The ‘Grab’ (properly ‘Ghurab,’ meaning a raven) is an overgrown

Pattimar. A model of the latter craft, primitive and Hindu, was

submitted 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 prejudice 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 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’áná

Májí); rats and cockroaches compose the live stock; the ammunition is

nowhere, and though the quarter and main decks are sometimes swept,

everything below is foul with garbage and vermin. The exteriors 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 incontinently thrashed him upon his own

quarterdeck, and were perforce ‘dismissed the service.’ Every captain in

the R. N. Maskat, besides impudently falsifying the muster-rolls, will

steal the fighting-lanterns, the hammocks, and other 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 Náhozá), a

Muallim or sailing-master, and a couple of Sukkanis (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 England 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. Zanzibar, 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 S.S.E. shelters the harbour from the Indian Ocean, whilst the

bulge of the mainland breaks the force of dangerous Hippalus, the S.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° = 1/360 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 shallow 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. Arc-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 absence of costume which

would startle even Margate. 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 traveller the idea that the precious bone, here so

plentiful, is swept up by the sea. At night the front often flares as if

on fire. The cause is lime-burning 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 process in fictile madrepore formations. Off

Changáni 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 rubble. Some of

the larger houses have sunk four, and have sloped nine feet from terrace

to ground, owing to the instability of their soppy foundations. The

‘Tree-island’ of our earliest charts has been undermined and carried

away bodily by the waves; whilst to the north the sea has encroached

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 estimated 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. I 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 report of 1849 asserts it to be

‘about 60,000.’

The city is divided into 18 quarters (Mahallat), 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.[21] The west-end boasts

the best houses, chiefly those which wealthy natives let to stranger

merchants. The Central, or Fort quarter, is the seat of government and

of commerce, whilst few foreigners inhabit the eastern extremities, 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

gutter, which secures dryness and cleanliness—it is the first that I

have seen in an African city. As we go eastward all such signs of

civilization 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. I 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

physiognomy. The public buildings are poor and mean. The mosques which

adorn Arab towns with light and airy turrets, breaking the monotony of

square white tenements, magnified claret-chests, are here in the

simplest Wahhabi form. About 30 of these useful, but by no means

ornamental, ‘meeting-houses’ are scattered about the city for the use of

the ‘established church.’ They are oblong rooms, with stuccoed walls,

and 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 convenience of expectoration,

with inner emarginations in the normal shape of scallops or crescents,

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 diminutive 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 hypæthral

quadrangle, the Iberian Patio or Quintal. We miss, however, the shady

trees, the sweet flowers, and bright verdure with which the southern

European and the Hispano-American beautify their dwellings. Here the

‘Dár’ 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, connects 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’[22] 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.’ Bándá or

bándáni, pent-roofed huts of plaited palm-leaf (makuti or cajan) garnish

the roofs of the native town. Europeans do not patronize these look-

outs, fires being frequent and the slaves dangerous. 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

European 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, therefore the form is still common to Egypt and Zanzibar, Syria

and Asia Minor.

Arabs here, as elsewhere, prefer long narrow rooms (40 feet × 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 protracted 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 England would be bald and barn-like, here

suggests the coolness and pleasing simplicity of an Italian villa—in

Italy. A bright-tinted carpet, a gorgeous but tasteful Persian rug for

the daïs, matting on the lower floor, which is of the usual chunam; a

divan 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.’ In the rooms of the few who

can or will afford such trifles, ornaments of porcelain or glassware,

and French or Yankee knicknacks fill the niches. Of course the inner

apartments are more showily dressed, but these we may not explore.

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-

Ecclesia) recall to mind the Portuguese of the heroic sixteenth century.

It is one of those naïve, crenelated 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 d’armes_,’ about 50 feet wide, divides the two,

and represents the naval and military arsenal—two dozen iron carronades

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 Hormuz or of Maskat, where the small matter of a

‘piece of ham wrapped up in paper’[23] 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, patriarchs

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 Baloch

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 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 backwards, 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. Determined 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. Holding a long 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 collars, and the heavy waist-

chains, do not prevent black man from conversationizing, singing comic

songs, and gambling with pebbles. The same was the case with our gruel-

houses—‘Kanji-Khanah,’ vulgò ‘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 _arrière

pensée_ of Paradise. But the most mutinous 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 torturing

M. Maizan. An Arab expedition sent into the interior returned with this

wretch, declaring 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 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 Custom House, it is always thronged, and like

the bazars of Cairo and Damascus it gives an exaggerated idea of the

population. There are besides 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 cassava: it will not make wood-

meal, called κατ’ ἔξοχην, farinha, the flour. The poisonous Manioc

(Jatropha Manihot) must be soaked in water, or rasped, squeezed, and

toasted, to expel its deleterious 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 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 fluid 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 sometimes 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. From the sea it is conspicuous

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 strays; there is also a rude lock-up,

for ware-housing the more valuable goods. A small adjacent square shows

an unfinished and dilapidated 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 themselves 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 Sayyid, 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 Majesty; but at Zanzibar the windows are far higher up,

and the jail-like aspect is far more pronounced. Beyond it commences the

east-end, and here lives my kind friend M. Cochet, Consul de France. He

came, expecting to find civilization, whist in the evening, ladies’

society, and the pianoforte: he had been hoaxed in Paris about Colonel

Hamerten’s daughters. He is thoroughly disgusted. Even the Consular

residence is the meanest of its kind. No wonder that M. Le Capitaine

Guillain was ‘froissé dans son amour-propre national’ when he entered

it.

Far better, and more open to the breeze, is the house of the hospitable

M. Bérard, agent to Messrs Rabaud Frères, of Marseille. The one

disadvantage of the site is the quantity of Khoprá, 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

balsam. And ton upon ton of cowries, strewed in the sun, or piled up in

huge heaps till the mollusc decays away, can hardly be deemed Sabæan or

even commonly wholesome.

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 flâner 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

rope twisted round a frame of the rudest carpenter’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 windows are loop-holes, and the doors are miracles of rudeness.

Lastly, there are the wretched shops, which supply the few wants of the

population.

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 hush

and plantation. As the waters retired they left behind them a rich

legacy of fevers and terrible diseases; 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 Changáni Point and the west

end of the city, often escape without a single case of sickness.

Similarly at Havannah, crews exposed to breezes from the Mangrove swamps

have lost half their numbers by 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 supplied 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 generally will not drink rain-

water for fear of dysentery; 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 establishment, and where Hasan bin Ibrahim built a

large house called Chuweni or Leopard’s Place. So at São 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, 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 undrinkable 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 becomes 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 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 wholesome month, Lieut. Christopher had 16 deaths

amongst his scanty crew. In this case, however, the lancet, so fatal

near the Line, and the deadly Zerámbo, 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 vegetable matter. During

the second visit of H. M. S. Andromache, in August, 1824, Commander

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, according to natives and

strangers, obstinate costiveness. Between Zanzibar and the Cape, five

brigs lost collectively 125 men from fever, dysentery, 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 Zanzibar. During her 14 months’ exploration of

the island and the coast the Ducouëdic 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 Madagascar. Each 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 Zanzibar 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 (latrinæ) opening upon 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, instead of

epitaph, a china saucer or bits of porcelain 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 contend, owes much of its fatality to want of drainage, and it

might readily be drained into comparative healthiness. But the East

African Arab holds the possibility of pestilence and the probability of

fever to be less real evils than those of cutting a ditch, of digging a

drain, or of opening 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 central

situation, the depôt 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 inhabitants possess as few attractions for a

Christian stranger as any place and people in the wide world.’ As late

as 1842 this chief emporium 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 with nasal monotonous

voices sentences to be afterwards understood by instinct, others

scraping the primitive writing-board with a pointed stick.

We will now return to the centre of attraction, 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,[24] the favourite ‘kitchen’ with Wasawahíli and

slaves; it brings from Maskat and the Benadir a goût so high that it

takes away the breath. These vendors vary the tedium of inaction by mat-

making, plaiting leaves, ‘palavers,’ and ‘pow-wows,’ which argue an

admirable conformation of the articulating 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 His

Highness stalks down the 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-frightened pigeons. A yellow man, with short, thin beard,

and high, meagre, and impassive features, he is well-dressed and

gorgeously armed. Observe that he is ‘breek-less’: trowsers are ‘un-

Arab,’ and unpopular as were the servile braccæ 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 neighbour. The foot-gear gives him that peculiar

strut which is deemed dignified, and if he has a long walk before him—a

very improbable contingency—he must remove his chaussure. I never yet

saw a European who could wear the sandal without foot-chafing.

Right meek by the side of the Arab’s fierceness appears the Banyan, the

local Jew. These men are Bhattias from Cutch in western India; unarmed

burghers, with placid, satisfied countenances, and plump, sleek, rounded

forms, suggesting the idea of happy, well-to-do cows. Such is the effect

of a diet which embraces only bread, rice, and milk, sweetmeats,

vegetables, and clarified 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 crimson stuff

edged with gold. The latter are complicated 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 upwards and backwards, somewhat as in the knightly days of

Europe.

Another conspicuous type is the Baloch mercenary from Mekran or Maskat.

A comely, brown man, with regular features, he is distinguished 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 thickness of our

whipcord, and is wound in many a coil 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 batten under the breeching. (A parenthesis. Were I 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 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, like his demeanour, are those of a

disciplined, or rather of a disciplinable, man.

The wildest and most picturesque figures are the half-breeds from the

western shores of the Persian Gulf—light 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 unclean,

saffron-stained shirts, which suggest the ‘night-gown’ of other days,

and these are apparently 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

matchlocks, they stand cross-legged, with the left foot planted to the

right of the right, or vice versâ, and they prowl about like beasts of

prey, as they 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 singularly 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 monotonous grunt-song, and kicking out of the

way the humped cows that are munching fruit and vegetables under the

shadow of their worshippers, the Banyans. Add half a dozen pale-skinned

‘Khojahs,’ tricky-faced men with evil eyes, treacherous smiles, fit for

the descendants of the ‘Assassins,’ straight, silky beards, forked after

the fashion of ancient Rustam, and armed with Chinese umbrellas.

Complete the group by throwing in a European—how ghastly appears his

blanched face, and how frightful his tight garb!—stalking down the

streets in the worst of tempers, 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 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

highest 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 broiling sun to dialogue as follows is not a little

remarkable:

_A._ Yambo (pronounced Dyambo) or Hali gáná?—The state!

_B._ Yambo Sáná—My state is very (good).

_A._ Siyambo (or amongst the Arabized Wasawahíli, Marhabá)—Right

welcome!

_B._ Hast thou eaten and slept?

_A._ I have made my reverential bow!

_B._ Yambo?

_A._ Siyambo Sáná!

_B._ Like unto gold?

_A._ Like unto gold!

_B._ Like unto coral?

_A._ Like unto coral!

_B._ Like unto pearl?

_A._ Like unto pearl!

_B._ The happiness—Kua-heri! (farewell!).

_A._ In happiness let us meet, if Allah please!

_B._ Hem!

_A._ Hem! (drawn out as long as possible).

The fact is they are going about ‘Ku amkía,’ to salute their friends,

and to waste time by running from house to house. Even freemen generally

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 gradually

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 the shoulder,

are known by a comparatively civilized aspect. They copy their masters,

and strangers remark that the countenance is cheerful 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 crocodile, 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 Súr, 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 Uhiáo, distinguished by the shape of

her upper lip. A thorn-pierced hole is enlarged with stalks of green

reed till it can admit a disk of white-painted wood nearly as big as a

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 regions 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 proportion. In the

elder women the ornament is especially hideous. As a rule, the South

American ‘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 Mhiás, whose

tattoo (chale) is a single line forked at both ends:[25] 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 African tribes,

especially the agricultural, where women are the workers. The same may

be observed 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 chequered 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 prodigiously

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 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 Ná-kujá

(I come!) to other small fry disporting itself more amusingly.

-----

Footnote 17:

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 Mtángá, 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 chyá with

jyá, and pronounce, for instance, Msijyáná for Msichyáná—a lass. The

Arabs, who cannot articulate the ch, convert it into their familiar

sh, e. g. Ku Shimba for Ku Chimba (to dig).

Footnote 18:

Manioc, often erroneously written Mahogo.

Footnote 19:

I have described (Pilgrimage to El Medinah and Meccah) the modern

Sambúk of the Red Sea, and find the word ‘Sonboúk’ in the French

translation of Ibn Batutah. Sir Gardner Wilkinson quotes Athenæus, who

makes the ‘Sambuca’ (a musical instrument) ‘resemble a ship with a

ladder placed over it.’

Footnote 20:

It is written Mutaifiyah in the Arab Chronicle of Mombasah History,

translated and included in Captain Owen’s work (Voyages to Africa,

vol. i. 416, Arabia, etc., London, Bentley, 1833).

Footnote 21:

The quarters, beginning from Changáni, 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 Zambarani, the Kajifichemi, the Kunazemi,

and the Námbo 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 Melindi, 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.

Footnote 22:

The Iberian name (in Arabic الستح, El Sat’h) of the flat roof-terrace,

borrowed from the dry lands of Western Asia.

Footnote 23:

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

Footnote 24:

The Arabs here call the shark ‘jarjúr,’ the Wasawahíli p’hápá. I do

not know why Captain Guillain (ii. 391) says, ‘le requin, nommé par

les Arabs _lebah_—‘Lebah is the Somali name for a lion.

Footnote 25:

Uhiáo is the Iáo of Mr Cooley, who calls the people M’yau (Mhiáo) and

Miyáo (Wahiáo). 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 indigènes donnent à ses habitants. Moudjâou, ou plutôt Moniâo

et, par contraction, M’iâo signifie un homme du pays de Iáo.’ Uhiáo

would be the country; Mhiáo and Wahiáo (singular and plural), its

people.

CHAPTER V.

GEOGRAPHICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL.

‘To my surprise, the information concerning Zanzibar and the N. E. coast

of Africa ... scarcely contains meagre phrases destitute of precision.’—

(Col. Sykes’ Journal, R. G. S., vol. xxiii. 1853.) He forgets 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—Menouthias—Position and

Formation—The East African Current—Navigation—Aspect of the Island.

It is an old remark that Africa, the continent 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 uniform dark complexion of her

sons and of her fauna—a solid body, like her own cocoa-nut, 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 centuries, cut off from

intercourse with mankind by the storm-lashed waters of the northern

approach; 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 progressive part of the old world.

The more fortunate north-eastern and subtropical shores were enabled by

their vast crévasse, 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 seaboards offer,

for the space of a thousand miles, 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 shipwrecked 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, sweeping up unbroken from the South Pole, are yet more

perilous. The highlands fringing the southern and eastern coasts arrest

the humid winds, and are capable of supporting an extensive population;

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 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 consequent insalubrity of its

climate. The drainage 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 rollers, 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 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 barricaded 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.[26]

I have elsewhere remarked (The Lake Regions 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

proceeding inland from the ocean a succession of corallines, of

sandstone and of calcaires, which appear to be an offset from the

section of that great zone forming the Somali country. The western

coasts, after quitting the basalts and lavas 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 porphyries.

The negroes and negroids of both these inhospitable coasts, an

undeveloped and not to be developed race—in this point agreeing with the

fauna and flora around them—are the chief obstacles 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 monkeys, 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

luxuriance to cassava and rice, maize, and holcus, cotton, sugar-cane,

and wild indigo, banana, 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 Tête and in the

Zambeze Valley, as related in Dr Livingstone’s First Expedition

(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

(Coloë 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 depôts for exports and

imports. 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 adaptation, like Azan,

and even Ajan, of the Arabic, Barr el Khazáin, or the Land of Tanks,[27]

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 following important

passage: ‘immediately following this mart (Opone) is another bay, where

Azania begins. At its beginning are the promontory Zingis (ζίγγις,

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 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. 11° 50′. 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 Zanzibar creeping into use. The

Adulis inscription (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 ‘Zingium.’ It is found in Abu Zayd

Hasan, generally known as Hunayn bin Ishak (died A.D. 873); 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.D. 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

circumference of 2000 miles, and vast numbers of elephants. The India

Minor, India Major, and India Tertia of the mediæval Latin travellers

are the Sind, Hind, and Zinj of the Arabs. Ibn Batuta (A.D. 1330, 1331),

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 Zunúj.’ 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 (زنج), corrupted to Zinj, whence the plural ‘Zunúj,’ is

evidently the Persian Zang or Zangi (زنگ), a black, altered by the

Arabs, who ignore the hard Aryan ‘Gaf’ (گ), the ‘G’ in our gulf. In the

same tongue bár 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,[28] and, by some, Egyptians and

Bohemians.’ 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

Anushirawán, the 23rd king of the Sassanian dynasty, which began with

Ardashir Babegan (A.D. 226), and which ended with Yezdegird III. (A.D.

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.D. 758 the Persians, together with

the Arabs, mastered, pillaged, and burn Canton. Much later (17th

century) Shah Abbas claimed Zanzibar Island and coast as an appanage 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 included. A second

and later emigration (about A.D. 1000) occupied the south Zanzibarian

coast, and ruins built by the Shirazían 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. I, and Part 2,

Chap. 2.)

Persia has left nothing of her widely extended African conquests but a

name. In modern 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 north of the Equator. On the Zangian

mainland wells sunk in the rock, monuments of a form now obsolete;

mosques with elaborate minarets and pillars of well-cut coralline;

fortified 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 (S. lat. 0° 14 30″) to Cape Corrientes (S. 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 Mozambique

Island (S. lat. 15° 2′ 2″), where the Wasawahíli meet the ‘Kafir’ races.

The length would thus be, in round numbers, 15° = 900 geographical

miles, whilst the breadth, which is everywhere insignificant, can hardly

be estimated.

The Arabs, who love to mingle etymology with legend and fable, derive

the word ‘Zanzibar’ from the exclamation of its pleased explorers, ‘Zayn

za’l barr!’ (fair is this land!). Similar stories concerning Brazilian

Olinda and Argentine Buenos Aíres are well known. ‘El Sawáhil,’ the

shores, evidently the plural of Sáhil, 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, surrounded by a halo of Arab myth, ever

attracts the eye of the southing mariner. The Wasawahíli,’[29] or slave

tribes, are fancifully explained by ‘Sawwá hílah,’ 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

Kisíwa—insula. It is thus opposed to Mpoa-ni, the coast, and to Mrímá,

the mainland.[30] The latter, however, is properly speaking limited to

the maritime uplands between Tanga and the Pangani 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,

apparently an older form. We find ‘Lendgouya’ in the Commercial

Traveller Yakut (early thirteenth century); but ‘Bandgouia’ (Abd el

Rashid bin Salih el Bakui, A.D. 1403) is clearly a corruption.

Finally, Zanzibar has been identified by palæogeographers with the

Ptolemean Μενουθιὰς or Μενουθεσίας (iv. 9), and with the Μενουθιὰς of

the Periplus (Geog. Græci Minores of R. Muller, Paris, 1855), in some

copies of which Menouthesías 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.[31] Ptolemy,

it may be observed, places the two important sites, Menouthias and

Prasum (or Prassum) 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 S. lat. 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 S. lat. 7°,

the Rhapta promontory is in S. lat. 8° 20′ 5″, and the Prasum promontory

in S. lat. 15°. By applying the correction as before, we have for

Menouthias 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, S. lat. 1° (or more exactly, S. lat. 1° 10′); the

mouth of the Jub river being in S. lat. 0° 14′ 30″; the Rhapta

promontory in S. lat. 2° 30′, corresponding with the coast about Patta;

and finally, for Prasum S. lat. 9° 10′—Cape Delgado being in S. lat. 10°

41′ 12″.

The account given of Menouthias in the Periplus (written between A.D.

64, Vincent, and A.D. 210, Letronne[32]) 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 geographical 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)[33] lies the last emporium of the continent of Azania, called

Tà Rhaptà, thus named from the before-mentioned 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 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 Mbuamáji, which in former ages may have been more important.

D’Anville, Vincent, and De Froberville boldly prefer Kilwa (in round

numbers S. 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. Computations of ancient

courses and log-books can have little value except when they serve to

confirm commonly topographical positions. Kilwa has 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 attempting 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.’[34]

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 S. S. 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 (S. 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

correction, to the continental coast in E. long. (G.) 39° 32′ 5″. French

travellers assume a max. length of 83 kilomètres, 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^{h.} 36^{m.} and

56^{s.}. From Southampton round the Cape the run is usually laid down at

8500 miles, viâ Suez 6200. The Lesseps Canal has shortened the distance

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 occur

to one crossing the breadth.[35] The first is a band of grit-based

coralline, which runs meridionally, 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 scattered 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 reticulated 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 volcanic countries, hollow

and vault-like to the tread; the tunnels are frequently without issue

for drainage, and when the rain drips in, the usual calcareous

phenomena, 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 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 meridional 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, diarrhœas, 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 mountains.

Here, as in the rest of the Zanzibarian archipelago, the maritime line,

unlike the west Atlantic islands Tenerife and Madeira, is composed 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 1/100 and 1/140. 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 remarkable.

The windward coast, in common with many parts of the continental

seaboard, suffers especially from June to August from the Ras de Marée

(Manuel de la Navigation et la Côte occidentale de l’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

earthquake; 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 phenomenon, and to

seek a connection between it and the paroxysms of the neighbouring

cyclone region. At all times sailors remark the ‘shortness’ of the waves

and the scanty intervals between 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,[36] 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, 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 S.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 violent, especially close in shore, and observed that it

frequently trends against the wind. It is usually made to run to the

S.W. between December 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, like 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, concerning which

so much has been said and written of late years, was wrecked in 1855 off

St Juan de Nova of the Comoro group (S. lat. 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 N F B N. A writer in the _Pall Mall_ 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 analphabetic 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 shipmaster 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 neighbour Bawi. Three or four days afterwards the

Storm King of Salem, Messrs Bertram, ran aground whilst hugging Chumbi

in order to distance 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-ground is found between Zanzibar Island and the

continent.

[Illustration: ZANZIBAR FROM THE SEA.]

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 S. Juan de Nova on the east. Keeping well in mid-

channel, they head straight for Mafiyah. They hug Point Puna, avoiding

Latham’s Bank,[37] 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 S.W. monsoon—the anti-N.E. trade—sail up

the same passage. They must beware of falling to leeward; and those that

neglect ‘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-masters 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

viâ the northern passage. Those leaving the Island in the S.W. monsoon

stand north up channel, well out in E. lon. 9° 42′ to 43′, beat south of

Cape Delgado, pass between the Comoro group and the mainland, and thus

catch the Mozambique gulfstream. 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 foliage alternating

between the liveliest leek-green and the sombrest laurel, the only

variety that vegetation knows in this land of eternal verdure.

Everywhere 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 the exhilaration of

pure desert air, and the exaltation 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 excess 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, Phœnicia, 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

continuous wall. In some parts madrepore rock, looped and caverned by

the tide, and covered with weeds and testaceæ, whose congeners are

fossilized in the stone, rises abruptly a few feet above the wave. At

other places a dense growth 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 outline 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 Ipomæa—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 retentive 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;

tomatoes and naturalized vegetables, muhogo (the cassava), and Palma

Christi; coffee, cotton, and sugar-cane; clove, nutmeg, and cinnamon

trees; foreign fruits, like the Brazilian Cajú, the passion-flower and

the pine-apple; the Chinese Leechi; bananas and guavas, the Raphia 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 Máshámha or plantations, 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

Búbúbú—the principal of the ποταμοι πλειστοι of the Periplus—mere

surface-drains, choked with fat juncaceæ 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 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 ‘toadstools’ 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 fœtor 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 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

metallic 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 Zanzibar, as generally the case in

the narrow equatorial 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 inverted; 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

supersatured with moisture, Angola, on the same parallel, is a

comparatively dry, sandy, and sunburnt region. Kilwa, upon the eastern

coast, and in S. lat. 8° 57′, is damp 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. E. trades and their

modifications, discharge themselves upon the windward sides of

continents, especially when these are fringed with cold sierras, which

condense the vapour and render the interior a lee land.

In 1847 the Geographical Society 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 observations 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 (xxiii. 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.[38]

The result of nine months’ observations is that 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 inexperienced expect

to find so near the equator. It is within the limits of the true Trades.

The land and sea breezes laden with cool moisture 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 at a min. It seldom,

except under varying pressure of storms or tornadoes, rises or falls

above or below 30 inches at sea level, and a few tenths represent the

max. variation. It must be observed, however, on both coasts 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 southern hemisphere. Where there is

so little expansion in the mercurial column the convexity and concavity

of the column-head must be carefully 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 electrical 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

latitudes, by Lieut. Robertson, R.N., when sailing under Captain Ross

(1818), between N. lat. 51° 39′ and 76° 50′.

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.).[39]

So, upon the opposite 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 existing 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

1843. 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 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 interior, 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, declares 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 phenomenon 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 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 longboat,

which were twisted like wax by the electric fluid.

The mainlands of Zanzibar and of Mozambique are subject, as might be

expected, to tornados, which much resemble those of the West African

coast. Accompanying the formation 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 apparent periodicity of throbs, and the

frantic rage of the short-lived squall. The cyclones and hurricanes 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, overthrowing the Mábandani or roof-sheds,

and it was followed by a burst of rain. Colonel Sykes (loco cit.)

remarks, philosophically explaining the why, ‘Another peculiar feature

in the climatology 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 radiation. Captain Guillain (i. 2, 72) declares that the

rosées which accompany the rains are sufficient for watering the ground,

and observes (p. 94), I presume concerning those who remain in the open

air, ‘Rester à terre entre huit heurs du soir et le lever du soleil

c’est s’exposer à une mort très 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 clothing. 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 temperature. As in the west coast

squadron, so here, there is an order that all men on deck after sunset

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 influence 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 Masika’ 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)[40] to nine of S.E. and S.W. (Kausi). The regularity of

these seasons is broken by a variety of local causes, and there is ever,

I repeat, the normal instability of equinoctial climates. 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 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 S.W.

1. The Kaskazi or Kazkazi (vulgarly Kizkazi), to which the Arabs limit

the term El Mausim (Monsoon), is _the_ season during which the Azyab

(ازيب) or N.E. trade blows. The wind begins about mid-November; from

mid-December 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 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 agriculturist’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 Másika) 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 S.W.

monsoon, 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,[41] in Kisawahili Kausi (قوسی),

from mid-April to early August, the period of the greatest strength.

Second, Kipupwe or first winter—July and early August; and third, the

Dayman, which ends the Kausi.

Presently appear the rains which have followed 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 distinctly trace their progress. In

1857 the downfall 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 intertropical 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 40 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 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 S.W. began to blow. For some time

we had daily showers, now from the N.E., then from the S.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 showers strong enough to bind

the land, but not so violent as to carry off the manure deposited by the

year’s decayed vegetation. After this the water should fall in heavy

ropy torrents, 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 drenching.

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 creating the ‘rain-

doctor.’

During the Msika the horizon is obscured, 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 aërial

regions. From afar the island appears smothered in blue mist, and often

the cloudrock splits into two portions, one of which makes for the

coast. Even during the rare days of sunshine the distances, owing to the

continuous humidity, are rarely clear, and the exhalations make

refraction extensive. A high tension of vapour is the 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 becomes 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, complain

that the ‘heavy’ air produces an unnatural 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 suggests that it should be perspiring: super-

saturation 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 exposed 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 broadcloths stiffen and become boardy.

This excess of damp is occasionally varied by the extreme of dryness.

The hot wind represents the Khamasin of Egypt, the Sharki (or Sh’luk) of

Syria, the Harmattan of west Africa, and the Norte of the southern

Brazil, Paraguay, and the Argentine Confederation. At such times the air

apparently abounds in oxygen and in ozone. Cotton cloth feels hard and

crisp; even the water is cooled by the prodigious evaporation. 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. monsoon 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

exhausted 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 universally 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

despise the insidious attacks of malaria: they 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. Daymán (in Kisawahili Daymáni) ends the Kausi or S. 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)[42] 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 southern 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

recommences the Kaskazi, and the N. E. trade again blows. The sun is

distant, the thermometer does not range high, yet the temperature 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 ‘Báorá’ (blast), and declare that it brings on fits of ‘Mridi’

(refroidissement), here held dangerous. During the whole of the Azyab

monsoon the people prefer hot sun and a clear, which is always a

slightly hazy-blue, sky. They dislike the clouds and heavy showers

called Mvua[43] 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 S.

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, sesamum, and rice.