SIR JOHN KIRK AT HOME.
[Illustration: Fig. 1.—Sir John Kirk.]
Zanzibar, an island lying about twenty miles off the East Coast of
Africa, under the sixth parallel south of the equator (I feel bound to
furnish this information in the prevailing state of ignorance respecting
African geography), has long been a nucleus of foreign rule along the
eastern seaboard of the Dark Continent. Without going into the questions
of its remote history, and considering whether it was or whether it was
not distinctly known to the hazy geographers of classical days, we can
feel pretty certain that, for nearly as many centuries as form the
Christian Era, Zanzibar has been a place of resort for the Arab and
Persian traders and slave-dealers of the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and
the coasts of Sind and Gujerat. There was at one time a distinct Persian
colonization of the East African littoral to the north of Zanzibar, and
apparently also in Zanzibar itself, though here the intermixture of
Persian blood in the local race is in no way as evident as in places on
the mainland, such as Lamu, Malindi, or Magdishu. However, even in
Zanzibar, distinct traces of Fire Worship remain engrafted on the
African Mohammedanism of the inhabitants. After several centuries of
_quasi_ Arab rule, Zanzibar in the beginning of the sixteenth century
came under the dominion of the Portuguese, whose language has left its
traces in the Swahili vocabulary. When Portugal fell into the power of
Spain, and her hold on Abyssinia and the Eastern Horn of Africa waned
and faded, the Arabs reasserted their independence in Zanzibar, and the
island remained in the possession of various Arab chiefs till the end of
the last century, when the Imam of Maskat proclaimed and maintained his
suzerainty over Pemba, Zanzibar, and the neighbouring coast.
In 1841, the East India Company first established relations with the
ruler of Zanzibar, who had assumed the title of “Sayyid,” or Lord of the
Island. He was at the same time Sovereign of ’Oman, that East Arabian
principality of which Maskat is the capital. Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton,
the first British representative at the Court of Zanzibar, remained many
years at his post, and was still in East Africa when Burton undertook
his pioneer journey to the Lake regions. On his death General Rigby
succeeded him as Consul-General and Political Agent, and was in turn
followed by several officials whose residence in the island was of short
duration. At length, in 1873, Sir John Kirk, who had first come to
Zanzibar as Vice-Consul in 1866, and who had for some years acted in a
superior capacity, received his formal appointment to the post of
Consul-General, and later on attained the further office of Political
Agent. Sir John Kirk, who comes of an old Forfarshire family, was
educated primarily as a doctor, and served as a physician to the British
hospital at Renkioi, Dardanelles, during the Crimean War; but already,
both at the University and during his service abroad, his taste and
aptitude for natural history had so developed that he little cared to
make the medical profession his ultimate career. In 1858 he accepted the
post of naturalist to Dr. Livingstone’s expedition to the Zambesi. When
he arrived at the mouth of this river, the circumstances of the
expedition were such that it became necessary for Dr. Kirk (as he then
was) to lay his studies of natural history aside, and assume the arduous
position of second in command, and direct personally the conduct of the
land party. It was largely owing to his exertions and untiring labour
that the unfortunate Zambesi Expedition was not an even costlier
experiment than it eventually proved; and Dr. Livingstone found in his
colleague and second in command a mainstay and help in several critical
emergencies wherein the rest of his staff were of little service.
Shortly after his return from the Zambesi Dr. Kirk was offered the post
of Vice-Consul at Zanzibar, and thus entered the service in which he
rose successively to the ranks of Consul, Consul-General, and Political
Agent. In 1878 he was made C.M.G., and in 1881 he was knighted.
There is no one living or dead who has so profoundly influenced the
condition of Eastern Africa as Sir John Kirk. To him more than to any
one else is owing the effective repression of slave-trading; and it is
only quite recently that the full consequences of his steady
anti-slavery policy began to appear and develop themselves into a
healthy and beneficent solution of a difficult African problem. When Sir
John first arrived in Zanzibar the Arab ruler of the island, the
so-called Sultan, was little more than _primus inter pares_. He was
recognized as “Sayyid,” or Lord, of Zanzibar, by the Arab nobles and
traders, but his authority was most uncertain. Many of his subjects
thought themselves superior to him in purity of blood and ancient
genealogy, and whenever the wishes of their nominal ruler—merely one of
themselves deputed to transact the Government business—clashed with
their personal interests or predilections, they openly bade him
defiance, and put their fortress-houses into a state of siege. The
standing army was composed of a few miserable, beggarly Baluch
mercenaries—ill-clothed, unpaid, and as cowardly as they were rapacious.
Slaves were openly sold in Zanzibar, and the Sayyid was too weak to
incur the displeasure of his Arab subjects by the suppression of a
lucrative and easy trade. When Sayyid Majid died and the present
“Sultan,” Barghash bin Sa’id, succeeded him, Sir John Kirk set himself
resolutely to acquire the confidence and friendship of the young Arab
ruler, and, aided by his great knowledge of Arabic and Ki-Swahili, was
able to converse with the Sayyid in strict intimacy, without the medium
of an interpreter, so that he was enabled often to weld the will of
Barghash to conformity with his own wishes by means of an earnest
expostulation and half-playful sarcasm which would have sounded ill
through the intermediary of some wily Goanese. So great was the
influence already exercised over the Prince of Zanzibar after two years
of personal intercourse that Sir John Kirk was able to exact from him as
a favour and concession to friendship that which Sir Bartle Frere, with
all his personal prestige and position, and with a fleet of ironclads
behind him, failed to extort, namely, the Sayyid’s signature to a treaty
for the suppression of the East African slave-trade. This, though
refused under threats of bombardment, was granted after a few hours’
conversation with Sir John Kirk, and the treaty, which during Sir Bartle
Frere’s mission had been persistently rejected by the “Sultan,” was
signed and sealed within a few hours after the envoy’s departure, and
overtook him in a rapid despatch-boat before he reached Aden. An amusing
incident is recorded of Sayyid Barghash during the _séance_ of
deliberation which took place before he signed the treaty. Sir John Kirk
was explaining to him the terrors and inconveniences of a blockade, how
all supplies of provisions would be stopped, and the island reduced to
starvation, and he wound up his effective picture by asking the “Sultan”
what he would do _then_? “Why,” said Sayyid Barghash, “I should just
come and live with you, Consul.”
[Illustration:
SIR JOHN KIRK AT HOME.
To face page 21.
]
It is owing to our present representative in Zanzibar that the Sultan
has gradually assured and strengthened his hold over the East African
coast between the Portuguese northern boundary and the No-man’s Land of
the Somali Deserts, thus keeping in hands friendly to England the
richest coast-lands of East Africa and the trade-routes to the Central
Basin. Sir John Kirk has little disguised his views about English
influence in the Indian Ocean, and he steadfastly bears in mind that
nearly the entire commerce of Eastern Africa is in the hands of British
subjects, and that, to uphold our influence in the country, we should
encourage to the utmost the thrifty settlers from Western India. He also
feels, as any observant politician must, that much as we may admire and
sympathize with the promptings to colonization which, like the desire
for offspring late in life, are now animating so many old European
nations, there is no reason why England should act as a political
midwife, and assist in bringing to birth their late-born children, or
neglect the wants of her own large family in order that her neighbours’
weaklings may not die of inanition.
[Illustration:
Fig. 3.—Mtépé (with mat sail).
]
One of the firmest resolves of Sir John Kirk has been to keep Eastern
Africa between 10° N. and 10° S. clear of foreign influences, and so to
hold this littoral through our nominee, the present Sayyid, that
whenever the cold fit shall be off and the hot wave of further
colonization flow on again—whenever the irresistible spreading of the
English people compels it to look towards fresh fields of
enterprise—Zanzibar, city, island, and coast, may not be found in hands
hostile to British trade. To Sir John Kirk alone we owe it that the
Government of Portugal has not now included the important Rovuma river
in its East African possessions; and the same person is responsible for
having, with one English frigate, driven away the whole Egyptian fleet
under McGillup Pasha, when, acting under secret orders from the Egyptian
Government, the Khedive’s East African Expedition proceeded to annex,
occupy, and fortify the principal ports in the Sayyid’s continental
dominions. About the manifold checks that French ambition and
“protecting” zeal[6] have received in these Zangian regions I need not
dilate, as they are questions involving political feelings of some
acerbity at the present time, and would therefore be out of place in
this book. But I might further recall to my readers that it is to the
personal exertions of the British Agent and Consul-General that Zanzibar
owes its line of telegraph, its mail service, its hospital, its
observatory, its standing army (officered and commanded by Englishmen),
its horticultural development, its projected sanitary reform, and
possibly also the scarcely less precious introductions of lawntennis and
afternoon tea.
[Illustration:
Fig. 4.
Small Mtépé and Outrigger Canoe.
]
The British Agency and Consulate-General in the town of Zanzibar is a
handsome Arab house standing towards the southern end of the city, and
just overhanging the sea, which at high tide lashes its protecting wall.
The style of exterior and interior is purely Arab, or, to use a more
accepted term in architecture, Saracenic. Entering from the narrow
streets an iron gateway, you come into the grateful shade of a small
garden, planted with spreading mimosas, cocoanut palms, and mangoes, and
through the interstices of the foliage you look up at the high
grey-white walls of the house, which are scarcely relieved in their
monotony by the small and shuttered windows. The doorway is regularly
Eastern, quite a “Sublime Porte” in miniature. Broad, shallow steps lead
up to it, forming an admirably-arranged _mise-en-scène_ for the grouping
of white-clothed “Sikari” (consular guards) and Indian suppliants in
gaudy costumes. The frame of the door, which is itself garnished with
immense copper nails, is delicately and intricately carved in black
wood, with arabesque designs and letter scrolls.
Entering here, you come upon a small recess, with ogival niches round
the walls—a sort of anteroom—and from this a winding staircase ascends
to the first-floor, when you find yourself in the interior gallery
surrounding the four sides of the _patio_, or hollow square, which is
the ground-plan of most Saracenic buildings. From the centre of the
_patio_ rises a graceful areca-palm, which contrasts pleasingly with the
formal arches of the gallery. The house ascends to several storeys, and
is surmounted by flat terraces of varying height; but round the _patio_,
on the first-floor, the principal dwelling-rooms are ranged. These are
all Arab in character—narrow, high-pitched, lighted with little windows
with deep embrasures. The walls are dead white, cut into by false arches
of slightly horse-shoe shape, forming alternate recesses wherein shelves
of pottery, bookcases, or cabinets may be placed. Within the arches,
too, are further niches, cut deeper into the wall, with a carved stone
tracery at the back to let in air. These give an effect of lightness to
the somewhat massive walls, and the little points of light gleaming
through the windows of cut stone act as a _point de mire_ in each
recess. There are no pictures on the walls; nothing but coruscations of
Oriental pottery, all of it got from Zanzibar and the neighbouring
coast. The amount of beautiful Persian, Moorish, and even Chinese
pottery and porcelain to be found in Zanzibar is really surprising. Much
of it is hoarded up by old Arab families, who have kept it for
generations in their households, and it only sees the light in
occasional bankruptcies and auction sales. On many parts of this Zangian
coast pottery is fastened into the walls of mosques or plastered on to
tombs, whence—I say it with regret—Europeans do not hesitate to “loot”
it, under the pretext that if they do not the degenerate descendants of
the Oriental settlers will. At places like Lamu the most tasteful
Persian porcelain, rich in colour and very old, was to be easily picked
up but a short while ago, though the sudden rush of greedy travellers
has diminished the supply. Much of this Persian pottery—great bowls of
gorgeous tints, blue and gold plates, vases and cups—decorate the walls
of the Consulate, and lend colour and brightness to its apartments.
[Illustration:
A CORRIDOR IN SIR JOHN KIRK’S HOUSE.
To face page 25.
]
[Illustration:
Fig. 6.—Arab Dau.
]
The windows of two sides of the house look forth on the sea, and command
the entire harbour. All the shipping becomes a study of ever-changing
colour and form. The great black hulks of the steamers, surmounted by
their tall masts and funnels; the snow-sails of the daus coming into
port; the “mtépé,” or native barque, with a huge sail made of matting;
the dismantled daus, with their brown rigging and masts and folded
sails, lying at anchor in the blue still water: and the multitude of
tiny craft, canoes with outriggers, and the canoes that are simple
dugouts—all these form, together with the flags of many nations and the
bright costumes of the native sailors, the blue sky, with its rolling
cumulus-clouds, the placid sea, and the green islands on its horizon, an
infinitely diversified panorama, rather than a picture, but a cheerful
scene, full of bright activity, and a pleasant field of contemplation to
an idle man in a rocking-chair on a shady balcony, who is able to rest
inactive in his cool retreat, and watch the busy work going on around
him.
[Illustration:
Fig. 7.
Fishing Boat and Outrigger Canoe.
]
[Illustration:
Fig 8.—A Saracenic Doorway.
]
If you look from the verandah of the Consulate towards the town of
Zanzibar you have a scene of much picturesqueness and colour, and one
which, focussed and framed by the lattice-work that is hung with
creeping plants, becomes a real picture. You see the ships in the
harbour, the canoes and rowing-boats skimming in and out among the large
vessels, then lines of daus all drawn up along the shore of white sand,
with busy crowds of men working round and about them, some unloading,
some repairing, some looking idly on, others stripping for a bathe and
playing at a peculiar game in the water, round the hulls of the
half-floated daus, which consists in turning a somersault and bringing
your legs down with a smack on your companions’ backs. Indeed, the
absence of all social restraint on the shore at Zanzibar might
occasionally ruffle the sensibilities of those of our weaker sex who are
supposed to be shocked at seeing life under somewhat primitive
conditions. There are no “bathing regulations” at Zanzibar, and the
beach immediately below the Consular windows is the favourite resort of
“natives,” who in complete nudity gaily chase each other along the
silver strand, or plunge into the tiny billows and the black ooze of the
nether shore. Indeed, the number of Indians who seem to choose the
purlieus of the British Consulate for performing their ablutions
(doubtless because they look upon it as a right of British subjects to
bathe under their Consul’s eye) render it necessary sometimes to
despatch a Sikari for the purpose of driving the nude Hindoos to remoter
shores, for should the Consul be entertaining the lady residents of
Zanzibar at afternoon tea on the balcony, it is somewhat embarrassing
for their gaze continually to encounter, not the black glistening forms
of the burly negroes on whom nakedness sits with decency, but the yellow
and obese Hindoos, who, with the figures and demeanour of middle-aged
aldermen, are paddling up to their ankles with the innocence and
unconcern of early childhood.
[Illustration:
Fig. 10.—A View over the Housetops.
]
The buildings of Zanzibar along the shore-line are gifted with an
adventitious beauty which is derived from contrasts of colour, and
light, and shade. The Sultan’s clock-tower, which rises like a minaret
above the flat-roofed houses, is in reality a structure of vulgar,
tasteless design, but seen from a distance with its ugliness softened
down, it lends considerable point to the harbour view of Zanzibar. The
other buildings are little remarkable for elegance of exterior shape,
but, being all whitewashed or of light-coloured stone, they form under
the sun’s rays a snowy, irregular mass, the outline of which tells out
effectively against a deep blue or a storm-grey sky, and is here and
there relieved by the green cocopalms or the flags of the Sultan’s
palace and the different Consulates.
[Illustration:
ZANZIBAR HARBOUR FROM THE CONSULATE.
To face page 29.
]
This view at sunset becomes really beautiful. The eastern sky is a
sombre blue-grey, and the water of the harbour reflects the same tint,
unvaried in the evening stillness by a ripple. The long headland of dark
green forest, which stretches out into the sea, lends a deepening tone
to the darkened water and sky, and forms with them an effective foil, a
neutral background to the white tower and the mass of white buildings
which, turned towards the west, reflect on their sympathetic surfaces
the warm glow of the sunset. In the daytime, under the blaze of a
vertical sun, these houses of Zanzibar are disagreeably dazzling, but
now, in this one quiet half-hour of the short evening, they glow with a
soft pink radiance, and their tender blush-colour is heightened by its
background of strangely-coloured eastern sky which, first becoming
sombre blue with the sinking sun, for a brief while grows green with
jealousy of the west and partial reflection of the sunset, and offers a
complementary contrast to the houses at their pinkest. Then, along the
shore, and on the blue bay, the shipping, turned towards the warm light
of evening, loses its blackness and distinct outlines, and fuses into
dusky brown, the mazes of masts and rigging seeming to part with their
perspective and to stick together in one indistinct mass. As the shadows
deepen and the rose-tinted houses fade into dull grey, the stages of the
Sultan’s tower are picked out with yellow lamps, and suddenly from the
summit gleams out in cold radiance a star of more than first
magnitude—Sayyid Barghash has fitted up his clock-tower with the
electric light.
Any one visiting Sir John Kirk at home will hardly have set foot in his
house many hours without remarking the arrival of an Indian gentleman in
a suit of white clothes of half Asiatic, half European cut, with a
magnificent gold-embroidered turban, a watch-chain, a ring, and an
umbrella. This is Pira Doji, incorrectly known on board the mail
steamers as “The Prime Minister of Zanzibar.” He is really an astute
Indian trader, who by his capacity for business and exceptional talents
as a _raconteur_, has known how to obtain a very large share of the
“Sultan’s” confidence and esteem. Pira Doji is a most useful man to
Sayyid Barghash. Without in reality attaining the position of Prime
Minister or Grand Vizier (the Sayyid has no Ministers, and therefore
rules cheaply), he has yet become a sort of financial adviser to the
Prince of Zanzibar, and is at the same time head-waiter at State
dinners, man-of-business, negotiator in delicate matrimonial affairs,
and the picker-up and retailer of all the town news. If Sayyid Barghash
is mentioned in the _Times_, Pira forthwith goes to the “Sultan” with a
copy of the passage scored round with red chalk. If a European resident
in Zanzibar sprains his ankle, or beats his cook, the “Sultan” likewise
hears of it through the same source. Consequently all new arrivals at
the Consulate become objects of interest to Pira, as likely to furnish
“paragraphs” for his princely gossip. If ever a “Society” paper is
founded in Zanzibar, it will have Pira Doji for its editor.
His Highness Sayyid Barghash having then heard of our arrival, and as
much of our disposition, antecedents, present intentions, and future
plans as Pira can glean from the Consul’s household, it becomes
incumbent on us to present ourselves, or get our Consul to present us,
at one of the Sultan’s Friday levées.
Drawn up before his tawdry palace (a ricketty building of many storeys,
of no style whatever, and of execrable taste) is a smart-looking
regiment of the New Zanzibar army, the men in white uniform, with red
and yellow caps, and the officers in white trousers and magnificently
embroidered tunics. At their head stands their organizer and
Commander-in-Chief, General Matthews, who gives the order to present
arms as the Consular party draws near. Then the Goanese band strikes up
“God save the Queen,” and we risk a sunstroke by walking through the
serried ranks of soldiers with our helmets raised above our heads. In
the entry to the palace more guards, Persian and Baluch, are assembled,
and there are crowds of Arabs in gala costumes. Preceded by a kind of
Master of the Ceremonies, we pass along corridors and apartments
furnished in the Neo-Oriental (bastard French) style, and then ascend a
strangely mean and poky staircase covered with scraps of faded
kamptulicon. As we emerge on a small landing, coming up, as it were,
from a stage trap, a tall, portly Arab leans over the stair-rail, and
extends to each in turn a firm, plump hand. It is Sayyid Barghash come
to greet his visitors half way; and though his cordial way of taking you
by the hand and hoisting you up is merely a piece of formal courtesy,
still it is of material assistance to you in emerging from the trap-like
staircase. Preceded by the Sayyid, we are ushered into a long, narrow
reception-room of Arab shape but later French decoration. Except for the
fine Persian carpet which goes the whole length of the apartment, there
is little to note that is pleasing to a critical eye. The furniture is
red velvet and gilt wood. Round the walls are ranged medley assemblages
of kitchen clocks, ormolu timepieces, aneroid barometers, thermometers,
anemometers, telescopes, opera-glasses, musical-boxes, swords, spears,
guns, pistols, toys of ingenious kinds, photographic albums, photographs
glazed and framed and faded, and what not else. The upper end of the
room, where the “Sultan” ordinarily sits, has a large mirror in the
centre, and on either side of the mirror is a full-length oil painting
of Sayyid Barghash. These two paintings are identical in every detail.
They were manufactured in Paris. The Sayyid had a photograph taken of
himself during his visit to London. It was in a sitting posture. He sent
it to Paris with the order that it was to be enlarged standing, and then
converted into two oil paintings. The Parisian artist, in no way at a
loss, cut off the head of the sitting Sultan and stuck it on to the
decapitated portrait of some Algerian Arab photographed erect. The
combination was enlarged, and in due time gave rise to the two oil
paintings in the palace at Zanzibar.
Sayyid Barghash bin Sa’id, the Prince of Zanzibar, Pemba, and the
Zangian coast, is a man of about forty-five, as far as an Arab’s age may
be guessed. He is tall, somewhat corpulent, and not unhandsome. Were it
not that his face betrays the traces of a too uxorious life, and that he
has for some reason lately cut off his moustache and trimmed his beard
to resemble an English tradesman’s, he might even be called
good-looking. His complexion is clear, his eyes large and fine, though
faded with excesses, and his teeth white and perfect. The Sultan’s feet
are just of that ideal type that Sir Frederick Leighton loves to paint,
and which, until I saw them peeping from Sayyid Barghash’s sandals, I
never believed to exist. The feet and hands of the Sultan of Zanzibar
are the most beautifully formed I ever saw in a man, and he is justly
proud of them; but alas! his symmetry ends at his ankles, for he is
afflicted with elephantiasis—a not uncommon disease in Zanzibar, and his
limbs are swollen and misshapen. Though he speaks no languages but
Arabic and Swahili, he is a better-read man than many a contemporary
Eastern Sovereign, and even aspires to the honours of an author.
[Illustration:
Fig. 11.—Zanzibar Orchids.
]
One day four or five servants of the Sultan arrived at the Consulate,
bearing about a dozen volumes of a work in Arabic. This was Part I. of a
Digest of Mohammedan Jurisprudence written by the Sultan, and presented
with his compliments to the British Agent. In conversation, Sayyid
Barghash is often sprightly, and all that he says is marked by
intelligence and good sense. He is simple in his diction, for an Arab,
and sometimes baffles verbose flatterers by his curt replies. I may
remind my readers here of a little incident commented on at the time of
the Sayyid’s visit to England. At his first meeting with Lord
Beaconsfield that statesman thought to set him at his ease by addressing
him in somewhat high-flown Oriental parlance, and met him with the
enigmatic question, “Which does your Highness prefer, flowers or
jewels?” “I fail to see any connection between them,” replied Sayyid
Barghash in all simplicity.
[Illustration:
Fig. 12.—Kigelia Africana.
]
An interview with the Ruler of Zanzibar, then, is not of that _fade_
character which characterizes a ceremonial visit to most Oriental
sovereigns. He poses you with many shrewd questions, and when the
reception is over, the coffee and rose-sherbet drunk, and the Sayyid
hands you down the well-like staircase, and you depart with the band
playing “Rule Britannia,” you feel that you have met a man who, had he
received anything like an education, and had been trained by civilized
ideas of morality to conceal, if not to bridle, his unruly passions,
would have made no mean figure among the world’s rulers and statesmen.
Sayyid Barghash is the son of the last joint ruler of Maskat and
Zanzibar—Sayyid Sa’id. His mother was an Abyssinian woman. He has nearly
a hundred wives and five or six children, one son only among them. He is
brother to the present Imam of Maskat. His income is approximately
300,000_l._ a year, mostly derived from Customs duties.
Zanzibar, the chief town of his dominions, known as Unguja to the
inhabitants, has a population of about 90,000. As regards trade it is
the most flourishing and important place in East Africa, and the value
of its exports exceeds at the present time 1,300,000_l._, of which ivory
alone contributes 400,000_l._ The value of the imports is about
1,000,000_l._, and they chiefly consist of cotton stuffs, kerosene oil,
and rice. About 6,000 British subjects reside in the town, mostly
Indians, and in their hands lie the whole retail and most of the
wholesale trade.
[Illustration:
Fig. 13.—A Street in Zanzibar.
]
The streets of Zanzibar are paved with a sort of coral “ray,” sometimes
cemented over, and are generally, from the nature of their paving, clean
and inodoriferous. They are very narrow, and the houses in the Arab
quarters are lofty, so that you may walk about most of the town in
perfect shade. There are few really handsome buildings externally, yet
many of the portals to the houses and mosques are gracefully designed in
Saracenic style. Considerable Persian influence is evident in the
general architecture and interior decoration of the mosques and larger
buildings, and the Persian pointed arch (different in shape from the
Syrian or the Moorish) is constantly met with. In fact, to a student of
Saracenic architecture, Zanzibar and the Zangian coast are very
interesting, as they offer not only buildings of great age, some of the
mosques dating back to the tenth century of our era, but of archaic
style, recalling most unmistakably the kind of architecture met with in
Saracenic monuments in Spain of the same age, showing thus how universal
with the early Arab rule was that distinct architectural style which
they developed from the late Byzantine. Just as there are words in
Portuguese and Swahili[7] derived from a common Arabic origin, so the
resemblance between the architecture in Southern Portugal and Spain with
that of Zanzibar may be explained by recalling the fact that the Iberian
Peninsula and the Zangian coast both formed at one time extremities of
Arab rule. While Zanzibar, however, resembles any other Eastern city,
and differs little in outward aspect from Aleppo or Jaffa, yet the
island to which it gives its name is thoroughly tropical African in its
virgin state. The vegetation is rank and rich, and nearly every genus of
the tropical African flora is represented among its plants. There are a
few orchids, supposed to be peculiar, and possibly one or two ferns.
Many trees have been introduced from India, and flourish in a way that
exceeds their development in the mother-country. Magnificent mangoes are
planted all over the island, and the fruit they yield is justly
celebrated for its flavour of strawberries and cream. Of course
pine-apples, oranges, limes, and cocoanuts abound, and fruit here may be
had all the year round in constant variety and great quantity. Many
remarkable and many very beautiful productions in African flora, though
by no means peculiar to this island, may be observed and studied here
with greater facility than on the mainland. Of such are the magnificent
blue _Clitorea_, the extraordinary _Kigelia Africana_, the exquisitely
lovely _Hibiscus schizopetalus_, the _Crinum_ lilies, and the
gorgeous-leaved Crotons. The zoology of Zanzibar is purely African in
its character, as far as it is yet known. Being separated but a few
miles from the mainland, its birds and insects differ little, if at all,
from the parent fauna. It possesses, however, at least two species (in
common with its sister isle of Pemba) of peculiar mammals, viz. the
_Galago Zanzibariensis_ (a kind of Lemuroid), and a handsome monkey, the
_Colobus Kirkii_. This latter, as its name indicates, was brought to
light by Sir John Kirk; it was also extinguished by his means. Like most
great men who have helped to extend the British Empire, Sir John has one
dark blot on his escutcheon. Warren Hastings exterminated the Rohillas,
Governor Eyre was accused of too summarily suppressing the Maroons; Sir
John Kirk, more, perhaps, in the interests of British science than of
British rule, has entirely destroyed an innocent species of monkey. The
_Colobus Kirkii_ had disappeared from nearly every part of the island of
Zanzibar, but a rumour prevailed that it still lingered in a clump of
forest as yet unvisited by hunters. Thither Sir John sent his
_chasseurs_ to report on the monkey’s existence. After a week’s absence
they returned, triumph illumining their swarthy lineaments. “Well, did
you find them?” asked the British Consul-General. “Yes,” replied the men
with glee, “and we killed them every one!” Wherewith twelve monkey
corpses were flung upon the floor, and _Colobus Kirkii_ joined the Dodo,
the Auk, the Rhytina and the Moa in the limbo of species extinguished by
the act of man.
[Illustration:
THE BAY OF MBWÉNI.
To face page 38.
]
When Sir John Kirk gets conscience-troubled, and the _manes_ of the
avenging _Colobi_ (as negroes would believe) tamper with his health;
when Zanzibar gets stuffy and feverish, and the official routine
tryingly monotonous: he steals away, often on foot, to a little paradise
he has created among the groves of Mbwéni, a tiny settlement on the
coast of the island. Here he lives a life that is to him ideally happy.
He chats with his tenants, who lead Arcadian lives of nothing to do and
plenty to eat; he wanders in a shooting-coat amid the groves of
coco-palms and the clumps of pandanus that border the sea; he
photographs; and, above all, he gardens. Here, among his Cycads and his
Orchids, his Ensetes and his Dracænas, spade in hand, a wide-awake hat
on his head, a rare flower in his button-hole, and rustic contentment
irradiating his face—here, amid scenery which typifies a botanist’s
paradise, Sir John Kirk is emphatically At Home.
[Illustration:
Fig. 15.—Colobus Kirkii.
]