The Wasawahili, like the Somal and many other races, have attempted to

conform the lunar with the solar year, a practice which may date from

the days when the Persians were rulers of the Zanzibar coast. They also

give their own names to the lunar months of the Moslem; and, curiously

enough, they begin the year, not with Muharram, but with the ninth month

(Shaw wal), which they call ‘Mfunguo Mosi,’ or First Month. The next,

Zu’l Ka’adeh, is Mfunguo Mbili, Second Month, and so on till Rajah,

Shaa’-ban (or Mlisho) and Ramazan, which retain their Arab names.[44]

Amongst the Somal, five months, namely, from the second to the fifth,

are known by the old Semitic terms. The month, as amongst all savage and

semi-civilized tribes, begins with sighting the moon; and the Wasawahili

reckon like the Jews, the modern Moslems, and the Chinese, 12 of 29 and

30 days alternately. ‘The complete number of months with God’ being,

says the Koran, ‘twelve months,’ good followers of the Prophet ignore

the Ve-adar, second or embolical Adar, which the Hebrews inserted after

every third year, and retain their silly cycle of 354 days. The

Wasawahili add 10 to 12 days to the Moslem year, and thus preserve the

orderly recurrence of the seasons. The sage in charge of the local

almanac is said to live at Tumbatu: he finds his New Year’s Day by

looking at the sun, by tracing figures upon the ground, and by comparing

the results with Arabic calendars. Their weeks begin, as usual with

Moslems, on Friday (Ejúmá for Juma), the Saturday being Juma Mosi, or

one day after Friday, and so forth. Thursday, however, is Khamisi. This

subdivision of time, though suggested by the quarters of the earth’s

satellite, is known only to societies which have advanced toward

civilization. Thus in Dahome we find a week of four days; and even China

ignores the seven-day week.

‘The universal festivals,’ says the late Professor H. H. Wilson (Essays

on the Religion of the Hindus, ii. 155), ‘are manifestly astronomical,

and are intended to commemorate the revolutions of the planets, the

alternations of the seasons, and the recurrence of cyclical intervals of

longer or shorter duration.’ The Nau-roz (نوروز) or New Year’s Day,

here, as in Syria, locally pronounced Nay-roz, was established in

ancient Ariana, according to Persian tradition, by Jamshid, King of

Kings, in order to fix the vernal equinox.[45] It is the Holi of the

Hindus, and after the East has kept this most venerable festival for

3000 years, we still unconsciously celebrate the death and resurrection

of the eternal sun-god. The Beal-tinne is not yet forgotten in Leinster,

nor is the maypole wholly obsolete in England. As early as the days of

the Kuraysh, there was an attempt to reconcile the lunar with the solar

year, and the Nau-roz, though palpably of Pagan origin, has been adopted

by all the maritime peoples professing El Islam. Even the heathen-hating

Arab borrowed it for his convenience from the Dualists and Trinitarians

of Fars and Hindustan. Hence the æras called Kadmi and Jelali. In this

second solar æra the Nau-roz was transferred by the new calendar from

the vernal equinox to Sept. 14, A.D. 1079, and was called Nau-roz i

Mízán (نوروز مِنران). Amongst the Wasawahili it is known as Siku Khu ya

Mwáká, the Great Day of the year.

For the purpose of a stable date, necessary both to agriculture and to

navigation, and also for the determination of the monsoons, the people

who ignore the embolismal month, and who have no months for the solar

year, add, I have said, 10 to 12 days to each lunar year, the true

difference being 16 days 9 hrs. 0 min. and 11·7 secs. Thus the

contrivance is itself rude; moreover the Wasawahili often miscalculate

it. Between A.D. 1829 and A.D. 1879, it would fall on 28-29 August. In

1844 they made it commence at 6 p. m., August 28, immediately after full

moon: in 1850-2 they began it on August 27, and in 1856 on August

26.[46]

Sundry quasi superstitious uses are made of the 10 embolismal days

following the Nau-roz. Should rains—locally called Miongo—fall on the

first day, showers are prognosticated for the tenth; if on the second,

the twentieth will be wet; and so forth till the tenth, which if rainy

suggests that the Kausi or S.W. monsoon will set in early. The seasons

of navigation are thus reckoned. The Vuli rains are supposed to begin 30

days, counting from the twentieth, after Nauroz. On the eightieth (some

say the ninetieth) day are expected thunder, lightning, and heavy rains

at the meeting of the monsoons (mid-November), and so forth. Possibly

this may be a reflection of the Hindu idea which represents the Garbhas

to be the fetuses of the clouds, and born 195 days after conception.

With us the people mark the periods by saints’ days. The Bernais say—

Après le jour de la Sainte Luce,

Les jours s’allongent le saut d’une puce.

The Escuara proverb declares—

Sanct Seimon etu Juda,

Negua eldu da.

(‘At St Simon and St Jude, water may be viewed.’)

The basis of the following calculation is thoroughly Kisawahili—

S’el pleut le jour de Saint Médard, (June 8)

Il pleut quarante jours plus tard.

Nor is our popular doggrel less so—

Saint Swithin’s Day, if thou dost rain,

For forty days it will remain.

Saint Swithin’s Day, if thou be fair,

For forty days ’twill rain nae mair.

The Wasawahili also calculate their agricultural seasons from the stars

called Kilímia, a name probably derived from Ku lima, to plough. I

believe them to be Pleiades, but my sudden departure from the coast

prevented my making especial inquiries. When this constellation is in

the west at night the peasants say, ‘Kilímia, if it sets during the

rains, rises in fair weather,’ and vice versâ. Also Kilímia appearing in

the east is a signal for the agriculturist to prepare his land.

SECTION 3.

Climate continued—Notes on the Nosology of Zanzibar—Effects on

Strangers.

The climate of Zanzibar Island is better than that of the adjacent

continent. Here many white residents have escaped severe fever; but upon

the coast the disastrous fate of Captain Owen’s surveyors, the loss of

life on board our cruisers, and the many deaths of the ‘Mombas Mission,’

even though, finding the sea-board dangerous, they built houses on the

hills which lead to the mountain region of Usumbara, prove that malaria

is as active in eastern as in western Africa. Colonel Hamerton once

visited the Pangani river during the month of August: of his 19 men,

three died, and all but one suffered severely. Perhaps we should not

find a similar mortality in the present day, when the lancet has been

laid aside for the preventive treatment by quinine and tonics. It has,

however, been asserted that the prophylactic use of the alkaloid, which

was such a success in western Africa, did not prove equally valuable on

the eastern coast.

Yet Zanzibar, with its double seasons and its uniformly heated and humid

atmosphere, accords ill, even where healthiest, with the irritable

temperament of northern races. Here, contrary to the rule of Madagascar,

the lowlands over which the fresh sea-breeze plays are the only parts

where the white stranger can land and live; the interior is non

habitabilis æstu. Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton, called upon in March, 1844,

by Sir George Arthur, governor of Bombay, to report upon the island,

wrote in September of the same year, ‘The climate of the [insular] coast

is not unhealthy for Europeans, but it is impossible for white men to

live in the interior of the island, the vegetation being rank and

appearing always to be going on; and generally fever contracted in the

interior is fatal to Europeans.’ Colonel Sykes (loco cit.) questions

this assertion as being ‘contrary to all other testimony.’ Every

traveller, however, knows it to be correct. As in the lovely climates of

the Congo River and the South Sea Islands, corporal lassitude leads to

indolence, languor, and decline of mental energy, which can be recovered

only by the bracing influence of the northern winter. Many new arrivals

complain of depressing insomnia, with alternations of lethargic sleep: I

never enjoyed at Zanzibar the light refreshing rest of the desert. Yet

the island is a favourable place for the young African traveller to

undergo the inevitable ‘seasoning fever’, which upon the coast or in the

interior might prove fatal. The highlands, or the borders of the great

central basin, are tolerably healthy, but an invalid would find no

comforts there—hardly a waterproof roof. He should not, however, risk

after recovery a second attack, but at once push on to his goal;

otherwise he will expend in preparation the strength and bottom required

to carry out his explorations. With a fresh, sound constitution, he may

work hard for three years, and even if driven home by ill health he may

return in comparative safety within a reasonable time.

No European, unless thoroughly free from organic disease, should venture

to remain longer than three or four years at Zanzibar: the same has been

observed of Baghdad, and of the Euphrates valley generally. Lurking

maladies will be brought to a crisis, and severe functional derangements

are liable to return. The stranger is compelled to take troublesome

precautions. He may bathe in cold water, sweet or salt, but he must

eschew the refreshment of the morning walk: during the rains, when

noxious mists overhang the land, the unpleasant afternoon is the only

safe time for exercise. Flannel must always be worn despite the

irritability of the ever-perspiring skin: even in the hottest weather

the white cotton jackets and overalls of British India are discarded for

tweeds, and for an American stuff of mixed cotton and wool. Extra warm

clothing is considered necessary as long as the ‘mugginess’ of ‘msika-

weather’ lasts. Sudden exposure to the sun is considered dangerous, and

the carotid, jugular, and temporal arteries must be carefully protected

from cold as well as from heat. Hard work, either of mind or body, is

said to produce fever as surely as sitting in draughts or as wearing

insufficient clothing. The charming half-hour following sunset is held

dangerous, especially in hot weather; yet most tantalizing is the cool

delicious interval between the burning day and the breathless night.

Natives of the country rarely venture out after dark: a man found in the

streets may safely be determined to be either a slave or a thief—

probably both.

Directions for diet are minute and vexatious. The stranger is popularly

condemned to ‘lodging-house hours’—breakfast at 9 A.M., dinner at 3

P.M., tea at 8 P.M., bed at 10 P.M. He is told also to live temperately

but not abstemiously, and never to leave the stomach too long empty. I

should prescribe for him, contrary to the usual plan, an abnormal amount

of stimulants, port and porter, not claret nor Rhine-wine. It is evident

that where appetite is wanting, and where nourishing food is not to be

obtained, the ‘patient’ must imbibe as much nutriment as he safely can.

In these lands a drunkard outlives a water-drinker, despite Theodoret,

‘vinum bibere non est malum, sed intemperanter bibere perniciosum est’;

and here Bacchus, even ‘Bacchus uncivil,’ is still ‘Bacchus the healer.’

As usual old stagers will advise a stranger recovering from fever to

strengthen himself with sundry bottles of port, and yet they do not

adopt it as a preventive—‘experto crede Ricardo.’ The said port may be

Lisbon wine fortified with cheap spirits, liquorice, and logwood—in

fact, what is regimentally called ‘strong military ditto;’ yet I have

seen wonders worked by the much-debased mixture. Again, Europeans are

told to use purgatives, especially after sudden and strong exercise,

when the ‘bile is stirred up.’ As an amateur chronothermalist—thanks to

my kind old master, the late Dr Dickson—I should suggest tonics and

bitters, which often bring relief when the nauseous salts and senna

aggravate the evil. Also, in all debilitating countries, when the blood

is ‘thin,’ laxatives must be mild, otherwise they cause instead of

curing fever; in fact, double tonics and half purgatives should be the

rule. Above all things convalescents should be aided by change of air,

if only from the house of sickness to that of a neighbour, or to a ship

in port. The most long-lived of white races are the citizens of the

United States: they are superior to others in mental (or cerebral)

energy; they are men of spare, compact fibre, and of regular habits;

they also rarely reside more than two or three years at a time on the

island. On the other hand, the small French colony has lost in 15 years

26 men: they lived imprudently, they drank sour Bordeaux, and when

attacked with fever they killed themselves by the abuse of quinine.

Swallowing large doses upon an empty stomach, they irritated the

digestive organs, and they brought on cerebral congestion by ‘heroic

practice’ when constipated.

According to the Arabs and Hindus of Zanzibar, ague and fever are to be

avoided only by perspiring during sleep under a blanket in a closed

room—a purgatory for a healthy hot-blooded man in this damp tepid

region. I found the cure-almost-as-bad-as-the-disease precaution adopted

by the Spanish colonists at my salubrious residence—Fernando Po, West

Africa. Only two officers escaped ‘chills,’ and they both courageously

carried out the preventive system: on the other hand, it was remarked

that they looked more aged, and they appeared to have suffered more from

the climate, than those who shook once a month with ‘rigors.’ There is

certainly no better prescription for catching ague than a coolth of skin

during sleep: having purchased experience at a heavy price, it is my

invariable practice when awaking with a chilly epiderm to drink a glass

of water ‘cold without,’ and to bury myself for an hour under a pile of

blankets. Every slave-hut has a cartel or cot, and the savages of the

coast, like those of the Upper Nile, carry about wooden stools for fear

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

So much for the male sex. European women here, as in the Gulf of Guinea,

rarely resist the melancholy isolation, the want of society, and the

Nostalgia—Heimweh or Home-sickness—so common, yet so little regarded in

tropical countries. Under normal circumstances Equatorial Africa is

certain death to the Engländerin. I am surprised at the combined folly

and brutality of civilized husbands who, anxious to be widowers, poison,

cut the throats, or smash the skulls of their better-halves. The thing

can be as neatly and quietly, safely and respectably, effected by a few

months of African air at Zanzibar or Fernando Po, as by the climate of

the Maremma to which the enlightened Italian noble condemned his spouse.

The nosology of Zanzibar is remarkable for the prevalence of urinary and

genital diseases; these have been roughly estimated at 75 per cent.

Syphilis spreads wide, and where promiscuous intercourse is permitted to

the slaves it presents formidable symptoms. The ‘black lion,’ as it is

popularly called—in Arabic El Tayr or El Faranj; in Kisawahili, Bubeh,

Kiswendi, or T’hego—will destroy the part affected in three weeks:

secondaries are to be feared; noses disappear, the hair falls off, and

rheumatism and spreading ulcers result. Gonorrhœa is so common that it

is hardly considered a disease. Few strangers live long here without

suffering from irritation of the bladder, the result, it is said, of

hard lime-water: and the common effect of a cold or of stricture is

severe vesical catarrh. Sarcocele and hydrocele, especially of the left

testis, according to the Arabs, attack all classes, and are attributed

to the relaxing climate, to unrestrained sexual indulgence, and

sometimes to external injury. These diseases do not always induce

impotence or impede procreation. The tunica vaginalis is believed to

fill three times: as in elephantiasis the member is but a mass of flesh,

a small meatus only remaining. The deposition of serum is enormous; I

have heard of six quarts being drawn off. The natives punctuate with a

heated copper needle, and sometimes thus induce tetanus: Europeans add

injections of red wine and iodine. The latter is also applied with

benefit in the early stage to sarcocele; and both complaints have

yielded, it is said, to the galvanic current. Strangers are advised at

all times to wear suspensory bandages.

Elephantiasis of the legs and arms, and especially of the scrotum,

afflicts, it is calculated, 20 per cent. of the inhabitants: Arabs and

Hindus, Indian Moslems and Africans, however dissimilar in their habits

and diet, all suffer alike. It is remarked that the malady has never

attacked a pure white, European or American: perhaps the short residence

of the small number accounts for the apparent immunity. Similarly, in

the Brazil I have never seen a European stranger subject to the leprosy,

or to the goître, so prevalent in the great provinces of São Paulo and

Minas Geraes. The Banyans declare that a journey home removes the

incipient disease, or at least retards its progress: it recurs, however,

on return to Zanzibar. The scrotum will often reach the knees; I heard

of one case measuring in circumference 41 inches, more than the

patient’s body, whilst its length (33 inches) touched the ground. There

is no cure, and the cause is unknown. The people attribute it to the

water, and possibly it may spring from the same source which produces

goître and bronchocele.

Syphilitic and scorbutic taints appear in ulcers and abscesses. The

helcoma resembles that of Aden: it generally attacks the legs and feet,

the parts most distant from the centre of circulation; the toes fall of,

and the limb becomes distorted. Phagædenic sores are most common amongst

the poor and the slaves, who live on manioc, fruit, and salt shark often

putrid. Large and painful phlegemonous abscesses, attacking the muscular

tissue, occasion great constitutional disturbance: they heal, however,

readily after suppuration. Scabies, yaws (Frambæsia), psoriasis, and

‘craw-craw,’ inveterate as that of Malabar or the Congo River, commonly

result from personal uncleanliness, unwholesome food, and insufficient

shelter and clothing. That frightful malady Lupus presents pitiable

objects.

The indigenous diseases which require mention are fevers, bowel-

complaints, and pulmonary affections.

Fevers at Zanzibar have been compared with Aaron’s rod; at times they

seem to swallow up every other disease, and generally they cause the

greatest amount of mortality. As at Muhamreh, and on the swampy margins

of the Shat el Arab (Persian Gulf), the constitution worn out, and the

equilibrium of the functions deranged by moist heat and sleeplessness,

especially during and after the heavy rains of the S. West monsoon, thus

relieve themselves. Persians and northern Asiatics are even more liable

to attacks than Europeans; and, as in Egypt, rude health is rare. Some

Indian Moslems have fled the country, believing themselves bewitched.

Arabs born on the island, and the Banyans, who seldom suffer much from

the fever, greatly dread its secondary symptoms. The ‘hummeh,’ or

intermittent type, is remarkable for the virulence and persistency of

the sequelæ, which the Arabs call ‘Nazlah’ (metastasis), or defluxion of

humours—‘dropping into the hoofs’ as the grooms say. Cerebral and

visceral complications, with derangements of the liver and spleen,

produce obstinate diarrhœas, dysenteries, and a long dire cohort of

diseases. Men of strong nervous diathesis escape with slight

consequences in the shape of white hair, boils, bad toothaches,

neuralgias, and sore tongues. The weak lose memory, or virility, or the

use of a limb, the finger-joints especially being liable to stiffen;

many become deaf or dim-sighted, not a few are subject to paralysis in

its various forms, whilst others, tormented by hepatitis, constipation,

and disorders of the bowels and of the digestive organs, never

completely recover health. In this country all attribute to the moon at

the ‘springs’ what we explain by coincidence and by the periodicity of

disease. For months, and possibly for years, the symptoms recur so

regularly that even Europeans will use evacuants and quinine two or

three days before the new and full moons. In such cases, I repeat,

change of climate is the best aid to natura curatrix.

The malignant typhus is rare at Zanzibar: it raged, however, amongst the

crew of a French ship wrecked on the northern end of the island, when

the men were long exposed to privations and over-fatigue. Intermittents

(ague and fever) are common as colds in England. They are mild and

easily treated;[47] but they leave behind during convalescence a

dejection and a debility wholly incommensurate with the apparent

insignificance of the attack, and often a periodical neuralgia, which

must be treated with tonics, quinine, and chiretta.

The bilious remittent is, par excellence, the fever of the country, and

every stranger must expect a ‘seasoning’ attack. It was inordinately

fatal in the days when, the lancet being used to combat inflammation,

the action of the heart was never restored. Our grandfathers, however,

bled every one for everything, and for nothing: there were old ladies

who showed great skill in ‘blooding’ cats. In 1857 men had escaped this

scientific form of sudden death, but the preventive treatment so ably

used on the West coast of Africa had not been tried. The cure at

Zanzibar was an aperient of calomel and jalap. Castor oil was avoided as

apt to cause nausea. Quinine was administered, but often in quantities

not sufficient to induce the necessary chinchonization, and the

inexperienced awaited too long the period of remission, administering

the drug only during the intervals. Diaphoretics of nitrate of potash,

camphor mixture, and the liquor acet. ammon. were used to reduce the

temperature of the skin. The most distressing symptom, ejection of bile,

was opposed by saline drinks, effervescing draughts, diluted prussic

acid, a mustard plaister, or a blister. The hair was shaved or closely

cut, and evaporating lotions were applied to the head. The extreme

restlessness of the patient often called for a timid narcotic; in these

days, however, the invaluable hydrate of chloral, Sumbul and chlorodyne

were unknown, and soporifics were used, as it were under protest, being

believed to cause constipation. Extreme exhaustion was not vigorously

attacked with medical and other stimulants; and thus many sank under the

want of ammonia and wine. I have since remarked the same errors of

treatment in the West African coast; the patient was often restricted to

the acidity-breeding rice water, arrowroot, and similar ‘slops.’ When he

pined for brandy and beef-tea, the safe plan of consulting his instincts

was carefully ignored.

In strong constitutions the initiatory attack of remittents is followed

after a time by the normal intermittent, and the traveller may then

consider himself tolerably safe. In some Indian cases ague and fever

have recurred regularly for a whole year after the bilious remittent.

The bilious remittent of Zanzibar is preceded by general languor and

listlessness, with lassitude of limbs and heaviness of head, with chills

and dull pains in the body and extremities, and with a frigid sensation

creeping up the spine. Then comes a mild cold fit, succeeded by flushed

face, full veins, an extensive thirst, dry, burning heat of skin, a

splitting headache, and nausea, and by unusual restlessness, or by

remarkable torpor and drowsiness. The patient is unable to stand; the

pulse is generally full and frequent, sometimes thready, small, and

quick; the bowels are constipated, and the tongue is furred and

discoloured; appetite is wholly wanting. During my first attack, I ate

nothing for seven days; and despite the perpetual craving thirst, no

liquid will remain upon the stomach. Throughout the day extreme weakness

causes anxiety and depression; the nights are worse, for restlessness is

aggravated by want of sleep. Delirium is common in the nervous-bilious

temperament. These symptoms are sometimes present several days before

the attack, which is in fact their exacerbation. A slight but distinctly

marked remission often occurs after the 4th or 5th hour—in my own case

they recurred regularly between 2 and 3 A.M. and P.M.—followed by a

corresponding reaction. When an unfavourable phase sets in, all the

evils are aggravated; great anxiety, restlessness, and delirium wear out

the patient; the mind wanders, the body loses all power, the ejecta

become offensive; the pulse is almost imperceptible; the skin changes

its dry heat for a clammy cold; the respiration grows loaded, the

evacuations pass involuntarily; and after perhaps a short apparent

improvement, stupor, insensibility, and sinking usher in death. On the

other hand, if the fever intends yielding to treatment, it presents

after the 7th day marked signs of abatement; the tongue is clearer, pain

leaves the head and eyes, the face is no longer flushed; nausea ceases

after profuse emesis of bile, and a faint appetite returns.

After the mildest attacks of the Zanzibar remittent, the liver acts with

excessive energy: sudden exercise causes a gush or overflow of bile,

which is sufficient to bring on a second attack. The debility, which is

inordinate, may last for months. It is often increased by boils, which

follow one another in rapid succession, and which sometimes may be

counted by scores. Besides the wet cloth, the usual remedy to cause

granulation, and to prevent the sore leaving a head, is to stuff it with

camphor and Peruvian bark. When boils appear behind the head, the brain

is sometimes affected by them, and patients have even sunk under their

sufferings. The recovery, indeed, as in the case of the intermittent

type, is always slow and dubious, relapses are feared, and for six weeks

there is little change for the better; the stomach is liable to severe

indigestion; the body is emaciated, and the appetite is excessive, or

sickly and uncertain. The patient suffers from toothaches and swelled

face, catarrh, hepatitis, emesis, and vertigo, with alternations of

costiveness and the reverse. As I have already said, change of air and

scene is at this stage more beneficial than all the tonics and

preventives in the pharmacopœia. Often a patient lying apparently on his

death-bed recovers on hearing that a ship has arrived, and after a few

days on board he feels well.

Diarrhœa and dysentery are mostly sporadic; the former, however, has at

times attacked simultaneously almost every European on the Island. It is

generally the result of drinking bad water or sour wine, of eating

acescent or unripe fruit, and of imprudent exposure. Dysentery is

especially fatal during the damp and rainy weather. It was often

imprudently treated with mere astringents, and without due regard to the

periods of remission, and to the low form which inevitably accompanies

it. As in remittents, the patient was weakened, and his stomach was

deranged, with ‘slops,’ when essence of meat was required. The anti-

diarrhœa or anti-cholera pill of opium, chalk, and catechu has been

fatal wherever English medicine has extended; witness the Crimean

campaign, where the bolus killed many more than did the bullet. A

complication, rarely sufficiently considered, is the hepatic

derangement, from which almost all strangers must suffer after a long

residence in the Tropics. At Zanzibar some Europeans were compelled to

give up breakfasting, to the manifest loss of bulk, stamina, and

muscular strength—vomiting after the early meal, especially when eaten

with a good appetite, was the cause. Yet it was a mere momentary nausea,

and when the mouth had been washed no inconvenience was felt.

Catarrh and bronchitis are common in February and in the colder months

of July and August. Of endemic pulmonary diseases, pneumonia, asthma,

and consumption—the latter aggravated by the humid atmosphere—are

frequent amongst the higher classes, especially the Arab women

debilitated by over-seclusion. The incidental maladies are tropical

rheumatisms, colics, hæmorrhoids, and rare attacks of ophthalmia,

simple, acute, and purulent. Hæmorrhoids are very common both on the

Island and the coast; the people suffer as much as the Turks in Egypt

without wearing the enormous bag-trowsers which have been so severely

blamed.

Of the epidemics, the small-pox, a gift of Inner Africa to the world, is

fatal as at Goa or Madagascar. Apparently propagated without contact or

fomites, it disfigures half the population, and it is especially

dangerous to full-blooded Africans. About three years ago (1857) a

Maskat vessel imported a more virulent type. Shortly before my arrival,

numbers had died of the confluent and common forms, and isolated cases

were reported till we left the Island. All classes were equally

prejudiced against vaccination. The lymph sent from Aden and the

Mauritius was so deteriorated by the journey that it probably never

produced a single vesicle (1857).

Until 1859 cholera was unknown even by name. Col. Hamerton, however,

declared that in 1835 hundreds were swept off by an epidemic, whose

principal symptoms were giddiness, vomiting and purging, the peculiar

anxious look, collapse, and death. It did not re-appear for some years;

but in a future chapter I shall notice the frightful ravages which it

made on the East African coast at the time of my return from the

interior.

Hard water charged with lime and various salts, combined with want of

vegetables, renders constipation a common ailment at Zanzibar. Amongst

the rich it mostly arises from indolence, and from the fact that all are

greatly addicted to aphrodisiacs. The favourite is a pill composed of 3

grains of ambergris, and 1 grain of opium, the latter ingredient in the

case of an ‘Afímí’ (opium-eater) must be proportioned to his wants.

‘Doctors’ in my day were unknown at Zanzibar. Formerly, two Indians

practised; since their departure the people killed and cured themselves.

Amongst Arabs, and indeed Moslems generally, every educated man has a

smattering of the healing art. H. H. the late Sayyid was a ‘hakím’ of

great celebrity. A physician is valuable on the Island; throughout the

African interior he is valueless in a pecuniary sense, as every patient

expects to be kept and fed. The midwives are usually from Cutch; Arabs,

however, rarely consent to professional assistance. The Prince kept in

his establishment two sages femmes from Maskat.

SECTION 4.

Notes on the Fauna of Zanzibar.

The list of Zanzibarian Fauna and Flora is not extensive. In the

plantations the Komba or Galago abounds, and there is a small and pretty

long-tailed monkey (cercopithecus griseo-viridis) with black face, green

back, and grey belly: it is playful and easily tamed. This, as well as a

large species of bat, is pronounced delicious by curious gourmands. The

French ‘tigre’ and the English ‘panther’ (Felis Serval) is a leopard

about 18 inches high, and of disproportionate length, with a strong

large arm; the upper part of the skull vanishes as in the cheeta, and

the throat is so thick that no collar will keep its place. This felis is

destructive in the interior of the Island; and in parts of the Continent

the people fear it more than they do the lion: it is trapped in the

normal cage, and is speared without mercy. Two kinds of civets (Viverra

civetta, and V. genetta),[ one small, the other bigger than a Persian

(Angora) cat, are kept confined, and are scraped once a week for their

produce. As in all Arab towns, the common cat abounds; it has a long

tail and ears, a wild look, and a savage temper. This Asiatic

importation is never thoroughly domesticated in Africa, and seems always

aspiring to become a ‘cat o’ mountain’: on the West coast it is

difficult to keep cats in the house after kittening. The feline

preserves its fur in Zanzibar Island: at Mombasah there is or was a

breed more grotesque than the Manx, and completely bald like the Chinese

dog. The so-called ‘Indian badger’ (Arctonyx collaris, Cuv.) digs into

the graves and devours the dead. The rodents are grey squirrels, small

rabbits (?), large rats, some of peculiar but not of unknown species,

and mice, probably imported by the shipping. The ‘wild boars’ are pigs

left by the Portuguese: strangers mistaking the tusks often describe

them as ‘horned’ (chœropotamus). The Saltiana antelope is common: it

smells strongly of musk, and its flesh resembles the rat’s.

A fine large fish-hawk, with gold-fringed eye and yellow legs, bluish-

black plume, and grey neck-feathers, haunts the Island and the coast:

the other raptores are the brown kites (F. chilla), the scavengers of

Asia and Africa. As at Aden, so here, there are no common crows or

sparrows; the place of the former is taken by the African species

(corvus scapulatus), with white waistcoat, popularly called the ‘parson

crow,’ and the latter appears in the shape of the Java variety, which,

introduced about thirty years ago (1857) by Captain Ward, a Salem ship-

captain, has multiplied prodigiously. Green birds, like Amedavats,

muscicapæ of sorts, especially the ‘king-crow’ of India, here called

‘Drongo,’ abound; and visitors, like the French savant on the Dead Sea,

speak of a humming-bird, a purely New World genus, probably mistaking

for it a large hawk-moth. The parroquet resembles the small green

species of India: it is tamed and taught to talk. Zanzibar cannot boast

of the Madagascar parrot, a plain, brown, thick-bodied bird, celebrated

for distinct articulation.[48] Martens do not build at Zanzibar (?):

they halt at the Island in their migrations; and one kind, it has been

remarked, never remains longer than four to five days. After the rains

the lagoons are covered with wild-duck, mallard, and widgeon. The snipe

(jack, common, and solitary), a bird which everywhere preserves its fine

game flavour, is found on the Island and in the central Continent.

Sandpipers (charadrius hiaticula) run on the beach, and the waters

support various kinds of cranes, gulls, and terns.

When fewer ships visited the port, the sand-spit projecting from

‘Frenchman’s Island’ was covered with bay-turtle[49] (chelone esculenta

or Midas), which the negroes were too indolent or ignorant to catch. The

iguanas or harmless crocodiles (οὐδένα δὲ ἀνθρώπων ἀδικοῦσιν) of the

Periplus, have not yet been killed out of Zanzibar—and there are several

species.[50] Until lately the true crocodile was found in a small sweet

stream about eight miles south of the town, and the monsters swarm in

every river of the mainland.

Snakes are neither numerous nor deadly: possibly the climate, as in

Ireland and Bermuda, is too damp for them. I heard of a python[51]

resembling that of Madagascar and India; it is 13 feet long, and thick

as a man’s thigh. Its favourite habitat is in sugar-cane patches near

water, and it is occasionally fatal to a dog. There are water-snakes in

the harbour, like those once supposed to be peculiar to Western India.

The people speak of a green ‘whip-snake’—vaguest of terms—whose vertebræ

appear through the skin, and there are the usual legends of a venomous

tree-serpent which can shoot itself like an arrow. The pagan Mganga or

Medicine-man ties above the snake-wound a circle of wire with two small

bits of wood strung upon it. This, he says, prevents the venom

ascending; and doubtless the ligature is for half an hour or so

effective. The people have ‘Fiss’ or serpent-stones, which suggest the

Irish murrain-stones. Englishmen of undoubted character have recounted

cures effected by this remedy, which was so mysterious before capillary

attraction robbed it of its marvel.

There is a variety of small tiliquæ, and of large black earth-lizards.

One species, with melancholy chirrup and unpleasant aspect, supplies the

people with Herodotean tales. It is, they say, a hermaphrodite, and its

flanks are torn by its young during parturition. The chameleon also

suffers from the popular belief that it kills men with its breath.

Scorpions are small, and not so common as in the interior: the animal is

mashed and applied as a poultice to its own wound, which may derive some

benefit from the moisture. Centipedes haunt houses that are not cleaned

and whitewashed, and millipedes abound in every plantation.

The fish supply is variable[52] as the climate. Sometimes it is

excellent; at other times none but the poorest will eat it, and there

are many species considered always poisonous.[53] It is most abundant in

the S. West monsoon, when small fry may be caught in the still waters of

the harbour. Sharks are large and numerous, especially near Chumbi (La

Passe) Island, where all the best fish is netted; hut these tigers of

the sea do not injure the bathers on the beach. Though the shark is

easily hooked in the very harbour, many cargoes of its salted meat are

annually imported from Oman. The liver-oil is used to anoint the body:

and when Europe requires a succadeneum for huile de morue, I shall

recommend to her this shark-oil as an article of superior nauseousness.

The whale fishery reminds us of what it was on the Brazilian coast a

century ago. The mammals are sometimes found in soundings, and a wounded

sperm-whale lately entered Zanzibar harbour. In May, June, and July,

ships of 200 to 600 tons visit the waters south of Mafiyah Island; if

the capricious leviathan be not found there and then, it is waste time

to cruise about. In July, and at the beginning of the N. East monsoon,

schools migrate up the coast in search of food as far as the Red Sea.

From 30 to 60 lbs. of ambergris have been brought in one year to the

island, and a little of it is exported to Europe. This high-priced

article (1 lb. = £14) is taken from the rectum of the spermaceti whale:

it seems to have caused constipation and disease, and the oil drawn from

these fish is yellow and bad. The Arabs burn it in pastiles, and use it

not only internally but externally like musk. Old travellers report that

the Somal taught camels to hunt for it by the scent, in the same way as

pigs learn to find truffles; and the tale has been told to modern

travellers. The main virtue of ambergris is probably its heavy price.

The celebrated ‘Sir’ (Seer) fish, a corruption from Shir Mahi (شير ماهی)

or ‘tiger fish,’ so called on account of its armature, known to the

Arabs as Kunad (کناد) and in parts of India termed ‘Surmá,’ appears, for

about a fortnight, at Zanzibar during its period of migration northwards

in May and June. There are also ‘pomfrets,’ scates, soles which are

small and not prized, and red and gدrey mullet, excellent in July,

August, and September. The remora and the flying-fish enter the harbour;

the hippocampus is known; there are mangrove-oysters, ‘oysters growing

on trees’—a favourite subject with all old and with many new African

travellers—and a small well-flavoured, rock oyster, a favourite relish

with Europeans, caught about Chumbi Island. I saw no lobsters, so common

in the Camaroons river of Western Africa. The sands abound in Medusæ, or

jelly-fish, and in a large cray-fish, which the Arabs consider wholesome

for invalids: it makes a rather insipid salad, but it is excellent when

dressed after the fashion of the Slave Coast. The receipt is worth

giving, and may be found useful in England. The meat, taken out after

boiling, is pounded and mixed with peppers and seasoning. It is then

restored to the shell, the whole is baked in the oven, and, served up

piping hot, it forms an admirable ‘whet.’ Another kind of shell-fish is

indeed a ‘soft crab;’ when cooked it seems to melt away, no meat

remaining within: a third, also soft, is red even before being boiled.

On every unfrequented strip of sand or weed small crabs gather in

thousands; most of them have only one large claw, and their colours are

a brilliant pink, pearly white, violet, and tender red.

The seas are little explored (1857), and there are legends of

ichthyological marvels which remind us of European romantic zoology. I

was told by Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton of a fish, possibly one of the

Murænidæ, measuring nine feet long by three in diameter: the shape was

somewhat like a leech, both extremities being similar; the _ribs_

resembled, but were rather flatter than, those of a bullock, and the

flesh had the appearance of beef. A specimen, he said, had lately been

brought from Kipombui, a small harbour opposite Zanzibar; the prey,

however, is always cut up as soon as caught. This reminds us of the

‘full-sized devil-fish’ of the West Indian seas. The Arabs describe a

monstrous polypus, with huge eyes and arms 10 feet long: they declare

that it has entangled bathers and pulled them down close to shore. It

is, in fact, the ‘piuvre,’ so famed of late; and since I left Zanzibar a

French illustrated newspaper showed one of these horrors grappling with

a man of war’s gig. Thus Oppian described a fish that smothered mariners

with its monstrous wings, and drew them under water wrapped in a lethal

embrace. Nieuhoff (Brazil, 1640) mentions a ‘lamprey’ at Pernambuco that

‘snatched all that fell in this way (both men and dogs that swam

sometimes after the boat) into the water.’ Finally, Carsten Niebuhr

(Arabia, chap. i. p. 140. 1762) declares that ‘the cuttle-fish is

dangerous to swimmers and divers, of whom it lays hold with its long

claws; these do not wound, but produce swelling, internal pains, and

often an incipient paralysis.’

Sponge is found in abundance, but when dry it decays. Fine conchological

collections were chiefly made in former years. The merchants spoiled the

market by supplying whole cargos for watch-dials and for polishing

porcelain. Slaves still fasten their canoes to the several banks in the

roadstead, and find in the transparent waters the murex and other prized

specimens. The harp-shell and ‘double-harp’ are found upon the softer

sands enveloped in the folds of their owners; thus parasites cannot ruin

their beautiful and brilliant hues. The ‘Kheti,’ or common cowrie, is

picked up when the tide is out in vast quantities by the coast people,

from Ra’as Hafun to Mozambique. Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton was fortunate

enough in those early days to obtain two specimens of the Cypræa

Broderipii, or orange-cowrie, with a stripe down the dorsum. Exaggerated

ideas of its value had been spread, and it was reported that £500 had

been offered for a single shell. The cowrie trade of Zanzibar was begun

by M. E. P. Herz, of Hamburg. He made a daring speculation, and

supplanted in Western Africa the rare and expensive Hindostan shell by

the coarse, cheap Cypræa of this coast. During the last century the

Portuguese used to export cowries for Angola from the Rio das

Caravelhas, in Brazilian Porto Seguro. The success of M. Herz’s

investment opened a mine of wealth. M. Oswald (senior), afterwards

Prussian Consul-general at Hamburg, commenced as half-owner of a small

vessel which shipped cowries at Zanzibar, and traded with them for palm-

oil at Appi Vista, Whydah, Porto Novo, and lastly Lagos, on the Slave

Coast. As the sack was bought for $O.50 to $1.44, and sold for $8 to $9,

the trip cleared $24,000 (£4800), paid half in coin, half in ‘oil;’ and

the single vessel soon increased to three. The owner was an excellent

ship-master, who carefully supplied his employées with maps, charts, and

sailing directions. He died in 1859, leaving a self-insuring fleet of 18

sail. In 1863 his sons had raised the number to 24, and they kept up

large establishments at Lagos and Zanzibar.

The retail cowrie trade was solely in the hands of Moslems; the Banyans

would not sanction the murder of their possible grandmothers. On the

Continent, as on the Island, the shells are sunned till the fish dies

and decays, spreading a noxious fœtor through the villages. The

collection is then stored in holes till exported to Zanzibar. There the

European wholesale merchant garbles, washes, and stows away the shells

in bags for shipment. They are sold by the ‘Jizleh,’ a weight varying

according to the size of the shell: from 3 to 3.50 sacks would be the

average. The price of the Jizleh presently rose to $7, to $8, and in

1859 it was about $9. Seven vessels were then annually engaged in

carrying cargoes from Zanzibar to Lagos and its vicinity. This rude

money finds its way to Tinbuktu (Timbuctoo) and throughout Central

Africa, extending from the East to places as yet unvisited by Europeans.

Of late years, however, the increased metallic currency has caused the

cowrie trade to fall off, and the steady rate of decrease shows that

shell money is doomed.

Here, as in Western India, the rains bring forth a multitude of pests.

The rooms when lighted at night are visited by cockroaches and flying

ants; scarabæi and various mantidæ; moths and ‘death’s heads’ of

marvellous hideousness. Giant snails (achatinæ), millepedes, and beetles

crawl over the country, and the firefly glances through the shade.

Mosquitos are said not to be troublesome, but in an inner room I found

curtains necessary; the house-fly is a torment to irritable skins.

Fleas, and the rest of the ‘piquante population,’ are most numerous

during the north-east monsoon. The bug, which was held to be an

importation, is now thoroughly naturalized upon the Island; in the

interior it is as common as in the cities of Egypt and of Syria, where a

broken rafter will discharge a living shower. I could not, however, hear

anything of the ‘Pási bug,’ which, according to Dr Krapf, causes

burnings, chills, and fever. He made it to rival the celebrated Meeanee

(Muganaj) bug, the Acarus Persicus, whose exceedingly poisonous bite was

supposed to be fatal. In the Lake Regions of Central Africa (1.371) I

have conjectured that the word is a corruption for Papazi, a carrapato,

or tick. So Dr Krapf writes in the German way ‘Sansibar’ for Zanzibar.

The ants in Zanzibar, as in the Brazil, require especial study, and

almost every kind of tree appears to have its peculiar tenantry. Upon

the clove there is a huge black pismire whose nip burns like fire; as it

has a peculiarly evil savour, tainting even the unaromatic ‘bush,’ it is

mashed and stuffed up the nostrils as a cure for snake-bites. The Copal

is colonized by a semi-transparent ginger-coloured formica, whose every

bite draws blood, and the mango-leaf is doubled up by a smaller variety

into the semblance of a bird’s nest. The horrible odour in parts of the

bush, which young African travellers attribute to malaria and which

often leads them to suspect the presence of carrion, generally proceeds

from ants: I remarked this especially when visiting Abeokuta and other

places in West Africa. Throughout the interior ‘drivers,’ as they are

sensibly termed on the Guinea Coast, visit the huts in armies, and soon

clear them of all offal. A small black ant attacks meat, and the best

way to procure a clean skeleton is to expose the body near its haunt;

beware, however, of cats and dogs. As in Africa generally, the termite

is a plague; this small animal greatly obstructs civilization by the

ravages which it commits upon books and manuscripts.

Few, if any, domestic animals are aborigines of the Island, and of those

imported none thrive save Bozal negroes and asses. Cattle brought to

Zanzibar die after the first fortnight, unless protected from sun, rain,

and dew, and fed with dry fodder. The fatality resulting from the use of

green meat leads here, as in the Concan and at Cape Coast Castle, to the

impression that the grass is poisonous. At some places in the mainland,

Pangani for instance, cattle will not live—this is certainly the effect

of tsetse. At Cape Coast Castle horses always die; at Accra they

survive, if not taken away from the sea-board: in 1863, during a short

march through the country, I found an abundance of the tsetse, or

‘spear-fly.’ The specimens sent by me to England were lost with other

collections in the ill-fated ‘Cleopatra.’ As has lately been shown, the

tsaltsal of Bruce is mentioned in Deut, xxviii. 42, in Isa. xviii. 5,

and in Job xli. 7. The word is translated fish-spear, harpoon, locust;

but it is not proved that tsaltsal and tsetse are the same fly, and the

similarity of the two words may be the merest coincidence. The Banyans

of Zanzibar, who, having no local deity like their more favoured

brethren of Aden and Maskat, keep cattle for religious purposes, never

sell their beasts, and energetically oppose their being slaughtered.

Bullocks cost from $8 to $16, and are generally to be bought.

Sheep are principally the black-faced Somali, with short round knotted

tails, which lose fat from rich grazing: in their own desert country

they thrive upon an occasional blade of grass growing between the

stones. The excessive purity of the air doubtless favours assimilation

and digestion, and as the diet of the desert Arabs proves, life under

such circumstances can be supported by a minimum of food. I believe that

in early times the Persians introduced this animal into Somali and

Galla-land. The Wakwafi, who are rich in black cattle, contemptuously

call their Galla neighbours ‘Esikirieshi,’ or short-tailed sheep,’ from

the article forming their only wealth. The Somali muttons are the

cheapest, averaging from $1 to $3. There is also a ‘Mrima’ race, with

rufous ginger-coloured, hairy coats, and lank tails like dogs: others,

again, have a long, massive caudal appendage like Syrian or Cape

wethers. These cost $2 to $5, and are considered a superior article. The

most expensive are from the Island of Angazíjah, or Great Comoro, and

they are often worth from $8 to $9. As a rule, Zanzibar mutton, like

that of the Brazil, is much inferior to beef, and presents a great

contrast with the celebrated gram-feds’ of India.

Caponized goats in these regions are larger, fatter, and cent. per cent,

dearer than sheep: I have heard of $15 to $16 being paid for the Comoro

animal. The meat is preferred to mutton: my objection to it is the want

of distinct flavour. Yet goats are always offered as presents in the

interior. Some of the bucks brought from the Continent have a peculiarly

ungoatly appearance, with black points and dark crosses upon their tan-

coloured backs and shoulders, and with long flowing jetty manes like the

breast hair of a Bukhti or Bactrian camel. They must be kept out of the

sun, and fed on vetches as well as grass, otherwise they will die during

the rains from an incurable nasal running.

A stunted Pariah dog is found upon the Island and the Continent: here,

as in Western Africa, it is held, when fattened, to be a dish fit for a

(Negro) king. Some missionaries have tasted puppy stew—perhaps puppy

pie—and have pronounced the flesh to be sweet, glutinous, and palatable.

The horse is now a recognized article of consumption in Europe; the cat

has long served its turn, as civet de lapin, without the honours of

publicity; and the day may come when ‘dog-meat’ will appear regularly in

the market. I have often marvelled at the prejudices and squeamishness

of those races who will eat the uncleanest things, such as pigs, ducks,

and fowls, to which they are accustomed, and yet who feel disgust at the

idea of touching the purest feeders, simply because the food is new. It

is indeed time to enlarge the antiquated dietary attributed to the

Hebrew lawgiver, and practically to recognize the fact that, in the

temperates at least, almost all flesh is wholesome meat for man.

European dogs at Zanzibar require as much attention as white babies, but

these die whilst those live. They must be guarded from heat and cold,

sun and rain, dew and wind. Their meals must be light and regular, soup

taking the place of meat. They must be bathed in warm water, their coats

should be carefully dried, they are sent to bed early, and their

smallest ailments require the promptest treatment with sulphur, ‘oil,’

and other specifics, otherwise they will never live to enjoy the

honourable status of pères et mères de familles. The great object is to

breed from them as soon as possible, and the Creoles thrive far better

than even the acclimatized strangers. Arabs have been known to pay $50

for a good foreign watch-dog, hoping thus to escape the nightly

depredations of the half-starved slaves. They are kind masters, great

contrasts to the brutally cruel Negro, whose approximation to the lower

animals causes him to tyrannize over them. On the West Coast of Africa

the black chiefs often offer considerable sums for English dogs; but

none save the lowest ‘palm-oil rough’ would condemn the ‘friend of man’

to this life of vile African slavery. It is really pathetic to meet one

of these unfortunate exiles in the interior, where a white face is

rarely seen: the frantic display of joy, and the evident horror at being

left behind, have more than once made me a dog-stealer.

At Zanzibar, as upon the Continent, fowls may be bought in every

village, the rate being 6 to 12 for the dollar, which a few years ago

procured 36. They are lean, for want of proper food; ill flavoured, from

pecking fish; and miserably small, the result of breeding in—the eggs

are like those of pigeons. Yet they might be greatly improved; the

central regions of Africa show splendid birds, with huge bodies and the

shortest possible legs. This variety is found in the Brazil; and at

Zanzibar the mixture of blood has produced a kind of bantam with a large

foot. The black-boned variety of poultry, and that with the upright

feathers—the ‘frizzly fowl’ of the United States—are also bred here.

Capons are manufactured by the blacks of Mayotte and Nosi-béh (Great

Island). How is it that the modern English will eat hens, when their

great grandfathers knew how to combine the flavour of the male with the

tenderness of the female bird?

Peacocks are brought, as in the days of the Ophir trade, from Cutch.

Madagascar sends hard, tasteless geese and common ducks, and Mozambique

supplies turkeys which are here eaten by Arabs. A local superstition

prevents pigeon-breeding in the house: the birds are found wild on the

opposite coast, but Moslems will not use them as food. The Muscovy duck,

an aborigine of the Platine Valley, has of late years been naturalized—

it is a favourite with Africans, who delight in food which gives their

teeth and masticatory apparatus the hardest and the longest labour. The

only gallinaceous bird which Africa has contributed to civilization, the

Guinea-hen, here called the ‘Abyssinian cock,’ is trapped by slaves upon

the mainland, and is brought to the Island for sale. As might be

expected so near their mother-country, there are seven or eight

varieties of this valuable fowl, and until late years some of the rarest

and the most curious have been unwittingly used for the table. In every

part of the Arab world the Guinea-fowl has a different name: in Syria,

for instance, it is called Dik el Rumi (not Dik el Habash) or Roman

(Greek) cock, a term generally given to the turkey. It is curious on a

coast of estuaries and great river-mouths that the flamingo was not seen

by us.

SECTION 5.

Notes on the Flora of Zanzibar.

The prosperity of Zanzibar, the Island, has hitherto depended upon the

cocoa and the clove-tree. The former grows in a broad band around the

shore: on the Continent it follows the streams as far as 60 miles

inland. In Zanzibar the Arab saying that ‘cocoa and date cannot co-

exist,’ is literally correct; near Mombasah town, however, there is a

fruit-bearing phœnix, and on the promontory, fronting the fort, there is

a plantation of small stunted trees. Everywhere on the Pangani river we

found the ‘brab,’ a wild phœnix, as the word derived from the Portuguese

‘brabo,’ corrupted from ‘bravo,’ or rather in the feminine (palma)

‘brava,’ suggests; and it would appear that the cultivated variety might

be induced to thrive. The country was almost denuded of the cocoa to

make room for cloves, when the late Sayyid threatened confiscation to

those who did not plant in proportion of one to three. There are now

(1857) extensive nurseries in the Máshámbá (plantations), and as this

palm bears after six or seven years, it soon recovered its normal

status. Many trees are prostrated by gusts and tornados: the Hindus

replant them by digging a hole, and hauling up the bole with ropes made

fast to the neighbouring stems—this simple contrivance is here unknown.

The Wasawahili have many different names for the nut, viz. Kidáka, too

green when it falls to the ground for any use but fuel; Dáfú, or Kitále,

when the milk is drinkable, the husk is burned, and the shell is made

into a ladle (maghraf); the Koróma, when the meat is fit to eat, and

Nází,[54] the full-grown nut ready for oil-making. This most useful of

plants supplies, besides meat, wine and spirits, syrup and vinegar,

cords, mats, strainers, tinder, firewood, houses and palings, boats and

sails—briefly, all the wants of barbarous life. Every part of it may be

pressed into man’s service, from the sheath of the first or lowest leaf,

used as a sieve, to the stalk of the young fruit, which, divested of the

outer coat, is somewhat like our chestnut. During the hot N. East

monsoon the refrigerating, diuretic milk is a favourite with strangers,

and much feared by natives. A respectable man is derided if seen eating

a bit of ripe cocoa-nut, a food for slaves and savages from the far

west, but he greedily consumes the blanc-mange-like pulp of the Dáfu,

which is supposed, probably from its appearance, to secrete virility.

Rasped, the ripe kernel enters into many dishes; the cream squeezed from

it is mixed with boiled rice, and the meat, kneaded with wheat-flour and

clarified butter, is made, as at Goa, into scone-like cakes. No palm-

wine is so delicious as that of the cocoa-tree, and the vinegar is

proportionally good. The Zerambo, or distillation from ‘toddy,’ is

adulterated with lime, sugar, and other ingredients, which render it

unpalatable as it is pernicious.

Formerly there were many cocoa-nut oil-mills in the town; now (1857)

they are transferred to the plantations where Sesamum (Simsim) is also

crushed. The ‘Engenho’ is ruder than in the Brazil. A camel, blind-

folded to prevent it eating the oil-cake or striking work, paces slowly

round the ‘horse-walk,’ moving a heavy beam; this rolls a pestle of 6

inches in diameter in a conical wooden mortar, flat-rimmed above, and 4

feet deep, by 3 wide. Formerly as many as 70,000 lbs. were exported in a

single vessel. Now the people save trouble by selling the dried nut, and

when oil is wanted for home use they press and bruise it in water, which

is then boiled; consequently, though the tree again begins to cover the

Island Coast, the oil is three times dearer than at Bombay. It is

calculated that 12,000,000 nuts were exported last year (1856) for the

soap and candle trades, and a single French house has an establishment

capable of curing 50,000 per diem. Demand has prodigiously raised the

price of this article. In 1842 the thousand cost from $2 to $2.50; in

1857 it was $12.50. Though the coir of Zanzibar is remarkably fine and

was much admired at Calcutta, little use is made of it: some years ago

certain Indian Moslems tried to obtain a contract from the local

Government, and did not succeed, prepayment being the first thing

insisted upon.[55]

The constitutional indolence of the people, their dislike to settled and

regular work, and their Semitic unwillingness to venture money, have,

despite cheap labour and low ground-rents, prevented the Island from

taking to its most appropriate industry—sugar-growing. Refiners are

agreed that the cane in Zanzibar and Pemba is equal to that in any part

of Asia. About three years ago (1857) the late Sayyid established a

factory at his estate of Mohayra under a Frenchman, M. Classun, an

assistant, and 32 supervisors. Compelled to live in the interior, they

sickened, and died off, and thus Mauritius lost another dangerous rival.

A superior article was also made by the Persians, but they all caught

fever, and either perished or disappeared. The sugar now grown is

consumed on the Island, and there is only one steam-mill belonging to

the Sayyid.

Cotton is said to thrive upon the Island, but the irregular rains must

often damage the crop. At present a small quantity for domestic use is

brought from the coast, where there are plots of the shrub growing

almost wild. In the drier parts of the Benadir, however, the material

for hand-made cloth must be brought from India, mostly from Surat.

The virgin soils of Zanzibar, in fact, labour under only one

disadvantage,—the fainéantise of the people, but that one is all in all,

hence complaints concerning the expense. In the West India plantations 1

head was allowed per acre of cane, per 2 acres of cotton, and per 3

acres of coffee. Here 4 head would hardly do the work; slave labour is

bad, and free labour is worse.

Coffee was once tried in the Island, but the clove soon killed it; now

not a parcel is raised for sale. The berry, which was large and

flavourless, was not found to keep well. The overrich soil produces an

undue luxuriance of leafage, and the shrub lacks its necessary

wintering.

In the Brazil the richest lands are given to coffee, the next best to

sugar, and the worst to cotton and cereals. The Zanzibar coast from

Mombasah to Mozambique produces small quantities of coffee. Here great

care is given to it; the berry has a peculiarly dry and bitter flavour,

pleasant when familiar, and producing when first taken wakefulness and

nervous excitement. At present the Island imports her supplies from

Malabar and Yemen. The consumption is not great; the Arabs, who hold it

a necessary of life at home, here find it bilious, and end by changing

it for betel-nut. The coast growth sells in small lots, at various

prices, and may become an article of export. In the African interior the

shrub is indigenous between Northern Unyamwezi (S. Lat. 1° 0′) and

Southern Abyssinia (N. Lat. 10°); and, as it is found on the Western

Coast growing wild about the Rivers Nunez and Pongo (N. Lat. 10° 1′), it

probably extends in a broken band across the Continent. There appear to

be many varieties of the shrub. In Karagwah the wild bean is little

bigger than a pin’s head. Harar exports a peculiarly large species,

which sells as Mocha, and the Mozambique coffee does not at all resemble

in flavour that of West Africa. Dr Livingstone (Missionary Travels,

chap. x.) tells us that coffee brought from Southern Arabia to Angola by

the Jesuits was spread probably by agency of birds to 300 leagues from

the coast. It has long been ‘monkeys’ food,’ but it is now worked by the

ex-slavers.

Indigo here, as well as in most parts of intertropical Africa, grows

wild. The great expense of establishments, with the time and trouble,

the skill and attention required for the manufacture, will leave it in

the hands of Nature for many years to come.

Tobacco might be raised: the plant extends thoughout Eastern and Central

Africa, wherever the equinoctial rains fall. Usumbara exports to

Zanzibar stiff, thin, round cakes which have been pounded in wooden

mortars, and neatly packed in plantain leaves. It is dark and well-

flavoured: sailors pronounce it to be very ‘chawable.’ Here it sells at

two pice,[56] or 3/4_d._, per cake; at Usumbara it commands about one-

fifth of that price, paid in cloth and food.

The oil palm (Elæis Guineensis), whose produce has done so much for the

Guinea Coast and the fatal Bight of Biafra, is found, I am told, on the

Island of Pemba, and at other places near Zanzibar. About the Lake

Tanganyika it grows in abundance; the fruit, however, is a raceme, like

the date’s, not a spike, as in the Bonny river. The ‘Mchikichi’ is,

therefore, a different and probably an unknown species. Like that of

West Africa, it supplies wine as well as oil (The Lake Regions of

Central Africa, vol. ii. p. 59). The palm-oil might easily be introduced

into Zanzibar, and would doubtless thrive; but the people have enough to

do without it.

The Mbono or Palma Christi springs up spontaneously, as in most tropical

regions, throughout Zanzibar Island and on the coast. The Hindus say of

a man with more vanity than merit, ‘The castor shrub grows where other

plants can’t.’ The seed is toasted in iron pots, pounded, and boiled to

float the oil. After aloes it is the popular cathartic, and it is rubbed

upon the skin to soften the muscles, with an effect which I leave to the

nasal imagination.

Cinnamon and nutmeg trees were planted by the late Sayyid, and

flourished well on some soils. The latter takes nine years, it is said,

before bearing fruit, and gives trouble—two fatal objections in Arabs’

eyes. The spice is now imported from India. When at Kazah of Unyamwezi I

saw specimens brought, it is said, from the Highlands of Karagwah, but

the plentiful supply from the farther East would prevent this trade

being here developed. The cacao shrub (chocolate), which thrives so well

at Prince’s Island and Fernando Po in the Biafran Bight, has never, I

believe, been tried in Zanzibar.

The Mpira, or caoutchouc tree, flourishes in the Island, and on the

adjacent Continent. The people of Eastern Madagascar tap it in the cold

season, and have sent large cargoes to America. Mr Macmillan, U. S.

Consul, Zanzibar, offered $1000 for good specimens, but the Wasawahili

would not take the trouble to make a few incisions. I heard of two

varieties, a ficus and a lliana; there are probably many more: about the

Gaboon river the valuable gum is the produce of a vine or climber, with

an edible fruit, and the people have learned to extract a coarse

article, and to adulterate it till it is hardly tradeable. Here they use

the thinner branches, well oiled for suppleness, as ‘bakurs’—the

policeman’s truncheon, the cat-o’-nine-tails, the ‘Chob,’ and the

‘Palmatorio’ of E. Africa. I may here remark that our gourd-shaped

articles resist the climate of Zanzibar, whilst the squares and the

vulcanized preparations become sticky and useless. The London-made

blankets of smooth and glazed caoutchouc are so valuable that no

traveller should be without them: those that are not polished, however,

cannot be called waterproof; becoming wet inside, they are unpleasantly

cold. For exposure to the sun white impermeables must be preferred to

black, and a first-rate article is required; our cheap boots and cloaks

soon opened, and when exposed to great heat they were converted into a

viscid mass.

The tamarind, as in India, is a splendid tree, but the fruit, though

used for acidulated drinks, is not prepared for exportation. A smooth-

rooted sarsaparilla, of lighter colour than the growth of the Brazil and

Jamaica, is found wild upon the Island and the coast. The orchilla,

which gives its name to the Insulæ Purpurariæ, has been tried, and,

resembling that of the Somali country, it gives good colour. This lichen

chooses the forks of trees in every lagoon. In the Consular report by

Lieutenant-Colonel Playfair on the trade of Zanzibar for the year 1863,

I find—‘Orchilla is obtained from the more arid parts of the coast to

the north: none grows on the Island.’

The people of Zanzibar are fond of fruits, especially the mango, the

orange, the banana, and the pine-apple. All of these, however, except

the plantain—the bread-fruit of Africa—are seedlings, and engrafting is

not practised. Wall-fruit is of course unknown.

The mango, originally imported from India, and as yet unplanted in the

central regions, is of many varieties, which lack, however,

distinguishing names. Two kinds are common—a large green fruit like the

Alphonse (Affonso) of Western India, and a longer pome, with bright red-

yellow skin, resembling the Goanese ‘Kola.’ These, with care, might

rival the famous produce of Bombay: even in their half-wild state the

flavour of turpentine is hardly perceptible. The fruit is said to be

heating, and to cause boils. The Arabs spoil its taste by using steel

knives: with the unripe fruit they make, however, excellent jams, and

pickles[57] eaten in broths of fowl or meat. The pounded kernels are

administered in dysenteries, but the relish or sauce of which the Gaboon

people are so fond is unknown here and even in India. The fruit is most

plentiful during the N. East monsoon.

There are many varieties of the orange, all, however, inferior to the

produce of the Azores and the Brazil, of Malta and the Mozambique. The

‘native’ fruit, supposed to be indigenous, is green, not so sweet as the

kinds grown by the Portuguese, and the coat must be loosened by two

days’ exposure to the sun or it can hardly be removed. It seldom ripens

before the beginning of July, and it is best in August. The Persian

variety, from about Bandar Abbas, comes to market in early May; it has

grown common since 1842, and it has excelled its original stock. The

peel is loose and green, and the meat, when cleared of pips, tastes

somewhat like currants. The small brick-red Mandarin is good, and

resembles the African and Brazilian Tangerine. The trees want care, they

run to wood, the fruit is often covered with a hard, rough, thick, and

almost inseparable rind, and the inside is full of bitter seeds, pithy

placenta, and fluffy skins. The wild oranges upon the Island and the

Continent resemble those which we call Seville. As a rule the ‘golden

apple’ abounds from May to October. It is considered cooling,

antibilious, and antiseptic, especially when eaten before other food in

the early morning. Thus it was a saying in the Brazil that the physician

does not enter that house where orange-peel is strewed about. In West

Africa the Rev. Mr Brown[58] of Texas judged the fruit harshly, and

predicted the death of a brother missionary who was too fond of it. Many

boxes and bags of oranges are carried as presents from Zanzibar to the

northern ports (Banadir), Aden, and even Bombay; ‘Gulf-Arabs,’ who have

not such luxuries at home, will here devour a basket-full at a sitting.

The sweet limes of Zanzibar are considered inferior to none by those who

enjoy the sickly ‘mawkish’ flavour: the acid limes are cheap, plentiful,

and aromatic; they are second only to those grown about Maskat, the ne

plus ultra of perfume and flavour. The Pamplemouse or Shaddock, the

Pummalo of Bombay (Citrus Decumana), has been planted upon the Island,

but the people declare that it will not ripen: the same is said of the

citron, and the Zanzibarians ignore the Persian art of preserving it.

Bananas at Zanzibar are of two varieties, red and yellow: they are not

remarkable for delicacy of taste. In the highlands of the interior, as

Usumbara and Karagwah, the ‘musa’ may be called the staff of life. The

plantain, in India termed ‘horse-plantain,’ is a coarse kind, sometimes

a foot long, and full of hard black seeds: Europeans fry it in butter,

and the people hold it to be a fine ‘strong’ fruit. The musa bears

during all the year in Zanzibar, but it is not common in May and June.

The pine-apple of the New World grows almost wild in every hedgerow and

bush: cultivation and planting near running water would greatly improve

it. At present the crown is stuck in the earth, and is left to its fate

wherever the place may be. Strangers are advised to remove the thick

outer rind, including all the ‘eyes,’ which, adhering to the coats of

the stomach, have caused inflammation, dysentery, and death. The ananas

ripens in the cold season: when it is found throughout the twelve months

the people predict that next year it will fail. It is, in fact, a

biennial, like the olive in Palestine.

The especial fruits of the poor are the Fanas or ‘Jack’ of India, and an

even more fetid variety, the ‘Doriyan,’ which certain writers call the

‘Aphrodisiac dorion.’ Some Europeans have learned to relish the evil

savour, and all declare the Jack to be very wholesome. Hindus refuse to

touch it, because it is ‘heating food:’ they say the same, however, of

all fruits with saccharine juices. The nuts are roasted, and eaten with

salt, as in India, and the villagers fatten their poultry with ‘the rind

and the rotten.’

The bread-fruit, and the curious growth (Ravenala) known as the

‘Travellers’ Tree,’ were introduced from the Seychelles Islands: the

young plants, however, were soon uprooted and strewed about the fields.

Grapes, both white and red, look well, but, as in the Tropical Brazil,

the bunches never ripen thoroughly; in fact, the same cluster will

contain berries of every age, from the smallest green to the oldest

purple. This is a great disadvantage when making wine, and requires to

be corrected by syrup. The grape can hardly be expected to thrive where

the hot season, as in parts of the New World, is also the rainy season.

Like the produce of the Gold Coast, the stones are large and bitter, and

the skin is tart, thick, and leathery. Bacchus, though he conquered

India and founded Nysa, seems to disdain the equinoctial regions.

According to the French another variety should be introduced, and

perhaps the ground-grape of the Cape might succeed better. There are

many varieties of the vine in the Central Continent, but the people have

hardly learned to eat the fruit: at Zanzibar certain Arabs tried it with

sugar and rose-water, and suffered in consequence from violent colics.

We read in ‘El Bakui’ (A.D. 1403) that some vines bear three crops per

annum.

The water-melon, most wholesome of fruits in warm climates, is found in

Zanzibar and in the Lake Regions of the interior: the best are said to

grow about Lamu and Brava. It is a poor flavourless article, white-

yellow (not white and pink) inside, dry, and wanting the refreshing

juice; it is fit only for boiling, and its edible seed is the best part.

The growth of the papaw is truly tropical; a single year suffices to

hang the tree with golden fruit, which is eaten raw and boiled. Hindus,

as usual, object to its ‘heat;’ the Arabs make from the pips, which

taste like celery, a sherbet, which is said to have peculiar

effects.[59]

The ‘Khwemwé’ tree bears a nut with a hard reticulated skin: this is

roasted like the chestnut, and it affords a small quantity of oil. The

Sita-phal (Annona squamosa) and its congener, the Jam-phal, or sour-sop

(A. reticulata), grow wild over the Island and the Coast; as in the

Brazil, little attention is paid to them; this ‘custard-apple’ is here

considered to be a wholesome fruit. The guava is popularly called

Zaytun, which means ‘olive,’ a quasi-sacred fruit, possibly on the

principle that in England many growths become palms about Easter-time.

It runs wild around Mombasah, and spreads over much ground by a peculiar

provision of nature:[60] the guavas are said not to ripen well; yet on

the West coast they are excellent. The Jamli, a well-known Indian tree

(Eugenia Jambu), whose somewhat austere, subacid fruit resembles the

damson or bullace, is everywhere common. In A.D. 1331 the traveller Ibn

Batutah found El Jammún (الجمّون) at Mombasah.

The interior of the Island produces the ‘Fursád,’ a small stunted

variety of the Persian red mulberry; the ‘Tút,’ or white species, grows

in every jungle from the shore of the Mainland to Fuga, in Usumbara, and

suggests the possibility of rearing silk-worms. The pomegranate here, as

on the Coast, gives a fruit which is hardly eatable: during the season

Omani ships bring a supply of the very best description from the Jebel

el Akhzar (the Green Mountain), near Maskat, and apples from the Persian

Gulf. The Badam, locally called Bídam (the Persian almond), is here

barren; the broad polished leaves are used as platters by the vegetarian

Hindus. The Chinese Rambotang or Leechee is neglected, and the fruit is

poor. The Ber (jujube) is unusually well-flavoured; according to Moslem

custom, the Arab dead are washed with an infusion of the leaves. That

South American growth the Mbibo or Cashew (Caju) tree abounds here and

on the continental sea-board: the nuts are roasted, the pulp is eaten,

though its astringent quince-like flavour is by no means pleasant, and

the juice is distilled, as at Goa. After pressure, the yield, exposed

two or three days for fermentation, produces the celebrated ‘Cauim’

(Caju-ig) of the Brazilian Tupy-Guarani race, a wine here unknown. The

still yields at first a watery spirit, which by cohobation becomes as

fiery and dangerous as new rum. The lower orders like it; the effects,

they say, last out the week.

The principal wild trees are the following. The fan palm, a native of

the Island and the Continent, supplies the chief African industry—mat-

making. The ‘Toddy palm’ is found everywhere; the fruit is eaten, but no

one cares to draw off the beverage. The Dom, or Theban palm (Hyphene

Thebaica), is a rare variety, and the wood is used chiefly for ladder

rungs. Gigantic Raphias, called by the Arabs Nakhl el Shaytan, ‘the

Devil’s palm,’ throw over the streams fronds 30 and 40 feet long: these,

cut, stripped, and bound into rafts, are floated down and exported from

the Mainland to the Island; the material is soft and good for hut-

making. The graceful Areca palm flourishes everywhere, especially upon

the banks of the Pangani river: at the mouth of this stream a saw-mill

might be set up for a few dollars, and I have no doubt that it would

yield large profits, and extend its business as far as the Red Sea.

The Bombax, or silk-cotton tree (Eriodendrum anfractuosum), the Arab

Díbáj and the Kisawahili Msufi, common in East as in West Africa,

affords a fibre usually considered too short and brittle for weaving,

but I have seen Surat cotton very nearly as bad. The contents of the

pericarp have been used for pillow stuffings: the only result (_dicunt_)

was a remarkable plague of pediculi. The Kewra, or frankincense tree of

India, abounds. The red beans of the Abrus Precatorius are used by the

poor and by the wild people as ornaments; even the mixed Luso-African

race of Annobom will wear huge strings of this fruit, our original

‘carat.’ The soft-wooded Baobab, Mbuyu or calabash tree (Adansonia

digitata), grows rapidly to a large size upon the Island as upon the

Eastern and Western coasts. It is a tree of many uses. The trunk, often

girthing 40 feet, forms the water-tank, the trough, the fisherman’s

Monoxyle; the fibrous bark is converted into cloth, whose tough network

is valued by the natives; the fruit pulp is eaten, and the dried shells

serve as Buyu, or gourds. I have repeatedly alluded to this tree in the

Lake Regions of Central Africa, and I shall offer other notices of it in

the following pages. Of late the Mbuyu or Baobab has brought itself into

notice as affording a material more valuable for paper than straw,

esparto or wood pulp, and its superiority to other African basts, has

been acknowledged in England.[61] The Mpingo (Dalbergia Melanoxylum)

gives a purple timber, not a little like rosewood. The ‘African oak,’ a

species of teak, is reported to exist; but this tree does not extend far

north of Mozambique. The ‘P’hun’ is a stately growth, whose noble shaft,

often 80 feet high, springs without knot or branch, till its head

expands into a mighty parachute. It is more ornamental than useful,—the

wood is soft, full of sap, like our summer timber, and subject to white

ants. In these hot, wet, and windy tropical regions some trees,

especially those without gum or resinous sap, grow too fast, and are

liable to rot, whilst others take many years to mature, and are almost

unmanageably hard and heavy. Hence we have had timber-cutting

establishments set up by our Government at a large expense in the Brazil

and in West Africa, but the produce never paid the voyage to England.

The woods known to commerce are the ‘Líwá,’ a white-veined, faintly-

perfumed, bastard sandal from Madagascar: it is used for the sacred fire

by the poorer Parsees. Granadille wood is exported from the Mainland to

Europe, where it is worked for the bearings of mills and for the mouth-

pieces and flanges of instruments. The Arabs call it ‘Abnús,’ and the

Sawahili ‘Mpingo,’ both signifying ebony, which it resembles in

appearance, though not in qualities. Less brittle than ebony, and harder

than lignum vitæ, it spoils the saw; and being very heavy, it refuses to

absorb grease or water. It makes good ram-rods, and the Usumbara people

have cut it into pipe-bowls long before our briar-root was dreamed of.

The sweet-smelling ‘Kalambak’ (Vulg. Columbo), once common upon the

Island, is now brought from Madagascar. There are two kinds,—one poor

and yellow, like our box, the other hard, heavy, and dark red. Its fine

grain takes the high polish of mahogany, and it would make good desks

and work-boxes. Comoro men and Indian carpenters turn out rude furniture

of this wood, which is wilfully wasted: in felling and shaping it the

plantation-slaves, who ignore the saw, chip away at least half. The

smoke is said, to keep off mosquitos. The mango, the jack, the copal

tree, and many others, give fine hard woods for cabinet work.

Planks and scantling, cross-beams and door-panels, are made of two fine

trees, the ‘Mtimbati’ and the ‘Mvúle.’[62] The negro carpenters always

sacrifice, I have said, a tree to make a plank, and the latter is so

heavy that for all light erections, such as upper rooms, boards must be

imported from Europe. The Mtimbati is the more venous; rungs of ladders,

well kept and painted, will last 15 years. The enduring Mvúle, a close-

grained yellow wood, is rare upon the Island, but common in the Coast

jungles. As is the case with the Kalambak, there is no tariff for these

trees: what to-day is sold at a bazar auction for $1 may in a week fetch

$8. A good practical account of the medicinal plants and timbers of

Madagascar and Mozambique, Zanzibar and the Seychelles, will be found in

appendices A. B. vol. ii. of Mr Lyons McLeod’s ‘Travels in Eastern

Africa, with a Narrative of a Residence in Mozambique.’ Captain Guillain

may also be consulted, vol. i. p. 23-25.

The Bordi or Zanzibar rafters are felled by slaves on the Mainland, and

are brought over by Arabs and other vessels. The material is the useful

mangrove, of which we here find the normal two species; the Arabs call

both ‘Gurum,’ and prefer the Makanda, or red kind. At Zanzibar the posts

which become worm-eaten, and are reduced to powder by white ants, must

be changed every five years. In arid Maskat they will last out the

century, and they find their way to Aden, to Jeddah, and even to Meccah.

The usual price in the Island is $2 to $3 per ‘Korjah,’ or score.

The Mti wa Muytu (wild wood), or white mangrove, is found growing not in

brackish water, and upon the mud, like the red variety, but chiefly upon

the higher sandy levels. The wood is small, it shrinks when dried, it

splits easily, and snaps; it is worm-eaten at once, and its porous

nature causes it easily to absorb water. In Zanzibar it is used for fuel

in lime-burning, and it makes a hot and lasting fire; the people also

turn it into caulking mallets, which do not crack or spread out. The

usual price (1857) is half a German crown per Korjah.

Vegetables are little prized at Zanzibar: the list is rather of what

might be than of what exists. A local difficulty is the half-starved

slave who plunders every garden; nothing less than a guard of Baloch

would preserve edible property from his necessities and from his truly

African wantonness of destruction.

Almost all European vegetables will grow in the Island; they require,

however, shade, and they should be planted, as at Bourbon and the

Mauritius, between rows of cool bananas. The best soil is the dark

vegetable mould near the streams. Here lettuces, beet-root, carrots,

potatoes, and yams would flourish—cabbages and cauliflowers have never,

I believe, been tried. The ‘Jezár,’ an excellent sweet potato from

Comoro and Madagascar, has been neglected almost to extinction. Thirty

barrels of many sorted beans were sent from the Cape and grew well: they

are good and abundant in the African interior, but the Island has

allowed them to die out. The ‘egg-plant’ is remarkably fine, and the

wild species thrives everywhere on the sea-board between Somali land and

Zanzibar. The Continent sends sundry kinds of pumpkins and gourds.

Cucumbers of many varieties grow almost without sowing,—the people

declare that they become bitter if touched by the hand whilst being

peeled. The Arabs make from the seed an oil of most delicate flavour,

far superior for salads than the best Lucchese olive. In London I have

vainly asked for ‘cucumber-oil:’ the vegetable is probably too

expensive, and the seeds are too small to be thus used at home. About

Lagos on the Slave Coast, however, there is a cucumber nearly a foot

long, with large pips, which might be sent northwards, and I commend the

experiment to the civilized lover of oil. All kinds of ‘Chilis,’ from

the small wild ‘bird-pepper’ to the large variety of which the Spaniards

are so fond, thrive in Zanzibar, which appears to be their home. There

are extensive plantations of betel-pepper on the Eastern coast of the

Island.

Wheat, barley, and oats here run to straw. Rice is the favourite cereal.

The humid low-lands are cleared of weeds by burning, and the seed is

sown when the first showers fall. To judge from the bazar-price, the

home-grown article is of a superior quality; but nowhere in East Africa

did I find the grain so nutritious as that of the Western Coast. The

hardest working of all African tribes, the Kru-men, live almost entirely

upon red rice and palm-oil. The clove mania has caused the cereal to be

neglected; formerly an export, it is now imported, and in 1860 it cost

the Island £38,000. Jowari (Holcus Sorghum), here called by the Arabs

Ta’am (food), and by the Wasawahili Mtama,—an evident corruption,—is

sown in January and February, and ripens 6 months afterwards. The wheat

of the poorer Arabs, and the oats of horses, it grows 18 feet high, but

the islanders have little leisure, except in the poorest parts, to

cultivate. Banyans, Arabs, and Wasawahili buy it in the Brava country,

the granary of Southern Arabia, on the sea-board from Tanga to Mangao,

and in some districts of the near interior; they retail it in Zanzibar

at large profits. Sesamum (the Hindustani Til or Gingil, the Arabic

Simsim), the commonest of the oleaginous grains, of late demanded by the

French market, where the oil becomes huile d’olives, is also brought

from the Mainland, especially from the northern ports, Lamu and its

neighbours, the Banádir or Haven-land. In 1859 the Island of Zanzibar

exported 8,388,360 lbs, = £20,000. Besides this, the coast ports shipped

several cargos direct: formerly, East Africa used to supply the Red Sea

with this article.

Maize (Muhindi) is a favourite article of consumption, and a little is

grown on the Island. Bájrí (Máwélé, Panicum spicatum, Roxb.), the small

millet, a thin grain, inferior to that of Cutch and Western India, is

little cultivated. The gram[63] of Hindustan (in Arabic, Hummus; in

Persian, Nukhud; and in Kisawahili, Dengu, Cicer Arietinum) is of

several varieties, white and red. The Lúbiyá pulse is also of many sizes

and colours; the black flourishes everywhere, the red is common, and the

white, which the Portuguese of Goa import from the Mozambique regions,

is rare. The best and largest comes from Pemba Island; it is also grown

on the Continent. The leguminous T’hur (the Arabic Turiyan, and the

Kisawahili Barádí, Cajanus Indicus) is almost wild: the Banyans mix it

with rice, and make with it the well-known ‘Dáll’ and ‘Kichri.’ The

small green pea, known in India as Mung (the Persian Másh, and the

Kisawahili Chíroko, or Toka, Phaseolus Mungo, Roxb.), is boiled and

eaten with clarified butter (Ghi) like T’hur. The people also use the

little black grain resembling poppy-seed, known in India as Urat; in

Cutch, Páprí; and here, P’híwí (Phaseolus radiatus). The Muhogo, in the

plural ‘Mihogo,’ or White Cassava (Manihot Aypim), resembles in

appearance the sweet Manioc of the Brazil (Aypim or Macaxeira). The

knotted stem, about six feet long, is crowned with broad digitated

leaves; the conical root, however, has a distinct longitudinal fibre the

size of small whipcord, which is not found in the ‘black, or poisonous,

Manioc’ (Jatropha Manihot, or Manihot utilissima). The people have not

attempted to masticate it into a means of intoxication, the Caysúma of

the Brazilian Tupy.[64] The Muhogo grows everywhere in Zanzibar Island:

it is planted in cuttings during the rains, and it ripens six or eight

months afterwards. In the Consular reports for 1860 we are told that

‘the Manioc or Cassava, which forms the chief food of the slaves and

poorer classes, yields _four_ crops a year.’ This is not probable: the

longer all Jatropha is kept in the ground, within certain limits, the

larger and better is the root. Manioc is carried as an acceptable

present by travellers going into the interior.

At Zanzibar the traveller should train his stomach to this food, and

take care not to call it ‘Manioc.’ When raw it resembles a poor

chestnut, but in this state none save a servile stomach can eat it

without injury. Europeans compare it with parsnips and wet potatoes: the

Hindus declare it to be heavy as lead, and so ‘cold’ that it always

generates rheumatism. The Wasawahili have some fifty different ways of

preparing it. Boiled, and served up with a sauce of ground-nut cream, it

is palatable: in every bazar sun-dried lengths, split by the women, and

looking like pipe-clay and flour, are to be bought: a paste, kneaded

with cold water, is cooked to scones over the fire: others wrap the raw

root in a plantain-leaf and bake it, like greeshen, in the hot ashes.

The poorer classes pound, boil, stir, and swallow the thick gruel till

their stomachs stand out in bold relief. Full of gluten, this food is by

no means nutritious; and after a short time it produces that inordinate

craving for meat, even the meat of white ants, which has a name in most

African languages.

The Bhang (Cannabis Sativa), which grows plentifully, though not wild,

in the interior of the Continent, is mostly brought to Zanzibar from

India. In Mozambique the Portuguese call it Bange or Canhamo de Portugal

(Portugal hemp), and in the Brazil it is also known as Bange, evidently

the Hindustani ‘Bhang.’ The negroes smoke it for intoxication, but

ignore the other luxurious preparations familiar to Hindustan, Egypt,

and Turkey.

Wanga or arrow-root, globular like a variety found in the Concan, is

much less nutritious than the long kind. Here the best is brought from

Mombasah, and after the rains the southern coast could supply large

quantities. The people levigate the root, wash, and sun-dry it: the

white powder is then kneaded with Tembú (palm-wine) into small balls,

which are boiled in the same liquid. It is ‘cold’ and astringent: the

Arabs use it as a remedy for dysentery, and the Hindus declare that it

produces nothing but costiveness. Ginger thrives in the similar

formation of Pemba, and yet it will not, I am assured, grow at Zanzibar,

where it is imported from Western India, the tea being in this climate a

good stomachic. The Calumba or Colombo root is largely exported to

adulterate beers and bitters. Curious to say, the ground-nut, which

extends from Unyamwezi to the Gambia, is rare at Zanzibar.

The corallines of the coast are of course destitute of metals. A story

is told of an ingenious Frenchman who, wishing to become Director of

Mines in the service of H. H. the Sayyid, melted down a few dollars, and

ran a. vein of silver, most unfortunately, into a mass of madrepore: the

curious ‘gangue’ was shown to Lieutenant-Colonel Hamerton, and thus the

’cute experiment failed. The African interior beyond the mountains is

rich in copper and iron. I have described the copper of the Taganyika

Lake Region: it is said to be collected in small nuggets from torrent-

beds, and the bars have evidently been cast in sand. The iron of the

Umasai country makes the finest steel.

Gold has undoubtedly been brought from the mountains of Chaga; and the

eastern plateau promises to rival in auriferous wealth the Gold Coast.

The great fields north of and near the Zambeze, and N. West of Natal,

beyond the Transvaal Republic, discovered in 1866-7 by the German

explorer, M. Mauch, a country consisting of metamorphic rocks and

auriferous quartz, will probably be found extending high up in East

Africa throughout the rocks lying inland of the maritime and sub-

maritime corallines. It is also likely that the vast coal-beds, explored

by the Portuguese, and visited by Dr Livingstone, in the vicinity of

Tete on the Zambeze, and afterwards prolonged by him to the Rufuma

river, a formation quite unknown to our popular works, will be extended

to the Zanzibar coast. The valleys of rivers falling into the Indian

Ocean should be carefully examined. The similarity of climate and

geographical position which the province of São Paulo, and indeed the

maritime regions of the Brazil generally, present with Eastern Africa,

first drew my attention to its vast and various carboniferous deposits,

and they are found to correspond with those of the Dark Continent.

Messrs Rebmann and Pollock visited a spot near the ‘Water of Doruma,’ in

the Rabai Range, near Mombasah, where antimony[65] is dug. They found no

excavations, but the people told them to return after the rains, when

the ground would be soft. The holes, they say, were rarely deeper than a

foot and a half. Captain Guillain (iii. 277) was told that near the

village ‘M’tchiokara’ ‘il existe, presque à fleur de terre, des amas

d’une substance métallifère, qui semblerait être un antimoniure

d’argent, autant qu’il a été permis d’en juger par les échantillons

donnés à nos voyageurs.’

The valuable corals are not found at Zanzibar, but the people sell a

thin and white-stemmed madrepore, with brocoli-shaped heads of the

liveliest red (Tubipora Musica?). Gypsum abounds at Pemba and other

places. Ships bring from Maskat a fine hydraulic mortar called Sáraj,

the result of burning shells in small kilns (Tandúr for Tannúr). The

material is then stored in bags, pounded, and made into paste when

required: it sets to stony consistency like the Pozzolana used by the

Romans for under-water buildings. I presume that they mix with this

calcaire a certain proportion of sand. The natives do not use shell-lime

when chewing betel-nut and leaf: they spoil their teeth with the common

stuff.

The disadvantage of coralline as building material is that it retains

for a long time its ‘quarry-water.’ The Arabs dry it involuntarily, and

humour their indolence by expending a dozen years in constructing a

house—the home, as at Damascus, being rarely finished during the owner’s

life. The remedy is to expel the salts of lime and the animal gelatine

by baking the stone, as is practised in the South Sea Islands. Kilns

would make good lime at Zanzibar: on the island and coast the people now

burn the gypsum and polypidoms in heaps piled upon a circle of billets,

and the smoke, which fills half the town, is considered wholesome.

Instead of being kept unslaked in sacks, it is wetted with sea-water,

which prevents it drying, and it is then heaped up in the moist open

air. Moreover, it is mixed with sea-sand, which is washed in fresh

water, but its salt ‘sweats out’ for many a long year. Thus the best

houses are liable to cuticular eruptions during the wet season: the

mortar cracks, and is patched with a leprosy of blue, yellow, and green

mould. The flat roofs are protected from the rain with thick coatings of

this material, pounded to the desired consistency by rows of slave-women

and boys, armed with long flat tamps and rude mallets. During the last

15 years the price of lime at Zanzibar has increased five-fold, $11

being now (1857) paid for a small heap; and, as usual, when Europeans

are the purchasers, it rises 50 per cent.

SECTION 6.

The Industry of Zanzibar.

The industry of Zanzibar is closely akin to nil; the same may be said of

the coast—both are essentially exporting, and cannot become

manufacturing centres, at least as long as the present race endures.

The principal supply is of matting and bags for merchandise: the

labourers are mostly women, who thus spend the time not occupied in

domestic toil. The best mats are those sent by Madagascar: the ‘native’

Simím (in Kisawahili termed Mkeka), an article upon which none but

Diwans may sit, is neatly made of rush and palm-fronds from the river-

side and from the low grounds of the coast; it is dyed in red patterns

with madder, and the root of the Mudaa-tree boiled in water gives it a

dark purple variegation. The housewives also make a rude fan, imitating

that of Maskat. Materials for common mats and grain-bags are found in

strips of palmated and fan-shaped leaves, cut in the jungles of the

mainland, sun-dried, carefully scraped with knives, and plaited by men,

women, and children. The Maskat traders buy these lengths, and sew them

together with Khus, or thread made from the cocoa-leaf. The large Jámbi

(mat), varying from 8 to 10 cubits long, costs about a quarter of a

dollar: this is employed in bagging (in Arabic, Kafa’at, and in

Kisawahili, Makándá) to defend from rain the cottons, beads, and other

articles which are carried by traders into the far interior.

Cloth is fringed by Wasawahili and slaves. Many tribes, those of Chaga

for instance, will not take a ‘Tobe’ without its ‘Tarázá,’ and generally

when a piece of stuff is given to a wild man, he sits down and first

unravels the edge. The selvage also constitutes a highly-prized

ornament.

Bill-hooks (munda), coarse sword-blades (upanga), and knives (kesu);

hatchets (skoka), and hoes (jembe)—the latter two diminutive, and more

like playthings than working-tools—are made of imported iron, and form a

staple of trade with the mainland. The European spade and the American

broad axe still await introduction. Those who would explore E. Africa

should supply themselves with a large stock of such hardware, and be

careful not to waste them—to savages and semi-barbarians they are

everywhere more precious than gold.

[Illustration: ZANZIBAR, FROM THE TERRACE OF H. B. M.’s CONSULATE.]

Split bamboo forms the brooms, and the hard material tears the plaster

from the walls. A coarse pottery, which the saltness of the clay renders

peculiarly brittle, is fabricated by the Wasawahili at Changani Point,

and supplants the original lagenarias. Some Kumárs, or Hindustani

potters, came to Zanzibar a few years ago; they suffered so severely

from fever that, fancying themselves bewitched, all ran away.

-----

Footnote 26:

Dr Livingstone (Zambezi Expedition, x. 213) confounds these African

‘smokes’ with the blue hazy atmosphere of the ‘Indian summers’ in

America, often the result of grass-burning and prairie fires. During

an August on the Syrian coast and a December in the Brazil, I have

seen the African ‘smokes’ as well developed as at Fernando Po.

Footnote 27:

Dr Krapf (112, Missionary Travels) tells us ‘the Somali coast, from

Cape Guardafui southwards, is designated by the Arabs “Dar Ajam,” not

“Ajan” or “Azan,” as the maps wrongly have it, because no Arabic is

spoken in it.’ Dar Ajam is, I believe, a modern and incorrect phrase.

Footnote 28:

My learned and accomplished friend, Dr R. S. Charnoch (The Peoples of

Transylvania: London, Trübner, 1870, p. 28), agrees with D’Herbelot,

and from Zangi derives the racial gipsy names Czigány, It. Zingari,

Var. Cingani, Zingara, Cingari, Port. Ciganos, G. Zigeuner. But the

Zangi were and are negroes, Wasawahíli, whereas the gypsies never

were.

Footnote 29:

Foreigners—Arab, Persian, and Indian,—call them Sawáhili. They call

themselves Msawahíli in the singular, and Wasawahíli in the plural,

always accenting the penultimate syllable. In the Zangian tongues a

prefixed M is evidently an abbreviation of Mti, a tree, e. g. Názi, a

cocoa-nut, Mnázi, a cocoa-nut tree, or of Mtu, a man. Before a vowel

it is euphoniously exchanged to Mu, e. g. Muarábu, an Arab. The plural

form is Wa, a contraction of Watu, men. ‘Wá’ also is the sign of the

personal, or rather of the rational animate plural opposed to ‘Má,’

and must not be confounded with the possessive pronoun ‘Wá,’ of. Mr

Cooley (Memoir of the Lake Regions, &c., Reviewed, Stanford, 1864),

asserts that ‘Wa mtu,’ ‘of a man,’ becomes by rejection of the

singular prefix, ‘Watu,’ ‘men (des hommes):’ consequently it is an

error to call the coast people Wamrima and the mountaineers Wakilima.

If so, it is an error made by every Kisawahili-speaking man. There

are, however, tribes, for instance the Rabai and the Doruma, that do

not prefix the normal ‘Wá,’ to form a plural. A prefixed ‘Ki,’

possibly contracted from ‘kitu,’ a thing, denotes the language, e. g.

Kisawahili: it also acts diminutive, e. g. Kigito, a little mto, or

river; and it appears to have at times an adjectival sense. Opposed to

it is ‘Ji,’ an augmentative form, e. g. Jito, a big mto. U, possibly

derived from an obsolete root which survives in the Kinyika ‘Uatu’ (a

place), denotes the country, e. g. Uzaramo, Usagara, and Uzungu—Europe

the land of the Wazungu. Some names arbitrarily refuse this locative,

for instance, Khutu, Karagwah, Sanga, Bondei, and others: we never

hear Ukhutu, and so forth. ‘U’ is also a sign of abstract words, e. g.

Mzuri, a handsome man; Uzuri, beauty; Mtajíri, a merchant; Utajíri,

merchandise; Refu, long; Urefu, length. I may here remark that Captain

Speke’s analysis of Uzaramo and Usagara into U-za-ramo and U-sagara,

the country of Ramo and Gara, making them ‘obviously triple words,’ is

wholly inadmissible. The root of national and tribal names, whatever

it may be, is used only exceptionally amongst the Zangian races. Upon

this point I shall presently offer a few observations.

Footnote 30:

Captain Guillain (vol. iii. p. 107, et passim) is correct upon the

subject of the word ‘Mrima.’ Mr Cooley (Memoir on the Lake Regions,

&c., p. 8) informs us that ‘Wamrima’ (the mainland people) signifies

‘of the mainland; for it is a mistake to suppose that Mrima is but a

dialectic variation of Mlimá (read, Mlíma) hill, in its primary sense,

cultivable ground; it is, in truth, a corruption of the Arabic word

Marâ’im, signifying the land to the west, or under the setting sun.

When the early Portuguese navigators told us that the Querimba Islands

were peopled by the Morimos, we must understand by this name the

people of the mainland.’

This is an excellent illustration of how dangerous a thing is a

smattering of philology. The ‘Arabic word Marâ’im’ is absolutely

unknown to the Arabs of Zanzibar. It is evidently coined out of the

dictionary from ‘رَعَمَ observavit occidentem solem.’ I would also ask

how ‘Comazinghi is Arabic?’ (Geography, art. 15). Similarly, we find

(Journal Royal Geographical Society, xix. 190) the Somali ‘Aber’

(error for Habr) derived from the Arabic (Hebrew?) Bar, and explained

by Benú (sons), when it really signifies mother or old woman.

It may be noted that in the Kisawahili of Zanzibar, Mríma is applied

to the coast generally, especially between Mtangata and the Rufiji

River, and it is mostly synonymous with the Arabs’ ‘Bar el Moli,’

whereas Mlíma means a mountain. From the latter comes the diminutive

Kilima, a hillock, also synonymous in composition with the French

mont. It enters into many East African proper names, e. g. Kilima-

njaro, Kilima-ni, &c.

I cannot agree with Messrs Norris and Beke, despite their authority as

linguists, in stripping the national and racial names of their

inflections, e. g. Sagara for Usagara, Zaramo for Uzaramo. Mr Cooley

is equally wrong in stating that the ‘Sawáhily and the Arabs write

Nika, Zeramu, and Gogo.’ The Arabs may, the Wasawahíli do not, thus

blunder. Captain Guillain, I have remarked, is no authority. He

confounds (vol. i. p. 231) the land of Wak-wak (the Semitic Gallas)

with the South African Wamakua; and, worse still, with the ‘Vatouahs.’

And (vol. i. p. 281) he writes the well-known ‘Abban’ of the Somal,

‘Hebban.’ He also unduly neglects the peculiar initial quiescent

consonant M, e. g. (i. p. 456) ‘Foumo’ for ‘Mfumo.’ The bare root-

word, I repeat, is never used by the people, who always qualify it by

a prepositive. This, in our language Brit or Brut may be the

monosyllable upon which Briton and British are built, but it is

evidently barbarous to employ it without suffix. In the Zangian

tongues the prefixes are clearly primitive words; nouns, not as the

Rev. J. L. Doehne explains them in his Zulu-Kafir Dictionary (Cape

Town, 1857), ‘pronouns, in the present state of the language, used as

nominal forms compounded with other words.’

Footnote 31:

‘What Booken (Bukini) means I do not know.’ Wake on the Madecasses.

Journal, Anthrop. Soc. No. 28, xxxi., Dr Krapf (Kisuáheli Grammar, p.

106) uses Bukini as Madagascar generally.

Footnote 32:

Captain Guillain (vol. i. 121—139, et passim) contends, and with much

show of reason, that the Periplus was written after the days of

Ptolemy (A.D. 139 and A.D. 161). ‘Tant de lacunes dans l’œuvre du

grand géographe grec, ne semblent-elles pas assigner à son travail une

place toute naturelle entre les écrits de Marin de Tyr et le Périple?’

Footnote 33:

The daily run (مَجرا) native craft varies from 40 to 50 knots per

diem, and 50 may be assumed as an average. Captain Guillain estimates

it higher, from 48 to 60. Abulfeda gives the Majrá or δρόμος

νυχθημέρος, 100 Hashemi miles = 170 of our geographical miles, here

too high a rate unless aided by currents. Other Arab authors propose

100,000 paces = 100 Roman or Arab miles = 80 geographical miles. The

pilot Theophilus (Ptol. i. 9) rated the day and night run in these

seas at 1000 stadia = 100 miles, or two Ptolemeian degrees; the

Pelusian geographer having, I have said, reduced the degree to 500

instead of 600 stadia.

Footnote 34:

See Part II. chap. 11.

Footnote 35:

Dr Ruschenberger, I know not on what authority, says that the island

is undulated and _crossed_ by three principal ridges, whose most

elevated points are 500 feet high. My information, derived from

hearsay, however, not from actual inspection, assures me that the

waves of ground are disposed north and south.

Footnote 36:

The Bahr el Kharab, or Bad Sea, the mountains El Mulattam (the lashed

or beaten), El Nidameh (of repentance), and El Ajrad (the noisy); the

Mountains of Magnet, and the ‘Blind Billows’ and ‘Enchanted Breakers’

which, says El Masudi, make the Omani sailor of the tribe of Azd sing—

‘O Berberah and Jafuni (Ra’as Hafun), and thy warlock waves!

Jafuni and Berberah and their waves are these which thou seest!’

Footnote 37:

At Latham’s Isle was found guano, which Captain Cogan, I.N., obtained

permission to export. In 1847, however, it was washed away by a ‘Ras

de Marée.’

Footnote 38:

The temperature of the island as observed by French travellers is—

Max. (April 6 A.M. 2 morn.) 89° (F.)—Colonel 88° (F. in shade)

Sykes—

Min. (October, midnight and 6 A.M.) 73° ditto 73°

Mean temperature of the year 79° 15 ditto 79·90 (extreme range

18°-19°)

The following are the results of the evaporating dish:—

Total of month Greatest in one Least in one

day of month. day.

inches. inches. inches.

January, 1857 2·36 0·09 0·04

February ” 2·19 0·10 0·05

March ” 2·49 0·09 0·06

April ” 1·76 0·10 0·03

Footnote 39:

The Consular report of 1859 gives Captain Owen’s variation.

Footnote 40:

Azyab is the classical Arab term for Cæcias (Kaikias) the N.E. wind—

according to Firuzabadi it is the S.E.; Sciron, the N.W., is the Arab

‘Shúrsh’; Lips, the S.W., is ‘Labash’; and Euros, the S.E., ‘Sh’luk’

(scirocco, which is in many places a due east wind). The N.E. is still

commonly called ‘Barráni’; in vulgar Arabic, however, men would say,

Bayn el Shimal w’el Gharb. At Zanzibar the east wind is called by the

Washawahili Zá jú—of above, and the west Phepo Mánde or Umánde—of dew

or mist.

Footnote 41:

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

Sagittarius.

Footnote 42:

V and F are often interchanged, as Mpumbafu (a fool), and Mfulana (a

youth), for Mpumbavu and Mvulana. Generally the Arabs of Oman and

other incorrect speakers prefer the latter, and the Wasawahili the

former, a sound which does not exist in Arabic.

Footnote 43:

Or Mbua, the B and V being confounded, like F and V. Similarly, in the

Prakrit dialects of Indra, vikh becomes bikh (poison).

Footnote 44: