During the hot N. Hast monsoon the 
refrigerating, diuretic milk is a favourite with 
strangers, and much feared by natives. A re- 
spectable man is derided if seen eating a bit of 
ripe cocoa-nut, a food for slaves and savages from 
the far west, but he greedily consumes the blanc- 
mange-like pulp of the Dafu, which is supposed, 
probably from its appearance, to secrete virility. 
Rasped, the ripe kernel enters into many dishes ; 
the cream squeezed from it is mixed with boiled 
rice, and the meat, kneaded with wheat-flour and 
clarified butter, is made, as at Goa, into scone- 
like cakes. No palm-wine is so delicious as 
that of the cocoa-tree, and the vinegar is propor- 
tionally good. The Zerambo, or distillation from 
‘toddy,’ is adulterated with lime, sugar, and 
other ingredients, which render it unpalatable 
as it is pernicious. 

Formerly there were many cocoa-nut oil-mills 
in the town; now (1857) they are transferred to 
the plantations where Sesamum (Simsim) is also 
crushed. The ‘Engenho’ is ruder than in the 
Brazil. A camel, blind-folded to prevent it eating 
the oil-cake or striking work, paces slowly round 
the ‘horse-walk,’ moving a heavy beam; _ this 
rolls a pestle of 6 inches in diameter in a conical 


THE COCOA. 221 


wooden mortar, flat-rimmed above, and 4 feet 
deep, by 38 wide. Formerly as many as 
70,000 lbs. were exported in a single vessel. 
Now the people save trouble by selling the dried 
nut, and when oil is wanted for home use they 
press and bruise if in water, which is then 
boiled; consequently, though the tree again be- 
gins to cover the Island Coast, the oil is three 
times dearer than at Bombay. It is calculated 
that 12,000,000 nuts were exported last year 
(1856) for the soap and candle trades, and a single 
French house has an establishment capable of 
curing 50,000 per diem. Demand has prodigi- 
ously raised the price of this article. In 1842 the 
thousand cost from $2 to $2.50; in 1857 it was 
$12.50. Though the coir of Zanzibar is remark- 
ably fine and was much admired at Calcutta, 
little use is made of it: some years ago certain 
Indian Moslems tried to obtain a contract from 
the local Government, and did not succeed, pre- 
payment being the first thing insisted upon.’ 
The constitutional indolence of the people, 
their dislike to settled and regular work, and 
their Semitic unwillingness to venture money, 
have, despite cheap labour and low ground-rents, 
prevented the Island from taking to its most ap- 


‘I shall speak of the clove in a subsequent chapter. 


222 SUGAR. 


propriate industry —sugar-growing.  Refiners 
are agreed that the cane in Zanzibar and Pemba 
is equal to that in any part of Asia. About three 
years ago (1857) the late Sayyid established 
a factory at his estate of Mohayra under a 
Frenchman, M. Classun, an assistant, and 32 
supervisors. Compelled to live in the interior, 
they sickened, and died off, and thus Mauritius 
lost another dangerous rival. A superior article 
was also made by the Persians, but they all 
caught fever, and either perished or disappeared. 
The sugar now grown is consumed on the Is- 
land, and there is only one steam-mill belonging 
to the Sayyid. 

Cotton is said to thrive upon the Island, but 
the irregular rains must often damage the crop. 
At present a small quantity for domestic use is 
brought from the coast, where there are plots of 
the shrub growing almost wild. In the drier — 
parts of the Benadir, however, the material for 
hand-made cloth must be brought from India, 
mostly from Surat. 

The virgin soils of Zanzibar, in fact, labour 
under only one disadvantage,—the fainéantise of 
the people, but that one is all in all, hence 
complaints concerning the expense. In the 
West India plantations 1 head was allowed per 


COFFEE. 223 


acre of cane, per 2 acres of cotton, and per 
3 acres of coffee. Here 4 head would hardly 
do the work; slave labour is bad, and free 
labour is worse. 

Coffee was once tried in the Island, but the 
clove soon killed it; now not a parcel is raised 
for sale. The berry, which was large and flavour- 
less, was not found to keep well. The over- 
rich soil produces an undue luxuriance of leaf- 
age, and the shrub lacks its necessary wintering. 

In the Brazil the richest lands are given to 
coffee, the next best to sugar, and the worst 
to cotton and cereals. The Zanzibar coast from 
Mombasah to Mozambique produces small quan- 
tities of coffee. Here great care is given to 
it; the berry has a peculiarly dry and bitter fia- 
vour, pleasant when familiar, and producing when 
first taken wakefulness and nervous excitement. 
At present the Island imports her supplies from 
Malabar and Yemen. The consumption is not 
great ; the Arabs, who hold it a necessary of life 
at home, here find it bilious, and end by chang- 
ing it for betel-nut. The coast growth sells in 
small lots, at various prices, and may become an 
article of export. In the African interior the 
shrub is indigenous between Northern Unyam- 
wezi (S. Lat. 1° 0 ) and Southern Abyssinia (N. 


224 COFFEE. 


Lat. 10°); and, as itis found on the Western Coast 
growing wild about the Rivers Nunez and Pongo 
(N. Lat. 10° 1’), it probably extends in a broken 
band across the Continent. There appear to be 
many varieties of the shrub. In Karagwah 
the wild bean is little bigger than a pin’s head. 
Harar exports a peculiarly large species, which 
sells as Mocha, and the Mozambique coffee does 
not at all resemble in flavour that of West 
Africa. Dr Livingstone (Missionary Travels, 
chap. x.) tells us that coffee brought from South- 
ern Arabia to Angola by the Jesuits was spread 
probably by agency of birds to 300 leagues 
from the coast. It has long been ‘monkeys’ 
food,’ but it is now worked by the ex-slavers. 

Indigo here, as well as in most parts of inter- 
tropical Africa, grows wild. The great expense 
of establishments, with the time and trouble, the 
skill and attention required for the manufacture, 
will leave it in the hands of Nature for many 
years to come. 

Tobacco might be raised: the plant extends 
thoughout Eastern and Central Africa, wherever 
the equinoctial rains fall. Usumbara exports to 
Zanzibar stiff, thin, round cakes which have been 
pounded in wooden mortars, and neatly packed 
in plantain leaves. It is dark and well-flavoured : 


OILS. 225 


sailors pronounce it to be very ‘chawable.’ Here 
it sells at two pice,’ or $d., per cake; at Usum- 
bara it commands about one-fifth of that price, 
paid in cloth and food. 

The oil palm (Eleeis Guineensis), whose pro- 
duce has done so much for the Guinea Coast 
and the fatal Bight of Biafra, is found, I am told, 
on the Island of Pemba, and at other places near 
Zanzibar. About the Lake Tanganyika it grows 
in abundance; the fruit, however, is a raceme, like 
the date’s, not a spike, as in the Bonny river. 
The ‘ Mchikichi’ is, therefore, a different and 
probably an unknown species. Like that of West 
Africa, it supplies wine as well as oil (The Lake 
Regions of Central Africa, vol. 1. p. 59). The 
palm-oil might easily be introduced into Zanzi- 
bar, and would doubtless thrive; but the people 
have enough to do without it. 

The Mbono or Palma Christi springs up 
spontaneously, as in most tropical regions, 
throughout Zanzibar Island and on the coast. 
The Hindus say of a man with more vanity 
than merit, ‘The castor shrub grows where 
other plants can’t.’ The seed is toasted in iron 
pots, pounded, and boiled to float the oil. After 


1The Hindu anna, which contains four pice, is here reckoned 
at eight. 
VOL. I. 15 


226 CAOUTCHOUC. 


aloes it is the popular cathartic, and it is rubbed 
upon the skin to soften the muscles, with an 
effect which I leave to the nasal imagination. 

Cinnamon and nutmeg trees were planted by 
the late Sayyid, and flourished well on some 
soils. The latter takes nine years, it is said, 
before bearing fruit, and gives trouble—two 
fatal objections in Arabs’ eyes. The spice is 
now imported from India. When at Kazah of 
Unyamwezi I saw specimens brought, it is said, 
from the Highlands of Karagwah, but the plen- 
tiful supply from the farther Hast would pre- 
vent this trade being here developed. The cacao 
shrub (chocolate), which thrives so well at Prince’s 
Island and Fernando Po in the Biafran Bight, 
has never, I believe, been tried in Zanzibar. 

The Mpira, or caoutchouc tree, flourishes in 
the Island, and on the adjacent Continent. The 
people of Eastern Madagascar tap it in the cold 
season, and have sent large cargoes to America. 
Mr Maemillan, U. 8. Consul, Zanzibar, offered 
$1000 for good specimens, but the Wasawahili 
would not take the trouble to make a few incisions. 
I heard of two varieties, a ficus and a lliana; 
there are probably many more: about the 
Gaboon river the valuable gum is the produce 
of a vine or climber, with an edible fruit, and 


CAOUTCHOUCG, ETC. 227 


the people have learned to extract a coarse 
article, and to adulterate it till it is hardly 
tradeable. Here they use the thinner branches, 
well oiled for suppleness, as ‘ bakurs ’—the po- 
liceman’s truncheon, the cat-o’-nine-tails, the 
‘Chob,’ and the ‘ Palmatorio’ of E. Africa. I 
may here remark that our gourd-shaped articles 
resist the climate of Zanzibar, whilst the squares 
and the vulcanized preparations become sticky 
and useless. The London-made blankets of 
smooth and glazed caoutchouc are so valuable 
that no traveller should be without them: those 
that are not polished, however, cannot be called 
waterproof; becoming wet inside, they are un- 
pleasantly cold. For exposure to the sun white 
impermeables must be preferred to black, and a 
first-rate article is required; our cheap boots 
and cloaks soon opened, and when exposed to 
ereat heat they were converted into a viscid 
mass. 

The tamarind, as in India, is a splendid tree, 
but the fruit, though used for acidulated drinks, is 
not prepared for exportation. A smooth-rooted 
sarsaparilla, of lighter colour than the growth of 
the Brazil and Jamaica, is found wild upon the 
Island and the coast. The orchilla, which gives 
its name to the Insule Purpurarize, has been 


228 FRUITS. 


tried, and, resembling that of the Somali country, 
it gives good colour. This lichen chooses the 
forks of trees in every lagoon. In the Consular 
report by Lieutenant-Colonel Playfair on the 
trade of Zanzibar for the year 1863, I find— 
‘Orchilla is obtained from the more arid parts of 
the coast to the north: none grows on the 
Island.’ 

The people of Zanzibar are fond of fruits, 
especially the mango, the orange, the banana, 
and the pine-apple. All of these, however, ex- 
cept the plantain—the bread-fruit of Africa— 
are seedlings, and engrafting is not practised. 
Wall-fruit is of course unknown. 

The mango, originally imported from India, 
and as yet unplanted in the central regions, is of 
many varieties, which lack, however, distinguish- 
ing names. ‘Two kinds are common—a large 
green fruit like the Alphonse (Affonso) of West- 
ern India, and a longer pome, with bright red- 
yellow skin, resembling the Goanese ‘ Kola.’ 
These, with care, might rival the famous produce 


of Bombay: even in their half-wild state the | 


flavour of turpentine is hardly perceptible. 
The fruit is said to be heating, and to cause 
boils. The Arabs spoil its taste by using steel 
knives: with the unripe fruit they make, how- 


ORANGES. 229 


ever, excellent jams, and pickles’ eaten in broths 
of fowl or meat. The pounded kernels are admin- 
istered in dysenteries, but the relish or sauce of 
which the Gaboon people are so fond is unknown 
here and even in India. The fruit is most plen- 
tiful during the N. East monsoon. 

There are many varieties of the orange, all, 
however, inferior to the produce of the Azores and 
the Brazil, of Malta and the Mozambique. The 
‘native’ fruit, supposed to be indigenous, is 
green, not so sweet as the kinds grown by the 
Portuguese, and the coat must be loosened by 
two days’ exposure to the sun or it can hardly 
be removed. It seldom ripens before the begin- 
ning of July, and it is best in August. The 
Persian variety, from about Bandar Abbas, 
comes to market in early May; it has grown 
common since 1842, and it has excelled its 
original stock. The peel is loose and green, and 
the meat, when cleared of pips, tastes somewhat 
like currants. The small brick-red Mandarin is 
good, and resembles the African and Brazilian 
Tangerine. The trees want care, they run to 
wood, the fruit is often covered with a hard, 
rough, thick, and almost inseparable rind, and 


‘The mango pickles of Makdishu are described by Ibu 
Batutah in a.p. 1331. 


230 ORANGES. 


the inside is full of bitter seeds, pithy placenta, 
and fluffy skins. The wild oranges upon the 
Island and the Continent resemble those which 
we call Seville. As a rule the ‘golden apple’ 
abounds from May to October. It is considered 
cooling, antibilious, and antiseptic, especially 
when eaten before other food in the early morn- 
ing. Thus it was a saying in the Brazil that 
the physician does not enter that house where 
orange-peel is strewed about. In West Africa 
the Rev. Mr Brown ' of Texas judged the fruit 
harshly, and predicted the death of a brother 
missionary who was too fond of it. Many boxes 
and bags of oranges are carried as presents from 
Zanzibar to the northern ports (Banadir), Aden, 
and even Bombay; ‘ Gulf-Arabs,’ who have 
not such luxuries at home, will here devour a 
basket-full at a sitting. The sweet limes of 
Zanzibar are considered inferior to none by those 
who enjoy the sickly ‘mawkish’ flavour: the 
acid limes are cheap, plentiful, and aromatic; 
they are second only to those grown about 
Maskat, the ne plus ultra of perfume and flavour. 


‘Missionary of the Southern Baptist Connexion. He 
published a book of Travels in Western Africa, and a Grammar 
and Dictionary of the Yoruba language, printed by the 
Smithsonian Institution (May, 1858). | 


FRUITS. 231 


The Pamplemouse or Shaddock, the Pummalo of 
Bombay (Citrus Decumana), has been planted 
upon the Island, but the people declare that it 
will not ripen: the same is said of the citron, 
and the Zanzibarians ignore the Persian art of 
preserving it. 

Bananas at Zanzibar are of two varieties, red 
and yellow: they are not remarkable for deli- 
cacy of taste. In the highlands of the interior, 
as Usumbara and Karagwah, the ‘musa’ may be 
called the staff of life. The plantain, in India 
termed ‘ horse-plantain,’ is a coarse kind, some- 
times a foot long, and full of hard black seeds: 
Kuropeans fry it in butter, and the people hold 
it to be a fine ‘strong’ fruit. The musa bears 
during all the year in Zanzibar, but it is not 
common in May and June. 

The pine-apple of the New World grows 
almost wild in every hedgerow and bush: culti- 
vation and planting near running water would 
greatly improve it. At present the crown is 
stuck in the earth, and is left to its fate wher- 
ever the place may be. Strangers are advised to 
remove the thick outer rind, including all the 
‘eyes, which, adhering to the coats of the 
stomach, have caused inflammation, dysentery, 
and death. The ananas ripens in the cold 


232 FRUITS. 


season: when it is found throughout the twelve 
months the people predict that next year it will . 
fail. It is, in fact, a biennial, like the olive in 
Palestine. 

The especial fruits of the poor are the Fanas 
or ‘Jack’ of India, and an even more fetid 
variety, the ‘ Doriyan,’ which certain writers 
call the ‘ Aphrodisiac dorion.” Some Europeans 
have learned to relish the evil savour, and all 
declare the Jack to be very wholesome. Hin- 
dus refuse to touch it, because it is ‘ heating 
food:’ they say the same, however, of all fruits 
with saccharine juices. The nuts are roasted, 
and eaten with salt, as in India, and the villagers 
fatten their poultry with ‘the rind and the 
rotten.’ 

The bread-fruit, and the curious growth 
(Ravenala) known as the ‘ Travellers’ Tree,’ were 
introduced from the Seychelles Islands: the 
young plants, however, were soon uprooted and 
strewed about the fields. Grapes, both white 
and red, look well, but, as in the Tropical Brazil, 
the bunches never ripen thoroughly; in fact, 
the same cluster will contain berries of every 
age, from the smallest green to the oldest purple. 
This is a great disadvantage when making wine, 
and requires to be corrected by syrup. The 


GRAPES. 233 


grape can hardly be expected to thrive where 
. the hot season, as in parts of the New World, is 
also the rainy season. Like the produce of the 
Gold Coast, the stones are large and bitter, and 
the skin is tart, thick, and leathery. Bacchus, 
though he conquered India and founded Nysa, 
seems to disdain the equinoctial regions. <Ac- 
cording to the French another variety should be 
introduced, and perhaps the ground-grape of the 
Cape might succeed better. There are many 
varieties of the vine in the Central Continent, 
but the people have hardly learned to eat the 
fruit : at Zanzibar certain Arabs tried it with 
sugar and rose-water, and suffered in consequence 
from violent colics. We read in ‘El Bakui’ 
(A.D. 1403) that some vines bear three crops 
per annum. 

The water-melon, most wholesome of fruits 
in warm climates, is found in Zanzibar and in 
the Lake Regions of the interior: the best are 
said to grow about Lamu and Brava. It is a 
poor flavourless article, white-yellow (not white 
and pink) inside, dry, and wanting the refreshing 
Juice; it is fit only for boiling, and its edible 
seed is the best part. The growth of the papaw 
is truly tropical; a single year suffices to hang 
the tree with golden fruit, which is eaten raw 


234 FRUITS. 


and boiled. Hindus, as usual, object to its 
‘heat;’ the Arabs make from the pips, which 
taste like celery, a sherbet, which is said to have 
peculiar effects.’ 

The ‘ Khwemwé’ tree bears a nut with a 
hard reticulated skin: this is roasted like the 
chestnut, and it affords a small quantity of oil. 
The Sita-phal (Annona squamosa) and its con- 
gener, the Jam-phal, or sour-sop (A. reticulata), 
crow wild over the Island and the Coast; as in 
the Brazil, little attention is paid to them; this 
‘custard-apple’ is here considered to be a whole- 
some fruit. The guava is popularly called Zaytun, 
which means ‘ olive,’ a quasi-sacred fruit, pos- 
sibly on the principle that in England many 
growths become palms about Easter-time. It 
runs wild around Mombasah, and spreads over 
much ground by a peculiar provision of nature :? 
the guavas are said not to ripen well; yet on 
the West coast they are excellent. The Jamli, a 
well-known Indian tree (Eugenia Jambu), whose 
somewhat austere, subacid fruit resembles the 
damson or bullace, is everywhere common. In 

' The ‘hot amourist’ pronounces this drink to be C$ Laue) | 


“2'The seeds cannot easily be digested. Thus the lower 
regions of Fernando Po are a thicket of guava, suggesting the 
Jackal-coffee of the Neilgherries. 


FRUITS. 235 


A.D. 1831 the traveller Ibn Batutah found El 
Jammin (4402!) at Mombasah. 

The interior of the Island produces the 
‘Fursad,’ a small stunted variety of the Persian 
red mulberry ; the ‘ Tut,’ or white.species, grows 
in every jungle from the shore of the Mainland 
to Fuga, in Usumbara, and suggests the possi- 
bility of rearing silk-worms. The pomegranate 
here, as on the Coast, gives a fruit which is hardly 
eatable: during the season Omani ships bring a 
supply of the very best description from the Jebel 
el Akhzar (the Green Mountain), near Maskat, 
and apples from the Persian Gulf. The Badam, 
locally called Bidam (the Persian almond), is 
here barren; the broad polished leaves are used 
as platters by the vegetarian Hindus. The Chinese 
Rambotang or Leechee is neglected, and the fruit 
is poor. The Ber (jujube) is unusually well- 
flavoured; according to Moslem custom, the 
Arab dead are washed with an infusion of the 
leaves. That South American growth the 
Mbibo or Cashew (Caju) tree abounds here and 
on the continental sea-board: the nuts are 
roasted, the pulp is eaten, though its astringent 
quince-like flavour is by no means pleasant, and 
the juice is distilled, as at Goa. After pressure, 
the yield, exposed two or three days for ferment- 


236 TREES. 


ation, produces the celebrated ‘Cauim’ (Caju-ig) 
of the Brazilian Tupy-Guarani race, a wine here 
unknown. The still yields at first a watery spirit, 
which by cohobation becomes as fiery and dan- 
gerous as new rum. The lower orders like it ; 
the effects, they say, last out the week. 

The principal wild trees are the following. 
The fan palm, a native of the Island and the Con- 
tinent, supplies the chief African industry—mat- 
making. The. ‘Toddy palm’ is found every- 
where; the fruit is eaten, but no one cares to 
draw off the beverage. The Dom, or Theban palm 
(Hyphene Thebaica), is a rare variety, and the 
wood is used chiefly for ladder rungs. Gigantic 
Raphias, called by the Arabs Nakhl el Shaytan, 
‘the Devil’s palm,’ throw over the streams fronds 
30 and 40 feet long: these, cut, stripped, and 
bound into rafts, are floated down and exported 
from the Mainland to the Island ; the material is 
soft and good for hut-making. The graceful 
Areca palm flourishes everywhere, especially 
upon the banks of the Pangani river: at the 
mouth of this stream a saw-mill might be set up 
for a few dollars, and I have no doubt that it 
would yield large profits, and extend its business 
as far as the Red Sea. 

The Bombax, or silk-cotton tree (Hrioden- 


TREES. 237 


drum anfractuosum), the Arab Dibaj and the 
Kisawahili Msufi, common in East as in 
West Africa, affords a fibre usually considered 
too short and brittle for weaving, but I have 
seen Surat cotton very nearly as bad. The con- 
tents of the pericarp have been used for pillow 
stuffings : the only result (dicunt) was a remark- 
able plague of pedicul. The Kewra, or frankin- 
cense tree of India, abounds. The red beans of 
the Abrus Precatorius are used by the poor and 
by the wild people as ornaments; even the mixed 
Luso-African race of Annobom will wear huge 
strings of this fruit, our original ‘ carat.’ The soft- 
wooded Baobab, Mbuyu or calabash tree (Adan- 
sonia digitata), grows rapidly to a large size upon 
the Island as upon the Eastern and Western 
coasts. It is a tree of many uses. The trunk, 
often girthing 40 feet, forms the water-tank, the 
trough, the fisherman’s Monoxyle ; the fibrous 
bark is converted into cloth, whose tough net- 
work is valued by the natives; the fruit pulp is 
eaten, and the dried shells serve as Buyu, or 
gourds. I have repeatedly alluded to this tree in 
the Lake Regions of Central Africa, and I shall 
offer other notices of it in the following pages. Of 
late the Mbuyu or Baobab has brought itself into 
notice as affording a material more valuable for 


238 TREES. 


paper than straw, esparto or wood pulp, and its 
superiority to other African basts, has been ac- 
knowledged in England.” The Mpingo (Dalbergia 
Melanoxylum) gives a purple timber, not a little 
like rosewood. The ‘ African oak,’ a species of 
teak, is reported to exist; but this tree does 
not extend far north of Mozambique. The ‘P’hun’ 
is a stately growth, whose noble shaft, often 80 
feet high, springs without knot or branch, till 
its head expands into a mighty parachute. It 
is more ornamental than useful,—the wood is soft, 
full of sap, like our summer timber, and subject 
to white ants. In these hot, wet, and windy 
tropical regions some trees, especially those 
without gum or resinous sap, grow too fast, and 
are lable to rot, whilst others take many 
years to mature, and are almost unmanageably 
hard and heavy. Hence we have had timber- 
cutting establishments set up by our Govern- 
ment at a large expense in the Brazil and in 
West Africa, but the produce never paid the 
voyage to England. 

1 According to my friend Mr P. L. Simmonds (The Journal 
of Applied Science) this bast fetches readily £14 to £15 per ton, 
and ‘although the paper makers will buy any quantity brought 
to market, it is to be regretted that they will offer no combined 


assistance to facilitate the obtaining larger supplies of this im- 
portant product.’ 


WOODS. 239 


The woods known to commerce are the 
‘ Liwa,’ a white-veined, faintly-perfumed, bastard 
sandal from Madagascar: it is used for the 
sacred fire by the poorer Parsees. Granadille 
wood is exported from the Mainland to Europe, 
where it is worked for the bearings of mills and 
for the mouth-pieces and flanges of instruments. 
The Arabs call it ‘Abnts,’ and the Sawahili 
*‘Mpingo,’ both signifying ebony, which it re- 
sembles in appearance, though not in qualities. 
Less brittle than ebony, and harder than ignum 
vite, it spoils the saw; and being very heavy, it 
refuses to absorb grease or water. It makes 
good ram-rods, and the Usumbara people have 
cut it into pipe-bowls long before our briar-root 
was dreamed of. 

The sweet-smelling ‘ Kalambak’ (Vulg. Co- 
lumbo), once common upon the Island, is now 
brought from Madagascar. There are two kinds, 
—one poor and yellow, like our box, the other 
hard, heavy, and dark red. Its fine grain takes 
the high polish of mahogany, and it would make 
good desks and work-boxes. Comoro men and 
Indian carpenters turn out rude furniture of 
this wood, which is wilfully wasted: in felling 
and shaping it the plantation-slaves, who ignore 
the saw, chip away at least half. The smoke is 


240 PLANKS. 


said to keep off mosquitos. The mango, the 
jack, the copal tree, and many others, give fine 
hard woods for cabinet work. 

Planks and scantling, cross-beams and door- 
panels, are made of two fine trees, the ‘ Mtim- 
bati’ and the ‘Mvule.’* The negro carpenters 
always sacrifice, I have said, a tree to make a 
plank, and the latter is so heavy that for all ight 
erections, such as upper rooms, boards must be 
imported from Europe. The Mtimbati is the 
more venous; rungs of ladders, well kept and 
painted, will last 15 years. The enduring Mvule, 
a close-grained yellow wood, is rare upon the 
Island, but common in the Coast jungles. As is 
the case with the Kalambak, there is no tariff for 
these trees: what to-day is sold at a bazar auc- 
tion for $1 may in a week fetch $8. <A good 
practical account of the medicinal plants and 
timbers of Madagascar and Mozambique, Zanzibar 
and the Seychelles, will be found in appendices 
A.B. vol. 1. of Mr Lyons McLeod’s ‘Travels in 
Eastern Africa, with a Narrative of a Residence 
in Mozambique.’ Captain Guillain may also be 
consulted, vol. 1. p. 28—25. 

The Bordi or Zanzibar rafters are felled by 


1 The Inzimbati (a leguminosa) and Invouli of Capt. Guil- 
lain. 


MANGROVES. 241 


slaves on the Mainland, and are brought over by 
Arabs and other vessels. The material is the 
useful mangrove, of which we here find the 
normal two species ; the Arabs call both ‘ Gur- 
um,’ and prefer the Makanda, or red kind. At 
Zanzibar the posts which become worm-eaten, 
and are reduced to powder by white ants, must 
be changed every five years. In arid Maskat 
they will last out the century, and they find — 
their way to Aden, to Jeddah, and even to 
Meccah. The usual price in the Island is $2 to 
$3 per ‘ Korjah,’ or score. 

The Mti wa Muytu (wild wood), or white 
mangrove, is found growing not in brackish water, 
and upon the mud, like the red variety, but 
chiefly upon the higher sandy levels, The wood 
is small, it shrinks when dried, it splits easily, 
and snaps; it is worm-eaten at once, and its 
porous nature causes it easily to absorb water. 
In Zanzibar it is used for fuel in lime-burning, 
and it makes a hot and lasting fire; the people 
also turn it into caulking mallets, which do not 
crack or spread out. The usual price (1857) is 
half a German crown per Korjah. 

Vegetables are little prized at Zanzibar: the 
list is rather of what might be than of what 
exists. A local difficulty is the half-starved 


VO. I. 16 


242 VEGETABLES. 


slave who plunders every garden; nothing less 
than a guard of Baloch would preserve edible 
property from his necessities and from his truly 
African wantonness of destruction. 


Almost all European vegetables will grow in | 


the Island; they require, however, shade, and 
they should be planted, as at Bourbon and the 
Mauritius, between rows of cool bananas. The 
best soil is the dark vegetable mould near the 
streams. Here lettuces, beet-root, carrots, po- 
tatoes, and yams would flourish—cabbages and 
cauliflowers have never, I believe, been tried. 
The ‘Jezar,’ an excellent sweet potato from 
Comoro and Madagascar, has been neglected 
almost to extinction. Thirty barrels of many 
sorted beans were sent from the Cape and grew 
well: they are good and abundant in the African 
interior, but the Island has allowed them to die 
out. The ‘egg-plant’ is remarkably fine, and the 
wild species thrives everywhere on the sea-board 
between Somaliland and Zanzibar. The Continent 
sends sundry kinds of pumpkins and gourds. 
Cucumbers of many varieties grow almost without 
sowing,—the people declare that they become 
bitter if touched by the hand whilst being peeled. 
The Arabs make from the seed an oil of most 
delicate flavour, far superior for salads than the 


THE CEREALS. 243 


best Lucchese olive. In London I have vainly 
asked for ‘cucumber-oil:’ the vegetable is pro- 
bably too expensive, and the seeds are too small 
to be thus used at home. About Lagos on the 
Slave Coast, however, there isa cucumber nearly 
a foot long, with large pips, which might be sent 
northwards, and I commend the experiment to 
the civilized lover of oil. All kinds of ‘ Chilis,’ 
from the small wild ‘bird-pepper’ to the large 
variety of which the Spaniards are so fond, thrive 
in Zanzibar, which appears to be their home. 
There are extensive plantations of betel-pepper 
on the Eastern coast of the Island. 

Wheat, barley, and oats here run to straw. 
Rice is the favourite cereal. The humid low-lands 
are cleared of weeds by burning, and the seed is 
sown when the first showers fall. To judge from 
the bazar-price, the home-grown article is of a 
superior quality ; but nowhere in Hast Africa did 
I find the grain so nutritious as that of the 
Western Coast. The hardest working of all 
African tribes, the Kru-men, live almost entirely 
upon red rice and palm-oil. The clove mania has 
caused the cereal to be neglected ; formerly an ex- 
port, it is now imported, and in 1860 it cost the 
Island £38,000. Jowari (Holcus Sorghum), here 
called by the Arabs Ta’am (food), and by the Was- 


244 CEREALS. 


awahili Mtama,—an evident corruption,—is sown 
in January and February, and ripens 6 months 
afterwards. The wheat of the poorer Arabs, and — 
the oats of horses, it grows 18 feet high, but 
the islanders have little leisure, except in the 
poorest parts, to cultivate. Banyans, Arabs, and 
Wasawahili buy it in the Brava country, the 
eranary of Southern Arabia, on the sea-board 
from Tanga to Mangao, and in some districts of 
the near interior ; they retail it in Zanzibar at 
large profits. Sesamum (the Hindustani Til or 
Gingil, the Arabic Simsim), the commonest of the 
oleaginous grains, of late demanded by the 
French market, where the oil becomes huile 
d’olives, is also brought from the Mainland, 
especially from the northern ports, Lamu and its 
neighbours, the Banddir or Haven-land. In 
1859 the Island of Zanzibar exported 8,388,360 
Ibs, = £20,000. Besides this, the coast ports 
shipped several cargos direct: formerly, East. 
Africa used to supply the Red Sea with this 
article. 

Maize (Muhindi) is a favourite article of 
consumption, and a little is grown on the Island. 
Bajri (Mawélé, Panicum spicatum, Roxb.), the 
small millet, a thin grain, inferior to that of 
Cutch and Western India, is little cultivated. 


CEREALS. 245 


The gram’ of Hindustan (in Arabic, Hummus ; 
in Persian, Nukhud; and in Kisawahili, Dengu, 
Cicer Arietinum) is of several varieties, white 
and red. The Liubiya pulse is also of many 
sizes and colours; the black flourishes every- 
where, the red is common, and the white, which 
the Portuguese of Goa import from the Mozam- 
bique regions, is rare. The best and largest 
comes from Pemba Island; it is also grown on 
the Continent. The leguminous T’hur (the 
Arabic Turiyan, and the Kisawahili Baradi, 
Cajanus Indicus) is almost wild: the Banyans 
mix it with rice, and make with it the well- 
known ‘ Dall’ and ‘ Kichri.’ The small green 
pea, known in India as Mung (the Persian 
Mash, and the Kisawahili Chiroko, or Toka, 
Phaseolus Mungo, Roxb.),is boiled and eaten 
with clarified butter (Ghi) like T’hur. The 
people also use the little black grain resembling 
poppy-seed, known in India as Urat; in Cutch, 
Papri; and here, P’hiwi (Phaseolus radiatus). 
The Muhogo, in the plural ‘ Mihogo,’ or White 
Cassava (Manihot Aypim), resembles in appear- 
ance the sweet Manioc of the Brazil (Aypim or 
Macaxeira). The knotted stem, about six feet 


*Palpably a corruption of the Portuguese Grio—grain 
generally. 


246 MANIOC. 


long, is crowned with broad digitated leaves ; 
the conical root, however, has a distinct longi- 
tudinal fibre the size of small whipcord, which 
is not found in the ‘black, or poisonous, 
Manioc’ (Jatropha Manihot, or Manihot uti- 
lissima). The people have not attempted to 
masticate it into a means of intoxication, the 
Caysima of the Brazilian Tupy.* The Muhogo 
grows everywhere in Zanzibar Island: it is 
planted in cuttings during the rains, and it 
ripens six or eight months afterwards. In the 
Consular reports for 1860 we are told that ‘the: 
Manioe or Cassava, which forms the chief food 
of the slaves and poorer classes, yields four crops 
a year.’ This is not probable: the longer all 
Jatropha is kept in the ground, within certain 
limits, the larger and better is the root. Manioc 
is carried as an acceptable present by travellers 
going into the interior. 

At Zanzibar the traveller should train his 
stomach to this food, and take care not to eall it 
‘Manioc.’ When raw it resembles a poor chest- 
nut, but in this state none save a servile stomach 
can eat it without injury. Huropeans compare 

‘ T have read in some book that the ‘ Pywaree’ of Guiana 


is made from the masticated and fermented juice of the cassava- 
‘flower ’—probably for—‘ flour.’ 


MANIOC. 247 


it with parsnips and wet potatoes: the Hindus 
declare it to be heavy as lead, and so ‘cold’ that 
it always generates rheumatism. The Wasa- 
wahili have some fifty different ways of prepar- 
ing it. Boiled, and served up with a sauce of 
ground-nut cream, it is palatable: in every 
bazar sun-dried lengths, split by the women, 
and looking like pipe-clay and flour, are to 
be bought: a paste, kneaded with cold water, 
is cooked to scones over the fire: others wrap 
the raw root in a plantain-leaf and bake 
it, like greeshen, in the hot ashes. The poorer 
classes pound, boil, stir, and swallow the thick 
eruel till their stomachs stand out in bold re- 
lief. Full of gluten, this food is by no means 
nutritious; and after a short time it produces 
that inordinate craving for meat, even the meat 
of white ants, which has a name in most African 
languages. 

The Bhang (Cannabis Sativa), which grows 
plentifully, though not wild, in the interior of 
the Continent, is mostly brought to Zanzibar 
from India. In Mozambique the Portuguese 
call it Bange or Canhamo de Portugal (Portugal 
hemp), and in the Brazil it is also known as 
Bange, evidently the Hindustani ‘Bhang.’ The 
“negroes smoke it for intoxication, but ignore the 


248 ARROW-ROOT, ETC. 


other luxurious preparations familiar to Hin- 
dustan, Egypt, and Turkey. 

Wanga or arrow-root, globular like a variety 
found in the Conean, is much less nutritious than 
the long kind. Here the best is brought from 
Mombasah, and after the rains the southern 
coast could supply large quantities. The people 
levigate the root, wash, and sun-dry it: the white 
powder is then kneaded with Tembu (palm-wine) 
into small balls, which are boiled in the same 
liquid. Itis ‘cold’ and astringent: the Arabs 
use it as a remedy for dysentery, and the Hindus 
declare that it produces nothing but costiveness. 
Ginger thrives in the similar formation of 
Pemba, and yet it will not, I am assured, grow 
at Zanzibar, where it is imported from Western 
India, the tea being in this climate a good 
stomachic. The Calumba or Colombo root is 
largely exported to adulterate beers and bitters. 
Curious to say, the ground-nut, which extends 
from Unyamwezi to the Gambia, is rare at Zan- 
zibar. 

The corallines of the coast are of course 
destitute of metals. A story is told of an inge- 
nious Frenchman who, wishing to become 
Director of Mines in the service of H. H. the 
Sayyid, melted down a few dollars, and ran a. 


GOLD. 249 


vein of silver, most unfortunately, into a mass of 
madrepore: the curious ‘gangue’ was shown 
to Lieutenant-Colonel Hamerton, and thus the 
‘cute experiment failed. The African interior 
beyond the mountains is rich in copper and 
iron. J have described the copper of the 
Taganyika Lake Region: it is said to be col- 
lected in small nuggets from torrent-beds, and 
the bars have evidently been cast in sand. The 
iron of the Umasai country makes the finest steel. 

Gold has undoubtedly been brought from the 
mountains of Chaga; and the eastern plateau 
promises to rival in auriferous wealth the Gold 
Coast. The great fields north of and near the 
Zambeze, and N. West of Natal, beyond the 
Transvaal Republic, discovered in 1866-7 by the 
German explorer, M. Mauch, a country consist- 
ing of metamorphic rocks and auriferous quartz, 
will probably be found extending high up in 
East Africa throughout the rocks lying inland 
of the maritime and sub-maritime corallines. 
It is also likely that the vast coal-beds, ex- 
plored by the Portuguese, and visited by Dr 
Livingstone, in the vicinity of Tete on the Zam- 
beze, and afterwards prolonged by him to the 
Rufuma river, a formation quite unknown to 
- our popular works, will be extended to the Zan- 


250 COAL. 


zibar coast. The valleys of rivers falling into 
the Indian Ocean should be carefully examined. 
The similarity of climate and geographical posi- 
tion which the province of Sao Paulo, and in- 
deed the maritime regions of the Brazil gener- 
ally, present with Eastern Africa, first drew my 
attention to its vast and various carboniferous 
deposits, and they are found to correspond with 
those of the Dark Continent. Messrs Rebmann 
and Pollock visited a spot near the ‘ Water of | 
Doruma,’ in the Rabai Range, near Mombasah, 
where antimony’ is dug. ‘They found no exca- 
vations, but the people told them to return after 
the rains, when the ground would be soft. The 
holes, they say, were rarely deeper than a foot 
and a half. Captain Guillain (iii. 277) was told 
that near the village ‘M’tchiokara’ ‘il existe, 
presque a fleur de terre, des amas d’une sub- 
stance métallifére, qui semblerait étre un anti- 
moniure d'argent, autant qu’il a été permis d’en 
juger par les échantillons donnés a nos voya- 
geurs.’ 

The valuable corals are not found at Zan- 
zibar, but the people sell a thin and white-stem- 

' I heard also of antimony on the Brazilian coast, op- 


posite the Island of S. Sebastigo, in the Province of 8. Paulo, 
but I have not seen any specimens of it. | 


CORALLINE. 251 


med madrepore, with brocoli-shaped heads of the 
liveliest red (Tubipora Musica?). Gypsum abounds 
at Pemba and other places. Ships bring from 
Maskat a fine hydraulic mortar called Saraj, the 
result of burning shells in small kilns (Tandur 
for Tanntir). The material is then stored in bags, 
pounded, and made into paste when required : 
it sets to stony consistency like the Pozzolana 
used by the Romans for urider-water buildings. 
I presume that they mix with this calcaire a 
certain proportion of sand. The natives do not 
use shell-lime when chewing betel-nut and leaf: 
they spoil their teeth with the common stuff. 
The disadvantage of coralline as building 
material is that it retains for a long time its 
‘quarry-water.’ The Arabs dry it involuntarily, 
and humour their indolence by expending a 
dozen years in constructing a house—the home, 
as at Damascus, being rarely finished during the > 
owner's life. The remedy is to expel the salts 
of lime and the animal gelatine by baking the 
stone, as is practised in the South Sea Islands. 
Kilns would make good lime at Zanzibar: on 
the island and coast the people now burn the 
gypsum and polypidoms in heaps piled upon a 
circle of billets, and the smoke, which fills half 
the town, is considered wholesome. Instead of 


252 ‘INDUSTRY.’ 


being kept unslaked in sacks, it is wetted with 
sea-water, which prevents it drying, and it is 
then heaped up in the moist open air. More- 
over, it is mixed with sea-sand, which is washed 
in fresh water, but its salt ‘sweats out’ for 
many a long year. Thus the best houses are 
liable to cuticular eruptions during the wet 
season : the mortar cracks, and is patched with 
a leprosy of blue, yellow, and green mould. 
The flat roofs are protected from the rain with 
thick coatings of this material, pounded to the 
desired consistency by rows of slave-women and 
boys, armed with long flat tamps and rude mal- 
lets. During the last 15 years the price of lime 
at Zanzibar has increased five-fold, $11 being 
now (1857) paid for a small heap; and, as usual, 
when Europeans are the purchasers, it rises 50 
per cent. 


SECTION 6. 


The Industry of Zanzibar. 


Tue industry of Zanzibar is closely akin to 
nil; the same may be said of the coast—both 


‘INDUSTRY.’ 253 


are essentially exporting, and cannot become 
manufacturing centres, at least as long as the 
present race endures. 

The principal supply is of matting and bags 
for merchandise: the labourers are mostly 
women, who thus spend the time not occupied 
in domestic toil. The best mats are those sent 
by Madagascar: the ‘native’ Simim (in Kisa- 
wahili termed Mkeka), an article upon which 
none but Diwans may sit, is neatly made of 
rush and palm-fronds from the river-side and 
from the low grounds of the coast; it is dyed in 
red patterns with madder, and the root of the 
Mudaa-tree boiled in water gives it a dark purple 
variegation. The housewives also make a rude 
fan, imitating that of Maskat. Materials for 
common mats and grain-bags are found in 
strips of palmated and fan-shaped leaves, cut in 
the jungles of the mainland, sun-dried, care- 
fully scraped with knives, and plaited by men, 
women, and children. The Maskat traders buy 
these lengths, and sew them together with Khus, 
or thread made from the cocoa-leaf. The large 
Jambi (mat), varying from 8 to 10 cubits long, 
costs about a quarter of a dollar: this is em- 
ployed in bagging (in Arabic, Kafa’at, and in 
Kisawahili, Makanda) to defend from rain the 


254 ‘INDUSEEY.: 


cottons, beads, and other articles which are car- 
ried by traders into the far interior. 

Cloth is fringed by Wasawahili and slaves. 
Many tribes, those of Chaga for instance, will 
not take a ‘Tobe’ without its ‘Tardzd,’ and 
generally when a piece of stuff is given to a 
wild man, he sits down and first unravels the 
edge. The selvage also constitutes a highly- 
prized ornament. 

Bill-hooks (munda), coarse sword-blades 
(upanga), and knives (kesu); hatchets (skoka), 
and hoes (jembe)—the latter two diminutive, 
and more like playthings than working-tools— 
are made of imported iron, and form a staple of 
trade with the mainland. The European spade 
and the American broad axe still await introduc- 
tion. Those who would explore E. Africa should 
supply themselves with a large stock of such 
hardware, and be careful not to waste them—to 
savages and semi-barbarians they are everywhere 
more precious than gold. 

Split bamboo forms the brooms, and the hard 
material tears the plaster from the walls. A 
coarse pottery, which the saltness of the clay 
renders peculiarly brittle, is fabricated by the 
Wasawahili at Changani Point, and supplants 


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ZANZIBAR, FROM THE TERRACE OF H.B, M.’s CONSULATE, 


‘INDUSTRY.’ 


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the original lagenarias. Some Kumars, or 
Hindustani potters, came to Zanzibar a few 
years ago; they suffered so severely from fever 
that, fancying themselves bewitched, all ran 
away. 


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CHAPTER VI. 


VISIT TO THE PRINCE SAYYID MAJID.—THE GO- 
VERNMENT OF ZANZIBAR. 


‘Zanzibar is an island of Africa, on the coast of Zanzibar, 
governed by a king who is a tributary to the Portuguese.’ Sag 
Rercn’s CycLop#ptia. 3 an 


We now proceed to wait upon H. H. the 
‘Sayyid of Zanzibar and the Sawahil,’ who would 
be somewhat surprised to hear that he is ‘ tribu- - 
tary to the Portuguese.’ 

The palace lies east of, and close to, the fort. 
It is fronted by a wharf, and defended by a stuc- 
coed platform mounting eight or nine brass 
guns en barbette, intended more for show than — 
use. The building is a kind of double-storied, _ 
white-washed barrack, about 140 feet ~—— 
roofed with dingy green-red tiles, and se 
with a few windows jealously raised high & 
the ground; shutters painted tender-gr een tem pe 


THE PALACE. 25 


“J 


the sun-glare, and a few stunted, wind-wrung 
trees beautify the base. Seaward there is a ve- 
randah, in which levees are held, and behind it 
are stables and sundry outhouses, an oratory 
and a graveyard, where runaway slaves, chained 
together by the neck, lie in the shade. In this 
oratory, as in other mosques, are performed the 
prayers of the two Great Festivals which, during 
the late prince’s life, were recited at the Mto-ni 
‘Cascine.’ Here, too, is the large, gable-ended 
house commenced in his elder age by the enter- 
prising Sayyid Said, and built, it is said, after the 
model of the Dutch factory at Bander Abbas. It 
was intended for levees, and for a hall of plea- 
sure. Unhappily, a large chandelier dropped 
from the ceiling, seventy masons were crushed 
by a falling wall; and other inauspicious omens 
made men predict that the prince would never 
enter the ‘ Akhir el Zaman’ (End of Time). It 
has since been shut up, like one of our ghost- 
haunted houses, which it not a little resembles. 

In the centre of the square, opposite the 
palace, stands the Sayyid’s flag-staff, where the 
‘Baktr’ is administered, where executions take 
place, and where, according to an American tra- 
veller,' distinguished criminals are fastened to a 


! Recollections of Majunga, Zanzibar, Muscat, Aden, 
VOL. I. 17 


258 ‘CRAMS,’ . 


pole, and are tied from the ankles to the throat, 


‘till the soul of the dying man is literally 
squeezed out of its earthly tenement.’ The 
author, who visited Zanzibar in ‘the mercan- 
teel,’ was grievously hoaxed by some kind friend. 
Under Sayyid Said torture was unknown, death 
was inflicted according to Koranic law, and only 
one mutilation is recorded. I may remark, en 
passant, that in this part of the world the two 


master romancers, Ignorance and Interest, have — 


been busily at work; and that many a slander 
rests upon the slenderest foundation of fact. 
Adventurers have circulated the most ridiculous 
tales. We hear, or rather we have heard, of 
300,000 Arab cavalry, and hordes of steel-clad 
negroes, possibly a tradition of the ‘ Zeng’ (Zan- 
zibarians), who, in the days of the Caliphs, plun- 
dered Basrah. We read of brilliant troops of 
horse artillery, whose only existence was in the 
brain of some unprincipled speculator ; and yet 
this report sent a battery from Woolwich as a 
present for the late Sayyid. To the same cate- 
gory belong the Amazons bestriding war-bul 
locks, doubtless a revival of El Masudi, who in 
our tenth century reported that the ‘ King of 
Zeng’ commanded, Dahoman-like, an army of 


Mokha, Aden, and other Eastern Ports. Salem: George 
Creamer, 1854, 


VISIT TO THE PALACE. 259 


soldieresses, mounted, as are the Kafirs, upon oxen 
—the Portuguese ‘ boi-cavallos.’ Some travellers 
have asserted that the Cape tribes learned cattle- 
riding from Europeans: but Camoens, making 
his hero land at the Aguada de 8. Braz, after 
sailing from the Angra de Santa Elena, expressly 
states— 


‘Embrown’d the women by the burning clime, 
On slow-paced oxen riding came along.’—Canto V. 63. 


Durbars, or levees, are held three times a 
day, after dawn-prayers, in the afternoon, and at 
night. The ceremonial is simple. The leges, 
passing the two Sepoys on guard at the gate, 
enter with the usual Moslem salutation, and 
after kissing hands take their appointed places. 
There is no lord of the basin, lord of the towel, or 
lord of the pelisse, deemed indispensable by every 
petty Persian governor. The ruler is addressed, 
Ya Sidi, my lord, and is spoken of by his sub- 
jects as Sayyidna, our prince. Coffee is served, 
but only at night; and all forms of intoxicants 
are jealously banished. ‘The long, bare recep- 
tion-hall, ceilinged with heavy polished beams, 
and paved with alternate slabs of white and black 
marble brought from Marseille, boasts only a 
few dingy chandeliers, and three rows of common 
wooden-bottomed chairs. It is, however, un- 


260 VISIT TO THE PALACE. 


encumbered with the usual mean knicknacks, 
French clocks and bureaux, cheap prints, gaudy 
china, and pots of neglected artificial flowers, 
supposed to adorn the window-sills; nor, after 
the fashion of Zanzibarian grandees, are the 
sides lined with seamen’s chests, stuffed full of 
arms, watches, trinkets, cashmere shawls, medi- 
cines, and other such ‘ chow chow.’ 

The Prince received us at the Sadr, or top of 
the room, with the usual courtesy. He was then 
a young man, whose pleasing features and very 
light complexion generally resembled those of 
his father. This is said to have been the case 
with the whole family. We found the ‘divan’ 
of Egypt and Turkey unaccountably absent, 
banished by the comfortless black-wood ‘ Kursi’ 
of Bombay. After a few minutes’ conversation 
two chairs were placed before us, bearing a tray 
of sweetmeats, biscuits, and glasses of sherbet ; 
of these we ate and drank a mouthful in accept- 
ance of hospitality, and we were duly pressed to 
eat. Lemonade and confitures take the place of 
strong waters amongst Europeans, and of the 
cocoa-nut milk, the mangoes, and the oranges of 
humbler establishments. Pipes, however, though 
offered by the late Sayyid to distinguished Huro- 
pean guests, are never introduced, in deference — 


SLAVE THIEVES. 261 


to Wahhabi prejudice; nor did we suffer from 
the rose-water ablutions of which M. Guillain 
complains. Feminine eyes did not peep at us 
from the inner apartments; but we were fronted 
by well-dressed slaves who, as we pass through 
the crowded outer hall, will steal, if they can, 
the gilt tassels from our sword-knots, and who 
have picked the pockets of guests, even when 
dining with their Prince. H. H. the Sayyid 
Majid took considerable interest in our projected 
journey, and suggested that a field-piece might 
be useful to frighten the Washenzi (wild men). 
We left the palace much pleased with the kind- 
ness and cordiality of its owner, into whose ear, 
moreover, evil tongues had whispered the very 
worst reports. 

The Government of Zanzibar is a royal ma- 
gistracy, the only form of rule to which the primi- 
tive and undisciplinable Eastern Arab will submit. 
Whenever a new measure is brought forward 
by the Sayyid it is invariably opposed by the 
chiefs of clans, who assemble and address him 
more like an equal than a superior. One of the 
princes of Maskat corrected this turbulent feu- 
dality after the fashion of Mohammed Ali Pasha 
and his Mamluk Beys; even now a few summary 
examples might be made to good purpose. In 


262 | THE ‘MINISTERS’ , 


the days of the late Sayyid’s highest fortunes the 
most tattered of Stris would address him, ‘O 
Said !’ and proceed to sit unbidden in his pre- 
sence. Similarly, [bn Batutah, when describing 
the Sultan of Oman, Abu Mohammed bin Neb- 
han, tells us, ‘he has the habit of sitting, when 
he would give audience, in a place outside his 
palace; he has neither chamberlain nor wazir, 
and every man, stranger or subject, is free to ap- 
proach him.’ Sometimes a noble, when ordered 
into arrest at Zanzibar, has collected his friends, 
armed his slaves, and fortified his house. One 
Salim bin Abdallah, who had a gang of 2000 mus- 
keteer negroes, used to wage a petty war with 
the Sayyid’s servile hosts. It is, perhaps, the 
result of climate that these disturbances have 
never developed into revolutions. 

The ‘ministers’ spoken of by strangers are 
the Nakhodas of the fleet: by virtue of a few 
French or English sentences, they are summoned 
when business is to be transacted with Euro- 
peans who are not linguists. The late Sayyid’s 
only secretary and chief interpreter was Ahmad 
bin Aman of Basrah (Bussorah), a half-cast Arab, 
popularly called by the lieges ‘ Wajhayn’ or 
‘two faces. According to some he was a 
Sabi or Sabsean, commonly known as a Christian 


JUSTICE. 263 


of Saint John; and men declare that he began 
life as a cabin-boy and rose by his unusual astute- 
ness. When any question of unusual gravity 
occurs the Sayyid summons the Ulema, the 
Shaykhs, and especially the two Kazis, Shaykh 
Muhiyy el Din, a Lamu doctor of the Sunni 
school, and Shaykh Mohammed, an Abazi. Causes 
tried by ecclesiastics generally depend upon the 
extent of bribery; but there is always an appeal 
to the Prince, or in his absence to the Governor. 
The Kazis punish by imprisonment more or less 
severe. The stocks are set up in every planta- 
tion; the fetters are heavy, and there is, if 
wanted, a ponderous iron ring with long spikes, 
significantly termed in Persian the ‘Tauk i 
Ta’at,’ collar of obedience. Instant justice is the 
order of the day, and the crooked stick (bakir) 
plays a goodly and necessary part; how neces- 
sary we see in the present state of Syria, whence 
the ‘Tanzimat’ constitution has banished the 
only penalty that ruffians fear. From ten to 
fifty blows are usually inflicted: in the Gulf, 
when the bastinado is to be administered with 
the Nihayet el Azab (extreme rigour), half-a- 
dozen men work upon the culprit’s back, belly, 
and sides, and a hundred strokes suffice to. kill 
him. Severe examples are sometimes necessary, 


264 PRISONS. | 


though chastisement is on the whole wild and 
unfrequent. Zanzibar town is subject to fires, 
originating with the slaves, often in drunkenness, 

more often for plunder; and this induced the 
late Sayyid to forbid the building of cajan 
‘tabernacles’ (Makuti or Banda-ni) upon the 
house-tops. His orders were obeyed for four 
months, an unusually long time; and at last 
Europeans, in consequence of the danger which 
threatened them, were compelled personally to 
interfere with the severest preventive treatment. 
The Prince alone has the power of pronouncing 
a capital sentence; and, as usual in Moslem 
countries, where murder is a private, not a pub- 
lic, offence, the criminal is despatched by the 
relatives of the slain. Death may be inflicted 
by the master of the house upon a violator of 
domicile, gallant, or thief; the sword is drawn, 
and the intruder is at once cut down. Fines 
and confiscations, which have taken the place 
of the Koranic mutilation, are somewhat com- 
mon, especially when impudent frauds are prac- 
tised upon the Prince’s property. Confinement 
in the fort, I have said, is severe, but not so 
much feared as at Maskat, whose rock dungeon 
is an Aceldama; I saw something of the kind at 
Fernando Po. Criminals have a wholesome 


CA 


THE ARMY. 26 


horror of being the ruler’s guest, yet they some- 
times escape by the silver key, and, once upon 
the mainland, they may laugh at justice. I 
heard of a Banyan who, despite being double- 
ironed, managed to ‘make tracks.’ 

The military force of Zanzibar is not im- 
posing. In 1846, throughout the African pos- 
sessions of the Sayyid, the permanent force was 
only 400 men, namely, about 80 at Zanzibar, 
250 at Mombasah, 30 at Lamu, 25. at Patta, 6 
to 10 at Kilwa, and sundry pairs at Makdishu 
and other places; after that time they were 
doubled and even trebled. The ‘regulars’ con- 
sist of a guard of honour, a ‘ guardia nobile’ 
of a dozen serviles habited in cast-off Sepoy 
uniforms, collected from different corps of the 
Bombay army: one musket carries a bayonet, 
the other a stick. The cost of new equipments 
was once asked by the late Sayyid; after 
glancing at the total, he exclaimed that the 
guard itself would not fetch half that sum. The 
irregular force is more considerable, and repre- 
sents the Hayduques of old Eastern Turkey, the 
Arnauts or Albanians of Egypt, the Bashi- 
Buzuks of El Hejaz, and the Sayyareh and Zab- 
tiyyeh of modern Syria. The so-called Baloch are 
vagrants and freebooters collected from Northern 


266 POLICE. 


Arabia and from the southern seaboard of Persia, 
Mekran, and Kilat: when the Prince required 
extra levies he rigged out a vessel and re- 
cruited at Guadel or at Makallah. He preferred 
the Aryan,’ as being more amenable to discipline 
than the Semite: moreover, the Arab clans- 
man, like the Highlander of old, though feudally 
bound to follow his suzerain, requires the order 
of his immediate chief, and the latter, when most 
wanted, is uncommonly likely to rat or to 
revolt. The mercenaries of Zanzibar nomi- 
nally receive $2 to $3 per mensem, with rations: 
practically, the money finds its way more or 
less into the pocket of the Jemadar or C. O. 
The fort is here garrisoned by some 80 of these 
men and their negro slaves: the former are 
equal to double the number of Arabs in the 
field, and behind walls they are a match for a 
nation of savages. Police by day and night 
patrols are much wanted at Zanzibar, where 
every man must be his own ‘ Robert.’ The 
slaves are unruly subjects; even those of the 
fort will commit an occasional murder, and the 
suburbs are still far from safe during the dark 

‘ It is hardly necessary to correct in these days the error of 
Carsten Niebuhr, who made the ‘ Belludges’ (Baloch) a tribe of 


Arabs. The Baloch mercenaries will be found further noticed 
in Part II. chap. vi. 


or & om 
Ul] imi) | 


i 


mo 
= we 


WASIN TOWN, 


THE FLEET. 267 


hours. The garrison is securely locked up, and 
in case of most urgent need no aid is procurable 
before morning. 

I may now offer a catalogue raisonné of the 
late Sayyid’s fleet, which was intended to keep 
up the maritime prestige of his predecessors, the 
Yu’rabi Imams. The Shah Alam, a double- 
banked frigate of 1100. tons, carrying 50 guns 
(45, says M. Guillain, i. 584), was built at Maza- 
gon in 1820, and now acts guardship, moored off 
Mto-ni. The ‘Caroline’ (40 guns), the best of the 
squadron, and built at Bombay, was degraded to 
be a merchantman, in which category she visited 
Marseille (1849): she has, however, again 
opened her ports after returning from Maskat. 
The strong and handsome ‘Sultana’ was 
wrecked near Wasin when returning from 
India. The ‘Salihi’ was lost in the Persian 
Gulf; the ‘Sulayman Shah’ and the ‘ Humayun — 
Shah,’ in the Gulf of Bengal. The ‘ Piedmontese,’ 
36 guns, built at Cochin in 1856, might be re- 
paired at an expense of £10,000. The ‘ Victoria’ 
frigate (40), teak-built in the Mazagon dock- 
yard, is still sea-worthy. The ‘ Rahmani’ cor- 
vette (24 guns), is a fast-sailing craft with great 
breadth of beam, hailing from Cochin: she was 
lately fitted out for a recruiting vessel to Hazra- 


268 THE FLEET. 


maut. The ‘ Artemise’ corvette, formerly of 18 
guns, now a jackass frigate with 10 guns en bar- 
bette, was built at Bombay of fine Daman teak, 
and was lately repaired there, at an expense of 
22,000 Co.’s Rs. Called Colonel Hamerton’s 
yacht, because always placed at his disposal by 
the late Sayyid, she will carry him on his last 
voyage, accompanying us to Bagamoyo upon the 
mainland. She is commanded by the sailing- 
master of the fieet, Mohammed bin Khamis, who 
has studied navigation and modern languages in 
London—of him more anon. ‘The lighter craft 
are the ‘Salihi’ barque (300 tons), built in America 
about 1840, condemned and repaired in Bom- 
bay; and the ‘ Taj’’ brig (125 tons), launched at 
Cochin in 1829, and originally intended for a 
yacht. Besides there is a mosquito squadron 
composed of some 20 ‘ batelas,’ each armed with 
2 to 6 guns, which serve equally for cabotage 
and for campaigning. 

The useless, tawdry ‘ Prince Regent,’ pre- 
sented by H. B. Majesty’s Government to the 
late Sayyid, was by him passed over in 1840 to 
the Governor-General of India. It was sold at 
Calcutta, and for many years it was, as a trans- 
port, the terror of the eastern soldier. The Say- 
yid could not pray amongst the ‘idols’ of gild- 


THE FLEET. 269 


ing and carving; he saw pollution in every pic- 
ture, and his Arabs supposed the royal berth to 
be the Tabit Hazrat Isa—Our Lord’s coffin. 
Instead of this article he wished to receive the 
present of a steamer, but political and other ob- 
jections prevented.; Eastern rulers also will not 
pay high and regular salaries; and without 
European engineers every trip would have cost 
a boiler. Repairs were impossible at Zanzibar ; 
and, as actually happened to Mohammed Ali’s 
expensive machinery in Egypt, the finest work 
would have been destroyed by mere neglect. A 
beautiful model of a steam-engine was once sent 
out from England: it was allowed to rust un- 
opened in the Sayyid’s ‘godowns.’ Still the 
main want of the Island was rapid communica- 
tion. Sometimes nine months elapsed before an 
answer came from Bombay: letters and parcels 
—including my manuscript—were often lost ; 
and occasionally, after a long cruise, they re- 
turned to their starting-point, much damaged by 
time and hard usage. The Bombay Post-office 
clerks thinking, I presume, that Zanzibar is in 
Arabia, shipped their bags to Bushire and Mas- 


1 ‘Wellsted’s Travels in Arabia, vol. ii. p. 403. This author 
exposes, without seeming to know that he was doing so, the 
selfish and short-sighted policy of the H. E. I. Company 
which wanted a squadron subsidiary to its own. 


270 THE TREASURY. 


kat, some thousand miles N.West instead of 
S.West of Bombay, and vid Halifax—half round 
the world—was often the speediest way of com- 
munication with London. No wonder that letters 
were delayed from 7 to 9 months, causing great 
loss to the trade, and inconvenience to the 
authorities. Her Majesty’s proclamation was 
published in India on November 1, 1858; the 
Prince of Zanzibar was obliged with a copy only 
in March, 1859. A line of steamers from the 
Cape and other places was much talked of; it 
would certainly obviate many difficulties, but the 
Zanzibar merchants who had a snug monopoly 
were dead against free-trade and similar appli- 
ances of modern civilization. The French Com- 
pany then running vessels from Mauritius to 
Aden, proposed to touch at Zanzibar if permitted 
to engage on their own terms ‘ ouvriers libres.’ 
The liberal offer was declined with thanks. 

The Royal Treasury is managed with an ex- 
treme simplicity. When the Prince wants goods 
or cash he writes an order upon his collector of 
customs; the draft is kept as an authority, and 
the paper is produced at the general balancing 
of accounts, which takes place every third or 
fourth year. I found it impossible to obtain 
certain information concerning the gross amount 


THE TREASURY. 271 


of customs, and inquiry seemed only to lead 
further from the truth. The ruler, the officers 
under him, and the traders all have several in- 
terests in keeping the secret. 

The Custom House is in an inchoate condi- 
tion; it makes no returns, and exports being free, 
it requires neither manifest nor port clearings 
from ships about to sail. The customs are farmed 
out by the Sayyid, and 10 years ago their value 
was $142,000, or 38 per cent. less than is now 
paid. The last contractor was a Cutch Banyan 
named Jayaram Sewji. The ‘ijareh’ or lease 
was generally for five years, and the annual 
amount was variously stated at $70,000 to 
$150,000, in 1859 it had risen to $196,000 to 
$220,000. He had left the Island before Sayyid 
Said’s death, and though summoned by the 
Prince Majid, there was little chance of his com- 
_ mitting the folly of obedience. His successor was 
one Ladha Damha, also a Bhattia Hindu, and a 
man of the highest respectability. These renters 
declared that they did not collect the amount 
which they paid for the privilege: on the other 
hand, they could privately direct their caste fel- 


‘ The consular report of 1860 gives an aggregate value of 
the port trade at £1,667,577, viz.: imports £908,911, and 
exports (information furnished by the mercantile community, 


and evidently much understated) £758,666. 


272 THE TREASURY. 


lows, do what they pleased with all unprotected 
by treaty, and having a monopoly as tradesmen 
between the wholesale white merchants and the 
petty dealers of the coast, they soon became 
wealthy. 

Land cess and port dues were unknown at 
Zanzibar. The principal source of revenue was 
the Custom House, where American and European 
goods, bullion excepted, paid the 5 per cent. ad 
valorem provided by commercial treaties. Cargo 
from India paid 5:25, the fractions serving to 
salary Custom House officials. The import was 
levied on all articles transshipped in any ports of 
the Zanzibar dominions, unless the cargo was 
landed only till the vessel could be repaired. Of 
course the tariff was complicated in the extreme, 
‘custom’ amongst orientals being the ‘rule of 
thumb’ further west. The farmers appointed 
all subordinate officials, and as these received in- 
sufficient salaries, smuggling, especially in the 
matters of ivory and slaves, came to their assist- 
ance. The Wasawahili Makhadim, or serviles, 
contributed an annual poll-tax of $1 per head, 
and this may have amounted to 10,000 to 14,000 
crowns per annum. The maximum total of the 
late Sayyid’s revenue was generally stated as 
follows— a. 


bo 
~T 
oo 


THE TREASURY. 


Maskat (customs) German crowns ... $180,000 
Mattra (Matrah) 93 60,000 
Maskat and Mattra (octroi teem the See) 20,000 


Average receipts from other parts of Africa 20,000 

and Arabia 
Zanzibar (customs and poll-tax) ... ie 160,000 
Totalin German crowns... $440,000 


In 1811 Captain Smee computes the revenue 
of Zanzibar at $60,000 per annum, adding, how- 
ever, that he considers it to be much more. In 
1846 M. Guillain gives the revenue arising from 
customs on coffee and cloves, Indian rice and 
melted butter, and divers taxes on shops, indigo, 
dyes, thread-makers, silk-spinners,and so forth, as 
follows— 


Total of Oman oe $136,600 
African dominions 349,000 


Grand total $485,600 = 2,500,000 frances. 


3? 


The author, who appears to have been ably 
assisted in his inquiries by M. Loarer, also states 
that in the days of Sayyid Said’s father the farm- 
ing of the customs at Zanzibar represented $25,000, 
from which it gradually rose to $50,000; $60,000; 
$80,000 ; $100,000; $105,000; $120,000 ; 
$147,000; $157,000; and $175,000 in 1846. We 
may safely fix the revenue in 1857 at a maximum 
of £90,000 per annum. The expenses of navy, 


army,and ‘civil service,’ and the personal expendi- 
VOL, I. 18 


274 THE TREASURY. 


ture of the Prince were easily defrayed out of this 
sum, whilst the surplus must have been consider- 
able. The income might easily have been in- 
creased, and the outlay have been diminished by 
improving the administration; but the Sayyid 
had ‘some time before his death reached that 
epoch of life when age and weariness determine 
men to consider the status quo as the supreme 
wisdom.’ 

Under the new régime affairs did not im- 
prove. An Indian firm farmed the customs 
throughout the Zanzibar dominions for the an- 
nual sum of $190,000, and the following is the 
official statement of the revenues derived by ‘His 
Highness the Sultan,’ * in 1863-4. 


Customs dues ai Wy a $190,000 
Pemba dues ... ‘ Ly, 8 6,000 
Poll-tax of Makhadim ... i, .- 10,000 
Private clove plantations is 15,000 

Total $221,000 
Deduct subsidy paid to Maskat ig 40,000 


Balance $181,000 


The income, thus sadly fallen otf, was hardly 
enough for the necessaries of the ruler, and left 


1 Commercial Reports, received at the Foreign Office from 
H. M.’s Consuls, between July 1, 1863, and June 30, 1864. 
London, Harrison and Co. In 1862 the revenue of Maskat was 
computed to reach the very respectable cipher of £1,065,640 
per annum. 


THE TREASURY. 275 


no margin available for improvements or public 
works. At last the government, which by treaty 
is unjustly debarred from imposing export or 
harbour dues, or even from increasing the im- 
port duties, devised a modified system of land- 
tax, charging 5 per cent. per annum on cloves, 
and 2 pice (= 2d.) on mature cocoa-trees whose 
estimated average value is $1. This, if levied, 
would produce about $40,000 per annum. 

Since that time prosperity has returned to 
the Island. The return of imports by the Cus- 
tom House rose from £245,981 in 1861-2 to 
£433,693 in 1867-8.! One half of the trade was 
in the hands of English subjects, and the Com- 
mittee remarks that Zanzibar is the chief market 
of the world for ivory and copal; that the trade 
in hides, oils, seeds, and dyes is on the increase, 
whilst cotton, sugar, and indigo, to which may 
be added cocoa, loom in the distance. 


* Report of Select Committee appointed to inquire into 
the whole question of the slave trade on the East coast of Africa. 


CHAPTER VIL. 


A CHRONICLE OF ZANZIBAR.—THE CAREER OF THE 
LATE ‘IMAM,’ SAYYID SAID. 


‘Mais, comme le livre n’est point une ceuvre de fantaisie, 
comme il traite de questions sérieuses, et qu’il s’addresse a des 


intéréts durables, je me résigne, pour lui, 4 inattention du 


moment, et j’attendrai patiemment pour que l’avenir lui ramene 
son heure, lui refasse, pour ainsi dire, une nouvelle opportu- 
nité. —M. GuILLatn. 


TuErE is little of interest in the annals of 
Oman and of her colonies. Fond of genealogy, 
the modern Arabs are perhaps the most in- 
curious of Orientals in the matter of history: 
they ignore the past, they disregard the present, 
and they have a superstitious aversion to speak 


of the future. Lawless and fanatical, treacher-— i 


man, have converted their chronicles into a | 
7 . HA - 4 . : 
ate ee “s 

“ tiiy ar he 


6 
4% 


1 


HISTORY. 277 


of Newgate Calendar, whilst the multitude of 
personages that appear upon the scene, and the 
perpetual rising and falling of Imams, princes, and 
grandees, offer to the reader a mere string of 
proper names. Ample details concerning Mas- 
kat will be found in the pages of Capt. Hamilton, 
Carsten Niebuhr, Wellsted, and Salil ibn Bazik,' 
to mention no others. Zanzibar has ever been, 
since historic times, connected with Oman, 
whose fortunes she has reflected; the account of 
the distant dependency given by travellers is, 
therefore, as might be expected, scanty and 
obscure. 

At an early period the merchants and trad- 
ers of Yemen frequented the Island, and ex- 
changed, as we read in the Periplus and Ptolemy, 
their homes of barren rock and sand for the 
luxuriant wastes of Hastern Africa. If tradition 
be credible, their primitive settlements were 
Patta (Bette), Lamu, and the Mrima fronting 
these islets; and here to the present day the 
dialect of their descendants has remained the 
purest. Themselves pagans, they lived amongst 
the heathenry, borrowed their language, as the 

1 History of the Imams and Sayyids of Oman, from a.p. 


661 to 1856, by Salilibn Razik. Translated, &c., by the Rev. 
G. P. Badger. Printed for the Hakluyt Society. 


278 THE PORTUGUESE. 


Arabs and the Baloch still do, intermarried with 
them, and begotthe half-caste Wasawahili, or coast 
population. In proof that these were the lords 
of the land, the late Sultan Ahmad, chief of the 
Shirazi, or free tribe of the mulattoes, received 
annual presents from the Arab Sayyid of Zanzi- 
bar. When the former died Muigni Mku, his 
wazir, or brother—here all fellow-countrymen 
are brothers—succeeded, in default of other heirs, 
to the position of monarch retired from busi- 
ness. Heisa common-looking negroid, who lives 
upon the proceeds of a plantation and periodical 
presents: he is not permitted to appear as an 
equal at the Sayyid’s Darbar, and it is highly im- 
probable that he will ever come to his own again. 

The Sawahil or Azania continued to ac- 
knowledge Arab and Persian supremacy till the 
appearance of the Portuguese upon the coast. 
D. Vasco da Gama passed Zanzibar Island 
without sighting it when first bound Indiawards, 
and authors differ upon the subject of his return 
voyage. The historian Toio de Barros (i. 4, 11) 
relates that the expedition made its land-fall 
from India below Magadoxo (Makdishu or 
Maka’ad el Shaat, ‘the sitting-place of. the 
sheep’),' beat off a boat attack from ‘ Patdé’ 


1 So called from some silly vision of an illuminated sheep 


THE PORTUGUESE. 279 


(Patta), visited Melinde, Mozambique, and the 
Aguada de S. Braz, and doubled the Cape of 
Storms on March 20, 1499. Goes’ declares 
that da Gama, after touching at Makdishu and 
Melinde, arrived at Zanzibar on February 28, 
and was supplied by its ruler with provisions, 
presents, and specimens of country produce. The 
island is described as large and fertile, with 
groves of fine trees, producing good fruit, two 
others, ‘Pomba’ (Pemba) and ‘ Mofia’ (our Mon- 
fia and the Arab Mafiyah), lying in its vicinity. 
These settlements were governed by Moorish 
princes ‘of the same caste as the King of Melinde’ 
—doubtless hereditary Moslem Shaykhs and 
Sayyids. The population is represented as being 
in ‘no great force, but carrying on a good trade 
with Mombassa for Guzerat calicoes and with 
Sofala for gold.” The ‘King of Melinde’ made 
a name in Europe. Rabelais commemorates 
Hans Carvel, the King of Melinda’s jeweller, and 
(in Book I. chap. v.) we read, ‘thus did Bacchus 


appearing to one of the Shaykhs. The city is supposed to 
have been founded in a.p. 295, about 70 years before Kilwa. 

The three voyages of Vasco da Gama, &c., as from the 
Lendas da India of Gaspar Correa, translated by the Hon. 
Henry C. J. Stanley, London, Hakluyt Society, 1869, chap. 
xxi., note to page 261. M. Guillain (i. 319) makes the expe- 
dition reach Zanzibar on April 29, 1499. 


280 THE ‘ KINGS? 


conquer Ind; thus philosophy, Melinde,’—mean- 
ing that the Portuguese taught their African 
friends more drinking than wisdom. Joao 
de Barros (i. 4. 2) informs us that the Chief 
of Zanzibar was ‘da linhagem dos Reys de 
Mombaga, nossos imigos.’ The inhabitants were 
‘white Moors’ (Arabs from Arabia) and black 
Moors or Wasawahili; the former are portrayed 
as a slight people, scantily armed, but clothed in 
fine cottons bought at Mombasah from mer- 
chants of Cambaya. Their women were adorned 
with jewels, with Sofalan gold, and with silver 
obtained in exchange for provisions, from the 
people of St Lawrence’s Island (Madagascar). 
And here we may remark that the Arab settle- 
ments in Hast Africa, visited by the Portuguese 
at the end of the 15th century, showed generally 
a civilization and a refinement fully equal to, if 
not higher than, the social state of the European 
voyagers. The latter, expecting to find savages 
like the naked Kafirs of the South, must not 
have been a little surprised to receive visits 
from the chiefs of Mozambique and Melinde, 
men clad in gold, embroidered silks, velvets, and 
‘crimson damask, lined with green satin; ’ 
armed with rich daggers and swords sheathed 
in silver scabbards, seated on arm-chairs, and 


THE PORTUGUESE. 981 


attended by a suite of some 20 richly-dressed 
Arabs. The modest presents offered by the 
Europeans to these wealthy princelets, whose 
women adorned themselves with pearls and other 
precious stones, must have given a mean idea of 
Portuguese civilization. And even in the present 
day the dominions of the ‘barbarous Arab’ 
are superior in every way to the miserable 
colonies on the West African coast, which repre- 
sent Christian and civilized Europe. 

Four years afterwards (1503) Ruy Lourenco 
Ravasco, a Cavalleiro da Casa d’ El Rey, sailing 
with D. Antonio de Saldanha, cruized off ‘ Zem- 
zibar,’ as his countrymen called Zanzibar, and in 
two months captured twenty rich ships, laden 
with ambergris, ivory, tortoiseshell, wax, honey, 
rice, coir, and silk and cotton stuffs. This cap- 
tain appears, like most of his fellows, to have 
been a manner of pirate: he did not restore them 
till ransom was paid. ‘ El Rey,’ still friendly to 
the Portuguese, sent a spirited remonstrance, 
when the insolence of the reply forced him to 
take hostile measures. The Arabs manned their 
canoes with some 4000 men; but two launches, 
well-armed with cannon, killed at the first dis- 
charge 34 men and put the rest to flight. Thus the 
Malik or Regulus was compelled by Ravasco to pay 


282 THE PORTUGUESE. 


an annual tribute of 100 gold miskals in token of 
submission to the greedy and unprincipled Dom 
Manuel. ‘The conquered pays the conquest! ’ 
exclaims with Christian emphasis the venerable 
Osorio. Portugal now began to gather gold from 
Sofala to Makdishu; ‘Wagerage,’ the chief of 
Melinde, contributed every year 1500 wedges 
(ingots) of the precious metal, and the insolence 
of the victors must have made the good old man 
deeply regret the welcome and the Godspeed 
which he had bestowed upon the exploratory 
expedition. 

The Portuguese having wrested Kilwa and 
Mombasah from its Arab chiefs, D. Duarte de 
Lemos, appointed (A.D. 1508) by the King 
Governor of the ‘ Provinces of thiopia and 
Arabia,’ attacked successively Mafiyah, Zan- 
zibar, and Pemba, for failing in the paramount 
duty of paying tribute. Mafiyah submitted, the 
people of Pemba escaped to Mombasah, leaving 
nothing in their houses, and Zanzibar resisted, 
but the town was taken and plundered. The 
Shaykh retired northwards, and his subjects 
fled to the bush, ‘ depois de bem esfarrapados na 
carne con a ponta da lanca, e espada dos nossos ’ 
—after being well pierced in the flesh by the 
lance-points and the sword-blades of our men— 


THE PORTUGUESE. 283 


says the chronicler. From this time probably 
we may date the pointed arches that still remain 
upon the Island, and the foundation of the fort, 
which is popularly attributed to the ‘ Faranj.’ 
Mombasah and Pemba were presently occupied 
by the Portuguese; and the ruins of their ex- 
tensive barracoons, citadels, and churches still 
argue ancient splendour. In other places upon 
the seaboard I found deep and carefully sunk 
wells, stone enclosures, and coralline temples, 
whilst vestiges of European buildings may be 
traced, it is said, contrary to popular opinion, 
many days’ journey inland. 

We read little about Lusitanianized Zan- 
zibar, where the insalubrity of the climate must 
have defended the interior, and even parts of the 
coast, from the spoiler. In a.p. 1519 the Moors 
massacred certain shipwrecked sailors belonging 
to the expedition of D. Jorje de Albuquerque. 
Three years afterwards the Shaykh, or, as he 
styled himself, the Sultan! of Zanzibar, who, 
after submitting to Ravasco, had acknowledged 
himself a vassal of D. Manuel, fitted out, with 
the aid of the factors Joao de Mata and Pedro 

* The only Shaykhs who took the name of Sultan were 


those of Kilwa and Zanzibar: he of Mombasah was tributary 
to the latter. 


284: THE PORTUGUESE. 


de Castro, a small expedition against the Quir- 
imba islandry, who had allied themselves with 
the hostile tribes about Mombasah. The attack 
was successful, the chief town was pillaged and 
burnt, and terror of the invader brought all the 
neighbouring islets to terms. In 1528-9 the 
Viceroy of India, Nuno da Cunha, being about 
to attack Mombasah, was supplied with provi- 
sions by the Chief, and the Portuguese presently 
reduced the coast to a single rule whose centres 
were successively Kilwa, Sofala, and Mozam- 
bique. Hast Africa then became one of the four 
ereat governments depending upon the vice- 
royalty of India; the three others being Ma- 
lacca, Hormuz, and Ceylon. 

In this state Zanzibar remained till the close 
of the next century. When, however, Pedro 
Barrato de Rezende, Secretary to the Viceroy, 
Count of Linhares, wrote his ‘ Breve Tratado’ on 
the Portuguese colonies of India and East Africa 
(1635), the Island had ceased to be vassal and 
tributary, but the Sultan remained friendly to 
Europeans. Many of the latter occupied with 
their families rich plantations ; Catholic worship 
was protected, and there was a church in which 
officiated a brother of the order of St Austin. 
There was the usual massacre of the Portu- 


THE YU’RABI ARABS. 285 


guese, and expulsion of the survivors in imita- 
tion of Mombasah, about 1660; and the Island- 
ers, doubting their power to procure independ- 
ence, applied for assistance to the Arabs. 

The reign of the Yuw’rabi of Oman, a clan 
of the great Ghafiri tribe, began as follows. 
The Imam, Sultan bin Sayf bin Malik el Yu’- 
rabi, the second of the family, having recovered 
Maskat (April 23, 1659), and Matrah, created 
a navy which added Kang, Khishm, Hormuz, 
Bahrayn, and Mombasah (1660) to the Arabian 
possessions left by his ancestors. After investing 
Bombay this doughty chief died in a.p. 1668 or 
in 1669. His son, Sayf bin Sultan, after de- 
feating an elder brother, Belarab, became the 
third Imam of the house of Yu’rabi, and sum- 
moned to submission the petty chiefs on the 
eastern mainland of Africa. Between 4.p. 1680 
and 1698, the powerful squadron of the warlike 
Moor drove the Portuguese from Zanzibar, 
Kilwa, Pemba, and Mombasah, where he estab- 
lished as Governor Nasir bin Abdillah el 
Mazrw’i, the first of the great family of that 
name. He failed only at Mozambique. Arabs 
still relate the legend how having closely in- 
vested the fort they were undermining the wall, 
when a Banyan gave traitorous warning to the 


286 THE YU’RABI ARABS. 


besieged. Pans of water ranged upon the ground 
showed by the trembling fluid the direction of 
the tunnel; a countermine was sprung with 
fatal effect, and the assailants, retreating in con- 
fusion to their shipping, raised the siege." The 
squadron, however, pursued its course as far 
south as the Comoros and Bukini (Madagascar, 
or rather the northern portion of the Island), 
whence, hearing of the ruler’s death, it returned 
home. When the Island became Arab property 
the Wasawahili fled to the ‘bush’: they presently 
consented to render personal service, or to pur- 
chase exemption by annually paying $2 per head. 

Sayf bin Sultan was succeeded, in A.D. 1711, 
by his eldest son, Sultan bin Sayf, who defeated 
with his fleet of 24 to 28 ships, carrying 80 
guns, the soldiers of Abbas III. and of Nadir 
Shah. After his decease the chieftainship of 
Oman was seized by a distant relative, Moham- 
med bin Nasir, Lord of Jabrin, who according 
to some, first assumed, according to others, re- 
sumed, the title of ‘Imam,’ making himself 
priest as well as prince, like him of Sana’a in 
Yemen. It has ever been a Khariji, and espe- 
cially a Bayazi tenet, that any pious man, not 
only those belonging to the Kuraysh or the Pro- 


‘M. Guillain (i. 522) had vaguely heard of this tradition. 


THE YWRABI ARABS. 287 


phet’s tribe, might rise to the rank of Pontiff. 
In a.p. 751 they were powerful enough to elect 
Julandah ben Mas’td, but the succeeding dynasty 
rejected the term. The usurped rule was reco- 
vered after his decease (A.D. 1728) by Sayf el 
Asdi, a younger son of Sultan bin Sayf: this in- 
dolent debauchee being shut up in Maskat by a 
cousin, Sultan bin Murshid—some corrupt his 
father’s name to Khurshid—applied for assistance 
to that Nadir Shah, whom his more patriotic 
father had successfully resisted. In 1746 the 
Persians, aided by intestine Arab divisions, soon 
conquered Oman: Sultan bin Murshid slew him- 
self in despair, and Sayf el Asdi, duped by his 
allies, died of grief in his dungeon at Rustak. 
The latter city was in those days the ordinary 
residence of the Imams; in fact, a kind of 
cathedral town as well as capital. 

The power now fell from the hands of the 
Ywrabis (Ghafiris) into the grasp of their rivals, 
the Bu Saidi (Hinawis). These ancient lords of 
Oman claim direct descent from Kahtan (Joc- 
tan), great-grandfather of Himyar, founder of 
the Southern Arabs, and brother to Saba, who 
built in Yemen the city that bore his name: the 
stock is held to be noble as any in the Peninsula. 
Oman remained under foreign dominion, paying 


288 THE BU SAIDI ARABS. 


tribute to, and owning the rule of, Nadir Shah, 
till the Chief of Sohar, Said bin Ahmad el Bu | 
Saidi, struck the blow for freedom. Five years 
afterwards (A.D. 1744) his son, Ahmad bin Said, 
artfully recovering Maskat from Mirza Taky 
Khan, the Governor of Fars, who had revolted 
against Nadir Shah, expelled the Persians from 
Oman. When laying the foundation of the 
present dynasty he assumed the title of ‘ Sayyid’ 
(temporal ruler) ; persuaded the Mufti to elect 
him ‘Imam’ (prince-priest), and was confirmed. 
in his dignities by the Sherif of Meccah.  Col- 
onel Pelly (p. 184, Journal Royal Geographical 
Society, 1865) gives a somewhat different. ac- 
count — ‘It appears that the family of the 
Imams of Muskat were originally Sayeds of a 
village, named Rowtheh, in the Sedair imme- 
diately below the Towaij hills. The founder of 
the family was Saeed. His son’s name was 
Ahmed. They came to Oman, and took service 
under the domimant tribe called Yarebeh. Subse- 
quently they obtained possession of the strong 
hill-fort called Hazm, in the neighbourhood of 
Rostak. Eventually they became the rulers of 
Oman, and changed their sect from that of Sun- 
nee to Beyathee.’ Ahmad allied himself with the 
ex-royal Yu’rabis, by marrying a daughter of 


THE BU SAIDI ARABS. 289 


Sayf el Asdi. After crushing sundry rebellions, 
he plundered Diu (4.p. 1760), and massacred the 
population, a disaster from which the great port 
and fort never recovered. He then sent an 
army of 12,000 men against the Ghafiri of Ra’as 
el Khaymah, who had assisted the Persians to 
attack the Kawasim, and against the Nuaymi, a 
powerful clan dwelling south of Sharjah on the 
Pirate Coast. His success was complete; Khur- 
fakan, Khasab, Ramsah, Ra’as el Khaymah, 
Jezirat el Hamrah, Sharjah, and Fasht, all in 
turn submitted to him. Im a.p. 1785 he per- 
sonally visited Mombasah, and by his lion-like 
demeanour he secured its submission. 

Dying shortly afterwards, Ahmad bin Said 
left the government to his son, Said bin Ahmad, 
who was declared Imam, but was confined till 
the date of his death, in 1802, to Rustak and its 
territory by his younger brother, the ambitious 
and warlike Sultan bin Ahmad. This prince 
occupied the islands of Khishm, Hormuz, and 
Bahrayn; he attempted to protect his commerce 
from the pirates of Julfar and Ra’as el Khaymah, 
especially the Kawasim, in our books called 
Jowasmee:' these Algerines of the East had now 

1 The Western as well as the Eastern Arabs turn the hard 
Kaf into a Jim, e. g. Jibleh for Kibleh. The Kawasim derive 


VOL... i, 19 


290 SAYYID SAID. 


become Wahhabis, and were backed by all the 
influence of Satid, Lord of Daraiyyah. After 
vainly attempting to obtain aid from the Pasha 
of Baghdad, Sultan bin Ahmad was attacked 
whilst sailing to Bandar Abbas by five ships of 
the Kawasim, and was shot in the mélée on Nov. 
18, 1804. 

This decease brought to power the late 
Sayyid Said,* the second son born to Sayyid Sul- 
tan bin Ahmad in a.p. 1790. His maternal 
uncle, Sayyid Bedr bin Sayf, and the Wahhabi 
Chief, Saud, enabled him to defeat Sultan Kays 
bin Ahmad of Sohar, another uncle who aimed 
at usurpation; but the danger was shifted, not 
destroyed. At length, in a.p. 1806, Sayyid 
Said’s aunt, the Bibi Mauza, daughter of the 
Imam Ahmad, and popularly known as the Bint 
el Imam, determined that Sayyid Bedr must be 
slain at a Darbar. Sayyid Said, a youth of 16, 
was unwilling, but the strong-minded woman— 
in every noble Arab family there is at least one 
—prevailed, and on July 31 the dangerous pro- 


their name from a local Wali, or Santon, the Shaykh Kasim. 

'A detailed account of this Prince’s early life is given in 
the ‘ History of Syed Said, Sultan of Muscat’... trans- 
lated from the Italian. London, 1819 (written by his physi- 
cian, Shaykh Mansur, alias Vincenzo). Buckingham, Fraser, 
and Sir John Malcolm have also supplied notices of his event- 
ful career. 


SAYYID SAID. 291 


tector whilst descending the stairs, was struck 
in the back by his nephew’s dagger. Sayyid 
Bedr sprang from the window, and mounted a 
stirrupless horse which stood below, when he 
was wounded with a spear; the ‘ Imam’s daugh- 


> 


ter,’ with a blood-thirstiness truly feminine, 
cheering on the assassins, till after riding half a 
mile on the highway from Birkat to Sohar, he 
fell from his animal and was speedily despatched. 
The young prince was, they say, so strongly 
affected by the scene, that through life he could 
hardly be persuaded to order a death.’ 

Thus Said became, with the consent of his 
elder brother, Sayyid Salim, an independent 
ruler, and the fourth of his dynasty, the Bu 
Saidi. His proper title was ‘Sayyid,’ which in 
Oman and amongst the Eastern Arabs means a 
chief or temporal ruler, whereas ‘Sherif’ is a 
descendant of the Prophet. Many Anglo-In- 
dian writers ignore this distinction. ‘Imam’ is 
an ecclesiastical title, signifying properly the man 
who takes the lead in public prayer, and it de- 
mands both study and confirmation: in sect- 
arian theology it is the hereditary head of El 

‘T give this account as it was told to me by Lieut.-Col. 


Hamerton. M. Guillain (part II. chap. iii.) may be consulted 
for another and a more diplomatic version. 


292 SAYYID SAID. 


Islam. The ‘Imam of Mascat,’’ therefore, never 
followed the practice of his predecessors. His 
acclamation took place on Sept. 14, 1806. He 
was immediately involved in troubles with Mom- 
basah, Makdishu, and the unruly Arab settle- 
ments of the East African Coast. His possess- 
ions in Oman also were invaded and overrun by 
the Wahhabis, under Said who died in 1814, 
and afterwards under his son Abdullah: these 
energetic Puritans converted, by much fighting 
and more intrigue, several tribes to ‘ Unitari- 
anism’; the land was at once fettered with a 
five per cent. Zakat (annual tribute), of which 
Maskat paid 12,000 German crowns, and Sohar 
$8000. Yet his valour and conduct gradually 
raised Sayyid Said to wealth and importance, 
and the warlike operations of Mohammed Ali 
Pasha against the Wahhabis gave him power to 
throw off the yoke. His personal gallantry in 
the disastrous affair with the Benu Bu ’Ali 
(1820—21), won him the praise of India, and 
the gift of a sword of honour from the Governor- 
General. His tolerance, so unusual in Arabia, 
the patriarchal character of his rule, and his 


* I cannot but express my astonishment to see a geographer 
like Ritter, and a veteran from the East like Colonel Sykes 
(loco cit.), confound ‘Imam’ with ‘Imaun’ (Iman), which 
signifies faith or creed. 


SAYYID SAID. 293 


love of progress, as shown by his concessions to 
European and Hindu traders, and by a squadron 
of three frigates, four corvettes, two sloops, seven 
brigs, and twenty armed merchant vessels, en- 
titled him to a place amongst civilized powers. 
With England he became an especial favourite, 
after he had entered into the Palmerstonian 
views upon the subject of slave exportation. 
He began by sacrificing, it is said, 100,000 
crowns annually, and he declined the various 
equivalents, £2000 for three years, and other 
paltry sums offered in a.p. 1822, as a compensa- 
tion by Captain Moresby, R.N. His friendship 
with us, indeed, cost him dear: more than once 
he threatened that if other concessions were de- 
manded by the unconscionable abolitionist he 
would escape the incessant worry by abdicating 
and retiring to Meccah. 

Sayyid Said first left Maskat for Zanzibar in 
1828, and finally in 1832, justly offended by our 
refusing to assist him, according to treaty, 
against Sayyid Hamud bin Azran bin Kays, 
the rebel chief of Sohar. Our policy on. this 
occasion is generally supposed to have been 
prompted by Captain, afterwards Colonel, Sam. 
Hennell, British Resident at Bushire. This 
official, acting doubtless under orders, and living 


294 SAYYID SAID. 


in constant dread of ‘ breaking the peace of the 
Gulf,’ preserved it by yielding every point to 


every man; and the ignoble attitude which, 
amongst a warlike race, provoked only contempt, 
laid the foundation of the last Persian war. It 
was on a par with the orders which, under pain | 
of dismissal, bound the officers commanding the : 
Honourable East India Company’s cruisers in 

the Persian Gulf not to open fire upon a squadron 

of pirates unless they began the cannonade; and ~ 
which caused the capture by boarding of more 
than one man-of-war. 

Zanzibar had, since its conquest by Oman, 
been governed by an officer appointed from 
Arabia. Sayyid Safd found the town a line of 
cajan huts, with the fort commanding the 
harbour, which served only for an occasional 
pirate or slaver. Till a. p. 1822 some 15 or 16 
Spaniards and Portuguese ranged these seas, 
committing every kind of atrocity: they were 
dangerous outside the port, and when at anchor 
they were guilty of every crime; as many as three 
and four have been killed in a single night, anda 
priest was kept for the purpose of shriving the 
stabbed and burying the slain. These, however, 
were the days of large profits. The share of 
one Arab merchant in a single adventure was 


SAYYID SAID. 295 


worth $218,000—he now (1857) begs his bread. 

Sayyid Said at once began to encourage 
foreign residents. With a remarkable liberality 
he at once broke up the monopoly of trade 
which the Wasawahili had preserved for eight 
centuries, including the 200 years when it was 
perpetuated by the avidity and the fanaticism 
of the Portuguese. The United States, who 
being first in the market for ivory, copal, and 
hides, had dispersed their cottons and hardwares 
throughout Hastern Africa, concluded with him, 
in Sept. 1835, an advantageous treaty, and estab- 
lished, about the end of 1837, a trading consul- 
ate at his court. Four years afterwards (De- 
cember, 1841) Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton was 
directed to make Zanzibar his head-quarters as 
‘H. B. Majesty’s Consul, and H. H. I. Company’s 
Agent in the dominions of H. H. the Imaum.’ 
Captain Romain Desfossés, the Mentor of the 
Prince de Joinville, and commanding the naval 
division of Bourbon and Madagascar, escorted by 
a squadron, signed a treaty on November, 1844. 
He was accompanied by a consul without a chan- 
cellier, and the former at once receiving his ex- 
equatur, began residence. 

The Sayyid was unfortunate in sundry at- 
tempts to subjugate the Zanzibar Coast: his 


296 SAYYID SAID. 


conduct of war argued scant skill as a general, but 
he never forfeited his well-earned favour for per- 
sonak gallantry. With the true Arab mania for 
territorial conquest, he eventually succeeded in 
flying his flag at all the ports that belonged to 
the Yu’rabi Imams, and which had descended, 
by the irregular right of succession, to his ances- 
tor, Ahmad bin Safd the Hinawi. The Ma- 
zara’ (Mazrui) clan, alias the Arabo-Mombasah 
princes, a turbulent and hot-tempered feudality, 
who, after the massacre of the Portuguese, had 
been allowed, by Sayf bin Sultan, to retain the 
city on condition of sending occasional presents 
and of doing certain baronial services, refused (A.D. 
1822) allegiance to the Ayyal Ba Safd. Captain 
Vidal, R.N., finding this important place threat- 
ened by Zanzibar, accepted an application from the 
citizens, who had hoisted the British flag; advised 
that they should be received as protégés, and per- 
suaded the claimant to withdraw. The Sayyid 
remonstrated against these measures with the 
Bombay Government ; and the ministers of the 
Crown to whom the question was referred, event- 
ually removed our establishment. 

Sayyid Safd, early in 1828, sailed with a 
squadron carrying 1200 men, to attack the town, 
but after taking and garrisoning the fort, he was 


SAYYID SAID. 297 


compelled to make Zanzibar, and eventually 
Maskat. The retreat was in consequence of the 
troubles excited by Saud bin Ali bin Sayf, the 
nephew of Sayyid Bedr, supported by the sister 
of Sayyid Hilal, chief of Suwayk, who had been 
treacherously imprisoned. He was enabled, by 
the aid of Isa bin Tarif and his dependents, to 
invest, with a squadron carrying a force of 4000 
to 5000 men, about the end of December, 1829, 
Mombasah Fort, from which his garrison had 
been repulsed. The Mazru’is, numbering a total 
of some 1500, gallantly held their ground: the 
Sayyid’s soldiers, suffering severely from fever, 
refused to fight: briefly two campaigns had little 
effect upon the besieged, and the Sayyid was 
obliged to accept the semblance of submission, in 
order to return triumphant to Zanzibar. After 
visiting Maskat, and putting down Hamud bin 
Azran, who had taken Rustak, and was threaten- 
ing the capital, he broke the treaty with Momba- 
sah, and blockaded it throughout the N. East mon- 
soon from November, 1831, to April, 1832. During 
the next year he attacked the place for the third 
time; but, after a week’s campaign, he returned 
once more with Oriental triumph to Zanzibar in 
February, 1833. Then treachery was called in 
to do the perfect work. Rashid bin Salim bin 


298 SAYYID SAID. 


Ahmad, the Mazrwi Wali or governor, and 
twenty-six of his kinsmen, enticed by the most 
solemn oaths, which were accompanied by a 
sealed Koran—it is wonderful how lar trusts 
liar !—embarked on one of the Sayyid’s ships, 
which carried his son Sayyid Khalid and Sulay- 
man bin Ahmad. The vessel instantly weighed 
anchor, stood for Zanzibar, and consigned its 
cargo to life-long banishment and prison, at Mina 
and Bandar Abbas. The Mazara’ at once sank 
into utter obscurity. 

Sayyid Said was persuaded (Jan. 6, 1843) to 
attack that notorious plunderer, Bana M’takha, 
chief of Sewi, a small territory near Lamu, who 
had persuaded one Mfumo Bakkari, and after- 
wards his brother Mohammed bin Shaykh, to de- 
clare himself Lord of Patta, and independent of 
the Arab prince. The ruler of Zanzibar here failed 
to repeat his success at Mombasah, the wily Afri- 
can shutting his ear to the charmer’s voice. The 
second son, Sayyid Khalid, then disembarked his 
1200 to 13800 troops, Maskatis and Wasawahih, 
‘cowardly as Maskatis,’ who with the Suri are 
the proverbial dastards of the race. He served 
out with Semitic economy five cartridges per head, 
and he marched them inland without a day’s rest, 
after a ‘ buggalow ’-voyage from Arabia. Short 


SAYYID SAID. 299 


of ammunition, and worn out by fatigue, they 
soon yielded to the violent onslaught of the enemy. 
The Wagunya, or as some write the word Bajuni, 
warriors, described to be a fierce race of savages, 
descended from the Wasawahili, the Somal, and 
the Arab colonists, charged in firm line, brandish- 
ing spear-heads like those of the Wamasai, a cubit 
long, and shouting as they waved their standards, 
wooden hoops hung round with the dried and 
stuffed spoils of men.’ The Arabs fled with such 
precipitation, that some 300 were drowned, an 
indiscriminate massacre and mutilation took 
place, the ‘ England’ and the ‘ Prince of Wales’ 
opened an effectual fire upon their own boats 
and friends; the guns which had been landed were 
all captured, and the Sayyid Khalid saved him- 
self only by the speed of his horse. The opera- 
tion was repeated with equal unsuccess next 
year, Sayyid Said himself embarking on board 
the ‘ Victoria :’ the general, Hammad bin Ahmad, 
fell into an ambuscade, and again the artillery 
was lost. After a blockade of the Coast, which 
lasted till the end of 1866, the Kazi of Zanzi- 
bar, Muhiyy el Din of Lamu, landing upon his 

1 The trophies are drawn out with a lanyard, and cut off 


when the patient is still alive—after death they are not so 
much valued’; finally they are dried so as to resemble isinglass. 


300 | SAYYID SAID. 


native island, talked over the insurgents. Bana 
M’takha afterwards sent back the Arab cannon, 
saying that he could not afford to keep weapons 
which ate such vast meals of powder, and acknow- 
ledged for a consideration the supremacy of Zan- 
zibar, retaining his power, and promising but 
never intending to pay an annual tribute of 
$9000. Hence the Baloch mercenaries speak of 
their late employer as a king who bought and 
sold, and who was more distinguished for the 
arts of peace than for the nice conduct of war. 
Even his own subjects complained on this occa- 
sion of his folly in commencing, and of his want 
of energy in carrying on, the campaign. 

The Sayyid’s matrimonial engagements were 
numerous. In 1827 he married the daughter 
of the Farman-farma (Governor) of Fars, and a 
grand-daughter of Fath *Ali Shah, under an 
agreement in the marriage contract that the 
bride might spend every summer with her 
own family at Bandar Abbas or Shiraz. Dis- 
gusted with Arab homeliness, and with six years 
of monotonously hot life at Maskat, she obtained 
leave, and once in a place of safety she wrote 
back a strong epistle. It began, ‘Ya Dayyus! 
yi Malan, alluding to the report that Sayyid 
Khalid had violated the harem of his father, as 


SAYYID SAID. 301 


the latter was also said to have done in his 
younger days. The Arab prince had lowered 
himself in the eyes of his subjects by represent- 
ing himself to be a Shiah. She called him a 
dog-Sunni, and upon this ground she demanded 
instant divorce. The Sayyid despatched two 
confidential elders with orders to represent that 
his spouse could not legally claim such indulg- 
ence: a singular bastinado upon the soles of 
their feet soon made the venerable learned dis- 
cover that divine right was upon the lady’s side. 
Her next exploit was to bowstring, in jealousy, a 
Katirchi (muleteer) with whom she had in- 
trigued ; and, driven from Shiraz by the fame of 
this exploit, she died at Kazimayn, in child-bed, 
her lover being this time a Hammamchi, or 
bath-servant. 

In a.D. 1833, four years after the death of 
Radama I., the Sayyid formed matrimonial de- 
signs upon the person of Ranavola Manjaka, 
Queen of the Hovas, and a personage somewhat 
more redoubtable than our good Queen Bess. 
Amongst his envoys on this occasion was one 
Khamisi wa Tani, who, under the Arabized name 
Khamis bin Osman, presently played some 
notable tricks upon the credulous ‘ compara- 
tive geographer,’ Mr W. D. Cooley. The envoys 


302 SAYYID SAID. 


were kept upon the frontier till the ‘Tangi-man ’ © 


arrived, bringing the Tangina. This nut, scraped 
in water, is administered as an ordeal, like the 
bitter water of the ancient Israelites and the 
poison nut of modern Calabar. The patient is 
ordered to walk about; after some 20 minutes 
he feels atrocious bowel-pains, prolapsus takes 
place, and he dies; if wealthy enough to pay 
the priest, another kind of nut is at once admin- 
istered, and it may cure by emesis. As soon as 
this potion, which always destroys traitors with 
frightful torments, in fact, with the worst symp- 
toms of Asiatic cholera, was proposed to the am- 
bassadors, in order to prove the purity of their 
intentions, and their affection for the royal family, 
all fled precipitately, as may be imagined, from 
the ‘ Great Britain’ of Africa. Sayyid Said was 
also unlucky in the choice of another Persian 
bride, the daughter of Irich Mirza, a suppositi- 
tious son of Mohammed Shah, and hardly a 
second-class noble. She came to Zanzibar in 
A.D. 1849, accompanied by a train of attendants, 
including her Farrdshas (carpet-spreaders), her 
Jilaudar (groom), and her private Jellad (execu- 
tioner). Sheastonished the Arabs by her free use 
of the dagger, whilst her intense relish of seeing 
her people ride men down in the bazar, and of 


SAYYID SAID. 303 


superintending bastinadoes administered with 
Persian apparatus, made the Banyans crouch in 
their shops with veiled faces, and the Arabs 
thank Allah that their women were not like 
those of the A’ajam. In a short time the lady 
made herself so disagreeable, that her husband 
sent her back divorced to her own country. 

The Sayyid kept a company of 60 or 70 concu- 
bines, and he always avoided those that bore him 
children. Though a man of strong frame and 
vigorous constitution, he exhausted his powers 
by excesses in the harem, he suffered from 
Sarcocele (sinistral) during later life, and an 
alarming emaciation argued consumption. The 
heat of Maskat, which he last visited when 
hostilities between England and Persia were 
reported, brought him to his grave. In October, 
1856, he died at sea off the Seychelles Islands, on 
board his own frigate, the ‘ Victoria.’ Aged 67, 
the ‘Second Omar,’ as his subjects were fond of 
calling him before his face, seems to have had 
a presentiment of death; before embarking he 
prepared, contrary to Arab custom, a ‘Sandtk 
el Mayyit,’ or coffin, and when dying he gave 
orders that his remains should be thrown over- 
board. The corpse, however, was carried to Zan- 
zibar and interred in the city. 


304 SAYYID SAID. 


Sayyid Said was probably as shrewd, liberal, 
and enlightened a prince as Arabia ever pro- 
duced, yet HKurope overrated his powers. Like 
Orientals generally, he was ever surrounded by 
an odious entourage, whom he consulted, trusted, 
and apparently preferred to his friends and well- 
wishers. He firmly believed in the African 
Fetish and in the Arab Sahir’s power of me- 
tamorphosis ;* he would never flog a Meganga 


1 T have alluded to this subject in my exploration of Harar 
(chap. 11.), and a few more details may not be uninteresting. 
Strong-headed Pliny (viii. 32) believes metamorphosis to be a 
‘fabulous opinion,’ and remarks, ‘ there is no falsehood, how- 
ever impudent, that wants its testimony among them’ (the 
Greeks), yet at Tusdrita he saw L. Coisilius, who had been 
changed from a woman intoa man. Curious to say, the learned 
Anatomist of Melancholy (Part I. sect. 1) charges him with 
believing in the versipellis, and explains the belief by lycan- 
thropy, cucubuth or Lupina Insania. Petronius gives an 
account of the ‘fact.’ Pomponius Mela accuses the Druidesses 
of assuming bestial shapes. Suidas mentions a city where 
men changed their forms. Simon Magus could produce a 
double of himself. Saxo Grammaticus declared that the priests 
of Odin took various appearances. John of Salisbury asserts 
that Mercury taught mankind the damnable art of fascinating 
the eyes. Joseph Acosta instances fellow-countrymen in the 
West Indies who were shot during transformation. Our 
ancestry had their were-wolf (homo-lupus), and the Britons 
their Bisclavaret. Coffin, the Abyssinian traveller, all but saw 
his Buda change himself into a hyena. Mr Mansfield Parkyns 
heard of a human horse. In Shoa and Bornou men become 
leopards; in Persia, bears; in Somali-land Cyn-hyenas ; in 
West African Kru-land elephants and sharks; in Namaqua- 
land, according to the late Mr Andersson, lions. At Maskat 


SAYYID SAID. 305 


(medicine-man), nor cut down a ‘ devil’s tree.’ 
He sent for a Shaykh whose characts were 
famous, and with a silver nail he attached the 


transformation is fearfully frequent; and illiterate Shiahs be- 
lieve the good Caliph Abubekr, whom they call Pir i Kaftar 
(old hyena), to be trotting about the deserts of Oman in the 
semblance of a she-hyena, pursued by many amorous males. 
At Bushire the strange tale of Haji Ismail, popularly called 
‘Shuturi,’ the ‘Camel’d,’ is believed by every one, and was 
attested with oaths by his friends and relations: this respect- 
able merchant whilst engaged in pilgrimage was transformed 
by an Arab into a she-camel, and became the mother of several 
foals, till restored to human shape by another enchanter. 
Even in Europe, after an age of scepticism, the old natural 
superstition is returning, despite the pitch-fork, under another 
shape. The learned authoress of the Night-side of Nature 
objects to ‘illusionists,’ argues lycanthropy to be the effect of 
magico-magnetic influence, and instances certain hysterical and 
nervous phenomena of eyes paralyzed by their own weakness. 

For many years I have carefully sifted every case reported 
to me in Asia and Africa, and I have come to the conclusion 
with which most men commence. No amount of evidence can 
justify belief in impossibilities, in bona fide miracles. More- 
over, such evidence mostly comes from the duper and the dupe. 
Finally, al] objective marvels diminish in inverse ratio to the 
increase of knowledge, whilst preternaturalisms and super- 
naturalisms gradually dwindle down to the natural badly un- 
derstood. 

Of course this disclaimer of belief in the vulgar miracle 
does not imply that human nature has no mysterious powers 
which, if highly developed and displayed in a dark age, would 
be treated as a miracle or as an act of magic. It has lately 
been proved that the will exercises positive and measurable 
force upon inert matter; such ‘glimpses of natural actions, 
not yet reduced to law,—as Mr Faraday said—open up a 


wonderful vista in the days to come. 
VOL. lL. 


306 SAYYID SAID. 


paper to the doorway of Lieut.-Colonel Ham- 
erton’s sick-room, thereby excluding evil spirits 
and the ghost of Mr Napier, who had died at 
the Consulate. He refused to sit for his por- 
trait—even Colonel Smyth’s History of Knight- 
errantry and Chivalrous Characters failed to 
tempt him, for the European peasants’ reason, 
—it would take away part of his life. When 
‘chivalry ’ was explained to hin, he pithily re- 
marked that only the ‘ Siflah’ (low fellows) in- 
terfere between man and wife, master and man. 
His pet axiom—a fair test of mental bias—was 
‘Mullahs, women, and horses never can be 
called good till death,’ in this resembling Pulei— 


Cascan le rose, e restan poi le spine ; 
Non giudicate nulla innanzi al fine. 


The Société Royale des Antiquaires du Nord 
sent him their diploma: he declared that he would 
not belong to a body of grave-robbers and corpse- 
snatchers. The census of Zanzibar having been 
proposed to him, unlike King David, he took re- 
fuge with Allah from the sin of numbering his 
people. When tide-gauges were supplied by the 
Geographical Society of Bombay, he observed 
that the Creator had bidden the ocean to ebb and 
to flow—‘ what else did man want to know about 
it?’ Such was his incapacity for understanding 


SAYYID SALD. 307 


European affairs, that until death’s-day he be- 
lieved Louis Philippe to have carried into exile, 
as he himself would have done, all the fleet and 
the public treasure of the realm. And he never 
could comprehend a Republic— who adminis- 
ters the stick ?’ 

Of this enterprising man, the Mohammed Ali 
Pasha of the further Hast, I may say, Extinctus 
amabitur idem. Shrewd and sensible, highly re- 
ligious though untainted by fanaticism; affable 
and courteous, he was as dignified in sentiments 
as distinguished in presence and demeanour. He 
is accused of grasping covetousness and treach- 
ery—but what Arab ruler is not covetous and 
treacherous? He was aprince after the heart of 
his subjects; prouder of his lineage than fond of 
ostentation or display, an amateur conqueror on a 
small scale, mild in punishment, and principally 
remarkable as the chief merchant, cultivator, 
and ship-builder in his dominions. An epitaph 
may be borrowed for him from a man of very 
different character—first in war, first in peace, 
and first in the hearts of his fellow-countrymen. 
Peace be to his manes ! 

Sayyid Said’s territory at the time of his 
death extended in Oman from the Ra’as el Jebel 
(Cape Musseldom) to Sohar. In Mekran the 


308 SAYYID SAT 


seaboard between Ra’as Jask and Guadel be- 
longed to him: in the Persian Gulf he had 
Khishm, Larak, and Hormuz, and he farmed 
from the Shah, Bandar Abbas and its depend- 
ency, Mina. His African possessions were far 
the most extensive and important. He ruled, to 
speak roughly, the whole Eastern Coast from N. 
lat. 5°, and even from Cape Guardafui, where 
the maritime Somal were to a certain extent his 
dependents, to Cape Delgado (S. lat. 11°), where 
the Arab met the Portuguese rule—an extent of 
16° = 960 geographical miles. The small re- 
publics of Makdishu (Magadoxo, in N. lat. 2° 
l’ 4°), of Brava (N. lat. 1° 6 48”), of Patta or 
Bette (S. lat. 2° 9’ 12”), and of Lamu (S. lat. 
2° 15’ 42”), owned his protectorate, and in April, 
1865, Marka received from him a garrison. The 
whole Zanzibarian Archipelago was his, and he 
claimed Bahrayn, Zayla, Aden, and Berberah, 
the first-mentioned with, the last three without, 
a shadow of right. His Arab subjects declared 
that they, and not the Portuguese, ceded Bom- 
bay to the British: the foundation of the story 
is a mosque built in ancient times by the 
Omanis, somewhat near the present Boree Ban- 
dar. 


Sayyid Said left a single widow, the lady 


SAYYID SAID. 309 


Azza bint Musa, of the Bu Khariban, a grand- 
daughter of the Imam Ahmad, and consequently 
a cousin. She is now (1857) in years, but her 
ancient lineage and her noble manners retain 
for her the public respect. She had but one 
child, which died young: all the male issue of 
the Prince are by slave-girls, a degradation -in 
the eyes of free-born Omani Arabs. As usual 
amongst the wealthy and noble of the poly- 
gamous East, the daughters are the more nu- 
merous, and many are old maids, the pride of 
birth not allowing them, like the Sherifehs of 
the Hejaz, to wed with any but equals. The 
eldest of the fourteen sons, Sayyid Hilal, who, 
in 1845, had visited England, it is said, after 
an escapade, died at Aden en route to Meccah 
in 1851. He was followed, after an interval of 
a few months, by his next brother, Sayyid Kha- 
lid, called the Banyan. The eldest surviving 


' In the Journal of Anthropology (No. ii. Oct. 1870, Art. 
ix.), James Campbell, Surgeon, R.N., produces a paper upon 
‘Polygamy; its influence on Sex and Population, showing, 
by 17 cases drawn from Siam, exceptions to the common 
theory that in the patriarchal family more female than male 
children are born, But the evidence is too superficial to 
shake the belief of men who have passed their lives in poly- 
gamous countries; moreover, in the families cited the male- 
producing powers may either have been unusual, or they may 
have been peculiarly stimulated. 


310 SAYYID SAID. 


heir (Sayyid Suwayni), the son of a Georgian or 
Circassian slave, born about 1822, became by his 
father’s will, successor to and lord of the north- 
ern provinces. ‘To Sayyid Majid, the fourth son, 
now (1857) aged 22, a prince of mild disposition 
and amiable manners, contrasting strongly with 
the vigorous ruffianism of his elder brother, was 
left the Government of Zanzibar and of the 
Kast African Coast. There is, as usual amongst 
Arabs, a turbulent tribe of cousins: of these the 
most influential is Sayyid Mohammed, a son of 
Sayyid Salim bin Sultan, younger brother to the 
late Prince, who some years ago died of con- 
sumption. Hitherto he has used his powers 
loyally—ruling, but not openly ruling. Sayyid 
Said’s valuable property, including his planta- 
tions, was sold, as his will directed, and the 
money was divided according to a fixed scale, 
even the youngest princes claiming shares. No 
better inducement to permanent dissension could 
have been devised. But Eastern monarchs ap- 
parently desire that their dynasties should die 
with them. Fath Ali Shah of Persia, when 
asked upon his death-bed to name a successor, 
drew a sword and showed what made and un- 
made monarchs: scarcely had the breath left his 
body than the chamber was dyed with the blood 


SAYYID SAID. dll 


of his sons, each hastening to stab some hated 
rival brother. 

These lines were penned in 1857. Since 
1859 the hapless and turbulent family has been 
in a state of fratricidal strife, and the province 
of Oman has reverted to its normal state of in- 
trigue, treachery, and assassination. Sayyid 
Suwayni, a negligent and wasteful though not 
an unpopular man, to whom the English were 
especially obnoxious, threatened in 1859 an at- 
tack upon Sayyid Majid, and was prevented by 
British cruisers ; in due time he was murdered 
by his son, Sayyid Salim, who usurped the 
Government. This Sayyid Salim was dethroned 
by his uncle, Sayyid Turki, who surprised Mas- 
kat, and made himself master of the situation. 
The European would imagine that the stakes 
were hardly worth such reckless play: Arabs, 
however, judge otherwise. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


ETHNOLOGY OF ZANZIBAR. THE FOREIGN 
RESIDENTS. 


‘Quiconqgue ne voit guére 
N’a guére a dire aussi. Mon voyage depeint 
Vous sera d’un plaisir extréme. 
Je dirai; j’étais 14; telle chose m’avint, 
Vous y croirez étre vous-méme.’—La Fonratne. 


THe 300,000 souls’ now (1857-9) composing 
the residents on, and the population of, the Zan- 
zibar Island, are a heterogeneous body. The 
former consist of Americans and Europeans, 


'The extremes mentioned to me were 100,000 and 
1,000,000. Captain Smee (1811) gave 200,000. Dr Ruschen- 
berger (1835) made the population of the Island 150,000 
souls, of whom 17,000 were free negroes. M. Guillain 
(1846) places the extremes mentioned to him at 60,000 to 
200,000: when he asked the Sayyid, the latter replied like a 
veritable Arab, ‘ How can I know when I cannot tell you how 
many there are in my own house ?’ 


THE CONSULAR CORPS. 313 


about 14,000 Banyans (including those of the 
Coast), a few Parsees and Portuguese from Goa, 
and sundry castes of Hindustani Moslems, Kho- 
jahs, Mehmans, and Borahs, numbering some 
1200. There are also trifling numbers of free 
blacks from the Comoro Islands, Madagascar, 
Unyamwezi, and the Somali country. To this 
accidental division I will devote the present 
chapter. 

The Consular corps is represented by three 
members, who, as usual in these remote Oriental 
spots, assume, and are allowed to assume, the 
position of plenipos. The first American official 
was Mr Richard Palmer, who was succeeded by 
sundry acting men: the second was Mr Waters, 
who left in 1844: then came Mr C. Ward, Mr 
Webb, and Mr Macmullan. Captain Mansfield 
now (1859) holding office, is agent to Messrs 
John Bertram and Co. of Salem. This gentle- 
man, who took a great interest in the East 
African Expedition, has had a more extensive 
experience of the East than his predecessors ; he 
has also the advantage of being respectable and 
respected. 

On the part of the French Government the 
first Consul was M. Broquant: he died of fever 
and dysentery at Zanzibar, and was succeeded by 


314 THE CONSULAR CORPS. 


M. de Beligny, a French Creole from Santo. 
Domingo, afterwards transferred to Manilla and 
to Charleston, South Carolina. M. Vignard, a 
young man of amiable manners, and distin- 
guished in Algeria as an Arabic scholar, fell 
victim to a sunstroke when voyaging from Aden, 
where I met him en route for his post. The pre- 
sent Consul is M. Ladislas Cochet: the Chan- 
cellier and Dragoman is M. Jablonski, Pole 
and poet. 

Lieut.-Colonel Atkins Hamerton is, and has 
been, I have said, H. B. Majesty’s Consul, and 
H. E. I. Company’s Agent at the Court of H. H. 
Sayyid Said, since December, 1841, when we first 
established relations with Zanzibar. Attached 
to his establishment is a passed apothecary, an 
Eurasian, the only attempt at a medico on the 
Island. Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton had been on ~ 
terms of intimacy with Sayyid Said during a 
quarter of a century; and their friendship, as 
happens, began with a ‘little aversion.’ The 
Britisher proposed to travel in the interior from 
Maskat, in those days a favourite exploration 
with the more adventurous; and the Arab, sus- 
picious as all Arabs, thinking it safest to put the 
intruder out of the way, imprudently wrote a — 
letter to that effect. This missive fell into the — 


— 


LIEUT.-COLONEL HAMERTON. 315 


hands of the person whom it most concerned: he 


boldly carried it to the Prince, and reproached 


him in no measured terms with his perfidy. 
Sayyid Said found himself overmatched, sub- 
mitted to Kismat, and, admiring the traveller’s 
spirit and openness, determined to win his at- 
tachment. The two became firm friends; the 
Consul was the influential adviser of the ruler, 
and the latter intrusted him with secrets jeal- 
ously hidden from his own. The reason why 
the trade of Zanzibar was surprisingly devel- 
oped under the primitive rule of an Arab Prince 
is not only the immense wealth of LHastern 
Africa, it results mainly from the wise measures 
of a man who for the greater part of his life 
devoted himself to the task. It was an un- 
worthy feeling which made M. Guillain write of 
my late friend (ii. 23), ‘ Bref, sa réputation est 
de placer fort bien, et a beaux bénéfices, l’argent 
que lui donnent la reine et le gouvernment de la 
compagnie ’—his generosity to his family left 
little after his decease. Not the least of Sayyid 
Said’s anxieties upon his death-bed was to reach 
Zanzibar alive, and even when half-unconscious 
he continually called for Colonel Hamerton. It 
is suspected that he wished to communicate the 
place of his concealed treasures, which, despite 


316 LIEUT.-COLONEL HAMERTON. 


the most careful search, were never found. When 
hiding their hoards it is not unusual for Arabs 
to put to death the slaves who assist in the labour, 
and thus to prevent negro indiscretion. ‘The 
family, I may here say, firmly believes that 
Colonel Hamerton knows where the hoards lay, 
and yet refuses to divulge the secret. 

It will not be easy properly to fill this ap- 
pointment. Without taking into consideration 
the climate, it is evident that few Englishmen 
are prepared to settle for long years at remote 
Zanzibar, and Arabs do not care to trust new 
men. Yet it would be the acme of short-sight- 
edness to neglect this part of Hast Africa. Our 
Anglo-Indian subjects, numbering about 4000? 
in the dominions of Zanzibar, some of them 
wealthy men, are entitled to protection from the 
Arab, and more especially from the Christian 
merchants. Almost the whole foreign trade, or 
at least four-fifths of it, passes through their 
hands; they are the principal shopkeepers and 
artisans, and they extend as far South as Mozam- 
bique, Madagascar, and the Comoro Islands. 
During the last few years the number of In- 
dian settlers has greatly increased, and they have 


‘The extremes of the guess-work census are 2600 and 
5000. 


EUROPEAN SETTLEMENT. 317 


obtained possession from the Arabs, by purchase 
or mortgage, of many landed estates in the Say- 
yid’s dominions. The country can look forward 
only to a moderate development whilst it con- 
tinue in the present hands, but the capabilities 
of the coast are great. Labour only is wanted ; 
and a European power establishing itself upon 
the mainland—this object has frequently been 
proposed, and is steadily kept in view—could in 
a few years command a territory and a com- 
merce which would rival Western India. 

The other white residents are commercial, 
and it is with no little astonishment that the 
Englishman finds no direct trade with Great 
Britain, and meets none of his fellow-country- 
men at Zanzibar. Their absence results not 
from want of venture or dearth of business, but 
from supineness on the part of the authorities. 
No merchant can profitably settle where he can- 
not freely correspond, receive advices that ships 
have been despatched, and obtain orders for car- 
goes and consignments. Moreover, large sums 
have been wasted by respectable houses in settling 4 
here trustworthy agents and sober men. The few 
favourable exceptions found the climate either 


‘In 1862-3 a Bombay firm established a branch on the 
Island, but I have not heard of the results. 


318 EUROPEAN RESIDENTS. 


unendurable or fatal. Hitherto, however, Eng- 
lishmen have done little, and, I write it unwill- 
ingly, Englishwomen have done less, for the 
honour of the national name at Zanzibar than in 
most parts of the East. Two girls came out to 
the Island, married to the usual ‘ black princes,’ 
who mostly turn out to be barbers or domestic 
servants; this proceeding greatly scandalized 
the white residents, and the Desdemonas gave 
more trouble to the officials than the whole 
colony. 
The principal American houses are those of 
Messrs Bertram & Co., represented by Captain 
Mansfield, Mr Ropes, and Mr Webb: Messrs 
Rufus Green & Co., also of Salem, have three 
agents, Messrs Winn, Spalding, and Wilkins. 
Lastly, there is Mr Samuel Masury, of Salem, a 
‘general merchant,’ distinguished for probity 
and commercial sagacity: he left Zanzibar 
during our exploration of the interior, and he 
presently came to an untimely end. 

The French houses began with a misconcep- 
*tion, a certain chancellier having reported offici- 
ally to his Government, that 232 ships annually 
visited and loaded at Zanzibar. The intelligence 
caused considerable excitement: it was believed 
that every vessel left these shores crammed with 


FRENCHMEN. 319 


copal, ivory, and gold dust, and the French 
merchants resolved by concurrence to drive the 
Americans out of the field. Messrs Vidal fréres 
of Marseille despatched accordingly to Zanzi- 
bar Messrs Bauzan, Wellesley, and Peronnet, 
and appointed M. Mass their second agent at 
Lamu. They were opposed by Messrs Rabaud 
fréres, also of Marseilles, a house from whom we 
received especial kindness: their Zanzibar man- 
ager was M. Hannibal Bérard, and M. Terassin 
was sent to the ‘bone of contention,’ Lamu. 
These firms choose their employés amongst their 
captains, who act supercargoes as well as com- 
manders; they are estimable men, sober and 
skilful, but painfully lax in dealing with ‘les 
négres.’ Their Consul publicly declared that it 
was his duty to curb the merchants, as well as 
to protect the commerce of France. 

The specialty of the French houses is oil. 
They export the cocoa-nut in various forms, 
sesamum and other oleaginous grains, which 
Provence converts with such energy and success 
into huile Volives. The sesamum is a compara- * 
tively new article of commerce, yet the Periplus 
(chap. xiv.) numbers Elezeon Sesdminon (oil of 
sesamum) amongst the imports from India. 
Now it is supplied chiefly by Lamu. Vast 


320 FRENCHMEN. 


quantities could be grown there, but the natives, 
though large advances have been offered to them, 
will not extend their cultivation for fear of low- 
ering the price, which has lately doubled. 
French ships now visit the West Coast of India 
as far North as Kurrachee, in search of sesamum, 
and last year (1856) 27 vessels took cargo from 
Bombay. 

At length the Marseille houses found out 
that Zanzibar is overstocked with buyers ; that 
demand in these regions does not readily, at 
least, create supply; that it is far easier to dis- 
pose of than to collect a cargo; that the African 
man will not work as long as he can remain idle, 
and that sure profits are commanded only by the 
Banyan system; briefly, the two French houses 
are eating up each other. The Messrs Vidal are 
named for a loss of $400,000, which it will be 
impossible to recoup. It is also reported that 
too sanguine M. le Chancellier was threatened 
with a procés-verbal ; of his 232 ships 70 were 
whalers, many names had been twice registered, 
and only 32 (232 minus 200) took in cargo. 

The houses from Hamburg, that ‘ Carthage of 
the Northern Seas,’ conclude the lst of Euro- 
peans. The brothers Horn and M. Quas, agents 
for Messrs Herz and Co., are the most successful 


GERMANS. 321 


copal cleaners; they find it more economical to 
keep a European cooper than to depend upon 
the bazar. Messrs William and Albert Oswald, 
British protégés, represent their father; they are 
assisted by M. Witt, an intelligent young man, 
who haying graduated in Californian gold-fields, 
proposes to prospect the Coast. M. Koll acts 
for Messrs Hansing and Co., and, lastly, M. 
Reich, lately returned to the Island, is the re- 
presentative of Messrs Miller and Co. 

Europeans are, as a rule, courteously treated 
by the upper classes, and civilly by the Arabs at 
Zanzibar; this, however, is not always the case 
on the Coast. They are allowed to fly flags; 
every merchant has his staff upon his roof, and 
there is a display of bunting motley as in the 
Brazil. Even a Cutch boat will carry the Say- 
yid’s plain red colours, with the Union Jack in 
the corner, and the Turkish crescent and star in 
the centre. 

Composed of patch-work material, the Euro- 
peans do not unite, and their disputes, especially 
between eompatriots, are exasperated by com- 
mercial rivalries, which have led to serious viola- 
tions of faith. All is wearisome monotony: there 
is no society, no pleasure, no excitement; sport- 


ing is forbidden by the treacherous climate, and, 
VOL. I. 21 


322 | FOOD. 


as in West Africa and the Brazil, strangers soon 
lose the habit of riding and walking. Moreover, 
the merchants, instead of establishing the busi- 
ness hours of Bombay, make themselves at home 
to their work throughout the day; this is the 
custom of the Bonny River, where supercargoes 
are treated like shopkeepers by the negroes. 
European women, I repeat, seldom survive the 
isolation and the solitary confinement to which 
not only the place but also the foul customs of 
the people condemn them. 

The necessaries of life at Zanzibar are plenti- 
ful, if not good. Bread of imported wheat is 
usually ‘ cooked’ in the house, and the yeast of 
sour toddy renders it nauseous and unwholesome. 
There have been two bakers upon the Island: 
one served at the Consulate, the other, a Petsian, 
was in the employment of the Prince. Meat is 
poor; a good preserved article would here make 
cent. per cent. Poultry is abundant, tasteless 
and unnutritious; fish is also common, but it is | 
hardly eatable, except at certain seasons. Cows’ 
milk is generally to be had, but the.butter is 
white, and resembles grease; fruit must be 
bought at the different bazars early in the 
morning. All such articles as tea, wine, and 
spirits, cigars, tobacco, and sweetmeats, are im- 


EXPENSE. 393 


ported from America or from Europe,—the town 
supplies nothing so civilized. Retail dealing is 
wanted, and the nearest approach to a shop is 
the store of a Khojah, who will buy and sell 
everything, from a bead to a bale of cloth. 

All articles but money are expensive at Zan- 
zibar, where the dollar represents our shilling.’ 
This is the result of the large sums accumulated 
by trade and of the necessity of importing pro- 
visions ; we see the same process at work through- 
out the tropical Brazil. Moreover, in all semi- 
barbarous lands a stranger living like a native, 
may live upon ‘ half-nothing;’ if he would, how- 
ever, preserve the comforts of home, and especially 
if he would see society, he must consent to an — 
immoderate expenditure. Finally, where the 
extremes of wealth and poverty meet, and where 
semi-civilization has not discovered that pru- 
dence is a virtue and improvidence a blunder, 
the more man spends the more he is honoured. 


* I have been much amused by the comments of the press 
upon the expenses of minor officials living abroad, as elicited 
from Ministers and Chargés d’Affaires by the Diplomatic Com- 
mittee of 1870. There seems to be a deeply-rooted idea in the 
British brain that, because heavily taxed, our native -island is 
the most expensive of residences. On the contrary, I have 
even found England the cheapest country, and London the 
cheapest capital in Europe. At Fernando Po my outlay was 
never less than £1800; at Santos (Brazil) it was £1500; at 
Damascus, from £1200 to £2000, and so forth. 


324 EXPENSE. 


The humblest dwelling at Zanzibar lets un- 
furnished for £80 to £100 per annum. Furni- 
ture of all kinds, porcelain, china, plate, and 
linen, no matter how old, fetch more than prime 
cost, and $1 will be paid for a patched and 
rickety chair worth in London a shilling. Cloth- 
ing must be brought from Europe: broad cloth 
is soon spoiled by sun and damp, and shoes must 
not be exposed to the air—it is well to have the 
latter one or two sizes larger than at home. The 
luxuries of life are of course enormously dear, 
when they are to be purchased. During the 
Sayyid’s absence the women of his harem have, 
through the eunuchs, sold for a song the valu- 
able presents sent from Europe; and after the 
return of the royal vessels from Bourbon and 
the Mauritius, watches and chronometers, sex- 
tants and spy-glasses, have been exceedingly 
cheap. In both cases the stranger-purchaser 
would have done well to remember that he was 
buying stolen goods. 

Another cause of expense at Zanzibar is the 
present state of the currency. The rouble of 
Russia is the frane of France, and here the 
standard of value is the Maria Theresa or Ger- 
man crown, averaging 4s. 2¢. Bearing the die of 
1780, and still coined at the mint of Vienna for 


EXPENSE. 325 


the Arab and the E. African trade, it is perferred 
by the people simply because they know it. ‘The 
popular names are Riyal (i.e. real, royal) or Girsh 
groschen, ‘broad’ pieces). Spanish dollars (bi 
takeh, ‘father of window,’ whence our ‘ patak’), 
elsewhere 8 per cent. more valuable, are here only 
equal to Maria Theresas. In 1846 a French 
Mission failed to fix the agio of the 5-frane 
piece at 10 per cent. below the Spanish dollar, 
which still remained 12.50 to 14 per cent. more 
valuable. The Company’s rupee, better metal 
than both the above, being still a comparative 
stranger, loses nearly a quarter of its value. Other 
silver pieces are the ‘Robo’ (Spanish quarter 
dollar) of 25 cents, and the pistoline (20 cents); 
these, however, are subject to heavy agio, Small 
change is always rare, another sure sign of 
thriftlessness, and it is strange how scarce is 
bullion in a land so wealthy: I can only account 
for the fact by the Oriental practice of burying 
treasure.’ 

Where men reside solely for gain and sorely 
against the grain, little can be expected from 
society. Hvery merchant hopes and expects to 
leave Zanzibar for ever, as soonas he ean realize a 
certain sum; every agent would persuade his em- 


1 For other details concerning the currency see the Appendix. 


326 SERVANTS. 


ployer to recallhim. Of late years, also, foreign- 

ers complain of a falling off in ivory, copal, cloves, 

and other articles which the natives, it might be 
supposed, could most easily supply ; thus profits 

are curtailed, and a penny saved is a penny 
gained. Most residents are contented with an 
Abyssinian or Somali girl, or perhaps an Msa- 
wahili; with a Portuguese cook, who consents to 

serve till he also can get away; and with a few 

hired slaves or free blacks, the dirtiest, the least 
honest, and the most disorderly of domestics. 

The British Consulate is the only establishment 
which employs Indian Moslems, perhaps the best 

of Eastern attendants. This luxury costs, how- 

ever, at least £25 per mens., each man receiving 

from $10 to $12, about double the wages paid | 
in India, and all are ever anxious to return ‘ 
home, the mal de pays making them discon- : 
tented and unhappy. ‘The bumboat-men and | 
the beach-combers are Comoro rascals, who some- | 


times gain considerable sums; there are also 
some half-a-dozen negroes, speaking a little bad : 
French, and worse English, who offer themselves 
to every stranger, and who fleece him till turned 
away for making the quail squeak. Workmen 
are hired by the day. Carpenters demand $0.50, 
three times the Indian wage, and the day’s 


MECHANICS. 327 


work is at most 5 hours; of these men 4 
barely did in 43 what 2 ship-carpenters managed 
in 5 days. The blacksmith and tin-man receive 
from $0.50 to $1 per diem; the goldsmith is 
paid according to the value of what he takes in 
hand—so much per dollar-weight. 

The merchants, par excellence of Zanzibar, are 
the enterprising Bhattias or Cutch Banyans. 
The Periplus (chap. xiv.) mentions an extensive 
import trade for Aridke and Barugaze, the latter 
generally identified with Baroch.* Vasco da 
Gama found ‘ Indians,’ especially Calicut men, at 
Mozambique, Kilwa, Mombasah, and Melinde, 
and by their information he reached their native 
city. From the beginning of the present century 
the monopoly fell into the hands of the Bhattia 
caste. At first they were obliged to make Zanzi- 
bar, vid Maskat, in a certain ship which sailed 
once a year: they were exposed to many hard- 
ships and perils: several of them were murdered, 
and when a Hindu died the Arabs, like the 
Turks of Masawah, claimed the droit d’aubaine. 
They rose in mercantile repute by commercial 
integrity, frugality, and perseverance, whilst the 
inability of the Moslem Sarraf to manage ac- 


* Pliny, however (vi. 35), calls Baricazu a ‘town of 
AAthiopia.’ 


328 BANYANS. 


counts or banking put great power into their 
hands. At Maskat and the neighbourhood they 
number nearly 500, and here about 400." They 
extend southwards to Angosh (Angoxa) and 
Mozambique, where they make fortunes by the 
sale of Casimir noir, and where they are now as 
well treated as they were formerly tyrannized 
over by the Portuguese. Thus, though never 
leaving the seaboard, they command the inland 
trade, sending, where they themselves do not care 
to travel, Arabs and Wasawahili to conduct . 
their caravans of savages and slaves. For this 
reason they have ever been hostile to European 
exploration, and report affirms that they have 
shown no scruples in compassing their ends. 
They are equally powerful to forward the dis- 
coverer; they can cash drafts upon Zanzibar, 
Mandavi, and Bombay; provide outfits, supply 
guards and procure the Pagazi, or porters, who 
are mostly their employés. Ladha Damha 
farms the customs at Zanzibar, at Pemba Island 
his nephew Pist has the same charge: Mom- 
basah is in the hands of Lakhmidas, and some 
40 of his co-religionists; Pangani is directed by 
Trikandas and contains 20 Bhattias, including 


* In 1844 there were 500 Banyans on the Coast and Island, 
—the number has now nearly trebled. 


BANYANS. 329 


those of Mbweni; even the pauper Sa’adani has 
its Banyan; Ramji, an active and intelligent 
trader, presides at Bagamoyo, and the customs 
of Kilwa are collected by Kishindas. I need 
hardly say that almost all of them are connected 
by blood as well as by trade. 

The Bhattia at Zanzibar is a visitor, not a 
colonist; he begins life before his teens, and, 
after an expatriation of 9 to 12 years, he goes 
home to become a householder. The great 
change of life effected, he curtails the time of 
residence to half, and furloughs become more 
frequent as transport waxes easier. Nota Hindu 
woman is found upon the Island; all the Ban- 
yans leave their wives at home, and the conse- 
quences are certain peccadilloes, for which they 
must pay liberally. Arab women prefer them 
because they have light complexions; they are 
generous in giving jewels, and they do not in- 
dulge in four wives. Most of them, however, 
especially those settled on the Coast, keep 
handsome slave-girls, and, as might be expected 
where illegitimates cannot be acknowledged, they 
labour under the imputation of habitual infan- 
ticide. On the other hand, their widows may not 
remarry, and they inherit the husband’s property 
if not embezzled by relatives and caste-fellows. 


330 BANYANS. 


The Bhattias are forbidden by their Dharma 
(‘ caste-duty ’) to sell animals, yet, with the usual 
contradiction of their creed, all are inveterate 
slave-dealers. They may not traffic in cowries, 


that cause the death of a mollusc; local usage,’ 


however, permits them to buy hippopotamus- 
tusks, rhinoceros-horn, and ivory, their staple of 
commerce. We cannot wonder if, through their 
longing to shorten a weary expatriation, they 
have sinned in the matter of hides. This, together 
with servile cohabitation, caused a_ scandal 
some years ago, when the Maharaj, their high 
priest, sent from Malwa a Chela, or disciple, to 
investigate their conduct. Covered with ashes 
and carrying an English umbrella, the holy man 
arrived in a severe mood; he rejected all civili- 
ties, and he acknowledged every address with 
a peculiar bellowing grunt, made when ‘ Arti’ is 
offered to the Dewta or deity. The result was 
a fine of $20,000 imposed upon the rich and 
wretched Jayaram. ‘The sum was raised amidst 
the fiercest and most tumultuous of general 


subscriptions, and since that day the spoils of — 
the cow have been farmed to a Khojah employé. — 
All oppose with might and main the slaughter of 
cattle, especially in public, and they attempt to * 
quit the town during the Moslem sacrificial days. _ 


Wan J 
; 4 ; 
ior 


a a Pings 8 


BANYANS. 331 


The long limp black hair, the smooth yellow 
skin, and the regular features of the Bhattia, 
are conspicuous near the woolly mops, the 
grinning complexions, and the flat faces of the 
Wasawahili. His large-peaked Cutch turban, 
white cotton coat.or shoulder cloth, and showy 
Indian dhoti around the loins, contrasts fa- 
vourably with the Arabs’ unclean garb. The 
Janeo, or thread of the twice-born, passes over his 
shoulder, and, in memory of home, he encircles 
his neck with a string of dry Tulsi stalks 
(Ocimum canum, a species of herb Basil), which 
he now grows at Zanzibar. His manners as well 
as his outer man are rendered pleasant and ~ 
courteous by comparison with the rest of the 
population, and he is a kind master to his serv- 
iles, who would love him if they possibly could 
love anything but themselves. 

These Hindus lead a simple life, active only 
in pursuit of gain. On the Coast, where profits 
are immense — Trikandas of Pangani, for in- 
stance, claims $26,000 of debt—they have sub- 
stantial stone houses, large plantations, and 
goodly gangs of male and female slaves. Those 
resident at Zanzibar are less anxious to display 
their wealth: all, however, are now entitled by 
treaty to manage their own affairs without the 


332 BANYANS. 


interference of the local Government. These 
Banyans will buy up the entire cargoes of 
American and Hamburg ships: the ivory from 
the interior is consigned to them, and they pur- 
chase the copal from the native diggers. They 
rise at dawn to perform the semi-religious rite 
‘Snan’ (bathing), apply to business during the 
cool of the day, and dine at noon. Avoiding 
Jowari, the Arabs’ staff of life, they eat boiled 
rice, vegetables, and ghee, or wheaten bread and 
Mung, or other pulse, flavoured with assafoetida, 
turmeric, and ‘warm spices.’ They chew to- 
bacco, though forbidden by caste rule to smoke 
— it, and every meal concludes with betel-nut and 
pepper-leaf, whose heating qualities alone enable 
them, they say, to exist at Zanzibar. They work 
all day, rarely enjoying the siesta unless rich 
enough to afford such luxury: they bathe in 
the evening, sup at 9 p.m., chew betel once 
more, and retire to rest. 

As the Island contains no local Dewta, the 
Bhattias are careful to keep a Vishnu in the 
house, and to travel about, if possible, with a 
cow: in places like Pangani, where the horned 
god cannot live, they supply its place by a 
Hanuman (a small monkey, like the Presbyter 
Entellus of India) trapped in the jung 


BANYANS. 333 


Pagodas not being permitted, they meet for 
public devotions at a house in the southern 
quarter of the city, where most of them live, 
and lately they have been allowed to build a 
kind of fane at Mnazi Moyya. As usual with 
Banyans, the Bhattias have no daily prayers: on 
such festivals as the Pitri-paksha—the ‘ Manes- 
Fortnight,’ from the 13th to the 18th of the 
month Bhadrapad—they call in, and fee a Brah- 
man to assist them. Their proper priests are 
the Pokarna, who, more scrupulous than others, 
refuse to cross the sea: the Sarsat Brahmans, so 
common in Sind and Cutch, are the only high- 
caste drones who to collect money will visit 
Zanzibar and Maskat. With a characteristic 
tenderness, these Banyans cook grain at the 
landing-places for the wild slaves, half-starved 
by the ‘ middle-passage,’ and inclination as well 
as policy everywhere induces them to give alms 
largely. Apostasy is exceedingly rare: none 
Islamize, except those who have been perverted 
by Moslems in their youth, or who form connec- 
tions with strange women. The Comoro men, ° 
here the only energetic proselytizers, have, how- 
ever, sometimes succeeded: a short time ago 
two Bhattias became Mohammedans, and their 
fellow caste-men declared that the Great Destruc- 


304 BANYANS. 
tion was drawing nigh. Yet Vishnu slept, and 
still sleeps the sleep of the just. 

When a Bhattia’s affairs become hopelessly 
involved he generally ‘levants’: sometimes, 
however, he will go through the Diwali or bank- 
ruptey, a far more troublesome process than the 
‘Gazette. The unfortunate places in his store- 
front a lighted lamp, whence the name of the 
ceremony, and with head enveloped in a sheet, 
he silently occupies the furthest corner. Pre- 
sently a crowd of jeering Moslems collects to see 
the furious creditors ranting, scolding, and beat- 
ing the bankrupt, who weeps, wails, calls upon 
his god, and swears to be good for all future 
time. These degrading scenes, however, are now 
becoming rare. They remind us of the Tuscans 
and the Boeotians of old, ‘who brought their 
bankrupts into the market-place in a bier, with 
an empty purse carried before them, all the boys 
following, where they sat all day, circumstante 
plebe, to be infamous and ridiculous.’ 

All Hindus are careful when returning home 
from foreign travel to purge away its pollution 
by performing a Tirth or Yatra to some holy 
spring, and by large payments to Brahmans. 
Moslems declare that when the death-rattle is 
heard, one of those present ‘ eases off’ the mori- ee 


BANYANS. 335 


bund by squeezing his throat. Banyan corpses 
are burnt at a place about two miles behind the 
town, and the procession is accompanied by a 
guard to keep off naughty boys. When a 
Bhattia dies without relatives on the Island, a 
committee of his fellow caste-men meets by the 
order of H. B. Majesty’s Consul; takes cogni- 
zance of his capital, active and passive; and, 
after settling his liabilities, remits by bill the 
surplus to his relatives in India. 

The following is a list of the other Hindu 
castes to be found at Zanzibar :— 

Brahman, of whom there are now six indi- 
viduals, two Gujrati, and four Rajgarh, both 
sub-castes of the Sadrsat. One of them, Prad- 
han Joshi, is a Shastri—learned in the Veda. 

Khattri, four in number: of these one is a 
trader, and the rest are carpenters capable of 
doing a very little very rough work. 

Wani (pure Banyan) one. There are also 
three or four of the Lohana sub-caste from Sind 
and Cutch. 

Lohar, or blacksmith: of this Shudra sub- 
caste there are five; one acts Sutar (carpenter), 
and a second is a Sonar, or goldsmith—in Cutch 
the occupations are not separated by ‘ Dharma.’ 

A few Parsees from Bombay visited Zan- 


336 PARSEES. 


zibar ; two were carpenters, and the third was a | 
watchmaker, dishonest as his craft usually is. 
To the general consternation of Europeans, two 
Parsee agents lately landed on the Island, sent by 
some Bombay house whose name they concealed. 
These will probably be followed by others, and if 
that most energetic of commercial races once 
makes good a footing at Zanzibar, it will pre- 
sently change the condition of trade. They are 
viewed without prejudice by the Arabs and the © 
Wasawahili. The late Sayyid was so anxious to 
attract Parsees, who might free him from the 
arrogance and the annoyance of ‘white mer- 
chants,’ that he would willingly have allowed 
them to build a ‘ Tower of Silence,’ and to per- 
form, uninterrupted, all the rites of their re- 
ligion. | 

The Indian Moslems on the Island and the 
Coast were numbered in 1844 at 600 to 700. 
Besides a few Borahs and Mehmans, Zanzibar 
contains about 100 Khojahs, who are held to be 
a ‘generation of vipers, even of Satan’s own 
brood.’ Here, as in Bombay, they are called 
Ismailiyyahs, heterodox Shiahs, who take a name 


from their seventh Imam Ismail, son of Jaafar 


el Sadik, while orthodox Shiahs believe the 
seventh revealed Imam to have been Musa el _ 


SHIAHS. 337 


Kazim, another son of Ja’afar el Sadik ; and the 
founder of the Sophy (Safawi) dynasty, in the 
tenth century of the Hijrah (A.p. 1501). They 
have derived from the Batinis and Karmatis cer- 
tain mystic and subversive tenets ; and they are 
connected in history with Hasan Sabah (or Say- 
yah, the travelling Darwaysh), our Vetulus de 
montanis, or Old Man (Shaykh, Le. chief) of the 
Mountains, and with modern Freemasonry, 
which begins to appear when the Crusaders had 
settled in that home of heresies, Syria and Pal- 
estine. Hence the tradition that the First Grand 
Lodge was transferred to Lake Tiberias, after 
the destruction of Jerusalem. ‘They practise 
the usual profound Takiyyah (concealment of 
tenets), call themselves Sunnis, or Shiahs, as the 
case may require, and assume Hindu as well as 
Moslem names. The Imam to whom they now 
pay annual tribute is one Agha Khan Mahallati, 
a Persian rebel, formerly Governor of Kirman, 
and afterwards notorious upon the Bombay turf. 
This incarnation of the Deity is not intrusted 
with any of the secrets of his sect. The Kho- 
jahs have at Matrah, near Maskat, an enclosed 
house, which the Arabs call Bayt el Luti. They 
declare that both sexes meet in it, and that when 


on a certain occasion it was broken open, a 
VOL, I. 22 


338 KHOJAHS. 


large calf of gilt silver was found to be the 
object of worship. Other incredible tales are 
also told about the sect: they remind us of the 
legends of the Libanus, which make the Druzes, 
apparently another offshoot of the Batini, wor- 
ship El Ij] (the calf) when the figure is placed 
in their Khilwahs, or lodges, in memory of the 
detested Nishtakin Darazi, and in contra-dis- 
tinction to El Akl, Hamzeh, their greater 
‘prophet.’ No Agapomenical establishments 
exist at Zanzibar: the chief of the heretic sect 
is one Haymah, who has, however, but little 
authority, and who commands even less respect. 
The Khojahs at times repair to a tumbledown 
mosque on the sea-shore south of the city, in the 
quarter called Mnazi Moyya. 

By no means deficient in intelligence, though 
unscrupulous and one-idea’d in pursuit of gain, 
the Khojahs are the principal shop-keepers in 
Zanzibar. They are popularly accused of using 
false weights and measures ; they opposed the in- 
troduction of a metallic currency, and they have 
ever advocated, with the Prince, a return to the 
bad old state of barbarism. Many have applied 

1 Such is the general view. There may, however, be a 


section of the Druze creed that retains the calf-image in _ 
honour. 


HANDSOME MOSES. 339 


themselves to slave-dealing, and lately one was 
deported for selling poison to negroes; they are 
receivers of stolen goods, and by the readiness 
with which they buy whatever is brought for 
sale, they encourage the pilfering propensities of 
the slaves. They travel far and wide; several 
of them have visited the Lake Regions, and we 
afterwards met, at Kazeh of Unyanyembe,’ one 
of their best men, Musa Mzuri. At Zanzibar all 
not in trade are rude artisans, who can patch a 
lantern and tin a pot; one of them, who had 
learned to mend a watch, repaired the broken 
wheel of my pocket pedometer. 

Of the free blacks who visit and who some- 
times reside in Zanzibar, I have mentioned the 
Malagash: these Madagascar Islanders occupy 
the easternmost suburb of the town. In early 
ages the Arab and Wasawahili settlers on the 
western coast of the Great Island traded with 
the Mozambique, the Sawahil, and even Arabia, 
and since 1829 the persecutions of the Queen 
Ranavola-Manjaka, and the heavy yoke of the 
Hova conquerors, caused many to leave their 
homes. ‘The rare Somal need hardly be no- 

* “Handsome Moses’ is mentioned in ‘The Lake Regions 


of Central Africa’ (i. 323, et passim). He and his ‘ brother,’ 
Sayyan, entered the country about 1830. 


340 ‘COMORO-MEW,’ 


ticed. During the season a few run down from 
Makdishu and Brava, to trade and barter hides 
and cattle. There are almost 2000 men from 
Angazijeh (Great Comoro), Mayotta, Hinzuwan 
or Anjuan (Johanna), and Muhayli. The word 
Comoro is evidently corrupted Arabic, meaning 
Moon-Island. The natives of the Archipelago 
here preserve their own language, which seems 
to be a superstruction of Javanese and Bali, 
Arabic, and Sanskrit erected upon a primitive 
insular dialect, meagre and un-Aryan. Others 
have detected in it a resemblance to that of the 
Philippine Islands,’ and hold the people to be 
of Malay origin. The blood was Persianized and 
Arabized in the 12th century, and the Sultan and 
chiefs have ever since retained the Semitic physi- 
ognomy; but the extensive negro innervation 
has so tainted the blood that no difference can 
be perceived in the characteristic effluvium 
between them and the Wasawahili. It is curious 


‘ 
* 
_ 


to hear them, withal, boast of their Koraysh de- 
scent, and pride themselves upon the glories of 
the ancient race that produced the ‘ Rasul Ullah.’ 
In a.p. 1774 they hospitably entertained the 


‘ T state this upon the authority of Lieut.-Colonel Hamer- 
ton. Capt. Guillain (i. 414) appears to think the language 
Zangian much mixed with Arabic. 


JOHANNA-MEN. 341 


crew of an East Indiaman wrecked whilst en 
route to Bombay. The Sultan of Johanna received 
in return a magnificent present from the H. E. 
I. Company, and the Comoro Islanders gained 
for themselves a permanent good name. A con- 
siderable emigration was caused in the early part 
of the present century by intestine divisions and 
by piratical attacks from Madagascar, whilst 
the slave emancipation by the French in 1847 
set a large class free to travel. Of late they have 
displayed a savage and mutinous spirit, and 
two men were put to death for attempting with 
peculiar audacity the life of the young chief, 
Abdullah. 

Amongst Eastern impostors the Comoro, 
especially the Johanna men, are facilé principes: 
the singular scoundrels have completely mastered 
the knack of cajoling Europeans—no Syrian 
Dragoman can do it better. Once or twice a year 
they tell-off begging-parties, who visit Mauritius 
and Aden, Bombay and Calcutta, and who invari- 
ably represent themselves as being on ‘ Church- 
bijness,’ i.e. pilgrimage. Linguists, after the fash- 
ion of Egyptian donkey-boys, they also have the 
habit, like the petty Shaykhs and Emirs in the 
Libanus, of calling themselves ‘ princes.’ More 
than one scion of Comoro loyalty, after obtain- 


342 JOHANNA-MEN. 


ing a passage on board our cruisers, insisting 
upon the guard being turned out, and claiming 
from our gullible countrymen all the honours of 
kinghood, has proved to be a cook or a bumboat- 
man. Unscrupulous as bigoted, they have in- 
duced half-starved Europeans to apostatize by 
promises of making them chiefs and of marry- 
ing them to princesses; after circumcision, the 
wretches were left to starve. The Comoro men 
settled at Zanzibar are mostly servants in 
European houses, where they recommend them- 
selves by exceeding impudence and by being 
handy at any fraud. Others are rude artisans, 
and the rest are Mercuries, beach-combers, and 
bumboat-men, who supply sailors with Venus 
and Bacchus, both execrably bad. When expect- 
ing invasion, Sayyid Majid equipped about 130 of 
these fellows as a garde de corps: they had 
flint muskets, two spears apiece, and lozenge- 
shaped hats, whereas the common troops wore 
woollen night-caps. Finally, they are cowardly as 
they are dishonest: it was not without astonish- 
ment that I heard of Dr Livingstone engaging a 
party of them for exploration in the African 
interior, and the trick which they played him is 
now a matter of history. | 

The Diwans or chiefs of the mainland ports 


A BLACK JUGURTHA. 343 


and towns occasionally visit the Island on public 
and private business. Twice a year, in our mid- 
summer and midwinter, a crowd of the Wanyam- 
wezi and other races of the inner intertropical 
regions flock, via the Coast, into Zanzibar, where 
they engage themselves as porters, and undertake 
carrying packs for the native traders to the Lake 
Regions and other meeting-places of commerce. 
They are so wild, that they cannot be induced to 
enter a house; and the terror of one who was 
brought to the consular residence was described 
as grotesquely comical: even the more civilized 
look upon a stone abode as a cavern or a dun- 
geon. ‘These half-naked miserables may be seen 
devouring, like birds of prey, carrion and putrid 
fish in the outskirts of the city; they have also 
a ‘ Devil’s tree,’ whose trunk bristles with nails, 
and whose branches are robed in foul rags. 

Some years ago one of the chiefs of the in- 
terior, I was told, was brought to Zanzibar a 
prisoner of war. He is described as a man of 
kingly presence, 6 feet 2 inches tall, handsome 
in face, and well-formed in head; his skin was 
covered with scar and tattoo in patterns, amongst 
which the crescent shape predominated.! When 


' One of my informants suggested that from this peculiar 
tattoo, ‘ Unyamwezi,’ the Land of the Moon, might have taken 


344 A BLACK JUGURTHA. 


struck by his Arab owner he spat upon him, and 
declared that if burnt alive he would not ery 
out. Being carried before the late Sayyid, he 
boldly told him that ‘God exalts men and brings 
them low, that both were kings, and that the 
same misfortune which had made one a captive 
might also happen to the other.’ As he walked 
through the streets all the slaves, wild and do- 
mestic, prostrated themselves, to be touched by 
the point of his staff; they served him with food 
upon their knees; they remained in that position 
while he ate, and all wailed when he was placed 
in the Fort. The same story is told of an old 


b] 


‘Congo king,’ who is still remembered at Rio de 
Janeiro. The prisoner of Zanzibar invariably 
placed his foot upon presents, and when the 
Sayyid restored him to liberty he departed empty- 
handed. M. Broquin, the French Consul, and 
other Europeans made inquiries about this black 
Jugurtha: all they could discover was that his 
country lay somewhere about the great Central — 
Lakes. | 

A few Wazegura, Wasegejo, and Wadigo, 
heathen from the mainland, visit Zanzibar to buy 
and sell, or to fly from foes and famine. ‘The 


the name which the Greeks after their fashion literally trans- 
lated ‘ Mountain-range of the Moon.’ 


FLYING POPULATION. 345 


greater portion settle permanently upon the Is- 
land, the savage for the most part unwillingly 
exchanges the comforts and pleasures of semi- 
civilization for the wildness and freedom of 
‘Nature,’ so dear to the man of refinement. 
These Africans live by fishing and work in the 
plantations: they easily obtain from the large 
landed proprietors bits of ground, paying as a 
yearly quit-rent half a dollar and upwards ac- 
cording to crop, manioc, bananas, and sweet 
potatoes. 


CHAPTER IX. 


HORSEFLESH AT ZANZIBAR.—THE OUTSKIRTS OF y 
THE CITY, AND THE CLOVE PLANTATIONS. 


‘Peregrination charms our senses with such unspeakable 
and sweet variety, that some count him unhappy that never 
travelled, and pity his case, that from his cradle to his old age 
beholds the same still; still, still the same, the same.’— 
‘ ANATOMY OF MeLANncuHOLY,’ Part II. sect. ii. mem. 3. 


Most Europeans at Zanzibar keep horses a 
which they seldom ride. The Sayyid, however, © a 
had, after hospitable Arab custom, placed a large 
stud at the disposal of Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton | % 
and his guests. I had heard much of the Oman — 
blood, so before excursioning to the outskirts ois 
Zanzibar City we proceeded to the Prince Ce 
stables. re 


The late ruler had rarely less than 200 mai es, 


ARAB HORSES. 347 


at present, however, the number is greatly re- 
duced. They require as much nursing as Euro- 
pean dogs: in the morning they must be pick- 
eted in the courtyard to ‘smell the air’; during 
the day they must take shelter from the sun 
_ under a long cajan-roofed shed; they must at 
all times be defended from rain and dew; and 
they must be fed with dry fodder—here, as in 
Paraguay, the belief is that the indigenous 
green meat becomes fatal to imported beasts. We 
found the treatment very rough. The animals 
were ungroomed, and mostly they had puffed 
legs, the result of being kept standing night and 
day upon a slope of hard boarding. Amongst 
them I was shown a curious Nejdi, which re- 
minded me of Lady Hester Stanhope’s pam- 
pered beasts; the coat was silver-white, the 
shoulders were pinkish, and the saddle-back 
amounted almost to a deformity. The favourite 
charger of the late Sayyid is a little bay with 
black points, standing about 14 hands 2 inches: 
its straight fetlocks are well fitted for stony 
ground, it wears the mane almost upon the 
withers, and the shoulder is well thrown back, 
barely leaving room for the saddle. The hind- 
quarter, that weak point in the Arab, is firmly 
and strongly made, and the tail is thin, switch- 


348 OTHER HORSES. 


like, carried nearly straight, as usual with the 
best blood, and remarkably. high. The beau- 
ideal of a Nejdi is an animal all shoulder and 
quarter, connected by a bit of barrel; and to 
this pitch of excellence we are gradually breed- 
ing up our English horses. ‘The charger in 
question is of the ancient Oman race, once cele- 
brated for endurance: the late Sayyid, how- 
ever, injured his stud by crossing foal and dam, 
brother and sister, till the animals fined down 
and dwindled to mere dwarfs. I remarked that, 
here as elsewhere, the Arabs have learned from 
Europeans to trace the genealogy of their horses 
through the sire, a practice unknown to the 
sons of the desert. 

All the best horses in Zanzibar come from 
Oman: an inferior strain is exported by Brava 
(Barawa), and the Somali country. The latter 
sends good little beasts somewhat like those of 
the Pernambucan Province; but worn out by 
long marches and scant feeding, they usually die 
during the first rains. Upon the mainland they 
will live for years. Here, however, the new im- 
portations at first fatten; then they get foul; 
the sweat becomes fetid; they lose breath and 
become unfit for work, till fatal disease mani- 
fests itself by foam from the mouth. As in 


MULES AND ASSES. 349 


Malabar and Mauritius, where the field-officers 
have often been dismounted, it is next to impos- 
sible to keep horses in health and condition: 
they are also costly, $150 to $200, German 
crowns, being asked for Kadishs or garrons. 

The Government stables at Zanzibar also 
contain afew mules brought from the Persian 
Gulf. They become liable to inveterate drowsi- 
ness ; they start when approached, refuse food 
and drink, and soon succumb to the climate. 
The ass, on the contrary, here as in the Hast 
African interior, thrives even upon hard food, 
and consequently it is prized by the Arabs. 
There are many breeds. During the season fine 
animals are brought from Oman; iron-grey 
mares with white legs being preferred; Bahrayn 
and the Persian Gulf send a large light-coloured 
beast, resembling that of Baghdad ; it is not, how- 
ever, considered lasting. Asses imported from 
Brava and the Somali country are held fit only 
for carrying burdens, and the Unyamwezi breed, 
known by its lopped ears, though strong and 
serviceable, is always but half tamed, and is 
often vicious. The most useful and lasting are 
the Mutawallid or Muwallid, the progeny of 
Maskat beasts, Creoles born upon the Island— 
these we were advised to buy before leaving for 


350 ASSES AND CAMELS. 


the interior. I subsequently purchased thirty, 
and the last died within six months of landing 
we then mounted Unyamwezi animals, and had 
nothing to complain of. Asses are ridden, 
as they always should be, upon the crupper; 
the ‘hulis’ are rather pads than saddles, cov- 
ered with thick cloths and black sheepskins ; no 
one uses stirrups, and the bridle is the rudest of 
contrivances. The price of donkeys ranges from 
$15 to $100: I bought a tolerable riding animal 
f or $60, and I heard of one costing $350. 
Finally, the Sayyid keeps for the use of his 
plantation-mills a few miserable mangy camels 
from Brava and Makdishu: they may be worth 
$10 to $12 a-head. 

Mounted on the Prince’s best we passed 
through the town, where the long sharp poles 
projecting from the low house-eaves are not 
pleasant to those riding spirited nags. ‘This 
is the labour hour, and all are not inactive. 
The weaver on his raised clay bench, and shaded 
by his dwarf verandah, is engaged upon a turban, 
whilst his neighbour converts copal, reddened by 
cinnabar, into ear-rings and other ornaments. 
The tinsmith and the Comoro blacksmith, with 
the usual African bellows, are also at work ham- 


mering at pots and pans, fashioning the normal 4 


MORNING WORK. | 351 


weapons, arrow and spear heads, and repairing 
old guns. The leather-worker is moulding a 
targe of rhinoceros-hide, apparently all umbo, 
and the vendors of oil and grain, spices and 
drugs, glass and ‘ potions,’ are on the alert. By 
the way we walked into the partially-walled com- 
pound or court representing the slave-market, 
a bona fide affair, not like the caravanserai which 
used to be fitted up and furnished by the Cairene 
Dragoman for the inspection of curious tourists. 
In 1835 a wooden cage some 20 feet square often 
- contained some 150 men, women, and children, 
who every day were ‘knocked down’ to the 
highest bidder in the public ‘place.’ In those 
times the yearly importation was 6000 to 7000. 
The bazar was subsequently held in the Chan- 
gani Quarter, near the Western Point; the late 
Sayyid, however, having forbidden, by way of 
sop to the British Cerberus, the sale of men in 
the streets of Zanzibar as of Maskat, it was 
shifted to a plantation called Kirungani. As 
this was found inconveniently distant, it mi- 
grated to its present site. Lines of negroes 
stood like beasts, the broker calling out ‘ bazar 
khush ! ’—the least hideous of the black faces, 
some of which appeared hardly human, were 
surmounted by scarlet night-caps. All were 


352 THE SLAVE MARKET. 


horridly thin, with ribs protruding lke the 
circles of a cask, and not a few squatted sick on 
the ground. The most interesting were the 
small boys, who grinned as if somewhat pleased 
by the degrading and hardly decent inspection to 
which both sexes and all ages were subjected. 
The woman-show appeared poor and miserable ; 
there was only one decent-looking girl, with 
carefully blacked eye-brows. She seemed modest, _ 
and had probably been exposed for sale in con- 
sequence of some inexcusable offence against 
decorum. Asa rule, no one buys adult domestic - 
slaves, male or female, for the sufficient reason 
that the masters never part with them till they 
are found incorrigible. These, however, are 
mostly Bozals, or wild serviles newly driven from 
the interior, and they are not numerous, the 
transactions of the year being now concluded. 
The dealers smiled at us, and were in good 
humour. 

It would be easy to adorn this subject with 
many a flower of description ; the atrocities of 
the capture, the brutalities of the purchase, the 
terrors of the middle-passage, and the horrors to 
which the wretches are exposed when entering 
half-civilized lands. It was usual to throw the 
slaves overboard when the fatal symptom, copro- 


SLAVE DRIVERS. 353 


phagism, appeared amongst them. A single Dau 
(Dow) belonging to the late Prince Khalid lost 
when running a course 500 slaves by sickness, 
and by the falling of the pont-flottant or flying- 
deck—many a desperate naval action could not 
show such a butcher’s bill. A certain Charles 
L 
seven negroes in terrorem: two were fastened 
outside the ship, the others were nailed by the 
feet to the deck, and by the hands to capstan 
bars, lashed across the masts. With a lighted 
tar-barrel in an empty boat he nearly caused the 


, a kiln-dried Mauritius man, crucified 


loss of an English cruiser, and when she was 
well on the reef he let off rockets and saluted 
her. Another man, a Spaniard, finding his ven- 
tures likely to die of dysentery, sewed them up 
before he sent them to the bazar; this slaver 
made an act of contrition before he died, and 
severely blamed his bowie-knife. Sensational 
paragraphs, however, are not wanted by those to 
whom the subject is familiar, and they are likely 
to mislead the many who are not. I shall return 
to the subject of slavery in another chapter. 
Thence we entered the Malagash Quarter, 
where the land belongs chiefly to Sayyid Sulay- 
man bin Hamed, a former Governor of Zan- 
zibar; he is said to be so wealthy that he 


VOL. I. 23 


354 THE ‘ RED BAZAR.’ 


ignores the extent of his means. Here is the 
Lal Bazar, the very centre of prostitution, an 
Agapemone of some twenty Cyprians: all are 
Wasawahili—the Indian women, who appear 
almost European in complexion and features, . 
having now left. Their faces like skinned apes, 
and lean legs encased in red silk tights, make 
their appearance revolting as their society is dan- 
gerous. Some of them cool the orbits of the 
eyes by a kind of loup of perfumed turmeric, 
whose golden tint causes the outer darkness to 
gloom extra sooty ; others apply curry-coloured 
dabs to the woolly hair. Sundry of these patches 
are frontlets or medicines applied to the temples. 
In former days we used, for instance, ‘ rose- 
water and vinegar, with a little woman’s milk, 
and nutmegs grated upon a rose cake,’ and the 
Jews are said to have smeared themselves with 
Christian blood. 

The Malagash Quarter is at the far east of 
the city, leading to two tumble-down bridges 
which span a lagoon more deadly than that of 
British Accra. These ruins might easily be con- 
verted into dykes, and in process of time the 
mouth would be sanded or silted up; they are 
however, fated to make way for iron improve- 
ments. In my day the lagoon was connected by 


THE FETID LAGOON. 305 


fresh water with the sea, and became now a 
muddy pool at the ebb tides of the Syzygies, 
then a sheet of festering mud which nearly en- 
eircled the settlement, and which converted the 
site of Zanzibar city into a quasi-island. Every 
evening a pestilent sepulchral miasma arose 
from it, covering the skin with a clammy sweat, 
and exhaling a fetor which caused candles to 
burn dim, and which changed the sound of the 
human voice. Lazy skippers anchoring here for 
facility of watering, thus exposing their men 
to the breath of the fetid lagoon, have lost in a 
few days half the crew ; and although the water 
appeared to be of the purest, it became so offen- 
sive that often the casks had to be started. 

We then passed over a sandy flat, thinly 
powdered with black vegetable humus. To the 
left was a creek upon whose sandy beach vessels 
are hauled up, and where ships of 300 to 400 
tons can be safely careened : in a few years there 
will here be a dock. A mile of neat footpath 
placed us at the late Sayyid’s Summer Palace, 
Mto-ni, which is distant about three direct miles 
from the Consulate. After escaping the un- 
pleasant attentions bestowed upon us by the 
tame ostriches, who are apt to use beak and 
wing, we dismounted for inspection. The build- 


396 THE SUMMER PALACE. 


ing is of coral rag, pierced with square windows, 
and the wings are united by a verandah-terrace, 
supported by wooden pillars, and facing Meccah, 
for convenience of prayer. A few feet above 
the centre is the peaked roof of the Kiosk, 
which makes the place remarkable to crews 
entering the harbour. In front floats from sun- 
rise to sunset the red flag of the Sayyid: the 
rear is brought up by a small cemetery, sundry 
offices, and lowly cajan-thatched hovels tenanted 
by slaves. The work of man is mean enough, 
but it is surrounded by the noblest handiwork of 
Nature, cocoas and mangoes, whilst the borders 
of the little stream could be beautifully laid out. 

Gum Copal, formerly called in the trade 
Gum Anime, now Gum Elemi, is washed down 
by the rains, and is picked up by the slaves 
about the debouchure of this fiumara. On the 
Mto-ni road also we passed sundry places where 
pits, never exceeding five feet deep, had been 
sunk in the sandy plain, thinly clothed with 
sedgy grass. Upon the higher grounds, also, to 
judge by the eye, about 100 feet above sea-level, 


‘ 
* 
J 
‘ 
7 
r 


we found many deserted diggings. The soil is a 
dark vegetable mould, varying in thickness from 
a foot to 18 inches, and based upon the raised 
sea-beach of blue clay. This becomes fat and 


‘ JACKASS-COPAL.’ 307 


adhesive, clogging the hoe as it descends: the 
half-decayed blood-red fibre with which it 1s 
mixed throughout was recognized by the negroes 
as cocoa-roots. Bits of scarlet-coloured earth 
also variegated the faint blue marl, and at a 
depth of 25 feet water began to exude from the 
greasy walls of the pit. These places supply 
only the raw or unripe copal, locally called 
Chakazi,’ and by us corrupted to Jackass: the 
true vegetable fossil must be brought from the 
coast. The tree was probably once common on 
the Island, but it has been cut down for masts 
and similar uses. Copal does not appear under 
that name in the list of exports from Zanzibar 
given by Captain Smee in 1811: possibly that 
officer alludes to it when speaking of ‘ Dammer.’ 
In early days ‘gum-anime’ was held a precious 
medicine for rheums and heaviness of the head. 
It was imported via the Levant ‘from the place 
where incense is found, and that lande or soyle is 
called Animitim, and therefore the thing is called, 
Anime,’ says Dr Monardes, treating of the objects 
that are brought from the West Indies. He adds 
that American Anime was whiter, brighter, and 
said to be a ‘ spice of Charabe or Succino, which is 


* Tchakazi, espéce de gomme-résine, dont j'ignore 1’ origine 
(M. Guillain, Part II. p. 87). 


358 CLOVE-ORCHARDS. 


called amber congealed.’ In 1769 Portugal 
forbade the importation of true copal, in order to 
protect the Jataycica or gum of the Jatoba 
(hymenzea), of which 14 Arrobas had been sent 
from Turiassy in the Brazil. 

Leaving Mto-ni, after half a mile of beach, we 
turned towards the interior, and ascended the 
gently rising ground, beautifully undulated, which 
leads to the royal estates called Rauzah and Taif, 
formerly Kizimba-ni or Sebbe. For two or three 
miles a narrow path, which compelled us to ride 
in Indian file, wound through cocoa-groves and 
patches of highly-cultivated ground, with here 
and there a hut buried under fruit-laden mangos. 
The track, then 254 feet above sea-level, widened 
into a broad avenue of dark conical clove-trees, 
varying in height from 6 to 16 feet according to 
age; feathered almost to the ground, and extend- 
ing, like the well-berried coffee-shrub, its branches 
at right angles to the trunk. All, however, bore 
the impress of neglect, where Dr Ruschenberger 
found a ‘picture of industry and of admirable 
neatness and beauty’ that employed from 500 to 
700 slaves. 

We saw little to admire in the ‘palace,’ a single- 
storied lodge of coral rag, and ample porches look- 
ing upon sundry courts and yards, negro quarters 


SERVILE DESTFRUCTIVENESS. 3d9 


and drying-grounds. There is here a well said 
to be 100 fathoms deep, which gives water only 
in the rainy seasons; most of the upland planta- 
tions must draw the element from the little 
streams. The Arab care-takers, after refreshing 
us with cocoa-nut milk, led us out to inspect the 
grounds. These Semites, satiated with verdure, 
despise the idea of assisting nature, and yet at 
Maskat they will gaze delighted upon a dusty, 
ragged plot of sand-veiled rock, dotted with con- 
sumptive trees, and dignified by the name of a 
garden. Some years ago Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton 
taught the late Sayyid to plant rose-trees, which 
gave a crop as abundant as those of ancient Syria : 
during their owners’ absence the slaves uprooted 
the young growth in very wantonness. The nut- 
meg fared as badly. The Consul also succeeded in 
producing wall-flowers, lavender, and the apple- 
scented as well as the common geranium: im- 
ported from Europe with abundant trouble, they 
met the fate of all the roses. The Ravenala, or 
Travellers’ tree, was brought from the Seychelles 
by the Sayyid with the same unsuccess. Several 
kinds of jasmines were transported from Cutch 
to Zanzibar: the Arabs objected to them, that 
the scent depresses the male sex and unduly 
excites the feminine. Many flowers—for instance, 


360 THE CLOVE. 


the Narcissus and certain Acacias—labour under 
the same ill-fame. 

Here, after admiring the delicious view of the 
tree-crowned uplands, the low grounds buried in 
the richest forest, the cocoa-fringed shore of purest 
white, and the sea blue as a slab of lapis lazuli, we 
had an opportunity of inspecting the celebrated 
clove plantations of Zanzibar. According to 
Castanheda, when Vasco da Gama first touched at 
Mombasah and Melinde, their Reguli sent him, 
amongst other presents, cloves, and declared that 
their countries grew the spice. Other travellers 
mention the clove being found at various parts of 
Kast Africa, and Andrea Corsali in Ramusio de- 
scribes the produce as ‘ not like those of India, but 
shaped more like our acorns.’ The Dutch, how- 
ever, since their conquest of the Moluccas or Spice 
Islands in 1607, monopolized the clove like the 
nutmeg; and by destroying the former and enslav- 
ing the cultivators, they confined it, lest the price 
should fall, to the single Island of Amboyna. 
The naturalist traveller, M. Poivre, when governor 
of the Isle of France, brought from the least 
frequented of the Moluccas, in June 27, 1770, 
some 450 nutmeg stalks and 10,000 nutmegs in 
blossom or about to blossom, together with 70 
clove trees and a box of plants, many of them ~ 


THE CLOVE. 361 


well above the earth. In 1772 a further supply 
was procured ; ‘the greater part was kept in the 
Isle of France, the rest were dispersed amongst 
the Seychelles, Bourbon, and Cayenne. All the 
specimens given to private individuals died: 
skilful botanists, however, succeeded in preserv- 
ing 58 nutmegs and 38 clove trees. Of the latter 
two bore blossoms in 1775, and the fruit was 
gathered in the following year; the produce, 
however, was small, light, and dry, and all deemed 
that the Dutch had been unnecessarily alarmed.’ 
The project, however, proved completely success- 
ful. 

In 1818 the clove-tree (Caryophyllus aroma- 
ticus) was introduced from Mauritius and Bour- 
bon into Zanzibar; requiring little care, it 
speedily became a favourite, and in 1835 the 
aristocratic foreigner almost supplanted the 
vulgar valuable cocoa-nut, and the homely rice 
necessary for local consumption. The Banyans, 
Americans, and Europeans shared amongst them 
the principal profits of other commerce, and the 
cloves enriched the squirearchy, the landed pro- 
prietors. Yet it was early predicted that this 
prosperity would end in ruin; and presently the 
man who first introduced the spice became a 


1 Establicimientos Ultramarinos, vol. iii. Madrid, 1768. 


362 THE CLOVE. 


beggar. After a few years extensive plantations, 
some containing 15,000 to 20,000 feet, were laid 
out in the richest parts of the Island. The trees, 
however, set at intervals of 14 to 40, and now 20 
feet, occupied large tracts of ground, and they 
were so rarely trimmed, that degeneracy soon 
ensued. Similarly the Brazilian planter, though 
well aware of his loss, cannot prune his coffee 
shrub: his hands are all negroes, and if allowed 
to use cutting instruments, they would hack 
even the stem. Now the Zanzibar article cannot 
compete with the produce of Bourbon; and the 
Dutch having thrown into the market the valu- 
able and long-withheld produce of the Moluccas, 
it threatens to become a drug. The people would 
do well to follow the example of Mauritius, 
whence the clove has long departed in favour of 
sugar. For the latter Zanzibar is admirably 
adapted: when factories shall everywhere be 
established, the Island will have then found her 
proper profession, and will soon attain the height 
of her prosperity. 

The clove (Karanful), planted in picturesque 
bands, streaking the red argillaceous hills, is 
allowed to run to wood, and to die, withered at 
the top, in the shape of a bushy thick-foliaged 
tree 35 feet tall, and somewhat resembling a 


THE CLOVE. 363 


laurel. Grown from seed, it bears in the fifth 
year, and the fruit, the unexpanded flower-bud, 
is usually ripe in October. In rainy years the 
harvest beginning with early September is con- 
tinued uninterruptedly : when the season, how- 
ever, is dry the picking ceases in November and 
December, to be resumed in January. Hence the 
tales of two yields per annum. The crop, which 
lasts even till March, and which appears to be 
very uncertain, is hand-picked by Wasawahili 
and slaves—gathered, in fact, like coffee, except 
that, requiring ladders and more labour, it is a 
very slow process. Under favourable circum- 
stances the tree should produce a maximum of 
6 lbs; here, however, the ground is neither 
cleared nor manured, and the consequence is, 
that 30 trees rarely yield more than 35 lbs per 
annum. ‘The fruit is sun-dried upon matting for 
three days: the workmen forget to turn it, and 
allow it to be broken and injured; moreover, they 
will not smoke it, and thus prevent over-shrink- 
ing and wrinkling. Some years ago Mr Wilson, 
an English engineer who died at Zanzibar, pro- 
duced, by attending to the tree, and by properly 
desiccating his cloves upon iron hurdles, a supe- 
rior article, with red shanks and large full heads. 
M. Sausse, a Creole from Bourbon or Mauritius, 


364 THE CLOVE. 


also succeeded in extracting an excellent oil, 
the clove oil of commerce being generally made 
by distilling cinnamon leaves. This novelty be- 
came a universal favourite with the Zanzibar 
public, who held it to be highly medicinal, and 
used it especially for imflammations. Locally the 
spice is employed as a condiment and infused as 
a medicine and a tonic: women of the poorer 
classes make necklaces and ear-rings of the corns ; 
they also pound them to a paste, and mould them 
into different shapes. 

The Asakif, or stalks pulled off when the fruit 
is dry, are exported to Europe under the name 
of ‘clove stems,’ and are used as a mordant for 
dyeing silks, An English house once provided 
tin canisters to preserve its purchases, whereas 
they are mostly sent home in bulk. Certain 
other merchants, ‘born with the pencil behind 
their ears,’ open the hatches, and to make the 
cargo ‘weigh out’ heave in sea-water, which, 
they say, does not much affect the- flavour of 
pepper and cloves. The stems fetch from one- 
eighth to half of a German crown per Farsilah, 
or frail of 35 Ibs. The price of cloves, originally 
$5 to $6 per Farsilah, has now fallen to $2 and 
even to $1. In 1856, the Island exported 
five millions of lbs; the next year, however, was 


MNAZI MOYYA. 365 


unfavourable—the trees had been injured by 
drought ; the over-supply had sunk the price 
70 per cent., and many Arab proprietors talked 
of returning to rice and cocoa-nuts. Yet, in 
1859, the crop rose to some 200,000 Farasilah 
= 7,000,000 Ibs, valued at about £85,000; where- 
as 10 years before the total produce of Zanzibar, 
including Pemba, was 120,000 to 150,000 Fara- 
silah, and in 1839-40 it barely numbered 9000. * 

We returned via the bush to the south of 
the city, passing through a luxuriant growth of 
the hardest woods. After a stiff ride over the 
worst of paths, a mere ‘ picada,’ as the Brazilians 
say, we skirted the fetid lagoon which subtends 
the eastern city from north to south, and reached 
Mnazi Moyya, ‘One Cocoa-nut Tree.’ This bit 
of open ground is the Bois de Boulogne of 
Zanzibar, the single place for exercise, and we 
did not wonder that so many prefer to stay at 
home. 

During the *Id Saghir or Kuchuk Bayram, 
here called Siku-khu za Idf, ‘One Cocoa-nut Tree’ 
is a lively place. Whilst the boys sing and 
dance about the streets, and the garrison blacks, 
armed with sabres, engage near the fort in a 
Zumo or Pyrrhic, wildly waving their tremulous 
blades, and the Wahiao or Bozalsfrom about Kilwa 


366 THE RACES. 


execute their saltations near the bridge, and the 
other slaves carouse and junket in their own 
quarter of the town, each clan from the mainland 
keeping itself distinct, the grandees, fingering their 
rosaries and supported by long staves, proceed to 
Mnazi Moyya, where gallops, called races, form 
the attraction. About half-a-dozen garrons, rush- 
ing wildly about, represent the performers, and 
the performance is nothing new to the Anglo- 
Indian. The groups are motley if not pictur- 
esque. Here and there, surrounded by rings of 
sable admirers, are women boisterously singing 
and clapping hands, dancing and acting lionnes 
with all their might. Tremendous are the 
Vijelejele, the Kil, Zagharit, or trilling of the 
spectatresses. Men also stamp and wriggle ina 
rude ‘improper’ style to the succedaneum for a 
drum, a hollow wooden cylinder one foot in 
diameter, with the open end applied to the breast, 
and the dried and stretched snake-skin patted 
upon with finger and palm, Most of these people, 
regardless of fever or cholera, are primed with 
fermented cocoa juice. The heavily-clad Shaykhs, 
bestriding their asses, are preceded by outrunners, 


who mercilessly push aside and ‘bakur’ the 


crowd; and the latter turn viciously as bull- 
terriers. There is not much striking, but jostling 


THE RACES. 367 


and thrusting away are the rules. At Lamu and 
the wilder places swords and daggers are often 
bared on these occasions, and the Shaykhs have no 
little trouble to preserve the peace. Contrasting 
with the full-dressed crowd are the naked children, 
who seem all afflicted with umbilical hernia. This 
is the result of careless cutting, but the unsightly 
protuberance will wear away in after life, and a 
pot-belly is here, as elsewhere im Africa, looked 
upon as a good sign. The negro faces and bodies 
are marked with the tattoo in almost every 
possible fashion ; some wear straight black lines, 
others curved; these have perpendicular, those 
horizontal marks, and not a few wear painted 
squares with central spots, like the wafers upon 
the garment of the old country clown. At 
length the princes make their appearance, and are 
received with a file-firing of guns and pistols, 
whilst shouts and drums disturb the air; the races 
are formally run, and the crowd disperses through 
the unclean streets of the city. 

There is still some exploration to be done on 
the west or landward front of Zanzibar Island. 
Colonel Hamerton, however, strongly advises us 
not to risk fever, and to reserve every atom of 
strength and energy for the Continent. 


U hee | 


CHAPTER X. 


COMPARATIVE ANTHROPOLOGY (ETHNOLOGY) OF 
ZANZIBAR. THE ARABS. 


‘Les Arabes ne sont maintenant, dans |’ Afrique Orientale, 
que des parasites, comme lest tout peuple exclusivement com- 
mercant.—M. GvuI.uaty, vol. il. part 11. chap. u. p. 151. 


Tue Arabs upon the Island may amount toa 
total of 5000,’ all Omans; and they are divided, 
as in their fatherland, into two great Kabilah or 
tribes, the Hindawi and the Ghafiri. 

When Malik bin Fakhm, of the Benu Hunay- 
fah tribe, marched from his own country, Nejd, to 
recover Oman from the Persians under Dara, son 
of Bahman, son of Isfandiyar, an event popularly 
dated about the end of our lst century, he was 
jomed by some 100 Yemeni warriors who were 


1 In 1846 M. Guillain proposed 3000, including a floating 
population of 300 to 400. Documents, &c., part i. p. 78. 


ARAB GENEALOGY. 369 


called Benu Yemin, sons of the right hand, because 
they dwelt to the south or on the right hand of the 
Ka’abah. Their migration is attributed to the 
bursting of the dyke of Arim, near Mareb, the 
Mariaba of Ptolemy, which is the Babel-tower of 
Arabian history in the Days of Ignorance. The 
learned Dr Wetzstein (p. 104, Reisebericht iiber 
Hauran, &c. Berlin, 1860) believes this event to 
have taken place about the beginning of our era; 
most authors, however, place it at the end of the 
Ist or the beginning of our 2nd century. It was 
probably the over-populating of the land which 
sent forth the two great Sabzean tribes of Azud 
and Himyar to Bahrayn and N. Eastern Arabia ; 
they united, and were known as the Tanukh or 
Confederates. The former, also called from a chief 
‘Nasri,’ settled upon the Euphrates, and founded 
the East Tanukh kingdom, whose capital was after- 
wards Hira. The Himyar or Kudai originated, in 
the Hauran and the Belka, the West Tanukh king- 
dom, also termed from a chief ‘ Salih.’ These men, 
converted to Christianity, were probably the 
builders of the ‘ Giant cities’ of Bashan, mere 
provincial towns of the Greco-Roman Empire. 
Ta’alab (Thalaba), one of the sons of Malik bin 
Fakhm, is mentioned as the first ruler of East 
Tanukh. The extinct family of the Druze 


VOL. I. 24 


370 ARAB GENEALOGY. 


Tanukhs claimed descent from the western king- 
dom. | 

The Ya’rubah considered themselves to be of 
the Arab el Aribah (Joctanites), through their 
aneestor Yarub el Azud (a;¥l 2) bin Faligh 
(Peleg, the brother of Kahtan or Joctan), bin Abir 
(Eber), bin Salih, bm Arfakhshad, bin Sham 
(Shem), and to the present day their descendants 
boast of this ancient lineage. Malik bin Fakhm 
routed 40,000 horsemen supported by elephants, 
slew Mirzban (the Marz-ban or warden of the. 
Marches) the Satrap-lieutenant of the King of 
Kings, whose head-quarters were at Sohar, and 
conquered the country from Sharjah to the Ra’as 
el Hadd (Rasalgat), the eastern Land’s-end of the 
Arabian shore. Reinforced by fresh drafts of 
the Benu Yemin, he showed his gratitude by 
incorporating them with his own: tribe. The 
word Hindawi, meaning a patrician or ‘one having 
a founder,’ arose from Malik bin Fakhm, pro- 
posing himself as the Hanu (,.») or originator 
of the emigrants: certain Arabs derive it from 
Hina, a fanciful ancestor, and even call themselves 
Benu Hind. According to some authorities, Oman 
took its name from a place in the neighbour- 
hood of the dyke of Mareb; others derive it from 
a valley which, like the Wady el Arab, gave its 


ARAB GENEALOGY. 371 


name to the whole country; the Arab geogra- 
phers make it the ancient term for Sohar, and the 
classical geographer holds that the Ommanum 
Emporium of Ptolemy was applied to Maskat. 
When Malik bin Fakhm had been slain by 
his son Selima, and another son, Zayd, ruled 
Oman in his stead, a thousand of the Benu Nezar 
came to him from the town of Ubar, and were 
settled upon a tract of low open ground (_j2), 
whence they took the name of Ghafiri. These 
immigrants were Arab el Musta’arabah, which, in 
Omanic usage, denotes the insititious or Ismailitic 
clans derived from Adnan, son of Ishmael; and 
the gift of land had made them clients of Zayd and 
of his tribe, the Hinawi. Intermarriage, however, 
soon amalgamated the races. When El Islam 
brought the sword to mankind, and when the 
rival prophet Musaylimah, generally known as 
the Liar, paved the way for the Karmati (Carma- 
thians) and for a copious crop of heresies, the 
Ghafiri, cleaving to the faith of Meccah, were pre- 
ferred by the Caliph Abubekr to their former 
patrons, for the chieftainship of Oman. In his 
turn, the Caliph Ali restored precedence to the 
Hindawi who had espoused his cause. Hence an 
inveterate feud, a flame of wrath, which rivers 
of blood have not quenched. Throughout Oman 


372 ARAB TRIBES. 


the rival tribes still occupy separate quarters ; 
they will not connect themselves by marriage, 
and they seldom meet without a ‘faction fight.’ 
Even at Zanzibar, where the climate has softened 
them, they rarely preserve that decency of hate 
which is due by Arabs of noble strain to here- 
ditary and natural enemies. 

Here the principal clan of the Hindawi tribe 
is the Harisi (plural Hurs), under Abdullah bin 
Salim and Husayn bin Mahommed: once 
flourishing im Oman, it now barely numbers 
15,000 sabres, and in the Island it may amount. 
to 300, mostly merchants and wealthy planters. 
The other divisions are the Bu (or Ayyal) Sa’id; 
the ruling race which forms one large family— 
that of the Sayyid. There are also about a dozen 
of the Benu Lamk, whose preponderance in Oman 
was broken down by the Yu’rabi Imams. The 
minor sections of the Hindawi are the Benu Yas 
of Sur; the Benu Menasir near Sharjah; the 
Benu Ali; the Benu Baktashi; the Benu 
Uhaybi; the Benu el Hijri; the Benu Kalban ; 
the Benu el Abri; and the Benu bu Hasan, 
generally pronounced Bohsan. <A few of the 
Benu Dafri or Dafil at times visit the Island: 
they are professional carriers, and therefore they 
have no blood feuds with other tribes. Besides, 


ARAB TRIBES. 373 


these are Ammari, Adwani, Kuruni, Khuzuri, 
Salahameh, and Nayyayareh; most of them fre- 
quent Zanzibar during the trading season. 

The pure Ghafiri stock is still, they say, to be 
found in Nejd. Throughout Oman they are a 
wild unruly race, hostile to strangers, and inclined 
to Wahbhabi-ism. They possess at several places 
little castles armed with guns which are mere 
robbers’ dens; near Mina the Chief Musalim 
refused allegiance to Sayyid Said, and south of 
the Jebel el Akhzar, or ‘Green Mountain,’ they 
made themselves the terror of the country-side 
about Buraymah. The worst of the Ghafiri are the 
Kawasim pirates (the Anglo-Arabic ‘Jowasmees’ ) 
of Ras el Khaymah and our old enemies the Benu 
bu Ali of Ra’as el Hadd. To them also belong 
the Shaksi or Benu Ruwayhah, popularly called 
Ahl Rustak, from the settlement founded by the 
Persian Anushirawan on the eastern slope of 
Jebel el Akhzar, the mountainous district of 
Oman. It is about 70 miles west of Maskat, 
which, now the capital, began life as its harbour. 
The present representative of the Rustak chiefs, 
Sayyid Kays bin Azan, receives an annual in- 
demnification of $3000 from Sayyid Said, who 
had dispossessed him of Sohar and its depend- 
encies. Sur also belongs to the Ghafiri, of whom? 


374 THE ARAB. 


in these places, little good is spoken; they are 
said to be at once cruel and cowardly, to fear no 
shame, and to respect no oath. Weshall soon be 
compelled to chastise these petty sea-thieves and 
kidnappers. 

At Zanzibar the Ghafiri is represented chiefly 
by the Masakirah or Maskari clan, which under its 
chief, Sayf bin Khalfan, may number 2000 sabres. 
The Mazrw’i of Mombasah, so well known in Sa- 
wahil history, were also Ghafiri: they are now 
scattered about Gasi and other small Bandars, 
retaining nothing of their political consequence. 
The Yu’rabi clan, which gave to Oman its old pa- 
triotic Imams, is of scant account. The other sec- 
tions, who are for the most part visitors during 
the commercial season, comprise the Jenabah, 
the Bimani, the Benu Katub, the Benu bu Ali, 
and the Benu Riyaém of Nezwah in the Jebel el 
Akhzaar. 

The Arab holds, and, according to old Moslem 
travellers, has long held in these regions the posi- 
tion of an Osmanli in Arabia; he is a ‘superior 
person.’ As the Omani chiefs, however, like the 
Sherifs of El Hejaz, did not disdain servile con- 
cubines, many of their issue are negroids: of 
these hybrids some are exceedingly fair, showing 
African pollution only by tufty and wiry hair, 


THE ARAB. 375 


whilst others, ‘falling upon their mothers,’ as the 
native phrase is, have been refused inheritance at 
Maskat, and have narrowly escaped the slave- 
market. The grandsons of purest Arabs who 
have settled in Africa, though there has been no 
mixture of blood, already show important physi- 
cal modifications worked by the ‘ mixture of air,’ 
as the Portuguese phrase is. The skin is fair, 
but yellow-tinted by over-development of gall; 
whilst the nose is high, the lips are: loose, 
everted, or otherwise ill-formed; and the beard, 
rarely of the amplest, shrinks, under the _ hot- 
house air, to four straggling tufts upon the rami 
of the jaws and the condyles of the chin. Whilst 
the extremities preserve the fineness of Arab 
blood, the body is weak and effeminate; and the 
degenerate aspect is accompanied by the no less 
degraded mind, morals, and manners of the coast- 
people. The nervous or nervoso-bilious tempera- 
ment of the Sons of the Desert here runs into 
two extremes: many Arabs are bilious-lymphatie, 
like Banyans; a few, lapsing into the extreme of 
leanness, are fair specimens of the ‘ Living Skele- 
* This has been remarked even of Omanis 
born and-bred upon the Island. Those who in- 
cline to the nervous diathesis have weakly droop- 
ing occiputs and narrow skull-bases, arguing a 


ton. 


376 THE ARAB. 


deficiency of physical force, and they exaggerate 
the flat-sided unconstructive Arab skull—here an 
Indian may almost always be recognized by the 
comparative roundness of his calvaria. And as 
the Zanzibar Arab is mostly of burgher race in his 
own land, the forehead rarely displays that high 
development of the perceptive organs which cha- 
racterizes the Bedawin. | 

The Arab noble is still, like those of Meccah in 
Mohammed ’s day, a merchant, and here wealth has 
done much to degenerate the breed, climate more, 
and slavery most. The ‘ Californian fever ’—in- 
dolence—becomes endemic in the second genera- 
tion, rendering the race hopeless, whilst industry 
is supplied by the gross, transparent cunning of 
the Wasawahili and of the African generally. | 
Honesty is all but unknown; several European 
merchants will not have an Arab’s name in their 
books. A Nakhoda (Captain, Maskat R.N.) in 
the Prince’s service, commissioned to bring a 
watch or other valuables from Bombay, will delay 
to deliver it until threatened with the bakur, and 
the terrors of being blown from a gun. do not de- 
fend the ruler from the most shallow and impu- 
dent frauds. Like their kinsmen of Oman, they 
despise truth, without versatility enough to employ 
it when required, and few rise to the height of 


THE ARAB. 317 


Bacon’s model, ‘ who hath openness in fame and 
opinion, secrecy in habit, dissimulation in reason- 
able use, and a power to feign, if there be no 
remedy.’ Haughty in the highest degree, and 
boasting descent from the kings of Yemen, they 
hold themselves to be the salt of the earth. 
Man’s nature everywhere objects to restraint, 
these people cannot endure it: nothing afflicts 
them so much as the necessity of regular occupa- 
tion, as the recurrence of ‘duty,’ as the weight 
of any subject upon the mind. Constant only in 
procrastination, as they are hebetous in body so 
they are mentally torpid and apparently incapable 
of active exertion, especially of immediate action. 
Like their congeners of Maskat and Sur, they 
have distinguished themselves on all occasions 
when opposed to any but Arabs, by excessive 
poltroonery. They seldom mix with strangers, 
for whom they have generally an aversion, and 
they will refuse a dollar to a wretch who has 
changed his faith to save his life. They are never 
worse than in youth, when excessive polygamy 
and debauchery have enslaved them: as with 
the Arabs of the Peninsula, a people of violent 
and unruly passions, and seldom ripe for use 
till their beards are grey, these Zanzabaris im- 
prove by age, and body and mind seem to grow 


378 THE ARAB. 


better, to a certain point, as they grow old. 


To this sweeping evil account there are of - 


course exceptions. I have rarely met with a 
more honest, trustworthy man than Said bin 
Salim, the half-caste Arab, who was sent with us 
as Ra’as Kafilah, or guide. Such hitherto has been 
his character ; but man varies in these regions: 
he may grievously disappoint me in the end.’ 
The poorer Arabs who flock to Zanzibar dur- 
ing the season are Hazramis, and they work and 
live hard as the Hammals of Stamboul. These men 
club and mess together in gangs under an Akidah 
(head man), who supplies them with rice, ghi, and 
scones, and who keeps the accounts so skilfully, 
that the labourer receives annually about $35, 
though he may gain four times that sum. Pau- 
per Arabs settled upon the Island refuse ‘ nigger 
work, the West Indian synonym for manual 
labour, and, as a rule, the Mashamba or planta- 
tions supply them, like Irish estates of old, with 
everything but money. At first many were 
ruined by the abolition of slave export: at pre- 
sent most of them confess that the measure has 
added materially to the development and the 
prosperity of the Island. There are now Arab 
merchants who own 80,000 clove-trees, $100,000 


' T have the words as they were written early in 1857. 


THE ARAB. 379 


floating capital, a ship or two, and from 1000 to 
2000 slaves. 

The results of wealth and general aisance 
have been luxury and unbridled licentiousness. 
As usual in damp-hot climates, for instance, Sind, 
Egypt, the lowlands of Syria, Mazenderan, Mala- 
bar, and California, the sexual requirements of the 
passive exceed those of the active sex; and the 
usual result is a dissolute social state, contrasting 
with mountain countries, dry-cold or damp-cold, 
where the conditions are either equally balanced 
or are reversed. Arab women have been de- 
scribed as respectable in the Island, because, 
fearing scandal and its consequences, they deny 
themselves to Europeans. Yet many of them 
prefer Banyans to those of the True Faith, whilst 
the warmest passions abandon themselves to 
African slaves:' these dark men are such pearls 
in beauteous ladies’ eyes, and their fascinations at 
Zanzibar are so great, that a respectable Hindostani 
Moslem will not trust his daughter to live there, 
even in her husband’s house. A corresponding 
perversion and brutality of taste make the men 
neglect their wives for negresses; the same has 

1 It is easy to explain the preference of Arab women for 
slaves, and the predilection of the husbands for negro women: 


the subject, however, is somewhat too physiological for the 
general reader. 


380 THE ARAB. 


been remarked of our countrymen in Guiana 
and the West Indies, and it notably pre- 
vails in the Brazil, where the negress and the 
Mulatta are preferred to the Creole. Considering 
the effect of the African skin when excited by 
joy, rage, fear, or other mental emotion, of course 
a cogent reason for the preference exists. 

Public prostitutes are here few, and the pro- 
fession ranks low where the classes upon which 
it depends can always afford to gratify their pro- 
pensities in the slave-market. I have alluded 
to the Wasawahili women of the Madagascar 
Quarter; a few also live seattered about the 
town, but all are equally undesirable—there is 
not a pretty face amongst them. The honorarium 
varies from $0.25 to $1, and the proceeds are 
expended upon gaudy dresses and paltry orna- 
ments. Retired Corinthians who have not pros- 
pered, live by fishing upon the sands, or make 
rude pottery at Changani Point: those who can 
afford it buy a slave or two, and give the rest of 
their days to farming. Girls who work for hire 
are always procurable, but such amours are likely 
to end badly: the same may be said of the pros- 
titutes ; consequently most white residents keep 
Abyssinian or Galla concubines. The ‘ Liwat’ is 


here considered a mere peccadillo: the late Say- i 


THE ARAB. 381 


yid, however, denied Moslem burial to a nephew 
who built the British Consular residence. This 
‘Maf’ul’ died in agony after the bungling perform- 
ance of an operation which his debaucheries ren- 
dered necessary, and the body was cast naked 
into the sea. 

Both sexes and all ages delight in drinking. 
The rich use bad but expensive French and 
American liqueurs, gin, brandy, and rum, from 
Marseille, India, and the Mauritius. Some eat 
opium, others prefer Bhang in its several forms: 
the material is imported from Bombay and 
Cutch. We found it near the continental sea- 
board, and therefore the Indian shrub 1s also pro- 
bably grown upon the Island. A distillation, I 
have said, is made from the Cashew-nut and from 
palm-wine; this alcohol is called Zerambo, and 
a free-born Arab is disgraced by touching it ; 
preserved in foul old pots, it has the effect of 
poison ; a drunken sailor will fall down insensible, 
breathe with stertorous loudness, and gradually 


pass from insensibility to death. Tembo or toddy 
is of two kinds 


Tamu, the sweet and unintoxi- 
cating, and Khali, sour or fermented. The liquor 
is drawn from the trees by the Wasawahili and the 
slaves insular and continental. The Pombe, like 
the Buzah of Egypt and Berberia, Adel, and 


382 THE ARAB. 


Abyssinia, is a simple hopless beer, made from 
maize or holecus. Drunkenness amongst the poor 
is very properly punished only when it leads to 
crime. It is singular that the late Sayyid, who 
never touched an intoxicating drink, should have 
been so tender to an offence with which Moslems 
usually deal so barbarously. 

The Arab’s head-dress isa Kummeh or Kofiyyah — 
(red fez), a Surat calotte (Alfiyyah), or a white 
skull-cap worn under a turban (Kilemba) of 
Oman silk and cotton religiously mixed. Usually 
it is of fine blue and white cotton check, embroid- 
ered and fringed with a broad red border, with 
the ends hanging in unequal lengths over one 
shoulder. The coiffure is highly picturesque. 
The ruling family and grandees, however, have 
modified its vulgar folds, wearing it peaked in 
front, and somewhat resembling a tiara. The 
essential body-clothing and the succedaneum 
for trowsers is an Izar (Nguo ya ku chini), or 
loin-cloth tucked in at the waist, 6 to 7 feet long 
by 2 to 3 broad. The colours are brick-dust and 
white or blue and white, with a silk border 
striped red, black, and yellow. ‘The very poor 
wear a dirty bit of cotton girdled by a Hakab or 
Kundavi, a rope of plaited thongs; the rich pre- 
fer a fine embroidered stuff from Oman, supported 


a 


THE ARAB. 383 


at the waist by a silver chain. None but the 
western Arabs admit the innovation of drawers 
(Suruwali). The ‘Jama’,’ or upper garment, is a 
collarless coat of the best broadcloth, leek-green or 
some tender colour being preferred. It is secured 
over the left breast’ by a silken loop, and the 
straight wide sleeves are gaily lined. The Kizbao 
is a kind of waistcoat, covering only the bust: 
some wear it with sleeves, others without. The 
Dishdasheh (in Kisawahili Khanzu), a narrow- 
sleeved shirt, buttoned at the throat and extend- 
ing to mid-shin, is made of calico (baftah), 
American drill, and other stuffs called Doriyah, 
Tarabuzun, and Jamdani. Sailors are known by 
Khuzerangi, a coarse cotton, stained dingy red- 
yellow with henna or pomegranate rind, and rank 
with Wars (bastard saffron) and sharks’ oil. 
Respectable men guard the stomach with a 
‘ Hizim,’ generally a Cashmere or Bombay shaw] ; 
others wear sashes of the dust-coloured raw silk 
manufactured in Oman. The outer garment for 
chilly weather is the long, tight-sleeved Persian 
Jubbeh, Jokhah, or Caftan, of European broad- 
cloth. The Na’alayn, Viatu, or sandals of peculiar 
shape, made at Zanzibar, have already been de- 
scribed. Most men shave their heads, and the Sha- 


* In Moslem countries Christians prefer the right breast. 


384 THE ARAB. 


feis trim or entirely remove the moustaches. The 
palms are reddened with henna, which is either 
brought from El Hejaz or gathered in the planta- 
tions. The only ring is a plain cornelian seal, 
and the sole other ornament is a talisman (Hirz 
in Kisawahili Hirizi). The eyes are blackened 
with Kohl or antimony of El Sham—here not 
Syria, but the region about Meccah—and the 
mouth, crimsoned by betel, looks as if a tooth had 
just been knocked out. 

None but women and slaves leave the house 
unarmed. The lowest Arab sticks an old dagger 
in his belt, handles a rusty spear, or shoulders a 
cheap firelock. Gulf men are generally known by 
their round targes (Tursi) made of carved and span- 
gled rhinoceros or addax hide, toys with high cen- 
tral umbo, and at the utmost a foot in diameter ; 
others have fish-skin shields, and the Baloch affect 
the Cutch ‘ Dhal,’ or buckler. The sword is of 
three forms, of which the Sayf Faranji (Frankish 
sword, in Kisawahili Upanga) has long been the 
favourite. It is a straight, broad, two-edged, 
guardless, double-handed weapon, about 4 ft 3 in. 
long, sheathed in a scabbard of red morocco: the 
- thin and well-worn blade vibrates in the grip, and 
by the side of its razor-like keenness our weapons - 
resemble iron bars. The price varies from $10 to 


THE ARAB. 385 


$100, and, asat modern Damascus, cheap German 
imitations abound. The usual handle is wood 
bound with thread-like plaits of black leather and 
silver wire forming patterns; the pommel] is an 
iron knob, and the general aspect of the article 
suggests that it is derived from the Crusading 
ages. The ‘Kittareh’ is a curved European 
sabre: the young princes and those about the 
coast carry in hand expensive specimens with 
ivory hilts and gold mountings. Thirdly, the 
‘Imani,’ as they call it, is a short straight blade 
made in Europe, Oman, or Hazramaut. The 
Arab knows but two cuts,—one the ‘ Kalam,’ 
across the ankles, and the other our No. 7, di- 
rected at the head or preferably at the shoulder : 
the former is evaded by leaping or breaking 
ground, the latter is parried with the shield. 
Jambiyahs, Khanjars, or daggers, worn strapped 
and buckled round the waist, are curved till the 
point forms almost a right angle with the hilt. 
It is a silly construction ; but anything will serve 
to stab the enemy’s back above the shoulders. 
The dudgeon of black or white rhinoceros or buffalo 
horn is adorned with a profusion of filagree-work, 
and silver or gold knobs; the blade, sharp on 
both sides, is nearly three inches broad at the 


base. The sheath (’Ald) is similarly ornamented 
VOL. I. 25 


386 THE ARAB. 


upon a ground of leather, cloth, or brocade, dark 
or scarlet, with the usual metal rings and ‘ fix- 
ings. The Khanjar often costs $200, and a hand- 
some dagger is a sign of rank. 

Not having seen at home the higher classes of 
Arab women, who are said to be sometimes remark- 
ably handsome, I can describe them only from hear- 
say. In the house they wear tight Mezar, Sarwal, 
or pantaloons of Oman silk or cotton fastened at 
the waist with rich tasselled ties brought from 
Maskat, the Hejaz, and Bandar Abbas: the body 
dress is a long chemise of Bengal or Surat stuff, 
worn over a Mkajé or loin-cloth. The hair is 
plaited into Masaka (pig-tails) or Nyule (curls), 
and here, as elsewhere, the back of the head being 
the most sacred part of the feminine person, 
adults bind round the forehead a kerchief (Nguo 
ku jitanda) or dastmal of bright-coloured silk, 
which depends behind to the waist. Abroad they 
appear masqued with the hideous black ‘ Burka’- 
veil of Oman, whilst a Rida, Kitambi, or sheet of 
white calico or black silk, conceals even the dress 
from prying eyes. A Mavuli or umbrella shows 
dignity ; some wear sandals (Vyatu), like the men, 
others Egyptian Papushes. 

The favourite feminine ornaments are Bana- 
jireh, or Khalkhdl, bracelets or bangles, gold, 


ARAB WOMEN. 387 


silver, or copper rings, solid or hollow, plain or em- 
bossed, with or without hinges. A Yekdani (single 
gem, or ‘ union’), a cordiform or oval brooch and 
pendents of precious stones or stained glass, mass- 
ively set in gold, hangs round the neck by a 
string of bullet-sized gold-foiled beads. The 
Matale (anklets) are of silver worth, that is to 
say weighing, from $10 to $20. A Kirt, Kupini, 
P’hete ya Pua, or flower-shaped ornament of gold, 
silver, or base metal, is worn in the wimg of the 
left nostril. Earrings are of many varieties: the 
rim is pierced sometimes all round for silver Hal- 
keh or rings, whose place is supplied amongst the 
poor with leaden ‘ Kipini (in the plural ‘ Vipini’). 
The lobe is bored and trained to encircle a disk of 
silver or ivory; the slaves use a bright-coloured 
roll of palm leaf, and when that is not procurable, 
a betel-nut: the result is unnatural distension, 
and in age the ear, as among the Moplahs of 
Malabar, hangs down, a mere strip of skin, to 
the collar bone. They have also the Kengele, 
copper balls for the neck; the Mpogo, or ivory 
ring; the Kikomo, a copper or brass bracelet; the 
Mkhufu, or silver necklace chain; the Mchuhu, 
or coarse Cassolette, and a variety of Talismans or 
Grigris (Hirizi) round the wrists and ankles. 
These women, like most Easterns, prefer strong 


388 ARAB WOMEN. 


and heady perfumes of musk, ambergris, ottar of 
roses, and the large Indian jasmine; their cos- 
metics are oil, henna, Kohl, or Collyrium (Wanja), 
and saffron applied to the head and eyebrows; 
and they are cunning in the matter of fumigation, 
which might with benefit be imtroduced into 
Europe. 

The Zanzibar Arab’s day is regular, varied only 
by a journey, a family festival, a debauch, or the 
yearly Ramazan fast. He rises at dawn for 
ablution and prayer, eats ‘Suwayk,’ a kind of 
vermicelli, wheaten bread, or even a little meat, 
drinks a cup of coffee, and chewing betel, repairs 
to the bazar for business or calls upon his friends. 
Men shake hands when meeting, wish good-morn- 
ing, and ask, ‘ How is thy state?’ to which the 
reply is, ‘And how art thou?’ They then sit 
down and renew queries, interspersed with many 
Marhabas, Sana-B’dnas and Na shikamaus, ‘ Allah 
preserve thee!’ and ‘Thanks be to Allah, we are 
well!’ If one sneeze, the others exclaim, ‘ May 
Allah have mercy upon thee!’ which he acknow- 
ledges, with ‘ Allah guide you!’—this is anold Arab 
superstition. Sneezing being an omen of impend- 
ing evil to the patient, an ejaculation was made 
to the gods: ‘Homer mentions the custom; 
Aristotle fruitlessly attempts to explain its exist- 


THE ARAB. 389 


ence; Apuleius refers to it; and Pliny has a 
problem on it: “Cur sternutantes salutantur ;”’’ 
Asia still practises it, and the older Brazilians have 
not forgotten it. Here the convulsion is considered 
unsonsy : many a deputation waiting upon the late 
Sayyid has been prematurely dismissed because the 
ill-omened sternutation happened. As in Turkey 
and the Moslem East generally, the visitor’s place 
of honour is on the host’s left hand. Where 
coffee is offered on ceremonious occasions, all rise 
and take the little Finjan or thimble-cup from the 
house-master, who does not allow the servant to 
hand it; they then sit down, and they drink, con- 
trary to usual Arab custom, more than one cupful. 
The hospitality concludes with a glass of sherbet. 
Amongst the wealthier classes at Zanzibar and 
Mombasah, tea is becoming a favourite beverage ; 
not only ‘fashionable,’ but held to be hygienic 
because less heating than coffee. 

At 5 o’clock, our 11 A.m., the Arab, like the 
Syrian, eats the ‘Ghada’ of fish and meat, of 
wheaten bread and vegetables, and of rice boiled 
with the cream of rasped cocoa-nut, ending with 
half-a-dozen Finjans of coffee and with betel. 
Some then repair to the Mosque; most men pray 
the noon-day at home, and sleep like the citizens 
of Andine Mendoza till the Asr or after 3 P.M. 


390 THE ARAB. 


They again perform ablution and devotions, after 
which they dress for out-of-door business and 
for home visits. The evening prayers are generally 
recited in public. Some eat the Isha-supper 
before sunset; usually it is deferred till after 
worship. The climate effectively prevents those 
last pleasant rambles by moonlight and open air 
séances—the Makamat so much enjoyed in the 
hot-dry sub-tropical regions. Here the evening 
is spent sometimes in society, oftener in the 
harem, and all apply to sleep between 10 P.M. and 
midnight. 

The yearly fast begins with the new moon of 
Ramazan ; crowds assemble in the open places and 
upon the terrace roofs till the popping of pistols 
and matchlocks and salvos from the squadron 
warn the faithful that the crescent has appeared. 
In the days of Sayyid Said the strict Arab salute 
of three guns (our 21) was kept up; five denoted 
a victory, and seven the decease of some eminent 
person. Arabs observe the dietetic law strictly ; 
their women are expected to fast, and boys of 13 
and 14 take a pride in imitating their parents. 
Many, especially those with weak digestion, 
cannot eat the dawn meal general throughout 
Egypt, Syria, and Persia. The Shafei ordeal ends 
when the sun has wholly sunk below the horizon ; 


THE FAST. 391 


the Bayazi waits till daylight has almost faded 
from the east, and he prays before breaking bread. 
Most men begin hygienically with something 
easily digested, as dates and sour milk,—a more 
substantial meal follows after an hour. The rich 
pass much of the fasting time in sleep, and the 
burden here, as elsewhere, falls far more heavily 
upon the poor. At Zanzibar, however, the inflic- 
tion is lightened by the damp climate and by the 
equinoctial day, short compared with the terrible 
16 hours which must sometimes be endured in sub- 
tropical latitudes. Yet the servants and slaves 
are useless during Ramazan: idle at all times, 
they then assert a right to do nothing: as I be- 
fore observed, the fast is one-twelfth of the year 
thoroughly wasted. On the other hand, it may 
be remarked that El Islam has wisely limited its 
festivals to six days in the year, a great contrast 
to the profuse waste of time which still charac- 
terizes the faith of Southern Europe. 

As at the beginning of the month, crowds 
assemble to sight the new moon which ends the 
fast, and every fellow who hasa matchlock wastes 
powder and ball, without much regarding where 
the latter flies. Here, as in the Brazil, nothing 
can be done without wasting gunpowder: at 
Zanzibar the matchlock is perforce preferred, in 


392 THE FESTIVAL. 


Rio de Janeiro the rocket and the squib have taken 
its place. This year (1857) a storm of rain on the 
evening of May 24th concealed the crescent, and it 
was not till half-past five p.m. on the 25th, that a 
salute from the shipping announced, despite the 
thick drifting scud which hid every inch of sky, 
that the weary ‘blessed month’ was no more. 
Then the men gathered about the palace, the 
women flocked to the house-tops, and the city, 
usually so sadly silent, rang with shouting, sing- 
ing, the braying of trumpets, and irregular dis- 
charges of small arms. After sunset again all 
was still as the grave. 

The *Id el Saghir, or lesser festival, that con- 
cludes the Ramazan, began at dawn on May 26th; 
the usual public prayers were recited in the 
mosques, and at 8.30 a.m. the squadron, dressed 
with flags, fired whilst the townsmen followed 
suit. The servants and slaves gathered in their 
new clothing to kiss the master’s hand and to 
wish him a happy festival. The Princes rode out 
in state. In the bazars an endimanché mob 
assembled despite the heavy rains, and before 
sunset they trooped through the miry lanes to 
witness the races at Mnazi Moyya, which take 
place only when the tide is out. These festivities 
—they have already been described—continued 


CEREMONIES. 393 


to a late hour, and thus passed away the earliest 
and the noisiest day of the ’Id. 

The second and the third days are diluted 
copies of the first; visits are exchanged between 
all acquaintances, and the Prince holds levées in 
full Darbar. Here the sons of Sayyid Said and 
their blood relations occupy one side of the long 
bare hall, opposite them are the high officials and 
interpreters, whilst the honoured guests sit by 
the ruler at the Sadr, or top of the room, and 
fronting them, near the door, stand the eunuchs 
and the slaves. On leaving, as on entering, the 
stranger shakes hands with the whole family 
according to seniority, and he is accompanied by 
the Prince either a few paces or to the doorway, 
the steps, in fact, being carefully proportioned to 
his rank. 

There is little peculiarity in the religious cere- 
monies of the Zanzibar Arab. An Azan (call to 
prayer) is repeated in the ear of the new-born 
babe, and on the Arba’in (40th day) the mother 
and infant are bathed, and become pure—until 
then the husband will not sit by his wife’s side. 
On this occasion the head of the male child is 
shaved, as usual amongst Moslems. Marriage is 
expensive, seldom costing the respectable man 
less than $500; all the food provided for he 


394 CEREMONIES. 


occasion must be eaten, even if guests be sought 
in the streets; this indeed is the rule of Arab 
feasts. Half the Mahr, or settlement-money, should 
be paid before the Fatihah is recited; the re- 
mainder is claimed upon separation or after the 
husband’s death. A woman cannot demand di- 
vorce except for the usual legal reasons, and the 
‘Tddeh,’ or interval before re-marriage, is three 
months and ten days. After a Khitmah or per- 
lection of the Koran, the relict, who has hitherto 
been confined to the house, is bathed by her femi- 
nine friends, in token of readiness for engagement. 
Many widows refuse to change their condition, and 
apply themselves to money-making by commerce, 
plantations, or slave-dealing. I heard of one jovial 


‘Armalah’ who invited Europeans to petit soupers . 


and parties fines, in which merriment takes preced- 
ence of modesty. The Arab women of Zanzibar 
appear unusually spirited, especially when com- 
pared with their lords ; in every great house some 
energetic petticoat or rather trowsers takes or 
forces her husband or her brother to takethe lead— 
perhaps, as nearer home, they are the more cour- 
ageous and venturous in braving danger because 
the risk and the brunt do not fall upon their 
heads. Men of pure family will not give their 
daughters to any but fellow-clansmen. They 


BURIALS. 395 


themselves do not object to Waswahili, and negro- 
girls, but the single Arab wife—there is rarely 
more than one—rules the concubines with a rod 
of iron. 

Men, women, and children weep at funerals, 
but it is not the custom to hire ‘keeners.’ The 
feminine mourning dress is black, and the period, 
as general among Moslems, lasts 40 days. Con- 
trary to Arab custom, the graves are lined with 
boarding. The exterior is a wall of coralline rag 
and, lime from a foot to a foot and a half high, 
with little raised steps at the head and feet; here a 
porcelain saucer or an encaustic tile is sometimes 
mortared in by way of ornament. Old ceme- 
teries abound throughout the city and the suburbs, 
sometimes showing offensive sights. A simple 
slab sufficed for the late Sayyid’s ancestors; on 
the spot, however, where he and his son Khalid 
he, they are building a dwarf truncated pyramid 
of stone and cement, an unusual memorial to a 
Bayazi or a Wahhabi. Of late years the Arabs 
have begun to inter their slaves. Formerly the 
corpses were thrown to the beasts or tossed into 
the sea, and from the windows of H.M.’s Consul- 
ate 1 have seen more than one body bleached 
snow-white by sea-water, and stranded upon the 
beach where no one cared to bury it. 


396 THE BAYAZI. 


During the reign of the last ruler, El Islam 
at Zanzibar was tolerant by compulsion; the 
Shiahs were allowed an Imambara at which they 
bewailed the death of Hasan and Husayn—few 
Sunni countries would have tolerated the abo- 
mination. But as these ‘sectarians’ almost wor- 
ship whilst others absolutely adore Ali and his 
descendants; and as the ‘ Khariji’ schism slew 
the former and well-nigh damns all the rest, they 
Join issue and agree to differ. This indeed is a 
recognized rule in religions, where the most 
minute distinctions cause and perpetuate the 
deadliest feuds, and the family quarrel will not | 
be reconciled, because love perverted becomes not 
indifference but hate. 

The Arabs are here all Shafei or Bayazi. As 
the latter schism is now rare under that name in 
the Moslem world, some notice of it may be con- 
sidered advisable. I have seen the Bayazi con- 
founded with the Mutazali (Motazilites who — 
support Free-will versus Predestination), but — 
there is an important difference: the latter hold 
Ali in high esteem and object only to the Caliph _ 
Muawiyah. = 

The Baydzi, also called Abdzi,’ Thbdz ~<_ 

1 Niebuhr terms them Beiasi and Abadhi (Travels in — 


Arabia, chap. exiv.). Salil ibn Razik makes Abdullah the ae 
not the grandson, of Abaz. : 


THE BAYAZI. 397 


Ibaziyyeh derive their name from Abdullah bin 
Yahya bin Abaz (in our dictionaries ‘ Ibaz’ 
Some authors have corrupted this name to Bey- 
dan, that of a Persian sectarian; others translate 
it the ‘ Whites,’ as opposed to the green of the 
Fatimites, and the black of the Abbasides. This 
arch-heretic, according to the Jehan-Numa, began 
to preach under the reign of El Merwan, the last 
Ommiade Khalifeh, between a.n. 127—1382 (A.D. 
744 and 749), and was shortly afterwards con- 
quered and put to death. His tenets spread far 
and wide amongst the Khawarij of Nezwah, ex- 
tended to the littoral, and filled the land with 
battle and murder. ay 

The Bayazi, who through their Imams go- 
verned Oman for 163 years, beginning from 
A.D. 751, are thus one of the many Khariji (in 
the plural Khawarij) sects whose origin may be 
traced in the rival faiths of Sabeism and Kuraysh 
idolatry ; in the contest of the ‘ Prophets ’ Moham- 
med and Musaylimeh, and in the political inter- 
ference of the first Caliphs between the turbulent 
tribes of Oman. Under the names of Shurah 
(s\.5), Haruriyah (43,5), and Muhakkimah 
(asS<+), these ‘Seceders’ were once numerous 
in northern Africa, Spain, and Arabia; in a.p. 
1350 Ibn Batuta found them at Timbucktu. 


398 THE BAYAZI. 


They are now mostly confined to a few cities in 
Morocco, and to the parts about Maskat: Some 
theological writers derive these Kharijites from 
the malcontents who declared that both Ali and 
Muawiyah had forfeited their right to the Ca- 
liphate by appealing from Allah’s judgment to 
human decisions, and who carried out their ob- 
jection by murdering Ali and by attempting the 
murder of Muawiyah and Amru. Their descend- 
ants are held to have formed 20 schools like the 
Shiahs (or Rawafiz) and the Mutazali; whilst 
the Marjiyyeh number six; the Mujbirah or 
Sunnites four, and, together with the Batiniyah, 
the Hululiyah, and the Zaydi, make up the 73 
divisions into which the first Moslem declared 
El Islam would split. The principal Kharijite 
schools (Usul el Firak) have, however, been re- 
duced to the following five. The first four are 
now common only in books. 

1. The Azarikah, or followers of Abu Rashid 
Nafi’? ibn el Azrak. They permit, in religious 
warfare, the massacre of women and children; 
they do not lapidate adulterers, Koranic command 
being absent, and they severely punish the male, 
not the female, slanderer of the Faithful. | 

2. The Najdat, disciples of Najdat bin Amir, 
formerly abounded in Mekran, Kerman, Mosul, 


THE BAYAZI. 399 


Mesopotamia, Seistan, and Oman. They hold 
persistency in the minor sins (Sughair) equiva- 
lent to polytheism (Shirk); whereas mortal sins 
are not damnable unless accompanied by petsist- 
ency (Israr). 

3. The Baghghasiyyeh, Banhasiyyeh, or Bay- 
hasiyyeh, followers of Abu Baghghas, Banhas, or 
Bayhas. I have found no account of their ‘ doc- 
trinal quiddities.’ 

4. The Safar, so called from their founder 
Ziyad ibn el Asfar, believe concealment of tenets 
(‘Takiyyeh ’) permissible in word not in deed, and 
they extend infidelity (Kufr) even to such offences 
as neglecting prayer. 

5. The Abazi or Bayazi, who form the mass 
of Arab population at Zanzibar, and who are 
also numerous in Oman. They are Karmati and 
anti-Moslem in the matter of Freewill, a vital 
distinction from the Sunnis; like the Ismailiyyeh 
and sundry mystic schools, they believe the Imam- 
ship to be a supreme pontificate, but not the 
succession, by grace, of the prophethood and the 
caliphate. They are opposed to the Mutazali by 
respecting the Shaykhayn (Abubekr and Omar), 
their exoteric reason being that El Islam then 
throve under asingle head. Therefore they deem 
it lawful and right to abuse Usman and Ali (damn- 


400 THE BAYAZI. 


ing the Shiahs for venerating the latter), Mua- 
wiyah and Yezid, Talhah, Zubayr,’ and others, 
who brought calamities upon the Faithful, and 
who caused the spilling of Moslem blood. In this 
age of decaying zeal they do not ‘Sabb’ or blas- 
pheme any one publicly by name, and by order 
of the late Sayyid they bless, during the Friday 
sermon (Khutbah), the two first Caliphs, and 
then generally the Sahabah (Companions of the 
Prophet), the Muhajirin (Meccans who accom- 
panied the Flight), and the Ansar (Medinites 
who received Mohammed). As are all Moslems 
they may not use the word ‘ La’anat,’ or curse, 
except to Satan—so Christians are forbidden to 
call others fools, and with equal success. Mo- 
ravian-like they pride themselves upon preserv- 
ing pure and undefiled the tenets and the ritual 
handed down to them from the Prophet’s day, 
and, with the rest of the Moslem Ulema, who in 
this point are the most conservative and anti- 
progressive of men, they would model all modern 
civilization upon that of barbarous Arabia in the 
7th century. One of their favourite sayings is, 

1 These two Ashab or ‘ Companions of the Apostle’ are 
popularly supposed to have been buried under a now ruined — 
dome in a garden lying East of the Dahdah cemetery, Damas- 


cus. It is, however,a mistake; they were interred near Basreh __ 
where they fell in battle. | Pa! 


THE BAYAZI. 401 


‘ All innovation (Bida’ah, i.e. a practice unknown 
to Mohammed’s day) is error, and all error is in 
hell-fire.’ Possibly, however, this may be the 
effect of Wahhabi neighbourhood. 

The faith of the Bayadzi is narrow and exclusive, 
a monopoly of righteousness, a moral study of the 
infinitely little. Amongst Christians I can com- 
pare him only with the ‘hard-grit’ style of Baptists, 
who aspire alone to people a Heaven in which the 
letter H is of no account. All who do not profess 
his tenets are Kafirs, and, as it is a standing be- 
lief that whoso calls a Moslem Kafir becomes a 
Kafir himself, they are replied to in kind. Each 
of the 73 schools naturally considers itself the 
‘ Najiyah,’ or Saving Faith; but it is not justified 
in consigning to Jehannum those that do not 
agree with it. The Baydzi condemn all the 
Sunnis, and especially the Shafeis, who expect 
actually to see the Deity (el Ru’uyah) during the 
next life. Quoting the debated passage of the 
Koran ‘Sight shall not see Him’ (la) Ss), 
the Kharijis agree that if the Lord be visible, He 
must be material and personal, consequently 
created and unessential. In these matters they go 
beyond their depth; but who, it may be asked, 
attempts the subject and does not? The idea of 


the Godhead varies with every race, of which it is 
VOL. I. 26 


402 THE BAYAZI. 


the highest mental and moral expression; the 
higher the conception the higher will be the intel- 
lectual status, and vice versi; even the same 
race constantly modifies its hold for better or 
for worse. I do not believe that the sages of 
Greece and Rome were polytheists or idolaters, 
although they may have sacrificed cocks to Escu- 
lapius. Under almost all mythologies, even the 
Hindu, there is an underlying faith m monothe- 
ism. But the God of the Jews, of the Christians, 
and of the Moslems, differs in kind as well as in 
degree, even as the God of Calvin would not be 
the God of Channing. A late writer has pub- 
lished several pages of very good writing and very 
bad reasoning, upon the contrast of the Deity, as 
worshipped by Christianity and by El Islam. His 
error has been to assume Wabhhabiism for the 
typical form of the latter. I might as well work 
out the theory that the Anabaptist Protestant is 
the Christian par excellence. Like the article on 
the Talmud which lately created so much attention, 
it is an able bit of special pleading and no more. 

Amongst Moslems, Paradise is supposed to em- 
brace the extent of the earth and firmament, and — 
the late Sayyid used quaintly to remark, that 
his scanty orthodox subjects would people it bat : 
poorly. The Baydzi, unlike others of the Savi 


THE BAYAZI. 403 


Faith, which we may better translate ‘le Salut,’ 
hold hell-fire to be the eternal portion of even their 
own sinners; thus literally interpreting the text, 
‘ever, to all eternity (dwelling) in it (hell),’— 
Vout leas pills. They have no prayer-station round 
the Ka’abah, and they relieve their chagrin by 
proving these oratories to be ‘novelties,’ un- 
known to the Prophet’s day. 

The ritual differences between the Bayazi and 
other schools are small; in prayer the arms and 
hands are extended down the thighs, instead of 
being folded over the waist. Contrary to the 
practice of Sunnis and Shiahs, they may wear 
gold or silver rings of indefinite weight, and silks 
and satins, provided that the latter be removed 
during prayer. ‘These sectarians cannot marry 
women with whom they have cohabited; divorce 
is imperative from wives whom they have visited 
at a forbidden season, and they allow legitimacy 
to children born within two years after the father’s 
death. Amongst the Shafei the period extends 
to four years: physiological ignorance of ovarian 
dropsy fixed the time; and mistaken charity has 
refused to shorten it. In general the Bayazi, like . 
the Druze, appears unwilling to explain his tenets, 
a remarkable contrast with the self-assertion and 
the controversial readiness of other Moslems. 


404 THE BAYAZI. 


When betrayed into argument they quarrel about 
their belief—a sign of weakness ; the calmly and 
thoroughly convinced, for mstance an honest 
Scotch country minister, only smiles with pity 
upon the man who dares to differ from him. The 
studied simplicity and literalness of the sect and 
its fierce intolerance, combined with its crass semi- 
barbarism and isolation from the great family of 
nations, have favoured the progress of Wahhabi 
puritanism, and accordingly many Bayazi have 
ranged themselves under the uncompromising 
banner of puritanical ‘ Unitarianism ’—literalism 
and Koranolatry. 

Of old the Kharijis were the flowers of the 
Islamitic garden; and history will ever dwell 
upon the literary glories of Seville and Cordova. 
It was this heresy that produced the Allamat 
(doctissimus) El Ghazali, and the celebrated 
Persian grammarian and poet, the Imam Abu’l 
Kasim Mohammed bin Omar, El Zamakhshari. 
His wife attacked his vile belief in man’s Free-will 
with an argumentum ad hominem more demon- 
strative than purely logical. It caused him, 
however, to recant the error and to express his 
penitence in that glorious ode beginning— _ 


dolor Cdgadl de by ape b 
SN peed Ud Lal 


THE BAYAZI. 405 


‘O Thou who seest the midge extend her wing 

Athwart the gathered glooms of gloomiest night,’ 
and to end life in the firm conviction of fate and 
predestination. His commentary (the Kashshaf 
"an Hikaik el Tanzil) displayed a logical reason- 
ing, a profundity of learning, and purity of style 
which made it popular throughout El Islam, and 
it cleared the way for a long procession of similar 
productions. 

In modern degenerate days the Bayazis of 
Zanzibar have little education and no learning: 
they must even borrow from the Sunnis com- 
mentaries (Tafsir) and other religious works, 
whence they can extract food for their own crav- 
ings of belief. Of these the most popular are El 
Bokhari, the Jeldlayn, and El Baghawi; the 
abstruse Bayzawi is seldom troubled. Logic is 
neglected: history, philosophy, and the exact — 
sciences are unknown. Being Arabs, they do not 
require El] Sarf (accidence or the changes of the 
verb), and the Alfiyyeh of Ibn Malik is the only 
popular treatise upon the subject of El Nahw 
(syntax, and the changes of non-verbal parts of 
speech). The Kazis of the Bayazi and the Sunni 
schools lecture in their own houses upon the 
religious sciences, and the elementary establish- 
ments may number on the Island 15 or16. Here 


406 THE BAYAZI. 


boys learn to read the Koran, and to write the 
crabbed angular hand which distinguishes these 
Moslems. Nakhodas master a little arithmetic and 
navigation at Bombay and Calcutta. Some few 
have been sent to England and France, where 
they showed no want of attention or capacity: 
on their return to semi-barbarism, however, al- 
most all went to the bad; they robbed and plotted, 
and most of them died of drunkenness and de- 
bauchery. ) 

The best education to be had at Zanzibar can 
only exercise the memory; it does little to culti- 
vate the understanding or to improve the mind. 
Yet the people, averse to literary labour and 
despising learning in the presence of business, 
pleasure, or idleness, are shrewd and plodding 
‘thinkers,’ and probably for the reason that their 
wits are not blunted by books and lectures, they 
are a match for Europeans in the everyday busi- 
ness of life. It is evident that where the profound- 
est ignorance of our elementary knowledge co-ex- 
ists with practical wisdom, there is a large field for 
the labours of civilization, and that the western 
school, if kept strictly secular and pure of prose- 
lytizing, would be a blessing to the children of 
both sexes at Zanzibar. 


CHAPTER XI. 


COMPARATIVE ANTHROPOLOGY (ETHNOLOGY) OF 
ZANZIBAR—THE WASAWAHILI AND THE SLAVE 
RACES. 


‘Venti anni sono, il commercio di Zanzibar era nullo; ora 
il commercio li supera 50 milioni di franchi, Per alcuni 
articoli, per esempio, pel garofano, per la gomma copale, e 
per l’avorio, il mercato di Zanzibar é divenuto il principale 
del Mondo.—P. 17, La grandezza Italiana, by the learned 
geographer Cavagliere Cristoforo Negri. Torino, 1864. 


THE Wasawahili, bounded north by the Somal 
and the Gallas, south by the so-called Kafir 
tribes, extend along the Indian Ocean from 
Makdishu to Mozambique, a coastal distance of 
some 1050 miles; they also occupy the Zangian 
Archipelago, and the islets that fringe the shore. 
They call themselves Wazumba, ignoring the 
term Jabarti or Ghiberti (Gibberti), still ap- 


408 THE WASAWAHILI. 


plied to them by the northern Moslems. It is 
given by El Makrizi to Zayla in Somaliland, 
and by other writers to the Abyssinian ‘ Moors ; ’ 
vocatur quoque Jabarta, i.e. Regio Ardens. This 
insititious race might be called Hamito-Semitic 
if anywhere we could discern that the mythical 
Ham, or his progeny, ever became negroes. 
They are, as they confess themselves to be, 
mulattos, descended from Asiatic settlers and 
colonists, Arabs, and Persians of the Days of 
Ignorance, who intermarried with the Wakafiri 
or infidels. The author of the Natural History of 
Man is correct in asserting their African origin, 
but he under-estimates the amount of Asiatic 
innervation. The traveller still witnesses the 
process of breeding half-castes: Maskatis and 
Baloch still trade to the coast harbours, and settle 
as agriculturists in the maritime regions, whilst 
the African element is maintained in the Island 
by a steady importation of slave girls. The 
Wasawahili differ in one essential point from 
their congeners of mixed blood, Egyptian, Nubian, 
Abyssinian, Galla, Dankali, Somal, and the 
northern negroids; these have not, those like the 
Comoro men distinctly have, the negro effluvium, 
they are the ‘foumarts, not the civets,’ of the — 
human race. | e 


RACIAL EFFLUVIUM. 409 


I am compelled by its high racial significance 
to offer a few words upon this unpleasant topic. 
The odour of the Wasawahili, like that of the 
negro, is arank foetor, sw generis, which faintly 
reminded me of the ammoniacal smell exhaled 
by low-caste Hindus, popularly called Pariahs. 
These, however, owe it to external applications, 
aided by the want of cleanliness. All agree that 
it is most offensive in the yellow-skinned, and 
the darkest negroids are therefore preferred for 
domestic slaves and concubines. It does not 
depend upon diet. In the Anglo-American 
States, where blacks live like whites, no diminu- 
tion of it has been remarked; nor upon want of 
washing,—those who bathe are not less nauseous 
than those who do not. After hard bodily 
exercise, or during mental emotion, the epiderm 
exudes a fcetid perspiration, oily as that of orange 
peel: a negro’s feet will stain a mat, an oar 
must be scraped after he has handled it, and a 
woman has left upon a polished oaken gun-case 
a hemispherical mark that no scrubbing could 
remove. This ‘Catinga, as the Brazilians call 
it, taints the room, infects every part of the body 
with which it comes in contact, and exerts a 
curious effect on the white races. A missionary’s 

wife in Zanzibar owned to me that it caused her 


410 THE TWO FAMILIES. 


almost to faint. I have seen an Englishman 
turn pale when he felt that a crowded slave-craft 
was passing under his windows, and the late 
Sayyid could not eat or drink for hours after he 
had been exposed to the infliction. 

The Wasawahili may be roughly estimated at 
half a million of souls. In 1850 Dr Krapf 
(Vocabulary of six East African Languages) pro- 
posed 350,000 to 400,000. In Zanzibar Island 
they are divided into two great families, a dis- 
tinction hitherto disregarded by travellers. The 
Shirazi, or nobles, derive themselves from the 
Shangaya settlement, also called Shiraz, on the 
coast north of Lamu in about 8. lat. 2°; thence 
they extended to Tungi, four days’ sail south of 
the Rufuma river. Asserting themselves to be 
Alawi Sayyids (descended from the Khalifah 
Ali) they take the title of Muigni, ‘lord,’ equiva- 
lent to the Arab ‘Sherif,’ whereas the other 
chiefs are addressed as B’ana—master. The last 
Msawahili Sultan in the days of the Arab , 
conqueror, Ahmed bin Said, was Ahmed bin — 
Sultan bin Hasan el Alawi. The actual head 
of the family is entitled Muigni Mku by his — 4 
people ; by the Europeans, ‘ King of the Sawahili.’ 
His name is mentioned in the Khutbah or Friday 
Sermon; he collects the poll-tax, and receives © 1 


ORIGIN OF THE WASAWAHILI. 41] 


percentage, some say one half, others only $2000, 
when paying it into the Sayyid’s treasury. He 
was never, however, admitted to any equality by 
the Arab ruler. The Shirazi clan does not now 
contain more than a hundred families. | 

The Wasawahili race appears, from the ‘ Kilwa 
Chronicle’ (Huma Chronica dos Reys de Quiloa) 
mentioned by De Barros (1st Decade of Asia, vii. 
4, 5), to have been derived from the ‘ Emozaydis’ 
(Amm Zayd) or followers of their Imam, Zayd bin 
Ali Zayn el Abidin bin Husayn, the grandson 
of the Prophet. He was proclaimed Khalifah at 
Kufa in A. H. 122 (4. D. 739), under the Khalifat 
of El Hesham bin Abd el Melek, the Ommiade, 
by whom he was conquered and slain. The pre- 
tender’s son, Yahya, fled to Khorasan, where the 
Abbasides were already making head against 
the Ommiades, and the tenets of his followers, 
the Zaydis, spread throughout Yemen, where 
they formed, and they still form, a numerous and 
influential class. Other ‘Shiah’ partisans took 
refuge from persecution in East Africa, fortified 
themselves upon the littoral about Shangaya, and, 
extending southwards, became lords of the land. 
Some generations afterwards an emigration of 
Sunni Arabs from El Hasa, in three ships, 
commanded by seven brothers flying from the 


412 THE ‘ EMOZAYDIS, 


tyranny of their chief, visited the coast, founded 
Makdishu and Brava, and extended to Sofala. 
The ‘Emozaydis, unwilling to accept orthodox. 
rule, retired into the interior, intermingled with 
the Kafir race, and became the Bedawin of the 
country. The second Persian emigration took 
place early in our eleventh century. <A certain Ali, 
son of a ‘ Moorish’ Sultan Hasan, who governed 
Shiraz, by an Abyssinian slave, finding himself 
despised by his six brethren, fled with wife and 
family in two ships from Hormuz to East Africa. 
At Makdishu and Brava, finding Arabs of another 
faith (Sunnis), he went to Kilwa Island, bought 
land with cloth, took the title of Sultan, and 
fortified himself against the Kafirs and against 
the Moslems of Songo-Songo and Changa, whose 
dominion extended to Mompana (Mafiyeh). The 
latter, together with other islets, was conquered 
by his son, Sultan ‘Ali Bumale,’ and the 
dynasty lasted a grand total of 541 lunar years 


before the arrival of Cabral at Kilwa in July, — 
A.D. 1500. These Shirazis originated the noble — 
family of the Wasawahili, who do not claim — 
descent from the older ‘ Emozaydis.” i 

The Mahadimu, or serviles, a word derived y: 
from the Arabic Makhadim, the ‘Mohaydin’ of — 


' Further details will be given in Part II. chap xi. 


ret, 
“ - 

»~ aire 
‘ a* . 


SERVILE WASAWAHILI. 413 


Europeans, compose the mass of the Wasawahili 
race. They are popularly derived from the slaves 
left upon the Island by the Portuguese. It 
must, however, be observed that most of the 
great families in Eastern and Southern Africa 
have congener clients, or rather outcastes, who are 
probably, like the Spartan Helots, remnants of 
subjugated rivals. Thus, to quote but a few, 
there are the Midgans amongst the Somal, the 
Walanguilo or Ariangulo and Dahalo amongst the 
Southern Gallas,’ and the Wandurobo amongst the 
Wakwafi. The Wasumbara have their Washenzi; 
the Hottentots their Bushmen, and the Kafirs 
their Fingos. In a former volume | have shown 
that even the Arabs of Oman and Yemen are 
mixed with Khadims, a system of race within race, 
as contrary to the spirit of El Islam as of Chris- 
tianity. These servile castes are distinguished 
by swarthier skins, weaker frames, and other signs 


1 A highly interesting account is given of this almost 
unknown race by the Rey. Thomas Wakefield in his ‘ Footprints 
in Eastern Africa, or Notes of a Visit to the Southern Gallas’ 
(London, Reed. 1866, pp. 76—79). We are told that ‘the 
Galas never stab a Mlangilo, but removing the blades of their 
spears, they thrash him to death with the shafts or handles: ’ 
moreover, that ‘the Walangilo approach a Gala on their 
knees, crying, ‘“tiririsho! tiririsho! tiririsho!” until their 
greeting is acknowledged by a grunt from their lord or by 
the latter spitting out a little saliva!’ 


tl 


414 THE WASAWAAZILI. 


of inferior development. The Mahadimu of Zanzi- 
bar are evidently the ancient lords of the Island, 
reduced to a manner of servitude by northern 
conquerors. Though now free, and often slave- 
owners, these Helots are subject, at the Prince’s 
order, to an occasional corvée, and to a poll-tax. 
The amount of the latter affords a rude census; the 
adult males range between 10,000 and 12,000, 
and the women, it is said, are proportionally more 
numerous. 
‘The Wasawahili of the Island appear physically 
inferior to those of the seaboard: as in the days 
of Marco Polo, they are emphatically an ugly 
race. If the girls in early youth show traces 
of prettiness, it is a grotesque order of the beauté du 
diable. Some of the men have fine, large, strong, 
and muscular figures, without being able to use 
their strength, and as amongst uncivilized people 
generally, the reality falls short of the promise. 
The national peculiarity is the division of the 
face into two distinct types, and the contrast — 
appears not a little singular. The upper, or © 
intellectual part, though capped by woolly hair, 
is distinctly Semitic—with the suspicion of a — 
caricature—as far as the nose-bridge, and the 4 
more ancient the family the more evident is the | 
mixture. The lower, or animal half, ccpocialitg 


THE WASAWAHILI. 415 


the nostrils, lip, jaws, and chin is unmistakably 
African. There are afew Albinos with silk-cocoon- 
coloured hair, and tender-red eyes, their pinkish 
skins are cobwebbed by darker reticulations and 
rough from pellagrous disease. Leucosis, however, 
is rare; we saw only two cases, one on the Island, 
the other a youth near Tanga. 

The Wasawahili are by no means a jet-black 
people, as Pritchard, misled by Dr Bird, has as- 
sumed; nor, indeed, is this the distinction of the 
Zanzibarian races generally. The skin is a choco- 
late-brown, varying im shades, as amongst our- 
selves, but usually not darker than the complexion 
of Southern Arabia. About Lamu and Patta the 
colour is yellow-brown ; at Mombasah and Zanzi- 
bar dark-brown; and south of Kilwa, I am told, 
black-brown. Mostly the hair is jetty, unless 
sunburnt; crisp, and curling short; it splits after 
growing a few inches long, and often it is planted 
like the body pile, in distinct ‘pepper-corns.’ The 
barbule is a degeneracy from the Arab goatee, and 
the mustachios are short and scanty. The oval 
skull, too dolichocephalous to be purely Caucasi- 
an, is much flattened at the walls, and sometimes 
the upper. brow (the reflective region of Gall) is 
too highly developed for the lower. The eyes, 
with dark-brown pupils and cornea stained dirty 


416 THE WASAWAHILI. 


bilious-yellow, are straight and well-opened, but 
the nose is flat and patulous, the mouth is coarse 
and ill-cut; the lips, often everted, project un- 
duly; the teeth are obliquely set, and the jaw is 
prognathous. The figure is loose and pulpy, and 
even in early manhood the waist is seldom finely 
formed; in many men I have seen the nipples 
placed unusually low down, whilst the women 
have the flaccid pendulous breasts of negresses. 
Both sexes fail in point of hips, which are lank 
and angular, whereas those of the inner savages 
are finely rounded. The shanks are bowed for- 
wards, the calf is high raised and bunchy, the 
heel is long, and the extremities are coarse and 
large. There is another proof of African blood 
which can hardly be quoted here: many overland 
travellers have remarked it amongst the boatmen 
of Egypt.’ 

Veritable half-castes, the Wasawahili have in- 
herited the characters of both parents. From the. 
Arab they derive shrewd thinking and _ practice 
in concealing thought: they will welcome a man 
with the determination to murder him; they have 
unusual confidence, self-esteem, and complacency; _ 


1 The curious reader will find it in the Travels of Marco 4 
Polo (chap. xxxvii. note 1, p. 432, of Bohn’s Antiquarian — 
Library). ea ; 


ret 
* a 
? he ad 
ra 


3) 
mits 


THE WASAWAHILI. 417 


fondness for praise, honours, and distinctions ; 
keenness together with short-sightedness im 
matters of business, and a nameless horror of re- 
sponsibility and regular occupation. Africa has 
sifted them with comparative freedom from 
bigotry —they are not admodum dediti re- 
ligionibus. Usually the Moslem combines com- 
merce with proselytizing, opposed to our sys- 
tem, which divides by a wide gulf the merchant’s 
career from that of the Missionary, and which 
unites them only upon the subscription sheet. 
These people care little to make converts: 
their African languor upon doctrinal points pre- 
vents their becoming fanatics or proselytizers. 
African also is their eternal, restless suspicion, the 
wisdom of serf and slave compensating for their 
sluggish imagination and small powers of concen- 
tration. They excel in negro duplicity; they are 
infinitely great in the ‘Small wares and petty 
points of cunning,’ and they will boast of this 
vile eminence, saying, ‘ Are we not Wasawahili?”’ 
men who obtain their ends by foxship? Natum 
mendacio genus, truth is unknown to it; honesty 
and candour are ignored even by name. When 
they assert they probably lie, when they swear 
they certainly lie. The favourite oath is ‘Mi mi 


wad (or M’ana) hardm{—I am a bastard if,’ &c., 
VOL, I. 27 


418 THE WASAWAAZILI. 


&c., and it is never respected. The language is 
very foul, and such expressions as Komanyoko are 
never out of the mouth. The Msawahili will not 
ask a thing openly: he waits, fidgeting withal, 
till the subject edge itself in, and then he will 
rather hint than speak out. At the same time he 
is an inveterate beggar, and the outstretching of 
hands seems to relieve his brain. When his mind 
is set upon an acquisition, he becomes a mono- 
maniac, like that child-man the savage. His 
nonchalance, carelessness, and improvidence pass 
all bounds. He will light his pipe under a dozen 
leaky kegs of gunpowder ; ‘ he will set a house on 
fire, as it were, to roast his eggs;’ he will wreck 
his ship because anchoring her to the beach saves 
trouble in loading; he might make his coast a 
mine of wealth, but he will not work till hunger 
compels him, and his pure insouciance has al- 
lowed his valuable commerce to be wrested from 
him by Europeans, Hindus, and Arabs. His dis- 
like of direct action exceeds that of the Bedawi, 
and yet he quotes a proverb touching procrastin- 
ation, ‘ Leo kabli ya kesho,’—to-day is before to- 
morrow — better than our ‘To-morrow never 


comes.’ 


In disposition the Msawahili is at once ite | 4 


ly and destructive: his quarrelsome temper leads — 


tf 
' 

rag 

a u 


at 
rh 


THE WASAWAHILI. 419 


him into trouble, but he fights only by being 
brought to bay. Sensual and degraded, his self- 
indulgence is that of the brutes. He drinks, and 
always drinks to excess. He would stake and 
lose his mother at play. Chastity is unknown in 
this land of hot temperaments—the man places 
paradise in the pleasures of the sixth sense, and 
the woman yields herself to the first advances. 
Upon the coast, when an adulterer is openly de- 
tected, he is fined according to the ‘injured 
husband’s’ rank; mostly, however, such pecca- 
dillos are little noticed. Unnatural crimes are 
held conducive to health. * * * 

The manners of ‘the perverse race of Kush’ 
are rough and free, especially compared with those 
of India, yet dashed with a queer African cere- 
moniousness. Their conversation turns wholly 
upon the subjects of women and money. With 
these optimists all that is is good, or, at least, it 
is not worth the trouble of a change for the 
better. They ‘make a stand upon the ancient 
way, and they hold that old custom, because it is 
old, must be fit for all time. This savage con- 
servatism, combined with their traditional and 
now instinctive dread of the white face, and 
perhaps with a not unreasonable fear of present 
and future loss, has made them close the interior 


420 THE WASAWAHILI. 


to Europeans. They have no especial dislike to, 
at the same time no fondness for, foreigners, 
who in mind as well as body are separated from 
them longo intervallo. 

The characteristic good points of the coast 
race are careless merriment, an abundance of 
animal spirits; strong attachments and devoted 
family affection. There is amongst men an 
artificial fraternity which reminds us of the 
‘fostering’ of Ireland and the ‘ Lambmas brother 
and sister’ of the local Kermess, St Olla’s Fair: a | 
similar brotherhood is found at Madagascar. 
Amongst the negro races generally each sucks or 
exchanges blood from an arm vein, and the two 
then swearrelationship. The operation is called Ku 
chanjana and the oath Sare or Sogu,—the Arabs, 
by whose law it is forbidden, name it Mushati- 
beh. Girls, even though their parents be living, 
adopt a Kungwi or stead-mother, who may or who 
may not be of the family: the latter attends her — 
‘Mwari’ (adopted child) when the first ablution 
for puberty is performed, and at the wedding sits 
upon the couch till decency forbids. The con- 
nection reminds us of the Persian proverb, ‘ The 


nurse is kinder than the mother.’ Like Orientals | 
and certain peoples of Southern Europe, they _ 
make little distinction between near and distant s 


ie 
ie 
oe 
» ee 
>A) 


THE WASAWAHILI. 42] 


relationship: a man’s son may come from the 
same city and his brother perhaps from the same 
province. So in West Africa ‘brother’ has an 
extensive signification. 

The Wasawahili from Makdishu to Mozam- 
bique (Mussumbeg) are all Moslems and Shafei, 
as they were in the 14th century when Ibn 
Batuta reported them chaste and honest, peace- 
ful and religious. Possibly under the orthodox 
denomination they may still preserve the hereti- 
eal Zaydi tenets of their ancestors; but of this 
point I was not familiar enough with them to 
judge. If Persians, they must date from the 
days before the universal prevalence of Tashayyu 
(Shitism), or they have abandoned their ancient 
faith. Feuds with the late Sayyid Said spread 
the school along the coast, and his Bayazi sub- 
jects became Sunnis in spite, even as Irishmen 
and Romans sometimes turn Protestants. El 
Islam, however, only fringes the Continent. With 
their savage irreverence for holy things, the 
Wasawahili calling themselves Moslems know 
little beyond the Kalmah, or profession of faith, 
rarely pray, and fast only by compulsion. Like 
Hindostanis, Persians, and Egyptians, nations pro- 
fessing El Islam at a distance from the fountain- 
head, amongst whom local usage has been largely 


422 THE WASAWAHILI. 


incorporated with the pure practice of the Faith, 
they have retained a mass of superstitions and 
idolatries belonging to their pagan forefathers. 
They have a terror of the sorcerers, with whom 
Maskat is said to swarm, and they tell fright- 
ful stories of men transformed into hyzenas, 
dogs, sheep, camels, and other animals, They 
defend themselves and their huts against evil 
spirits (Jann) and bad men by Koranic versets, 
greegrees, and various talismans, mostly bought 
from the pagan Mganga or Medicine-man. They 
believe in alchemy and in Rimbwata, or love- 
philters, the latter, as usual in the East, containing 
various abominations. The slave girls from about 
Mangio, a small port near Kilwa, are famous for 
concocting draughts which, after bringing on a 
possibly fatal sickness, subjugate for ever the 
affections of the patient. Similarly in India, 
Sind, Egypt, and Persia, no man will touch 
sherbet under the roof of his betrothed and pre- 
pared by her mother, unless his future father-in- 
law set him the example. Some of the Rimb- 
wata or philters are peculiar: a few grains of 
Jowari are ‘forced’ in an exceptional way till they 
sprout; they are then pounded and mixed with 
the food. This harmless adhibition causes, say 
the people, either death by violent disease or 


SUPERSTITIONS. 423 


intense affection. It is a superstition common to 
the Western East, and I have found it in India 
and Sind, in Peru and Egypt. Ghosts and larvee 
haunt the houses in which men have died, a 
Fetish belief which does not properly belong to El 
Islam or to Christianity: the British Consulate 
has a bad name on account of the terrible fate of 
its owner, the late Sayyid’s nephew. Descended 
from ‘devil-worshippers,’ the Wasawahili rather 
fear the ‘Shaytani’ than love Allah, and to the 
malignant powers of preternatural beings they 
attribute sickness and all the evils of human life. 
A Zanzibar negroid will not even fetch a leech 
from the marsh, for fear of offending him to 
whom the animal is ‘ Ju-ju,’ or sacred. 

Generally, the Msawahili Alim or literato, 
though capable of reading the Koran, cannot write 
a common Arabic letter. Some, however, attain 
high proficiency : I may quote as an instance the 
Kazi Muhiyy el Din. These negroids begin arith- 
metic early, a practice which, perhaps, they have 
learned from the Banyans. They excel in memory 
and in quickness of apprehension from early child- 
hood to the age of puberty: the same has been 
remarked about the Arabs, and Anglo-Indians 
observe it in the natives of Hindostan. Whether 
at the virile epoch there is an arrest of develop- 


494 ) NAMES. 


ment, or the brain suffers from exclusive, excessive 
obedience to the natural law, ‘increase and 
multiply’ and its consequent affections, is a 
question still to be settled. Boys are sent to 
school when aged seven, and finish their 
Khitmah (perlection of the Koran) in one to 
three years; after this they-are usually removed 
to assist their fathers in the business of life. 
Upon the Island the Msawahili child receives 
some corrupted Moslem name, as Taufiki (Taufik) 
Muamadi (Mohammed), Tani (Usman), Shibu 
(Nasib), Muhina (Muhinna), Usy (Ali), or . 
Hadi. Upon the coast the appellations are 
mostly heathen: I may quote the followime 
from the Benu Kendil tribe 
Kambi, Kangaya, Kirwasha, Mareka, Mkame, 
Mkhokho, Mombe, or Mwambe, Mwere, Nun- 
gu, Shangora, Shenkambi, Zingaji. The wilder 


Bori, Chumi, 


Wasawahili communities adopt very charac- 
teristic compounds: such are Machuzi wa 
Shimba (fish-soup), Mrima-khonde (mountain 
plantation),’ Mkata-Moyyo (cutter-out of heart), 
Khiro-kota (treasure trove), Mchupio wa Keti 

1 Mr Cooley (Geog. 37) tells us that ‘Conda, in Congoese 
and also in Sawahili, means hill.” It certainly does not in 
Zanzibar, where Konda is an adjective, lean or thin. Konde 
means the fist (in Arabic - ,~), and Khonde is applied to a 
i ae 4 
Shamba or plantation. 


NAMES. 425 


(leaper upon a chair), Mshindo-Mamba (con- 
queror of crocodile), Khombe la Simba (lion’s 
claw), Mguru Mfupi (short-legs), Mur’ Mvua 
(Mister rain), Mkia ya Nyani (monkey’s tail), 
Masimbi (cowries), and Ugali (stirabout). 
Girls take Arabic names, as Mamai Khamis 
(Mother Thursday), Fatimah, and Arusi, or they 
borrow from the pagans Magonera, Zawadi 
and Apewai (a gift), Timeh, Siti, Bahati, Tinisi, 
and Machoydo (their eyes). The ceremonial 
address to men is Bwana (pronounced B’ané) 
master, possibly a corruption of the Arabic 
‘Abuna:’ it is prefixed to proper names, especially 
Arabic, as B’and Muamadi. -The diminutive 
Kib’ana is the Italian ‘Signorino.’ The fe- 
minine form Mivana (M’ana) has equal claims 
of descent from the Arabic Ummana, our 
mother. It means, however, ‘child’ generi- 
cally in the proverb M’ana uwwda Maze, Mze 
hawwa M’ana—child slays parent, parent slays 
not child—the equivalent of the Italian Amor de- 
scende non ascende, and the Arab’s ‘ My heart is on 
my son, my son’s isonastone.’ Amongst certain 
interior tribes it is still prefixed to the names of 
chiefs; hence probably the ‘Emperor’ Monomo- 
tapa (M’And Mtdpa) which J. de Barros writes 
Benomotapa: the latter may not be a misprint, 


426 MARRIAGES. 


but represent ‘ B’ana Mtapa.’ Muigni, contracted 
to Mui’, is applied to Sayyids, Sherifs, and tem- 
poral rulers, and Shehe is the equivalent of 
Shaykh. Mkambi belongs to the sultan or 
chief, and the Anglo-Arab ‘Seedy’ (Sidi = my 
lord) is unknown. 

The marriages (Maowano) of the Wasawahili 
are operose, as might be expected amongst a 
race whose family festivals are, as in the far north 
of Europe, their only public amusements. I 
may, perhaps, here remark that in matching, as 
well as in despatching, even civilization has not 
thrown off all traces of the old barbarism, and 
that the visit to M. le Maire and the wedding 
breakfast, to mention no other troubles and 
disagreeables, should make us uncommonly 
lenient to those less advanced than ourselves. 
The relatives of the bridegroom, as soon as he 
reaches the mature age of 15, having found for 
him a fit and proper mate, repair to the parents ; 
propose a Mahr, or settlement, varying according 
to means from $15 to $25, and obtain the reply 
ancipital. The women then visit one another; 
the answer emerges into distinctness, and all fall g 
to cooking. In due time Coelebs receives, as a — 
token of acceptance, a large Siniyyah, a tray of — 
rice, meat, and confectionery, a ‘ treat’ for his i 


‘ 
~ 


a 


MARRIAGES. 427 


friends, forwarded by the future father-in-law. 
The feast concludes the betrothal ;' either of the 
twain most concerned is still at liberty to jilt; 
but in such a case, as usual throughout the 
Moslem East, enmity between the families inevit- 
ably results. 

The wedding festivities outlast the month: 
there are great ‘affinities of gossips;’ tympanum et 
tripudium; hard eating and harder wetting of 
the driest clay with the longest draughts of 
Tembo K’hali (sour toddy), of Pombe beer (the 
Kafir Chuala), and of the maddening Zerambo. 
Processions of free women and slave girls, pre- 
ceded by chattels performing on various utensils 
of music, perambulate the streets, smging and 
dancing in every court. At length the Kazi, 
or any other man of letters, recites the Fatiheh, 
and the two become one, either at the bridegroom’s 
or at the bride’s house. The women are present 
when the happy man enters the nuptial chamber, 
and they always require to be ejected by main 
force. Unlike the Arabs, they retain the Jewish 
practice of inspection: if the process be satis- 
factory, the bridegroom presents $10 to $50 
to his new connections, while the exemplary 

! M. Guillain (Part II. 108) calls the preliminary ceremony 


‘Outoumba,’ and I cannot help thinking that he was grossly 
‘sold’ by some exceedingly impudent interpreter. 


428 MARRIAGES. 


young person is blessed, congratulated, and 


petted with small gifts by papa and mamma. : 


She often owes, it is whispered, her blushing 
honours to the simple process of cutting a 
pigeon’s throat. In case of a disappointment, 
there is a violent scene of abuse and recrimin- 
ation ; but when lungs and wrath are exhausted, 
the storm is lulled without blows or even divorce. 
The first ‘Mfungato,’ 1. e. seven (days) after 
consummation, isdevoted to the wildest revelry, 
the ‘Walimeh,’ or wedding feast, concluding 
only with the materials for feasting. 

The Msawahili is allowed to breathe his last 
upon a couch, and the corpse, after being washed 


by an Alim or by some kinsman, is hastily 


wrapped in a perfumed winding-sheet. "Women 
of the highest rank sit at home in solitary grief. 
The middle-classes stain their faces, assume dark 
or dingy-coloured dresses, and repair to the sea- 
shore for the purpose of washing the dead man’s 
clothes before dividing them amongst his. rela- 
tions or distributing them to the poor. The 
slave girls shave their heads like Hindus, bathe, 
and go about the streets singing Neniz, and 
mourning aloud. Meanwhile a collection, tech- 
nically known as Sanda (the winding-sheet), is 


made amongst the people, who are almost all a 


. 
4 
4 
; 
} 


DEATHS. 429 


connected by a near or distant tie. One of the 
blood-kinsmen acts Mundadi, or erier. As each 
one appears with his quotum, he shouts ‘lo! 
such a person (naming him) has bought such 
and such articles for his brother’s funeral feast.’ 
This publicity tends of course to make men 
liberal. The corpse is buried, as is customary 
amongst Moslems, on the day, generally the 
evening, of decease, and there is a popular belief, 
in which some Europeans join, that deaths take 
place mostly when the tide ebbs, at the full and 
change of the moon. The custom of abusing 
the corpse, accompanied with the greatest in- 
decencies, is confined to the least civilized 
settlements. After the funeral all apply them- 
selves to eating, drinking, and what we should 
call merriment; whilst music and dancing are 
kept up as long as weak human nature permits. 
The object is not that of the Yorkshire Arvills, to 
refresh those who attended from afar—it is confess- 
edly to ‘ take the sorrow out of the heart.’ So the 
Velorio of Yucatan is para divertise—to distract 
kin-grief. As in the matter of marriage, however, 
so in funerals, we can hardly deride barbarous races 
whilst we keep up our pomp and expense of ridi- 
culous trappings, taxing even the poor for mutes 
and carriages, for ‘ gloves, scarves, and hatbands.’ 


430 MUSIC. 


The Wasawahili have all the African passion 
for the dance and song: they may be said to 
exist upon manioc and betel, palm-wine and 
spirits, music and dancing. The Ngoma Khu, © 
or huge drum, a hollowed cocoa-stem bound with ; 
leather braces, and thumped with fists, palms, 
or large sticks, plays an important and complex 
part in the business of life: it sounds when ; 


a man falls sick, when he revives, or when he 
dies ; at births and at marriages; at funerals and a 
at festivals; when a stranger arrives or departs ; : 
when a fight begins or ends, and generally when- 
ever there is nothing else to do. It is accom- 
panied by the ‘Siwa,’ a huge pipe of black wood Y 
or ebony, and by the ‘ Zumari,’ a more handy ue 
variety of the same instrument. On occasions i 
which justify full orchestras, an ‘ Upatu,’ or brass 
pan, is placed upon the ground in a wooden tray, _ 
and is tapped with two bits of palm-frond. Some 
wealthy men possess gongs, from which the 


cudgel draws lugubrious sounds. The other 
implements are ‘Tabl,’ or tomtoms of gourd, 
provided with goatskin; the Tambire, or Arab 
Barbut, a kind of lute; the Malagash ‘ Zeze,’ a a 
Calabash-banjo, whose single string is scraped a 
with a bow; and finally horns of the cow, of the — 
Addax, and the Oryx antelopes. These people are 


A 
mupot* 
ee Ae 


DANCING. 431 


excellent timeists, but their music, being all in the 
minor key, and the song being a mere recitative 
without change of words, both are monotonous 
to the last degree. The dancing resembles that 
of the Somal, and, as amongst the slaves, both 
sexes prance together. The Diwans, or chiefs, 
caper with drawn swords, whilst the women move 
in regular time, shaking skirts with the right hand. 
The ‘figures’ are, unlike the music, complicated 
and difficult : they seem to vary in almost every 
village. The only constant characteristic appears 
to be that tremulous motion from the waist 
downwards, and that lively pantomime of love 
which was so fiercely satirized by the eminently 
moral Juvenal. It is, indeed, the groundwork 
of all ‘Oriental’ dancing from Morocco to 
Japan. 

The principal occupation of the Wasawahili 
is agriculture ; they form the farmer class of the 
Island, and everywhere in the interior we find 
their little settlements of cajan-thatched huts of 
wattle and dab, with flying roofs, acting chimney 
as well as ventilator—a right sensible contrivance, 
worthy of imitation. The furniture consists of 
a few mats; of low stools, mostly cut out of a 
single block; of chairs, a skin being stretched 
on a wooden frame ; and invariably of a Kitanda, 


432 DISHONEST Y. 


or cartel of coir and sticks; even the beggar 
will not sleep or sit upon the damp face of his 
mother earth. The dwelling is divided into 
several rooms, or rather closets, by partition 
walls the height of a man; as usual in tropical 
lands, the interior is kept dark. Sometimes the 
hovel boasts the convenience of a Cho’oni or 
Shironi (latrina), but in no case is there a window. 
Gossips meet under the shade of huge Calabashes 
and other trees. 

Like the Somal, the Wasawahili are essentially 
a trading race, a crumenimulga natio, and they 
do business with the characteristic dishonesty of 
Africans. They defraud and even offer violence 
to Banyans, and acting as trade-men to European 
merchants, they never allow a purchase without 
deducting their percentage. At the same time 
their plausibility, like that of the travelling 
Dragoman, so impresses upon the ‘civilized dupe, 
whom they hedge round with an entourage of 
their own, and whom it is their life-business 


ae 
Se sth * s ee 
SS eptes c oy £Oe pies ce x 


to cozen, that nothing can convince him of Ss 
their raseality. Some of them make considerable : O: 
fortunes: I heard of one who lately purchased 4 i 
an estate for $14,000. They are also commercial — 
travellers of no mean order. Upon the Zanzibar 


DRESS. 433 


for copal, and they act as middlemen; they 
wander far into the interior, buymg hides, 
slaves, and ivory, and they have thus become 
familiar with the Lake Regions, which are now 
attracting our attention. The poorest classes 
employ themselves in fishing, and many may 
be seen by day plying about the harbour in 
little ‘Monoxyles, which they manage with 
admirable dexterity. Others have learned to 
make the rude hardwares with which the 
mainland is supplied: there are also rough 
masons, boat-builders, and carpenters of peculiar 
awkwardness. 

Respectable Wasawahili dress like Arabs in 
‘Kofiyya,’ here meaning red caps, and the long 
Disdashah, or night-gown; the loims are girt 
with a ‘ Kamarband ’-shawl, and sandals protect 
the feet. Others are contented with the Ham- 
mam-toilette, waist-cloth (Shukkah or Tanga) 
and shoulder-sheets (Izar), always adorned with 
the favourite frmge (Tambta or Taraza). This 
is at once the simplest and one of the most 
ancient of attires; the plate from Montfaucon’s 
Cosmas Indicopleustes (1706, Topographia Chris- 
tiana) reproduced by Vincent (Periplus, Appendix, 
part I.) shows the kilt to have been the general 


dress of the ancient Aithiopians, as the spear was 
VOL. I. 28 


434 WOMENS DRESS. 


their weapon. Before superiors they bare the 
shaven poll, an un-Oriental custom probably 
learned from the Portuguese. As amongst the 
Arab Bedawin, the Syrian Rayahs, and the Per- 
sian Iliyat, the women mostly go abroad unveiled. 
The ‘Murungawanah,’ or freeborn, however, is 
distinguished out-of-doors by her rude mantilla, 
and ‘ladies’ affect an Ukaya, or fillet of indigo- 
dyed cotton, or muslin, somewhat like that of 
the Somal and the Syrians. The feminine garb — 
is a Kisitu, or length of stained cotton, blue 
and red being the pet colours. It resembles 
the Kitambi of the Malagash, and it is the nearest 
approach to the primitive African kilt of skin or 
tree bark. Wrapped tightly round the unsup- 
ported bosom, and extending from the armpits to 
the heels, this ungraceful garb depresses the 
breast, spoils the figure, and conceals nothing of 
its deficiencies. The hair, like the body, drips 
with unfragrant cocoa-nut oil; and though there 
is not much material to work upon, it is worked 
in various fanciful styles. Many shave clean ; 
some wear a half-crop, like a skull-cap of Astracan 
wool; others a full-grown bush covering the 
whole head. These part it down the middle, 
with an asinine cross over the regions of vener- 
ation; those draw longitudinal lines above the 


— ey, 


ORNAMENTS. 435 


ears, making a three’old parting ; there are also 
garnishings and outworks of stunted pigtails, 
forming stiff and savage accroche-cceurs. Two 
peculiar coiffures at once attract the stranger’s 
eye. One makes the head look as if split into 
a pair of peaks, the side hair being raised from 
sinciput to occiput in tall double unpadded rolls, 
parted by a deep central hollow: this style is 
nowhere so pronounced as near the Gaboon 
river, where the heads of the Mpongwe girls 
appear short-horned. The other consists of 
frizzly twists trained lengthwise from nape to 
brow, and the whitish etiolated scalp showing 
itself between the lines as though the razor had 
been used : the stripes suggest the sections of a 
musk-melon or the meridians of a map. 

The favourite feminine necklace is a row of 
sharks’ teeth; some use beads, others bits of 
copal, but the amber so highly valued in the 
Somali country is here not prized. I have alluded 
before to the artificial deformity of ear-lobes dis- 


~ tended by means of the Mpogo, a mixture of raw 


Copal (Chakazi) and Cinnabar. The left nostril is 
usually honoured with some simple decoration— 
a stud or rose-shaped button of wood or bone, of 
ivory or of precious metal, and at times its place is 
taken by a clove or a pin of Cassava. The tattoo 


436 TOBACCO. 


is not so common on the Island as upon the Con- 
tinent. These women are said to be prolific, but 
apparently they have small families: the child is 
carried in a cloth called Mbereko, and, curious to 
say, they do not bind up its head immediately 
after birth. ‘They are hard-worked; and, like the 
dames of Harar, they buy and sell with men in 
the bazar. Their food is manioe, holcus, rice, and 
sometimes fish; a fowl is the extent of luxury, 
flesh being mostly beyond their means. Few 
smoke, but almost all chew tobacco as lustily as 
their husbands, and them mouths are horrid 
chasms full of ‘Tambul’—quids of betel-nut and 
areca leaf peppered with coarse shell-lime.’ This 
astringent, like the Kola-nut of the Guinea 
Regions, acts preventive against the effect of damp 
heat, and it is a stomachic, consequently a tonic. 
The habit of ‘chawing’ it becomes inveterate : 
Hindostanis visiting Portugal, and unable to 
procure the favourite ‘Pan-Supari,’ have imitated 
it with cuttings of cypress-apples and ivy leaves. 
Ibn Batuta declares the betel to be highly 
aphrodisiac, and hence partly the high esteem in 
which this masticatory is held. 

‘ The areca-nut is called in Arabic Fofal, and in Kisa- 


wahili Popo: the betel-nut, Tambul and Tambuli, and the lime 
Nurah and Choka. 


THE KISAWAHILI TONGUE. 437 


The Wasawahili are not an honoured race; 
even the savage Somal call them ’Abid, or serviles, 
and bitterly deride their peculiarities. The unerr- 
ing instinct of mankind has poimted them out for 
slaves, and they have readily accepted the position. 
As Moslems they should be free, and the Faith 
forbids them to trade in Moslems. Yet by local 
usage, as the children become the property not of 
the parents, but of the mother’s brother, the latter 
can sell any or all of his nephews and nieces; in- 
deed, he would be subject to popular contempt if, 
when poor, he did not thus ‘ raise the wind.’ 

The most interesting point connected with 
these coast negroids is their language, the Kisawa- 
hii. It was anciently called Kingozi, from 
Ungozi or the region lying about the Dana, or 
rather Zana, the river known to its Galla accole 
as ‘ Maro,’ and ‘ Pokomoni’ from the heathen 
Pokomo who, living near its course, form the 
southern boundary of Galla-land proper. The 
dialect, is still spoken with the greatest purity 
about Patta and the other ancient settlements be- 
tween Lamu and Mombasah. Oral tongues are 
essentially fluctuating; having no standard, the 
roots of words soon wither and die, whilst terms, 
idioms, and expressions once popular speedily fall 
into oblivion, and are supplanted by neologisms. 


438 THE KISAWAHILI. 


Thus the origin of words must often be sought by 
collation with the wilder kindred dialects of the 
coast tribes; for instance, the root of ‘Mbua’ (rain), 
which has died out of Kisawahili, still visits in 
Kinyika—ku bud, to rain. In Zanzibar Island 
Kisawahili is most corrupted; the vocabulary, 
varying with every generation, has become a 
mere conglomerate which combines South African, 
Arabic, Persian, Hindi, and even Portuguese, 
an epitome of local history. On the coast it greatly 
varies, being constantly modified by the migra- 


tion and mixture of tribes. Like the Malay 
of the Indian Islands, it has become the Lingua 
Franca, the Lingoa Geral of commerce from Ra’as 
Hafun to the Mozambique and throughout Cen- 
tral Intertropical Africa. This Urdu Zaban, or 
Hindostani of East Africa, is indispensable to the ' 
explorer, who disdains mere ‘ geography;’ almost 
every inland tribe has some vagrant man who 
can speak it. My principle being never to travel 
where the language is unknown to me, I was 
careful to study it at once on arriving at Zan- 
zibar; and though sometimes in the interior 
question and answer had to pass through three 
and even four media, immense advantage has 
derived from the modicum of direct intercourse. 
_ The base of Kisawahili is distinctly African ; 


THE KISAWAHILI. 439 


and, totally unlike its limitrophe the Galla, it 
grammatically ignores the Semitic element. It 
is now time for writers to unlearn that, ‘all the 
languages over the face of the earth, however 
remotely different and however widely spread, 
appear to be all reducible to the one or the other 
of three radically distinct tongues’ (Dr Beke, p. 
302, Appendix to Jacob’s Flight. London, Long- 
mans, 1865).* It is only, I believe, the mono- 
genist pure and simple who in these days would 
assert ‘there exist three linguistic types, as there 
are three physical types, the black, the yellow, 
and the white’ (M. de Quatrefages, p. 31, Anthro- 
pological Review, No. xxvii.). To the old and 
obsolete triad of Turanian, Semitic, and Aryan, or 
Turanian, Semitic, and Iranian, we must now 
add at least another pair—without noticing the 
Asianesian— namely, the American or Sentence 
language, and the prefixitive South African family. 


1 This is repeated by my friend (p. 59, The Idol in Horeb: 
Evidence that the golden image at Mount Sinai was a cone, 
and not a calf. London: Tinsleys, 1871), who, however, 
informs us that in 1846 Major, now Sir Henry, Rawlinson 
agreed with him in saying that, ‘the class of languages to 
which the designation Semitic or Semitish is properly applicable 
is that comprising the whole of the aboriginal languages of 
Asia, Polynesia, and America.’ This latter continent, however, 
should not have been included without proofs, and hitherto we 
have failed to find them. 


440 THE KISAWAHILI. 


These two great tongues, one extending over half 
a world, the other through half a continent, are, I 
believe with Lichtenstein and Marsden, unbor- 
rowed, indigenous, and marked with all the pecu- 
liarities which distinguish their inventors. Both 
are idioms which seem to indicate nice linguistic 
perceptions and high intellectual development ; 
history, however, supplies many cases of civiliza- 
tion simplifying and curtailing the complicated 
tongues of barbarians, thus making language the 
means, not the end, of instruction. 

The limits of the South African family may be 
roughly laid down as extending from the Equator 
to the Cape of Good Hope. The Equatorial 
Gaboon on the Western Coast ! evidently belongs 
to it; and upon the Congo river I found that 
whole sentences of Kisawahili were easily made 
intelligible to the people.’ Though the language 
is evidently one in point of construction through- 
out this immense area, isolation and hostilities be- 
tween tribes have split it into a multitude of 


1 Grammar of the Bakéle language, &c., by the Missionaries 
of the A. B. C. F. M. Gaboon Station, Western Africa. New 
York: Pratt, 1854. Also Grammar of the Mpongwe language, 
&ec., by the same. New York: Snowdon and Pratt, 1847. 

2 A Vocabulary of the Malemba and Embomma Languages. 
(Appendix I. Tuckey’s Expedition to the River Zaire. London : 
Murray, 1818.) Also Fr. B. M. de Cannecatim’s Diccionario 
da Lingua Bunda. Lisboa, 1804. 


THE KISAWAHILI. 441 


dialects. Almost every people, at the distance of 
30 to 50 miles, has its peculiar speech, and in these 
regions it would not be difficult to collect ‘ Speci- 
mens of ahundred African Languages.’ The older 
travellers remarked that the Tower of Babel 
must have been near the Gulf of Guinea; they 
would have found the same throughout the in- 
terior and Eastern Coast. 

My experience’ of the tongues spoken to the 
west of the Zanzibar coast proper is that their 
amount of difference greatly varies : some average 
that of the English counties, others of the 
three great Neo-Latin languages, whilst in some 
the degree amounts to that between English, Ger- 
man, and Dutch. And generally, I may remark, 
the East-West extremities of the lingual area are 
more closely connected than the North-South : 
the language of Angola, for instance, is more like 
Kisawahili than the Sichuana. I am at pain to 
understand why Dr Krapf should have named 
this linguistic family, Orphno- (dark-brown) 
Hamitic, Orphno-Cushite, Nilo-Hamitic, and Ni- 
lotic,” when it is far more intimately connected 


1 When travelling in East Africa I took as a base the 
vocabulary of Catherine of Russia, and filled it up with five 
dialects, viz., those of the Sawahil, Uzaramo, Khutu, Usagara, 
and Unyamwezi. 

* In these days, however, we cannot say, with the Opener 


449 THE KISAWAHILI. 


with the Kafir regions, the Congo and the Zam- 
beze rivers, than with Aithiopia or the Nile Valley 
proper. Mr Cooley’s term ‘Zangian’ or ‘ Zin- 
gian’ also unduly limits the area to that of a 
mere sub-family. 

The crux grammaticorum of the great South 
African language is its highly artificial system of 
principiatives or preformatives.’. In the three 
recognized lingual types of the old world the 
work of inflexion, the business of grammar, and 
the mechanism of speech disclose themselves at 
the ends of vocables. In this prefixitive tongue 
the changes of mood, tense, case, and number, 
are effected at the beginning of words by preposi- 
tive modifying particles, which are evidently con- 
tractions of significant terms, and whose apparatus 
supplies the total want of inflexion. This de- 
velopment, arrested in other languages—the 
Coptic, for instance—here obtains a significance 
which isolates it from all linguistic society. The 
practised student at once discovers that he is 
dealing with a completely new family by the 
unusual difficulty which unvaried terminations 


of Inner Africa (p. 123), ‘The Nilotie family of win n no- 
where extends into the basin of the Nile.’ 
1 T have sketched the distinguishing points of the Baits 


tongues in my Preface (p. xxii.) to‘ Wit and Wisdom from : 


West Africa’ (London: Tinsleys, 1865). 


THE KISAWAHILI. 443 


and initial changes present to one accustomed 
only to the terminal. 

The minor characteristics of the Kisawahili 
are the peculiarities of the negative system in sub- 
stantives and adjectives, pronouns, adnouns, and 
verbs; for instance, Asie, he or she who is not, 
Isie, it which is not. Secondly, are the broad 
lines of distinction drawn between words de- 
noting the rational and the irrational, and in 
a minor degree the rational-animate (as man), 
and the rational-inanimate (as ass). In most 
cases the rational-animate affixes Wa as a plural 
sign: the irrational-animate Ma. Umbu, a 
sister, properly makes Waumbu, sisters: the 
ignorant, however, and the Islanders often say 
Maumbu (sisters) ike Map’hunda (asses). Thus 
personality supplies the place of gender, a phe- 
nomenon that already dawns in the Persian and 
in other Indo-European tongues. Next is the 
artful and intricated system of irregular plurals, 
and last, not least, the characteristic alliteration, 
an assonance apparently the debris of many an- 
cient dialects based upon an euphonious concord 
not always appreciable by us, and therefore not 
yet subjected by our writers to rule. We under- 
stand, for instance, that an alliterative speaker 
should say Mtu mema (a good man), and Watu 


444 THE KISAWAHILI. 


wema (good men); but why is the regularity 
altered to Mahali pango (my place), p'hunda 
zgango (my donkey), and Mtu wa Rashidi (Rashid’s 
man), instead of mango, pango, and ma? These 
distinctions appear far too empirical, arbitrary, 
and artificial for the wants of primitive speech. 
The Kisawahili is an oral tongue — an illi- 
terate language in the sense assigned to the 
term by Professor Lepsius. The people, like 
the Somal and the Gallas, never invented a 
syllabarium. This absence of alphabet is a curious 
proof of deficient constructiveness in a race 
that cultivates rude eloquence, and that speaks 
dialects which express even delicate shades of | 
meaning: it contrasts wonderfully with the 
Arabs and Hindus, who adapt to each language 
some form of Phoenician or Dewanagari. The 
coast races use the modern Arabic alphabet, 
which, admirable for its proper purpose, re- 
presents African sounds imperfectly, as those of 
Sindi and Turkish, and is condemned to emulate 
the anomalous orthography or cacography of 
our English. The character is large, square, 
and old-fashioned, resembling later Kufic even 
more than that of Harar, and he must be a 
first-rate scholar who can read at sight all the 
letter of a man to his friend. Literature is 


THE KISAWAAHILI. 445 


confined to a few sheets upon the subject of 
Bao or Uganga (Raml or geomancy), to proverbs 
and proverbial sayings, mostly quatrains; to 
riddles and rabbit tales, which here represent the 
hare legends of the Namaquas and the spider 
stories of the Gold Coast; to Mashairi, or songs 
rhymeless, measureless, and unmusical, and to 
‘Utenzi,’ religious poems, and eulogies of the 
brave. | 

In Zanzibar Island Arabic is ever making 
inroads upon the African tongue, and the student 
who knows the former will soon master the 
latter. The first short vocabulary, by Mr Salt, 
was published in 1814, and was presently followed 
by others, especially the ‘Soahili vocabulary ’ 
of the late Mr Samuel K. Masury, of Zanzibar 
(Memoirs of the American Academy, Cambridge, 
May, 1845), and Mr J. Ross Browne’s ‘ Speci- 
men of the Sowhelian Language’ (Etchings of 
a Whaling Cruise. New York, 1846).1 Strange 
to say, the ‘Mombas Mission’ translated the 
Gospels into the obscure Jocal Kinyika, when 
only three chapters of Genesis and a version of 
the English Prayer Book (Tubingen, 1850—54) 

*Mr Ross Browne has lately been engaged in writing a 


voluminous report to the Government at Washington upon 
the mineral resources of the Western States of the Union. 


446 THE KISAWAHILI. 


were published ‘in the one language, by the 
instrumentality of which the missionary and 
the merchant can master in a short time all 
the dialects spoken from the Line down to the 
Cape of Good Hope.’ Dr Krapf’s ‘ Outline 
of the Elements of the Kisauaheli Language’ 
(Tubingen, 1850) requires great alterations and 
additions, especially in the alliterative and other 
characteristic parts of the tongue. Messrs 
Rebmann and Erhardt, who both were capable 
of writing a scholar-like book, or of perfecting 
the ‘Outline,’ turned their attention to the 
languages of ‘the Nyassa, Usumbara, and the 
Wakwafi. In 1857 M. Guillain published, as 
an Appendix to his third volume, a short gram- 
mar and vocabulary of the ‘langue Souahhéli: ’ 
they are mere bald sketches, and they convey 
but the scantiest idea of what they attempt to 
illustrate. A good study of Kisawahili would 
facilitate the acquisition of the whole sub-family. 
For my own use I commenced a grammar in- 
tended to illustrate the intricate and difficult 
combinations and the peculiar euphony which 
here seems to be the first object of speech: 
unfortunately my transfer to West Africa left 
it, like my vocabularies, in a state of MS. My 
friend Mr Tritbner has lately advertised a 


THE KISAWAAZILI. 447 


volume called ‘ Kast African folk-lore, Swahili 
Tales, as told by the natives of Zanzibar,’ with 
an English translation by Edward Steere, L.L.D., 
Rector of Little Steeping, Lincolnshire, and 
Chaplain to Bishop Tozer (London: Bell and 
Daldy, 1870);* and Dr Krapf has proposed to 
publish the Juo ya Herkal (Book of Heraclius), 
‘an account of the wars of Mohammed with 
Askaf, Governor of Syria, to the Greek Emperor 
Heraclius, in rhyme; a MS. in ancient Ki-Suahil 
written in Arabic charaeters.’ Also ‘Juo ja 
Utenzi, Poems and Mottoes in rhyme,’ the 
dialect being that formerly spoken in the Islands 
of Patta and Lamu. Both the ‘linguistie trea- 
sures’ were presented to the Oriental Society 
of Halle. The last publications which I have 
seen are ‘Specimens of the Swahili Language’ 
(Zanzibar, 1866) ; ‘Collections for a Handbook 
of the Swahili Language, as spoken at Zanzibar,’ 
by Bishop Tozer and Rev. E. Steere (Zanzibar, 
1865), and the Rev. E. Steere’s ‘ Collections for 
a Handbook of the Shambala Language’ (Zanzi- 


‘Messrs Monteiro and Gamitto (O Muata Cazembel, 
Appendix, 470) doubt whether the Tete grammar can be 
reduced to an intelligible system of verbs. I see no difficulty. 
Capt. Boteler, R. N. (Appendix, vol. i. Voyage to Africa, 
Bentley, 1835) easily collected a‘ Delagoa Vocabulary’ from 
George, his interpreter. 


448 THE KISAWAHILI. 


bar, 1867), the ‘tongue spoken in the country 
called in our maps Usumbara, which is a moun- 
tainous district on the mainland of Africa, 
lying opposite to the Island of Pemba, and 
visible in clear weather from the town of 
Zanzibar.’ 

Kisawahili is at once rich and poor. It may 
contain 20,000 words, of which, perhaps, 3000 
are generally used, and 10,000 have been pub- 
lished. Copious to cumbrousness in concrete, 
collective, and ideal words, it abounds in names 
of sensuoys objects; there is a term for every 
tree, shrub, plant, grass, and bulb, and I have 
shown that the several ages of the cocoa-nut 
are differently called. It wants compounds, 
abstract and metaphysical expressions: these 
must be borrowed from the Arabic, fitted with 
terminal and internal vowels, to suit the tongue, 
and modified according to the organs of the 
people, harsh and guttural consonants being 
exchanged for easy cognates. Even the numerals 
beyond twenty are mere Semitic corruptions. 
All new ideas, that of servant, for instance, must 
be expressed by a short description. In the 
more advanced South African dialects, as in 
the Mpongwe of the Gaboon, a compound or a 
derivative would be found to include all require- 


THE KISAWAHILI. 449 


ments. The sound would be soft and harmonious 
were it not for the double initial consonants, 
aspirated or not; for the perpetual reduplications 
(the Arabic Radif),’ a savage and childish con- 
trivance to intensify the word, and for the undue 
recurrence of the coarse letter K. Possibly the 
fondness of the people for tautology may have 
tended to develop their tautophony and euphony. 
Abounding in vowels and liquids, the language 
admits of vast volubility of utterance; in anger 
or excitement the words flow like a torrent, and 
each dovetails into its neighbour till the whole 
speech becomes one vocable. Withal, every vowel 
has its distinct and equal articulation. It wants 
the short and obscure sound of the English and 
other European languages (e. g. a liar, her, first, 
actor, and hurled) called by us the original vowel 
sound. Like the Chinese and Maori languages, 
and the other South African tongues, it confounds 
the so often convertible letters, the L and the R.* 
The slaves, the Wasawahili, and the wild natives 
mostly prefer the former, e. g. Mabeluki for 
Mabruki, and the Arabs and civilized speakers 

‘In Kisawahili reduplication sometimes seriously modifies 
the root meaning, e. g. Mbhali means‘ far’ or ‘distant ;’> Mbhali- 
Mbhali is different or ‘several,’ meaning ‘ distinct.’ 

*The Tupys of the Brazil, according to the Portuguese, 


ignored both sounds—lI presume initiative. 
VOL. I. 29 


450 THE KISAWAHILI. 


the latter, although Mr Cooley (Geography of 
N’yassi, p. 20) asserts the contrary. The me- 
tastasis, however, appears to me often arbitrary, 
occasioning trouble, e. g. when ku ria (to eat) 
becomes ku lia (to weep). Dr Livingstone, 
(chap. xxx. First Expedition) complains of 
Loangoa, Luenya, and Bazizulu being trans- 
formed into Arroangoa, Ruanha, and Morusurus, 
but he also similarly errs when he converts Karag- 
wah into Kalagwe, and when (p. 266) he uses 
indifferently Maroro and Maloli. The R is often 
inserted pleonastically, to prevent hiatus, as Ku 
potéra for Ku potéa, to lose; Ku pakira for Ku 
pakia, to pack. Sometimes, again, it is omitted, 
as U’ongo for Urongo, alie. In pronouncing it 
the tongue tip must .be more vibrated than in 
our language, which loves to slur over the 
sound. Aspirated consonants are found, as in 
Sanskrit, especially B’h, P’-h, D’h, Th, Kh, and 
G’h. Quiescent consonants are rare in the middle | 
of words; thus the Arabic Mismar (a nail) is 
changed to Misumari, and treble are unknown. 
There are only five peculiar sounds ' which are © 


* These are 

1. B—an emphatic and explosive perfect-mute, formed by 
compressing the lips apparently to the observer’s eye. 

2.",D-——which is half T, formed somewhat like the Arabic 


Ta (©) by touching the lower part of the central upper incisors 


THE KISAWAHILI TONGUE. 451 


generally mispronounced by the Arabs, and these 
are mostly of little importance. The dialect is 
easily learned: many foreigners who cannot 
speak understand, after a short residence, what 
is spoken to them. It may be said to have no 
accent, but a sinking or dropping of the 
voice at the terminal syllable—possibly the 
case with Latin hexameters and pentameters— 
seems to place the ictus upon the penulti- 


with the thickened tongue-tip. Strangers write indifferently 
Doruma and Toruma, Taita and Daida. 

3. G—harder and more guttural than ours, the tongue 
root being applied thickened to the soft palate. An mstance 
is Gombe, a large cow (Gnombe), which Arabs and Europeans 
pronounce Gombe, meaning a shell. Incrementation is also 
effected by simplifying the imitial sound, as Gu, a large foot, 
from Meu ; Dege, a large bird, from Kdege. 

4. J—a semi-liquid: the J is expressed by applymg 
the fore part of the tongue to the palate, above the incisors 
closely followed by a half-articulated Y. It is often confounded 
with D and Y, e. g. Unguja, Unguya, and Ungudya, for 
Ungujya (not Ugtya, as Mr Cooley believes), and Yambeho 
or Jambeho for Jyambeho. The sound is not ‘ pecuharly 
African ; it exists in Sindi and other tongues, and a likeness 
to it occurs at the junction of English words, as ‘pledge you.” 
Even the Arabs distinguish it from their common Jim, and 
it is well worth the conscientious student’s attention. 

5. K—half G, a hardened sound whilst the mid tongue 
is still applied to the palate. It might be taken for a corruption 
of the Arabie Kaf (,3). 

At Mombasah we shall remark other sounds mostly peculiar 
to the coast Kisawahili. Asa rule, however, the stranger will be 
understood even before his tongue has mastered these minutiz. 


452 KISAWAHILI. 


mate, as Wasawahili for Wasawahili.! Hence 
when first writing proper nouns I preferred 
Mtony and Pangany to Mto-ni and Panga- 
ni. Similarly the W when placed between a 
consonant and a vowel is often so slurred over 
as hardly to be detected. For instance, Bwana, 
master, becomes B’énd, and Unyamwezi might 
be both written Unyam’ezi were it not liable 
to confuse the reader. There is also a Spanish 
fi (Nifia), as in Nika, the bush, and Nendo, 
the P. N. of a district, which I express by 
Ny, e. g. Nyika and Nyendo. Finally, being a 
lazy language, which well suits the depressing 
climate, it takes as little trouble to articulate 
as Italian: hence, even in the first generation, 
Arabs and Baloch exchange for it their own 
guttural and laborious tongues, and their offspring 
will learn nothing else. This is more curious 
than the children of the Scandinavians aban- 
doning the father-tongue for Norman and Anglo- 


' Nothing can be more erroneous than the following 
sentence: ‘But the Mohammedan natives of the Eastern 
Coasts of Africa, who are comprehended under the name 
of Saw4hili, do not pronounce the hard h of the Arabs; 
the vowels, therefore, between which it stands in their name, 
unite to forma diphthong, like the Italian az or the English 1 
in wile ; and Saw4hili is pronounced Sawili’ (Inner Africa 
Laid Open, p. 88). The Wasawahil merely change the hard 


Arabic h (~) into the softer guttural (3). 


THE SLAVE RACES. 453 


Scandinavian, vulgarly called Anglo-Saxon. In 
East Africa adult settlers forget their mother- 
tongue. 

And now of the slave races proper. 

The treaty of 1845, which modified Capt. 
Moresby’s, of 1822, and Capt. Cogan’s, of 1839, 
forbade exportation from the Zanzibarian ports 
north of Lamu and its dependencies (S. lat. 1° 57’ 
and south of Kilwa (S. lat. 9° 2’): thus the upper 
markets were cut off, and the traffic was con- 
fined to the African dominions of the late Sayyid. 
The object of these provisions was, of course, to 
avoid interference with the status of domestic 
slavery, in the dominions of a foreign and friendly 
power. It actually, however, led to what it was 
intended to prevent. The vigilance and the sum- 
mary measures of our Cape cruisers, especially 
when commanded by men like Admiral Christo- 
pher Wyvill, inflicted severe injuries upon, and 
in some places almost abolished, the contraband. 
IT have said that the diminution of export has 
materially benefited the Island and its popula- 
tion. But at Zanzibar, as in the Guinea regions 
and the African interior, preedial slavery appears 
still an evil necessity: upon it hinges not only 
the prosperity but the very existence of the 
present race. An abolition act passed in this 


454 THE SLAVE RACES. 


Island would soon restore it to the Iguana and 
the Turtle, its old inhabitants. | 
The slave, on the other hand, has lost by not 
being exported. It is the same in the Oil rivers 
of West Africa, where in 1838 Sir T. Fowell Bux- 
ton proposed to substitute for illegal and-injurious, 
harmless and profitable trade leading to ‘Christi- 
anity, which would call forth the capabilities of 
the soul, and elevate the savage mind.’ It was 
expected that at Benin, for instance, man would 
become too valuable as a labourer to be sold as a 
chattel. Unhappily the reverse took place; man 
became so cheap, that to work and to starve him 
to death paid better than to feed him. A fresh 
gang could be purchased for a few shillings, and 
the price of provisions was of far more impott- 
ance than the value of life. The Buxtonian idea 
was founded upon simple ignorance of Africa, 
and upon the ill-judged assertion that slavery was 
caused by foreigners. The internal wars, whose ~ 
main object is capturing serviles, are the normal 
state of Blackland society; they continued and 
they will continue, whether slavers touch the 
coast or not. Briefly, the results to the captive are 
now not sale, but slaughter or sacrifice in the in- 
terior, and death by starvation upon the coast. 
When I visited Zanzibar, in 1857, the English 


THE SLAVE RACES. 455 


public, periodically stimulated by the Liberal 
press, had split up, on the subject of the African 
slave trade, into two sets of opinions, both 
honestly believed in, both diametrically opposed 
to each other, and both somewhat in extremes. 
The one sanguinely represented it as crushed, 
and congratulated the nation upon having dealt 
its death-blow to a system which was rotting the 
roots of prosperity and progress. The others de- 
spondently declared that, although in some places 
the snake was scotched, yet that it was nowhere 
killed ; they proved that whilst slavery had in- 
creased in horrors, the result of our interference, 
yet the average quantity of the wretched mer- 
chandise had not been diminished; they opined 
that nothing save the special interposition of 
Providence could end that which had so long 
baffled many best efforts; and being well ac- 
quainted with details, they maintained that the 
' average opinion was a mere pandering to popu- 
larity at the expense of truth. And, when weary 
of the self-glorifying theme whose novelty had 
engrossed the attention of their fathers, the public 
readily attributed selfish motives to those who 
would enliven their zeal. 

Fact, as usual, lay between the two assertions, 
but the inner working of the slave-abolition 


456 THE SLAVE SUPPLY. 


measures was known only to few, and those few 
hardly cared to speak out. England, ripe for free 
labour, had resolved to throw off the African ; she 
kicked away, to use a popular phrase, the ladder . 
by which she had risen, and she made slavery, for 
which she had shed her best blood in the days of 
Queen Anne, the sum of all villanies in the reign 
of King George. This was natural. The steps 
by which nations attain to the summit of civiliza- 
tion appear, as they are beheld from above, grada- 
tions of mere barbarism: to revert to them would 
be as possible as to enjoy the nursery tales which 
enlivened our childhood. 

Other European peoples were not in the con- 
dition of England to dispense with slave labour, 
but the termination of a long continental war was 
made the inducement to sign abolition treaties. 
All were so much waste-paper, not being based 
upon public opinion. As long as Cuba and the 
slave-importers of the Western world required 
(A.D. 1830—57) an annual supply of 100,000 men, 
their demands were supplied. Neither the word 
piracy, nor the prospect of hanging from the 
yard-arm—a remedy more virulent than the dis- 
ease—could deter adventurers from engaging in 
a trade where a ‘pretty girl’ was to be ‘ bought for 
a few rolls of tobacco, fathoms of flannel, and 


THE SLAVE SUPPLY. 457 


pieces of calico,’ and whose profits were estimated 
at 200 per cent. As long as sugar, tobacco, and 
dollars increase, so long will the desire for more 
support the means by which the supply may be 
increased. Of old one cargo run home out of 
three paid: presently one in four was found sufii- 
cient. The losses, however, added greatly to the 
misery of the slave; ships were built with 18 
inches between decks, one pint of water ahead 
was served out per diem, and five wretches were 
stowed away instead of two. With curious con- 
tradiction and ‘ wrong-headedness,’ these evils, 
caused by an abolitionary squadron, were quoted 
against the slaver, as if the diabolical malignity 
of the latter could be gratified only by destroying 
his own property. 

It was soon discovered that the slaves, being 
often condemned criminals,’ could not be returned 
under pain of death to their homes. The natural 
result was to disembark them free upon English 
eround, and thus certain British colonies were 
amply supplied with the hands of which their 

' IT regret to read such statements as the following in the 
Journal of the Anthropological Society : ‘It may be asserted, 
without fear of exaggeration, that it is to this demand for slaves 
that are to be attributed the desultory and bloody wars which 


are waged in Central Africa.’ (On the Negro Slaves in Turkey, 
No. 29, April, 1870.) 


458 THE SLAVE SUPPLY. 


government was depriving foreign powers. This — 
proceeding added jealousy to the ill-will with 
which our ‘meddling and muddling’ philan- 
thropy was regarded. But both those chiefly 
concerned—the slaver and anti-slaver—gained ; 
for the former the price of his wares was kept up, 
whilst the latter made not a little political capital 
out of his position. Slave exportation might at 
once have been crushed at head-quarters: Madrid . 
could have ended it in Cuba; Lisbon, and Rio de 
Janeiro, in Africa and in the Brazil; it was, 
however, judged best to let it die quietly, and to 
make as much use as possible of its dying throes. 
Some five years ago, after defying for a genera- 
tion the squadrons of civilized Europe and the 
United States, it perished of itself, and to-morrow 
it would revive if the old conditions of its exist- 
ence could be restored. 

The Zanzibar slave-depot is so situated that its 
market was limited only by the extent of Western 
Asia. From Ra’as Hafun to the Kilima-ni river 
was gathered the supply for the Red Sea, for the 
Persian Gulf, for the Peninsula of Hindostan, 
and for the extensive regions to the East. A 
spirited trade was carried on, and few obstacles 
were placed in its way. The Anglo-India Govern- 
ment did not in this matter rival the zeal of the 


THE SLAVE SUPPLY. 459 


Home Authorities. It lacked earnestness, judg- 
ing slavery leniently, and finding the practice 
conducive to the well-being of its subjects. A 
squadron of at least four steamers was required : 
the work was left to a sloop and a corvette sta- 
tioned in the Persian Gulf, with orders, amongst 
other things, to arrest slavers. The Cape squad- 
ron, whose beat extended to the Equator, rarely 
visited these seas, and the French ships of war 
were popularly said to do more harm than good. 
Even in after years, when a considerable impulse 
was given to our cruisers, they could capture only 
6.6 per cent.: thus, from Zanzibar and Kilwa, 
in 1867-9 were taken 116 daus carrying 2645 
slaves, leaving 37,000 to escape. There were 
neither special agents nor approvers; steam- 
launches and crews sufficiently numerous for ardu- 
ous boat-service were wanting. An infinite deal of 
nothing in the shape of bescribbled foolscap was 
collected, by way of sop for the Court of Directors ~ 
and for Exeter Hall; but the counsels of such 
authorities as Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton and Capt. 
Felix Jones, I. N., were passed over with the 
scant attention of acompliment. The fact is, in 
British India, as to a certain extent in France, no 
political capital could be made out of Abolition. 
Few men retain, after long residence in the East, 


460 THE SLAVE SUPPLY. 


that lively horror of the imstitution which dis- 
tinguishes the home-bred Englishman, and which 
has arisen partly from his crass ignorance of 
negro nature and from the misrepresentations of 
very earnest but also deluded anti-slavers. The 
Anglo-Indian has seen many a chattel happy and 
contented, enjoying an enviable lot compared 
with the poor at home free to starve or to die in 
the workhouse: possibly he has dined with some 
emancipated slave: certainly he has heard of 
Mamluk Beys and purchased Pashas; and, whilst 
he owns in the abstract that one man has no 
right to buy another, in practice he is lenient to 
the ‘ patriarchal system.’ 

The apathy of the Anglo-Indian Govern- 
ment gave the cue to its executive. When it was 
proposed that the Cutch ‘Nakhodas’ (skippers) 
should be compelled to keep crew-lists for in- 
spection, some ‘collector’ objected that such 
men cannot write—surely he must have known. 
that every vessel carries its own ‘ Kirani,’ or ac- 
countant. That imperium in imperio the Supreme 
Court, was enough to paralyze the energies of a 
fleet ; the captured slave-dau was carried to 
Bombay, whence, after a year’s detention by the 
claws of the law, it was probably restored to its 
owner. The officers of the Indian Navy would 


THE SLAVE SUPPLY. 461 


not exercise increased vigilance, necessitating 
exposure of their men and neglect of other more 
important duties, when their labours were so 
likely to be made futile. And as very little prize 
money was followed by a very large amount of 
correspondence, slaver-hunting appeared as un- 
desirable to them as to the officers of the French 
squadron on the West Coast of Africa. 

At Zanzibar, where the French Consul, or in 
his absence the first ‘ Drogman’ (like all consuls 
here, their office is rather political than commer- 
cial), could fine and imprison an offender, and even 
ship off a merchant skipper to the nearest port, the 
English functionary was a magistrate absolutely 
without magisterial or criminal jurisdiction. He 
could not deport an Indian convicted of slave-deal- 
ing. Whilst the Arab Courts were not allowed 
jurisdiction over British subjects, the latter, un- 
less merchant seamen ashore, were not liable to 
be arrested for felony. All this might easily 
have been remedied by extending eastward the 
British Order in Council for the exercise of power 
and jurisdiction by English functionaries (e.g. Con- 
suls for the Levant), in the Ottoman Dominions 
(June 19, 1844), and by adding power ashore to 
Article 124 of Consular Instructions, making of- 
fences on the high seas cognizable by the Consul. 


462 THE SLAVE SUPPLY. 


Thus, despite Order upon Ordinance, Asia was 
supplied by the whole slave-coast of HEastern 
Africa, without hardly the decency of conceal- 
ment. Boys and girls might be seen on board 
every native craft freshly trapped in the mner 
wilds, unable to speak a word of any language 
but the Zangian, and bearing upon their heads 
the trade-marks of the Hindu Banyan. The 
commerce was openly carried on by aliens sailing 
under British protection. Kidnapping was com- 
mon and daring, as about Lagos and Badagry. 
Scarcely a vessel manned by crews from Sur 
or Ra’as el Khaymah, the greatest ruffians of 
these pirate seas, left Zanzibar city or mainland 
without stealing a few negros or negrets. By 
the temptations of a bottle of rum or of some 
decoy girl, they were enticed into the house or 
on board, and they suddenly found themselves 
safe under hatches: even Arabs, men and wo- 
men, have been carried off in mistake by these 
inveterate thieves. A child here worth from 
£1 5s. to £3 would fetch in Persia £14 to £20; 
hence the practice. And the anti-slave export- 
ation treaties became exactly worth their weight 
in words, because the sword was known to be 
sheathed. 

The slaves on Zanzibar Island are roundly 


THE SLAVE SUPPLY. 463 


estimated at two-thirds of the population ; some 
travellers increase the number to three-fourths. 
The annual loss of males by death, export, and 
desertion, amounted, I was told, to 30 per cent., 
thus within every fourth year the whole gang 
upon a plantation required to be renewed. The 
actual supply necessary for the Island is now 
estimated at a total varying from 1700 to 6000, 
and leaving 12,000 to 16,000 for the export slave- 
market. As usualin Moslem lands, they may be 
divided into two distinct classes: first, the Mu- 
wallid or Mutawallid, the Mazaliya of the Wasa- 
wahili, the famulus or slave born in the family, 
or rather on the Island; secondly, the captive or 
imported chattel. 

The Muwallid belongs solely to his mother’s 
owner, who sells him or gives him away at plea- 
sure. Under no circumstances can he claim 
manumission—one born a slave is a slave for 
ever, even in the next world, amongst those 
nations which, like the Dahomans, have a next 
world. If notoriously ill-treated, however, he 
may compel his proprietor to dispose of him. 
Few Arabs behave cruelly to their ‘sons;’ they 
fear desertion, which here is always easy, and 
the master, besides being dependent for comfort 
upon his household, is also held responsible for 


464 THE SLAVE SUPPLY. 


the misdeeds of his property. He is also pro- | 
bably living in concubinage with the sisters of his 
slaves, and in this case the latter can take great 
liberties—they are the most unruly of their 
kind. I need hardly remark that the issue of a 
slave-girl by an Arab or by any other ‘ Hurr’ 
(free-born man) has been legitimate in El Islam 
since the days of Ishmael, inheriting like the son 
of a lawful wife, and that neither mother nor 
child can be sold. It is to be regretted that in 
this matter the Christian did not take example 
of the Mohammedan. 

The domestic slave-girl rarely has issue. 
This results partly from the malignant unchastity 
of the race, the women being so to speak in com- — 
mon; and on the same principle we witness the 
decline and extinction of wild tribes that come 
in contact with civilized nations. The chief 
social cause is that the ‘captive’ has no interest 
in becoming a mother; she will tell you so in 
the Brazil as in Zanzibar; her progeny by 
another slave may be sold away from her at any 
moment, and she obviates the pains and penalties 
of maternity by the easy process of procuring 
abortion. 

The wild slaves are brought over in daus 
which carry from 10 to 500 head. Most of those 


THE SLAVE SUPPLY. 465 


intended for the Island market are comparatively 
young: the Portuguese settlements at Mozam- 
bique give higher prices for able-bodied adults. 
Since the last treaty the value has more than 
trebled ; what then cost $10 has now risen to 
$30 to $35. A small boy fresh from the main- 
land commands from $7 to $15; a girl under 
7 or 8 years old, from $10 to $18. The live 
cargo pays duty to the Zanzibar and Kilwa 
custom-houses, as at Zayla, Tajurrah, and the 
slave-exporting harbours of the Red Sea: the 
sick and the refuse, however, enter free. About 
1835 the import duty varied from $0.50 to $4, 
according to the port whence the ‘black ivory’ 
was shipped: some races had such an ill fame 
that only excessive cheapness found purchasers. 
Presently $2 and at last $1 were levied upon all, 
good or bad. Of late years (1857) the annual | 
maximum collected was $23,000: this enables us 
to rate the import at an average of 14,000 to 
15,000 per annum, the extreme being 9000 or 
18,000. In 1860-61 it rose to 19,000, in 1861-62 
it fell to 14,000, and in 1862-63 there was a fur- 
ther declension.’ 

The impudence and audacity of the wild 
slaves almost passes belief. Such is their habit 
+ Concerning Kilwa further chap will be found in Vol. If. 


VOL, I. 


466 THE WILD SLAVE. 


of walking into any open dwelling and carrying 
off whatever is handy, that no questions are 
asked about a negro shot or cut down in the act 
of simple trespass. At night they employ them- 
selves in robbing or smuggling, and at times in 
firmg a house, when they join the crowd and 
spread the flames for the purpose of plunder. 
They are armed burglars, and not a few murders 
are laid at their door. In the plantation they 
gratify their savage, quarrelsome, and ungo- 
vernable tempers, by waging desultory servile 
wars with neighbouring gangs; hundreds will 
turn out with knobsticks, stones, and a few 
muskets, and blaze wildly in the direction of one 
another: at the first casualty all will run. Some 
proprietors have had as many as 2000 blacks— 
not half the number often owned in the Southern 
United States, and in the Brazil—but at those 
times the negro was worth only from $3 to $10. 
They were allowed two days out of the week to 
fish for themselves, and to work at their own 
patches of ground. 

Of late years the Zanzibar serviles have 
attempted to compete with the honest and hard- 
working porters of Hazramaut; but they cannot 
keep their hands from picking and stealing, and 
thus they have ruined several of their ‘ Akidahs,’ 


SERVILE RACES. 467 


or headmen, who rendered themselves responsible 
to the merchant. Being capable of considerable 
although desultory exertion, they get a living by 
day-work on board European ships, and they 
prefer this employment because they receive 
rations of rice and treacle, with occasionally a 
bit of beef or pork. When there is no work upon 
the plantation its slaves are jobbed at the rate of 
8 to 10 pice per diem, and of this sum they re- 
ceive 2, about the wage of an Indian ‘ biggaree.’ 
Of course they do their best to defraud their 
masters of the hire. 

The following are the distant races of whom 
a few serviles find their way to Zanzibar. 

Circassians and white slave girls being exceed- 
ingly rare, are confined to the harems of the 
rulers. They are brought from Persia, and are 
as extravagant in tastes as they are expensive in 
prime cost. <A ‘ Jariyeh bayza’ soon renders the 
house of a moderately rich man unendurable. 

Abyssinians, or rather Africans from Gura- 
gue, Amhara, and the continent north of the 
parallel of Cape Guardafui, are mostly imported 
from El Hejaz. Boys and lads range from $50 
to $100: girls, from $60 to $150. ‘The former 
are circumcised, and having a good reputation 
for honesty, intelligence, and amiability, they are 


4.68 SERVILE RACES. 


educated as stewards, superintendents, and super- 
cargos. ‘The latter, though exceedingly addicted 
to intrigue, are favourites with men, and, it is 
said, with Arab women. 

Galla captives of many tribes, especially of 
the Arisha and a few of the southern Somal, are 
shipped from Hafun, Brava, and Hanir or Mak- 
dishu. They fetch low prices, and are little 
prized, being considered roguish and treacherous. 
In appearance they are savage likenesses of the 
Abyssinians. 

The coast of Zanzibar, which before the days 
of the Periplus supplied the eastern world with 
slaves, has of late years been exhausted by over- 
driving. It may be divided into two sections : 
the northern country, which exports from Mom- 
basah and the little adjacent harbours as far 
south as the Pangani river; and the southern 
regions between Pangani and Kilwa. Details 
concerning all these servile races will be given 
when we visit their respective ports. 


CHAPTER XII. 


PREPARATIONS FOR DEPARTURE. 


‘The port of Zanzibar has little or no trade; that to Bom- 
bay consists of a little gum and ivory, brought from the main- 
land, with a few cloves, the only produce of the island ; and the 
import trade is chiefly dates, and cloth from Muscat, to make 
turbans. These things are sent in small country vessels, which 
make only one voyage ayear. The trade is consequently very 
trifling. —Capr. Hart, Commanding H. M.S. Imogene, 1834. 


THE dry season—and uncommonly dry it had 
been—was judged by all old hands unfit for travel, 
and I was strongly advised to defer exploration 
of the interior till after learning something of 
the coast. The Rev. Mr Erhardt’s Memoir on 
the Chart of Eastern and Central Africa, which 
threw into a huge uninterrupted Caspian half-a- 
dozen central lakes, and called it in the south 
Niandsha (Nyassa), in the north Ukerewe, and 
on the coast Niasa and Bahari ya Uniamési, 


470 LAKE ROUTES. 


had proposed a choice of three several routes. 
The first was through Dshaga (Chaga), and the 
lands of the Wamasai. It numbered 59 days, 
over level land, though studded with many 
isolated hills and mountains, and it traded to the 
Wanyamwezi, ‘of the race of Wazambiro,’ pro- 
bably the Wafioma of the Usambjiro district, 
near Karagwah. The middle caravan was re- 
ported to start ‘from Bagamoyo and Mboamaji 
to Uniamési.’ The general features of the coun- 
try, the distances, and even the position of Ujjiji, 


were remarkably well laid down. The ‘Stadt 


Ujiji,” inhabited partly by Arabians, partly by 
Wahas (Wahhas), of course, did not exist: the 
saline stream of the Wapogo,’ and the people, 
whose teeth became yellow by drinking of 
another water, were evidently the creations of 
some lively negro’s fancy. The ‘third or south- 
ern caravan line,’ set out from Kilwa, and after 
200 miles struck the ‘ Niasa or Niandsha’ Lake. 


' This salt stream might have been some confusion with 
the salt Lake Naivasha or Balibali, in about S. lat. 1° 40, first 


laid down by the Rev. Thomas Wakefield, ‘Routes of Native — 


Caravans from the Coast to the Interior of Eastern Africa, 
chiefly from information given by Sadi bin Ahédi, a native of 
a district near Gazi (Gasi?), in Udigo, a little north of Zan- 
zibar’ (pp. 3803—339, Journal of the Royal Geographical 
Society, vol. xl. 1870). Of this very valuable paper I shall 
have more to say in Vol. II. 


= 


M. ERHARDT. 471 


In this section the distances were miscalculated, 
and except the Wafipa and the Wabembe, the 
tribes were incorrectly named and placed. 

In his plan for exploring the Great Lake, and 
laid before the Royal Geographical Society in 
1854, M. Erhardt proposed to land at Kilwa, 
where he had touched with Dr Krapf; to collect 
a party of Wasawahili, and with an outfit of 
$300 to march into the continent. This might 
have been feasible in 1854; it was impossible in 
1856. The sum mentioned was inadequate; the 
missionaries had spent as much upon a fort- 
night’s march from Pangani to Fuga. Slaves 
are the only porters of the land, and the death of 
Sayyid Said had then made the coast Arabs and 
the Mrima people about Kilwa almost inde- 
pendent of Zanzibar. My directions from home 
were to follow, if possible, this line; Lieut. 
Christopher, I. N., however, who visited the 
coast in 1843, more wisely advised explorers to 
avoid the neighbourhood of Kilwa.  Lieut.- 
Colonel Hamerton, moreover, strongly objected 
to our landing anywhere but under the guns of 
Zanzibar, as it were. He informed me that the 
Wangindo, a tribe settled behind Kilwa, had 
lately murdered a native trader, at the instiga- 
tion of those settled on the coast; and that no- 


479 INTRIGUES. 


thing less than a ship of war stationed at the 
port would open the road to a ‘ Muzungu’ (white 
man). 

The Consul had also warned me that my in- 
quiries into the country trade, and the practice of 
writing down answers—without which, however, 
no report could have been compiled—were ex- 
citing ill will. The short-sighted traders dreaded, 
like Orientals, that competition might result 
from our discoveries, and their brains were too 
dull to perceive that the development of the re- 
sources of the interior would benefit all those 
connected with the coast. Houses that had 
amassed in a few years large fortunes by the 
Zanzibar trade, were exceedingly anxious to ‘ let 
sleeping dogs lie.’ As far as dinners and similar 
hospitality, the white merchants resident on the 
Island received us with the usual African pro- 
fuseness. There were, of course, honourable ex- 
ceptions: I have especially mentioned Captain 
Mansfield, Mr Masury, and M. Bérard; but not 
a few—exempla sunt odiosa —spread reports 
amongst the natives, Banyans, Arabs, and Wasa- 
wahili, which were very likely to secure for us the 
disastrous fate of M. Maizan. Captain Speke, 
who subsequently ignored this fact, threatened to 


throw one of the ‘first houses’ out of the win- 


INTRIGUES. 473 


dow ; and Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton declared that 
unless more discretion in spreading evil reports 
were shown he would withdraw British protec- 
tion from another well-known firm. The son of a 
Hamburg merchant had written to his father for 
leave to supply us with sums to be recovered from 
the Royal Geographical Society. When informed 
of this peculiar kindness I inquired the object, 
and the answer was that, intending himself to 
visit India, he wished to prepare his father for 
the expense of travel in the East. Certainly 
knowing all these intrigues, I see no reason why 
they should not be published. 

The Arabs were as much alarmed at the 
prospect of opening up the African interior as 
were ‘the foreign merchants; they knew that 
Huropeans had long coveted a settlement upon 
the sea-board, and they had no wish to lose the 
monopoly of the copal coast and the ivory-lands. 
Nothing indeed would be easier, I repeat, for a 
European power than to establish itself upon the 
mainland; and if it followed the wise example 
of the early Portuguese, who limited their pos- 
sessions to the principal ports and to the great 
centres of trade, it would soon monopolize an 
enriching traffic. With respect to copal, and to 
the articles most in demand, our commercial 


Ve ae 


474 CHANGES REQUIRED. 


relations with Zanzibar might be altered for the 
benefit of both contracting parties. It is at pre- 
sent an unnatural, exclusive system, a monopoly 
claiming advantages of which it will not, or 
cannot, avail itself. But all steps in these mat- 
ters must be taken by the Home Governments ; 
the petty jealousies of rival powers here render 
all local interference unadvisable. 

At length the Kazi Muhiyy el Din, the ‘ce- 
lestial doctor’ of the Wasawahili, was detailed 
by the curious to investigate the subject, and to 
represent the terrors of the public. He retired, 
satisfied that our plans were not of conquest. 
The Arab chiefs pressed Lieut.-Colonel Hamer- 
ton to swear upon the ‘ Kalmat Ullah’ that the 
expedition was to be conducted only by English 
officers, upon whose good-will they could rely ; 
that it was not a proselytizmg movement of the | 
Wanajuoni (sons of the book, missionaries), and 


that it would not be accompanied by ‘ Dutch- 
men,’ as certain gentleman from Germany were 
called by the Zanzibaris.". Had the Consul hesi- 


1 T leave these words as they were written in 1857, a time 
when German nationality did not exist, and when the name of 
German had perhaps reached its lowest appreciation. Throuvgh- 
out the history of the nineteenth century there is nothing 
more striking than the change which the last decade has 
worked in Europe, than the rise of the mighty power, which in 
a month crushed the armies of France, and which tore from _ 


THE ‘SEA OF MILK,’ 475 


tated to satisfy them, the course of events is 
clear to all who know the Eastern man. The 
surface of Arab civility would have run un- 
ruffied, but the undertow would have carried 
us off our legs. 

Persuaded at last by the earnestness of our 
energetic supporter, the Sayyid Sulayman bin 
Hamid bin Said—a noble Omani never neglects 
the name of his grandsire—came forward in our 
favour. This aged chief, a cousin of the late 
Sayyid, rejoiced in* the nickname of Bahari 
Maziwa (Sea of Milk), the Ethiopic equivalent for 
‘soft-sawder.’ He had governed Zanzibar during 
the minority of Sayyid Khalid, who died in 
1854, and his influence was strong upon the 
sea-board. He gave us his good word in sundry 
circulars, to which the Prince Majid added 
others, addressed to Kimwere, Sultan of Usum- 
bara; to the Diwans or Wasawahili head-men, 


her side the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. By an Eng- 
lishman who loves his country, nothing can be more enthusi- 
astically welcomed than this accession to power of a kindred 
people, connected with us by language, by religion, and by all 
the ties which bind nation to nation. It proves that the 
North is still the fecund mother of heroes, and it justifies us 
in hoping that our Anglo-Teutonic blood, with its Scandinavian 
‘baptism,’ will gain new strength by the example, and will 
apply itself to rival our Continental cousins in the course of 
progress, and in the mighty struggle for national life and 
prosperity. 


476 LIEUT.-COL. HAMERTON. 


and to the Baloch Jemadars, commanding the 
several garrisons. On the other hand, Ladha 
Damha of Mandavie, the Banyan Collector of 
Customs, provided me with orders upon the 
Hindu coast-merchants, to raise the requisite 
moneys, without which our reception would 
have been of the coolest. The horizon now 
began to clear, and even to look bright, as it 
generally will when the explorer has time and 
patience to await the change of weather. | 

If we travellers in transit had reason to be 
proud of our countryman’s influence at Zanzibar, 
the resident foreigners should have been truly 
thankful for it. When Lieut-Colonel Hamerton 
first made this Island his head-quarters (1841), 
he found that for nine years it had not been 
visited by a British cruiser, and that interested 
reports had been spread, representing us to be no 
longer masters of the Indian Seas. Slavery was 
everywhere rampant. Bozals, green or wild slaves, 
here called Baghams (:), were thrown over- 
board when sick, to avoid paying duty; and the 
sea-beach of the city, which acts Marine Parade, 
as well as the plantations, presented horrible spec- 
tac_es of dogs and birds of prey devouring swollen 
and spotted human carcases—the remnants of 


LIEUT.-COL. HAMERTON. 477 


‘slaves that never prayed.’* The Consul’s repre- 
sentations were listened to by Sayyid Said, who, 
through virtue of certain dry floggings and con- 
fiscations of property, 4 la Mohammed Al, in- 
stilled into the slave-owners some semblance of 
humanity. 

Negro insolence was dealt with as summarily. 
The Arabs had persuaded the Wasawahili, and 
. even the Creoles, that a white man is a being 
below contempt, and the ‘ poor African’ eagerly 
carried out the theory. Only 17 years have 
elapsed (1857) since a certain trading-consul, 
Mr W—, in consular hat and sword, was horsed 
upon a servile back, and was solemnly ‘ bakur’d,’ 
in his own consular house, under his own con- 
sular flag. This occurrence was afterwards de- 
nied by the best of all authorities, the gentleman 
who told the tale: I have, however, every reason 
to believe it. A Msawahili would at any time 
enter the merchant’s office, dispose his sandaled 
or bare feet upon the table or the bureau, call 
for cognac, and, if refused, draw his dagger. 
Impudent fishermen would anchor their craft 
below the windows of the British Consulate, 


! Dr Ruschenberger remarked the skeletons on the beach 
to the North and to the East of the Island. 


478 LIEUT.-COL. HAMERTON. 


and, clinging to the mast-top, enjoy with de- 
rision the spectacle of feeding Kafirs. The 
Arabs jostled strangers in the streets, drove 
them from the centre, and compelled them to 
pass by the wall. At night no one dared to 
carry a lantern, which would inevitably have 
been knocked out of his hand; and a promenade 
in the dark usually caused insults, sometimes a 
bastinado. To such a pitch rose contempt for . 
the ‘ Faranj,’ that even the ‘ mild Hindus,’—our 
‘fellow-subjects’ from Cutch and other parts 
of Western India,—could not preserve with a 
European the semblance of civility. 

Time was required to uproot an evil made 
inveterate, as in Japan, by mercantile tameness, 
and by the precept quocunque modo rem. Pa- 
tience, the Sayyid’s Increasing good-will, and at 
times a rough measure which brought the negro 
man to a ‘sense of his duty,’ were at last success- 
ful, and the result now is that the Englishman 
is better received here than at any of our Presi- 
dencies. The change is wholly the work of 
Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton, who, in the strenuous 
and unremitting discharge of his duties, has lost 
youth, strength, and health. The iron constitu- 
tion of this valuable public servant—I have 
quoted merely one specimen of his worth—has 


THE CARAVAN-LEADER. 479 


been undermined by the terrible fever, and at 
fifty his head bears the ‘blossoms of the grave,’ 
as though it had seen its seventieth summer. 
Before we could set out a guide, a Mahman- 
dar, a Cafilah-bashi or Kirangozi, was requisite, 
and this necessary was soon provided by the 
‘Sea of Milk.’ Said bin Salim el Lamki, the 
companion of our way for many a weary league, 
must not depart this life unsketched. Heisa 
half-caste Arab, as is shown by the wiry, woolly 
hair, which he generally, however, removes with 
care ; by his dead yellow skin; by scanty musta- 
chios, and by a beard which no pulling will 
lengthen. Short, thin, and delicate; a kind of 
man for the pocket; with weak and prominent 
eyes, the long protruding beak of a young bird, 
loose lips, and regular teeth dyed by betel to the 
crimson of chess-men, he owns to 40, and he 
shows 45. Of noble family on the father’s side, 
the Benu Lamk of the Hinawi, he was born 
when his progenitor governed Kilwa, hence his 
African blood; and he has himself commanded 
at the little port Sa’adani. Yet has not dignity 
invested him with the outer show of authority. 
He says ‘ Karrib,’—draw near !—to all, simple and 
gentle. He cannot beat his naughty bondsmen, 
though he perpetually quotes Ali the Khalifeh— 


480 SAID BIN SALIM. 


‘Buy not the slave but with staff and sword ; 
Or the lord will slave, and the slave will lord.’ 


I have heard him address, with ‘ rotund mouth,’ 
his small boy Faraj, a demon of impudence; 
yet he is mostly ashamed to scold. This results 
from his extreme timidity and nervousness. He 
never appears abroad without the longest of 
daggers and a two-handed blade fit for Richard 
of England. He will sleep in an oven rather 
than open the door when a leopard has been 
talked of: on board ship he groans like a 
colicky patient at every ‘lop,’ and a shipped sea 
brings from his lips the involuntary squeak of 
mortal agony. In the hour of perfect safety he 
has a certain quietness of manner and mildly 
valorous talk which are exceedingly likely to 
impose. He cannot bear hunger or thirst, fatigue 
or want of sleep, and until Fate threw him in 
our way he probably never walked a single con- 
secutive mile. Though owner of a wife, and of 
three quasi wives, he had been refused by Allah 
the gift of issue and increase. Possibly the glad 
tidings that a slave girl was likely to make him 
a father—he swore that, if a boy, Abdullah should 
be his name—suddenly communicated to him on _ 
his return from our first cruise, caused him to a 


SAID BIN SALIM. 481 


judge my companionship canny, and once more 
to link his destiny with ours. 

Said bin Salim is a Bayazi of the Khariji schism. 
He prays regularly; fasts uncompromisingly ; 
he chews but will not smoke tobacco; he never 
casts away a date-stone ; and he ‘sips water’ but 
‘swills milk’ as the Moslem saying directs. His 
mother tongue is the Kisawahili: he speaks, 
however, the grotesque Arabic of Oman, and 
sometimes, to display his mastery of the human- 
ities, he mixes hashed Koran and terminating 
vowels with Maskat ‘ baragouinage,’ Paradise 
Lost and Thieves’ Latin. He has read syntax; he 
writes a pretty hand; he is great at epistles, and 
he loves to garnish discourse with saw and song. 
When in the ‘ doldrums’ he will exclaim— 


‘The grave’s the gate all flesh must pass— 
Ah! would I knew what lies behind.’ 


I have heard him crooning for long hours— 


‘The knowledge of this nether world, 
Say, friend, what is it ?—false or true ? 
The false, what mortal cares to know ?— 

The true, what mortal ever knew ?’ 


Sometimes he will break out into rather a ‘ fast’ 
strain, e. g.— 
‘At Meccah I saw a lass selling perfume, 


She put forth a hand, and I cried, “ O sweet!’ 


(Three sniffs, crescendo. ) 
VOL, I. 31 


482 SAID BIN SALIM. 


She leant over me, casting a glance of love, 
But from Meccah I sped, saying, “ Farewell, sweet!”’ — 
(Three Kafir clicks, diminuendo, signifying ‘ No go.’) 


The reader will ask what induced me to take 
a guide apparently so little fit for rough and 
ready work? In the first place, the presence 
of Said bin Sdélim el Lamki, el Hinawi, was a 
pledge of our utter ‘ respectability,’ and as a 
court spy, he could report that we were not 
malignants. Moreover, he was well known upon 
the coast, and he had a knowledge-box filled 
with local details, which he imparted without 
churlishness. During the first trip I found 
him full of excellent gifts, courteous, thoroughly 
vood-tempered, and apparently truthful, honest, 
and honourable—a bright exception to the rule 
of his unconscientious race. When I offered 
him the task he replied, ‘ Verily, whoso benefit- 
eth the beneficent becometh his lord; but the 
vile, when well treated, will turn and rend 
thee.’ I almost hoped that he would not dis- 
appoint me in the end; but the delays, the 
dangers, and the hardships of the second journey 
proved too much for Said bin Salim. The thin 
outer varnish disappeared from the man, and the 
material below was not inviting. The Maskat 
Arab, especially the half-caste, easily becomes — 


SAID BIN SALIM. 483 


the Bedawi, the Ishmael, the Orson. These 
people have rarely any ‘stay’ in them; they 
are charming only as long as things run smooth, 
and after once showing true colours, they care 
not to conceal them. Arabs, however, are not 
the only handsome shoes that badly pmch. How 
often would fellow-travellers have avoided one 
another like fire, had they been able to see a 
trifle below the surface! Safd bin Salim, offended 
by certain remarks in my Lake Regions of Cen- 
tral Africa (passim), and wishing to ‘ prove his 
character for honour and honesty,’ persuaded 
Capt. Speke to give him another chance, and 
began by telling a gross falsehood, which Capt. 
Speke at once believed. He accompanied the 
second East African expedition: he played his 
usual slavish tricks, and he had to be ‘ dropped,’ 
utterly useless, at Kazeh, with the Arabs. 

I had engaged at Bombay two Portuguese 
boys, Valentino Rodrigues and Caetano Andrade, 
who resolved that what Sahib Log could endure, 
that same could they. Having described them 
once there is no object in saying further of them, 
except that they were, despite all deficiencies, a 
great comfort to us; and that they proved them- 
selves, in the long run, better men than the 
Arab. ‘Taking no interest in ‘ African explora- 


484 OULTIT. 


tion,’ and desirous of seeing only the end of the 
expedition, they must, poor fellows, have yearned 
sadly for home, even Goa; and I am rejoiced to 
think that they both reached it alive. 

The outfit and expenses of an African journey 
are always interesting to travellers. For the 
personnel, we expended in two months a total of 
$172 ($50 to Said, and $20 per mens. to the two 
Goanese), including $32 for ship hire, and the 
inevitable ‘ Bakhshish’ which accompanies it. As 
presents to the native chiefs who might entertain 
us, we took 20 Jamdanis, or sprigged muslin for 
turbans ($15) ; a score of embroidered Surat caps 
(Alfiyyah=$17.50); a broad-cloth coat and a 
Maskat Sabai, or loin-cloth of silk, cotton, and 
vold thread ($20.50) for the Sultan Kimwere; two 
gaudy cotton shawls, yellow and scarlet ($2.50), 
and 35 lbs. of small white-and-pink Venetian beads 
($14). This item amounted to $69.50. I made 
the mistake of ignorance by not laying in an ample 
store of American domestics (Merkani), the silver 
of the country, and a greater quantity of beads, 
which are the small change. About $250 repre- 
sented the expenses of living and travelling ($94 
in January, and in February $84): this included 
the expenditure of the whole party. The pro- — 
visions were, rice (three bags), maize flour (one 


ry, x oe i .. 
uw Sth PAR 


OUTFIT. 485 


barrel), dates (one bag), sugar and coffee (each 
20 lbs.), salt, pepper, onions, and curry stuff, oil 
and clarified butter, snuff and tobacco. Of 
course soap and candles were not forgotten, and 
we had a small but necessary supply of cords 
for baggage—these, however, soon followed the 
way of our knives. The several items form a 
grand total of $480, equal to about £50 per 
mensem. I must observe, however, that we travel- 
led in humble guise, hired poor vessels, walked 
the whole way, and otherwise practised a some- 
what rigid economy. 

Ladha Damha, who had provided us with these 
necessaries, also hired for the coasting cruise an 
old Arab Beden, or ‘ Awaysiyeh’ (foyst) called 
the Riami. She was a fine specimen of her class ; 
old and rotten, the boards and timbers of the deck 
were breaking up; the tanks were represented by 
a few Girbahs, or empty skins; the sails were in 
rags; the ropes and cables broke every half-hour, 
and the awning leaked like a cheap waterproof, 
despite bits of cotton rudely caulked in. Ants 
effected lodgment in our instrument cases, cock- 
roaches dropped upon us all day,and the rats made 
marriage, as Said said, during the live-long night. 
The crew was picked up out of the bazar: one 
was a tailor, a second stuttered unintelligibly, a 


486 OUR BOAT. 


third was maimed and purblind, a fourth 
‘was sick, and a fifth, the Chelebi (fop) of the 
party, was a malingerer, who could do nothing 
but shave, pluck his eyebrows, and contemplate 
a flat face in the glass. The only man on board 
was old Rashid, a scion of that Suri race, the 
self-styled descendants of the Syrians, well-known 
for beggary and niggardness, for kidnapping and 
safe piracy. They are the most uncourteous of 
the Arabs; and while ever demanding Hishmah 
(respect) for themselves, they forget their own 
proverb, ‘ Politeness has two heads,’ and they will 
on no occasion accord it to others. Rashid, how- 
ever, proved a hero and a treasure, by the side of 
our Nakhoda Hamid, a Saudawi or melancholist 
of the most approved type—never was brain of 
goose or heart of hen-partridge hidden by brow 
so broad and intellectual; never did liver of 
milk wear so Herculean a beard! He squats upon 
the deck screaming and abusing his men; now 
silent and surly, then answering every question 
with El ’ilm ’ind Allah (God knows! ), and in 
danger he weeps bitterly. With such fellows the 
only system is to be as distant as possible: the 
least familiarity ends badly; they will hate you 
more for one cross word than love you for a 
thousand favours. The civility of a pipe or a a 


OUR CREW. 487 


glass of sherbet infallibly spoils them: they re- 
spect only the man who tells them once a day 
that they are unworthy to eat with a Walad Amir 
(gentleman). They will call you proud; but that 
matters little, and if you pay them well they will 
speak of you accordingly. 

On the evening of Sunday, Jan. 4, 1857, we 
bade a temporary farewell to our kind friend and 
host, Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton, and transferred 
ourselves on board the Riami, expecting to set 
out. Simple souls that we were! There was 
neither wood nor water on board, and our gallant 
captain lost no time in eclipsing himself. The 
north-east wind coursing through the clear sky 
was dead against us, but he pretended that the 
sailors had remained in the bazar. He came on 
board next morning, when we made sail and ran 
down to Mto-ni, there filling our skins with bad 
saltish water. Hamid again went ashore, promis- 
ing to return in half an hour, and leaving us to 
spend the day in vain expectation. Said bin 
Salim solaced himself by wishing that the Shaytan 
might appear to Hamid on his death-bed and say, 
‘OQ friend of my soul, welcome home!’ But 
when the truant came off, he was welcomed by the 
half-caste Arab with a cup of coffee and a proverb 
importing that out of woe cometh weal; this con- 


488 THE THREE STARTS. 


siderably diminished the effect of my flea in the 
ear and threat of the ‘bakur.’ Finally, after the 
loss of two nights and a day, we fished up our 
ground-tackle and began our journey. I after- 
wards learned that in this part of East Africa the 
traveller must ever be prepared for three distinct 
departures—the little start, the big start, and the 
start. 

Amongst our belongings was a life-boat which 
we determined to tow, and the trouble which it 


4 - $y" 


gave was endless. In consequence of a lecture ° 


delivered at the United Service Institution (May 
2, 1856), by Major, now Sir Vincent, Eyre, of the 
Bengal Artillery, I wrote through him to Mr 
Joseph Francis, of New York, whose application 
of iron had taken the place of the old copper 
article in which Lieut. Lynch, of the United 
States navy, descended the Jordan rapids. ‘The 
total length, 20 feet, was divided into seven sec- 
tions, each weighing under 40 lbs. The pieces 
were so numbered that experienced men could 
put the thing together in one hour, and it was 


provided with rivets, bolts, nuts, and japanned — 


waterproof awning. <A flat keel and a cork 
fender were proposed by Major Eyre to the 
manufacturers, Messrs Marshall, Lefferts, and 
Co., and were rejected: the former would have 


THE ‘LOUISA’ LIFE-BOAT. 489 


offered greater hindrance to the joints, and the 
latter would have been only additional weight. 
This life-boat, after being set up with some 
difficulty at Zanzibar, accompanied us on our trip 
northwards. The galvanized and corrugated 
iron, in longitudial furrows, like the roofing of 
railway stations, but only sixpence-thick, proved 
far superior to the softer copper formerly used. 
The Arabs, who could not sufficiently admire her 
graceful form, the facility with which she was 
‘handled, and above all things, her speed, called 
her the Sharradeh, or runaway (mare). ‘The 
‘ Louisa’ was indeed sadly given to breaking her 
halter and to bolting. We lost her during a storm 
near Mombasah, but an article so remarkable and 
so useless to any but ourselves was of course 
easily recovered. Compelled by want of carriage 
on the coast to reduce my material, I left her 
most unwillingly at Zanzibar. Buoyant as grace- 
ful, fireproof, wormproof, and waterproof, incapa- 
ble of becoming nail-sick or water-logged, she 
would indeed have been a Godsend upon the 
‘Tanganyika lake, sparing us long delay, great ex- 
pense, and a host of difficulties and hardships. 


APPENDIX. 


THE UKARA OR UKEREWE LAKE. 
A DEDUCTION FROM THE REV. MR WAKEFIELD’S ‘ ROUTES.’ 


Tue following paper was read out on December 11, 1871, 
before a meeting of the Royal Geographical Society, Major- 
General Sir Henry Rawlinson, President of the Society, 
being in the chair. 


Mucu light had been lately thrown upon the dark 
points of Eastern Africa, especially those which gather 
round the much-yexed Ethiopic Olympus, Kilima-njaro, 
by the labours of the Rev. Thomas Wakefield. This 
gentleman, we are informed (Preface by Mr Samuel 8. 
Barton, General Mission Secretary, to ‘Footprints in Eastern 
Africa.’ London: Reed, 1866), was one of four missionaries 
sent out to Mombasah in 1861 by the United Methodist Free 
Churches under charge of Dr Krapf, who first established 
the now world-renowned ‘Mombas Mission.’ After a 
residence of five years he published the interesting series 
of ‘ Notes on a Visit to the Southern Galas’ above alluded 
to; and in 1866-7, accompanied by the Rev. C. New, 
he marched from Mombasah to Upokomo, on the Dana 
river. He is therefore an African traveller of some experi- 
ence; and as he has evidently mastered the Kisawahili _ 
tongue, he is unusually well qualified to supervise and to jz 


APPENDIX. 491 


correct the ‘ Routes of Native Caravans from the Coast to 
the Interior of Eastern Africa, chiefly from information 
given by Sadi bin Ahedi, a native of a district near Gazi 
(Gasi Bandar?) in Udogo, a little north of Zanzibar.’ 
Especially advocated by my old and tried friend Mr Alex- 
ander Findiay, F.R.G.S., this valuable paper was published 
in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society (pp. 303— 
339, No. xi. Vol. xl. of 1870), and I felt somewhat surprised 
that the extent of its importance has not attracted more 
attention in England. 

I will consider this addition to our scanty knowledge 
of one of the most interesting regions in tropical Africa 
under two heads—the philological and the geographical. 

Firstly, Mr Wakefield, like Doctors Livingstone and 
Kirk, all being practical linguists, invariably uses the 
system of Zangian orthography, adopted by the ‘ Mombas 
Mission,’ and by myself since 1859. He speaks, for instance, 
ot Kilima-njaro and Unyamwezi, not the Monomoezi of 
Mr Cooley or ‘ the authentic word Mueni Muezi,’ trans- 
lated landlord, or petty chief country (p. 11, The 
Memoir on the Lake Regions of East Africa reviewed, &c. 
&c., by W. D. Cooley. London: Stanford, 1864). We 
find in Mr Waketield’s Notes (p. 316) ‘ Lima, a term de- 
noting extraordinary size—Mlima being the general term 
for mountain,’ whilst (p. 321) Ki-Mrima is justly applied 
to the dialect spoken on the Mrima or mainland facing 
Zanzibar Island. We read also (323) ‘Mtanganyiko,' 
Kisawahili, meaning the place of mingling or mixture (ren- 
This is precisely the meaning attached by me 


’ 


dezvous). 


' Possibly a clerical error for Mtanganyika: similarly in the Notes 
(p. 313) we find Risimani, evidently a misprint for Kisima-ni. I shall 
write to Mr Wakefield upon the subject. 


492 APPENDIX. 


to the Lake’s name, yet I was assured in the Memoir above 
alluded to (p. 7) that nothing can be ‘more ridiculous’ 
than my explanation of Tanganyika. Even in philological 
details of the Kisawahili dialect Mr Wakefield agrees 
with me. He writes, for instance, Udogo (Notes, p. 313), 
Ugala (Footprints, p. 67, 68), and Ulangulo (Ibid. 'p. 63). 
I was assured in the Memoir (p. 9) that U is prefixed to 
the names of countries only by Dr Krapf and Captain 
Burton—this, too, after I had for years been talking of 
Kurope as Uzungu, literally, Land of white men. Mr 
Wakefield speaks of Wasimbaé, of Wasawahili (or Wa- 
Sawahili), and of Wanyamwezi, thus sanctioning the use of 
Wamrima, continental men, and Wakilima, hill-men. He 
adopts Kisawahili, Kikwavi, Kimasai, and so forth, prefix- 
ing an adjectival particle ‘Ki’ to the root, and denoting 
chiefly dialect, yet I was assured by Mr Cooley (Memoir, © 
p. 9) that ‘Ki’ has never an adjectival form. I may now ~ 
invite the author of Inner Africa Laid Open to revise the 
verdict (Memoir, p. 7) which pronounces me ‘ totally ignor- 
ant’ of the language of which I affect to be master. 

It may be deemed trivial to dwell upon these philological 
minutie, but, firstly, nothing is unimportant when it 
affects the accuracy of a traveller, especially of an explorer, 
in the smallest matters of detail. Secondly, without an _ 
exact nomenclature all topographical literature must be 
imperfect and of scant value. And, finally, as Mr Cooley 
and I have been differing upon these points for the last ten 
years, it is well that the portion of the public which takes 
an interest in the subject should see who is right and who 
is not. I have no personal feeling in the matter; and if 
the ‘ Geographer of N’yassi’ will bring, as I have done, inde- 
pendent testimony to bear upon the points in question, and 


APPENDIX. 493 


not evolve his learning out of the depths of his self-con- 
sciousness, I am at all times ready and willing to own myself 
wrong. 

Far more important and generally interesting, how- 
ever, is the geographical knowledge brought home or 
rather confirmed to us by Mr Wakefield’s ‘ Routes.’ We 
now know that the block whose apices are Mounts 
Kilima-njaro and Kenia (alias Doenyo Ebor, Mont Blanc) 
to be a great upland, bounded on the South by the 
Panga-ni river in 8. lat. 5°, and on the N. West by a 
lacustrine region in 8. lat. 6°; whilst it may possibly 
anastomose to the North, as was suggested by my friend 
Dr Beke, with the Highlands of Harar and of Moslem 
Abyssinia, lying upon the same meridian. The breadth 
between N. West and 8. East will be included between 
East long. (G.) 37° and 39°. Assuming, therefore, roughly 
the bounding lines to measure 240 by 120 direct geogra- 
phical miles—we obtain a superficies of 28,800 square geo- 
eraphical miles, more than a fourth of the area assigned to 
the British Islands. We can now safely believe, with Dr 
Krapf and Mr Rebmann, the explorers, that the block is a 
high volcanic country, separating the watershed of the 
Nilotic Basin from that of the Indian Ocean ; sending off, 
like the Highlands of Abyssinia, its own tributary or 
tributaries to the White river, and corresponding with 
the Camarones or Theon Ochema in West Africa (N. lat. 
4°); that it is a land of high plains and thickly forested 
hills, rising to summits capped, not with delomite and 
quartz, but with glaciers and eternal snows; and that it 
abounds in the lakes and swamps, sweet and salt, necessary 
to feed the inland ‘ smoke mountains’ or volcanoes, whose 


' Mr Keith Johnston, jun., who appended some very sensible and 


494 APPENDIX. 


existence before appeared so problematical. And now the 
two mighty summits, Kilima-njaro, explored by the late 
lamented Baron von der Decken and Doenyo Ebor, reported 
to Dr Krapf under the alias Kenia or Kirenia, and unex- 
pectedly confirmed by fresh evidence, have obtained local 
habitations as well as names. 

But the interest of Mr Wakefield’s Routes culminates 
in the fact that they show even to a certainty the exist- 
ence of a lake before unknown, and they lead to the con- 
clusion that the area of 29,900 square geographical miles, 
assigned to the so-called Victoria Nyanza, contains at 
least four and probably a greater number of separate 
waters ; that it is, in fact, not a Lake, but a Lake Region. 

Mr Keith Johnston observes (p. 333), ‘It is remarkable 
that not one single name of a district, people, or place 
(with the exception of that of the Wamasai, a general 
name for the people of the white region west of the Lake)! 
given in these new routes has any such remote resemblance 
to names reported by Speke and Burton as to warrant any 
identification with any one of them.’ The reason will 
presently appear in the fact that we are speaking of 
well-considered remarks to the ‘ Routes,’ observes (p. 337) that ‘the 
Njemsi volcano in this region has a special interest, since, if the report 
be true, it is the only one which is known to present any signs of activity 
in the African Continent.’ I cannot at present place my hand upon a 
private note addressed to me by Mr Frank Wilson of Fernando Po, and 
describing how the Camarones Peak was seen to be in eruption shortly 
after my departure from the West African coast (1864). I had found 
it in one place still smoking. 

‘The routes as well as the information given by me in the Lake 
Regions of Central Africa, and in my forthcoming work upon Zanzibar, 
City, Island, and Coast, prove the Wamasai to be a special tribe. M. 
Richard Brenner (Mittheilungen, 1868, p. 175, &c., and map facing p. 


384) shows that this fierce pastoral people has approached the coast 
aud seized the right or southern bank of the Sabaki or Melinde river. 


APPENDIX. 495 


different waters. The annotator further observes (p. 333) 
that ‘the arguments which Captain Burton used in re- 
commending a division of the Nyanza had not a sufficient 
basis of proof to give them moment, as is shown by the 
acceptance of the Lake as one sheet by the whole geo- 
graphical world.’ | 

The mapper will readily understand that it is much 
more sightly and convenient to have a basin neatly out- 
lined, and margined sky-blue, like the Damascus swamps, 
than to split it into fragments as I did. A volume 
published by the late Mr Macqueen and myself (The 
Nile Basin. London: Tinsleys, 1864), offered a sketch of 
what was actually seen by the second expedition, and 
the aspect of disjecta membra was not inviting. After- 
wards, however (p. 334), Mr Johnston remarks, ‘ Captain 
Burton’s recommendation would seem to receive some 
slight support from the new information obtained by Mr 
Wakefield.’ To this I would add that his language might 
have been less hesitating, as these ‘ Routes,’ so important 
to the geography of Eastern Africa, at once establish the 
existence of two lakes wholly independent of the so-called 
Victoria Nyanza. 

The first is that which we named from hearsay Bahari 
ya Ngo, contracted to Bahari Ngo, sea or water of 
Ngo(-land). In the atlas of Mercator (Gerhard Kauffmann) 
we find it written Barcena for Barenca or Barenga. Mr 
Wakefield prefers (324) Baringo, meaning a ‘canoe,’ and 
‘ possibly so called from its form.’ I shall follow his example, 
at the same time observing that African negroes rarely 
adopt such general and comprehensive views of larger 
features or venture upon such comparisons unless they can 
command a birds-eye glance at the prospect. Route No. 


496 APPENDIX. 


5, from ‘Lake Nyanza’ to Lake Baringo, conclusively 
proves that the latter is not ‘a sort-of backwater ’ connected 
with the former ‘by a strait, at the same distance from the 


Kast of Ripon Falls as the Katenga river is to the West.’ — 


Nor is it a ‘ vast salt marsh’ without effluent: the saline 
water has evidently been confused with the lately reported 


Lake Nairvasha or Balibali lying 8. West of Doenyo Ebor. ° 


Native description supplies the Baringo with the North- 
ern Nyarus—the southern effluent of the same name 
being clearly an influent. Nyarus thus corresponds with 
the old Thumbiri, Tubirih, and Meri, afterwards called 
Achua, Usua, and Asua, words probably corrupted from 
Nyarus. 

The map of 1864, printed by Mr now Sir Samuel Baker 
in the Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, 
affirms the Asua to have been a dry channel 150 yards wide 
when he crossed it, in Jan. 9, 1864, but rolling 15 feet deep 
in the wet season. He can hardly be speaking of the drain 
from the Baringo Lake, which must be large and perennial, 
and which therefore must be sought farther north, unless it 
anastomoses with some other stream. M. d’Arnaud, the 
French engineer sent in 1840-1841 by Mohammed Ah 
Pasha to explore the Upper Nile, reported (Journal Royal. 
Geographical Society, vol. xviii. p. 73) that about 30 leagues 
south of where the expedition was stopped by shallow water 
in N. lat. 4° 42’ 42”, and therefore in N. lat. 3° 12’, the 
several branches unite, the chief one flowing from the east. 

The Baringo Palus must act reservoir to the whole N. 
Western declivities of Doenyo Ebor, whose snows have given 
ita name. Ptolemy (iv. 8) distinctly mentions the x‘ovas, 
or (melted) snows which feed the Nile; and though he 
places them in 8. lat. 12° 30’, he is correct as to the exist- 


N°] - BURTON & SPEKE. May 858 


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APPENDIX. 497 


ence of snowy feeders. Some years ago a Swiss traveller 
drew my attention to the fact that glacier-water would ex- 
plain the term White river as opposed to Blue river. 
The quantity of melted snow or glacier-water which finds 
its way to the true Nile may be comparatively inconsider- 
able, but that little may perhaps modify the colourless 
complexion of rain-water when its suspended matter has 
been deposited, and distinguish it from the pure azure of 
a stream issuing from a Lake Geneva. In 1857 Captain 
Speke, an experienced Himalayan, easily detected, when — 
drinking from the Pangar-ni or Rufu river, the rough 
flavour of snow water. 

More important, however, than Baringo is the new 
Lake announced to us by Mr Wakefield’s African Pandit, 
Sadi bin Ahedi. The latter ignoring Nyanza, calls it Ny- 
anja, possibly a dialectic variety, and therefore a difference 
neither to be dwelt upon too much nor wholly to be neg- 
lected. Of greater value is the name Bahari ya Pil, or 
Second Sea, not called so, we are expressly informed, be- 
cause inland of the First Sea—Indian Ocean—but evi- 
dently because leading to a neighbouring water on the 
west. Most suggestive of all, and therefore adopted by 
me, is the term ‘ Bahari ya Ukara,’ or Sea of Ukara, the 
latter being the region on the Eastern shore. Here we 
detect the true origin of the ancient Garava, and of Cap- 
tain Speke’s Ukewere, which he applied to a peninsula 
projecting from the Eastern shore, and which the Wan- 
yamwezi, translating ‘island water,’ gave to the Oriental 
portion of the so-called Victoria Nyanza. 

Respecting the length of the Ukara Lake, Sadi was 
informed that it could be crossed by canoes in 6 full days, 


paddling from sunrise to sunset; but if the men went on 
VoL. IL 32 


498 APPENDIX. 


night and day, the voyage is to be accomplished in three 
days. Now the native craft used upon these dangerous 
plateau-waters never dare to cross them: the voyager 
may rush over the narrow parts of the Tanganyika Lake, 
but of course he would not attempt the physical impossi- 
bility of navigating without chart or compass beyond sight 
of land. It is impossible to believe in a canoe-cruise of 6 
days across the lake: it is evident that a coasting-cruise 
is meant. The total of hours, allowing the day to be 12, 
and without halts, would be 72. Upon the Tanganyika 
I estimated the rate at a little more than 2 knots an hour. 
Thus, in round numbers, we have 145 miles, which pro- 
bably require reduction : an estimate of the mean amount 
of error distributed on the whole of Mr Wakefield’s 
‘Routes’ gives, according to the annotator, an exagger- 
ation of 1.24: 1.0; and of course, when estimating the 
length of these distant and dangerous navigations, exag- 
geration would be excessive. We may, therefore, fairly 
assume the semi-circumference of the Ukara Lake at 120 
miles, and the total circumference at 240. Sadi, we are 
told (p. 309), made Bahari-ni on the Eastern shore the 
terminus of his long journey from Tanga Bandar to the 
‘Lake Nyanza’ (Nyanja?). Let us protract the full 145 
miles as the exceptional rate of 3 knots an hour upon 
Captain Speke’s last map, without allowing anything for 
the sinuosities of the coast, and the end would strike — 
the entrance of ‘Jordan Nullah’ off the ‘Bengal Archi- — 
pelago,’ about half the width of the so-called ‘ Victoria E 
Nyanza.’ 

As regards the breadth of the Ukara Lalo we read 
(p. 310), ‘Standing on the Eastern shore, Sadi said he 
could descry nothing of land in a western direction, excep “rt 


APPENDIX. 499 


the very faint outline of a mountain summit, far, far away 
on the horizon.’ This passage is again suggestive. The 
sandy and level Eastern shore of the Nyanja (i. e. water) or 
Ukara Lake about Bahari-ni, whence Sadi sighted, it is pro- 
bably in E. long. (G.) 35°15". The easternmost, that is, the 
nearest, point of the Karagwah, or, as Captain Speke writes 
it, the Karague Highlands, is in E. long. (G.) 32° 30. 
Thus the minimum width is 165 miles, whilst man’s vision 
under such circumstances would hardly cover a dozen. 
Here, again, we have room for a First as wellas for a Second 
Sea. Mr Johnston suggests that the mountain-summit in 
question might be an island rising high in the midst of the 
Lake ; but, he adds, such a feature could not well have been 
missed entirely by Captain Speke. Here I join issue with 
him for reasons which can be deduced from these pages— 
my companion and second in command never saw or heard 
of the Ukara Lake. But it is highly improbable that 
these who could tell Sadi the number of days required to 
cross or to coast along the Lake would not have known 
whether the summit was that of a mountain on terra firma 
or of a lacustrine islet. The latter feature is not un- 
familiar to Mr Wakefield’s informant: he does not fail to 
mention (p. 324) the small conical hill in the southern 
waters of the Baringo Lake. 

When Sadi declared that ‘he travelled 60 days 
(marches ?) along the shore without perceiving any signs of 
its termination,’ he evidently spoke wildly, as Africans will. 
His assertion that the natives with whom he conversed 
were unable to give him any information about its northern 
er southern limit, simply means that in this part of the 
African interior neither caravans nor individuals trust 
themselves in strange lands, especially with the prospect 


500 APPENDIX. 


of meeting such dangerous plunderers as the Wasuku. _ 
Similarly a ‘two months’ journey’ and ‘going to Egypt,’ 
asserted by ‘all authorities without exception, African and | 
Arab,’ signify nothing but the total ignorance of the in- 
formant concerning the country a few leagues beyond his 
home. A lake 120 miles in length, that is to say, even a 
little smaller than the Baringo is supposed to be, will amply 
satisfy all requirements in this matter. 

Finally, we have Sadi’s report that 8 or 9 years ago - 
(before 1867?) the Ukara Lake was navigated by Europeans. 
Certain very white men, we are told, who bought only short 
ivories (Scrivellos), refusing long tusks, and who purchased | 
large quantities of eggs—Africans have learnt by some 
curious process to connect Europeans with odphagy—came 
up in a large vessel, carrying three masts and another in 
front (bowsprit?), with many white cloths (sails). The 
event took place only a month and a half before he 
reached the Lake, and it is described with an exactness of 
detail which seems to vouch for itstruth. If this bea fact, 
it is clear that the Nyanja cannot be Captain Speke’s 
Nyanza, and that the visitors could not have made it via 
his ‘ White Nile,’ with its immense and manifold obstruc- 
tions. But it may be that of which he heard (Journal, p. 
333) from the ‘ Kidi officers,’ who reported a high moun- 
tain to rise behind the Asua (Nyarus?) river, and a lake 
navigated by the Gallas in very large vessels. We now 
understand why the ‘ King’ Mtesa (Ibid. p. 294) offered to 
send the traveller home (to Zanzibar) in one month by a 
frequented route, doubtless through the Wamasai and other 
tribes living between the Nyanja and the Nyanza. Thus 
Irungu of Uganda (Ibid. p. 187) expressed his surprise that 
Captain Speke had come all the way round to that country, 


< —_——_ -— eo 


APPENDIX. 501 


when he could have taken the short and safe direct route 
up the mid-length of his own lake—vid Umasai and Usoga, 
by which an Arab caravan had travelled. 

‘The Ukara Lake will be found laid down (a.p. 1712) in 
the Africa of John Senex, F.R.S. (quoted by the late Mr 
John Hoge, F.R.S., ‘On some old maps of Africa, in 
which the central equatorial lakes are laid down nearly in 
their true positions’). It is evidently the Garava of Merca- 
tor (A.D. 1623), whose atlas supplies it with a northern ef- 
fluent draining to the Nile. The ‘Couir’ of D’Anville’s 
folio atlas (a.p. 1749), and placed where the Lake No and 
_ the Bahr el Ghazal actually exist, may be a confusion with 
the equatorial Lake Kura Kawar, given by Ja’afar Mo- 
hammed bin Musa el Khwarazmi (A.p. 833) in the Rasm 
el Arzi, published in Lelawel’s Géographie du Moyen 
Age (Brussels, 1850), and, like Garava, both may be de- 
rived from Ukara. 

The third water is evidently the Nyanza of which I 
first heard at Kazah of Unyamwezi, whence Captain Speke 
was despatched on a reconnoitre between July 29 and 
August 25, 1858. After returning, he reported that this 
lake being nearly flush with the surface of the level country 
to the south, bears signs of overflowing for some 13 miles 
during the rains. The second expedition found no traces 
of flood on the marshy lands to the North and the N. West 
of the so-called ‘ Victoria Nyanza.’ ‘This fact, combined 
with a difference of level amounting to 400 feet in the 
surface of the two waters, speaks for itself. We are justi- 
fied in suspecting a fourth lake, or broadening of a river 
along whose banks Captain Speke and Grant travelled 
northward to Uganda, and there must be more than one, if 
all his effluents be correctly laid down. 


502 APPENDIX. 


Briefly to resume: Mr Wakefield’s very valuable 
‘Routes’ teach us these novelties: 

1. That the Baringo is a Lake distinct from the so- 
called Victoria Nyanza; that it has a northern effluent, 
the Nyarus, and consequently that its waters are sweet. 

2. That the Nyanja, Ukara, Ukerewe, Garava or Bahari 
ya Pili, is a long narrow formation like the Baringo, per- 
haps 20 miles broad, with 240 of circumference, and 
possibly drained to the White River or true Nile by a 
navigable channel. 

And I have long ago come to the following con- 
clusions: 

1. That the 30,000 square miles representing upon our 
maps the area of the so-called Victoria Nyanza represent 
not a lake, but a Lake Region. 

2. That the Victoria Nyanza Proper is a waters ppe 
sibly a swamp—distinct from the two mentioned above, 
flooding the lands to the south, showing no sign of depth 
and swelling during the hot season of the Nile, and vice 
versa. 

3. That the Northern and N. Western portions of the 
so-called ‘ Victoria Nyanza’ must be divided into sundry 
independent broads or lakes, one of them marshy, reed- 
margined, and probably shallow, in order to account — 
for three large effluents within a little more than 60 4 
miles. a 

I cannot finish these lines without expressing my gra- 
titude to Mr Wakefield for the interesting information _ 
with which he supplied us. He has returned to his labours _ 
at Mombasah, amongst the Wasawahili and the Wanyika, 
and as he has, I am assured by my friend Captain Gomnge,:i i 


APPENDIX. 50 


AN) 


R. N., qualified himself to take astronomical observations, 
we may rest assured that with his aid the ‘ Mombas Mission’ 
will lose nothing of its well-won fame for linguistic study 
and African exploration. 


END .OF VOE._T. 


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