IN ZANZIBAR
There is no name between the covers of the atlas more redolent of
romance and adventure. Ever since Livingstone entered the African
jungle on his mission of proselytism; ever since Stanley entered
the same jungle on his quest of Livingstone; and ever since the
railway-builders began to run their levels and lay their rails along
the trail blazed by them both, Zanzibar has been the chief gateway
through which Christianity, civilisation, and commerce have entered
the Dark Continent. Though its area has been steadily lessened by
spoliation, treaty, and purchase, until the sultanate, which once
extended from Cape Guardafui to Delagoa Bay and inland to the Great
Lakes, has dwindled to two coastwise islands in the Indian Ocean,
Zanzibar the capital is still the most important place, politically
and commercially, in all East Africa, and one of the most picturesque
and interesting cities in the world.
It bears the impress of the many kinds of men of many
nationalities—Arab sultans, slave-traders and pirates, Portuguese
merchants, European explorers, and ivory-hunters—who have swaggered
across the pages of its history. Four hundred years ago Vasco da
Gama's exploring caravels dropped anchor in its harbour, and the
architecture of the city is still Portuguese; a century later the
dhows of the piratical sultans of Muskat swooped down, giving to
Zanzibar an Arab dynasty, a lucrative slave trade and the Arabic
tongue; then a British war-ship came, bringing with it British law and
order and decency, and, under the mask of a “protectorate,” British
rule. Though its golden age ended with the extermination of the trade
in “black ivory,” it is still a place of considerable importance: the
end of several submarine cables, a port of call for many steamship
lines, a naval base within easy striking distance of the German and
Portuguese colonies on the East Coast and guarding the lines of
communication between the Cape and the Canal, and the place of export
for the major portion of the world's supply of copra, cloves, and
ivory.
Seen from the harbour, Zanzibar has little to commend it. So
uninviting, indeed, is the face that it turns seaward, that the story
is told of an American politician sent there as consul, who, after
taking one look from the steamer's deck at the sun-baked town, with
its treeless, yellow beach and its flat-roofed, whitewashed houses,
refused to go ashore at all, from the next port at which the steamer
called cabling his resignation to Washington. Though a city of
something over one hundred thousand people, with the major portion
of the trade of East Africa in its hands, Zanzibar has neither dock,
jetty, nor wharf, passengers and packages alike being disembarked in
small boats and carried through the surf on the shoulders of Swahili
boatmen. There are no words in the language adequate to describe the
scene which takes place on the beach bordering the harbour when
a mail steamer comes in. The passengers—white-helmeted tourists;
pompous, drill-clad officials; sallow-faced Parsee merchants;
chattering Hindoo artisans; haughty, hawk-nosed Arabs; and cotton-clad
Swahilis from the mainland—are unceremoniously dumped with their
belongings on the sand, where they instantly become the centres of
shouting, pleading, cursing, struggling, gesticulating, perspiring
mobs of porters and hotel-runners, from whose rough importunities they
are rescued only by the efforts of a dozen _askaris_, who lay their
rhinoceros-hide whips about them indiscriminately.
When a poor imitation of order has been restored and the luggage has
been rescued and sorted, you start for the hotel—there is only one
deserving of the name—with a voluble hotel-runner clinging to your arm
as though afraid you would break away, and followed by a miniature
safari of porters balancing trunks, hat-boxes, kit-bags, gun-cases,
bath-tubs, and the other impedimenta of an African traveller on their
turbaned heads. Returning the ostentatious salute of the tan-coloured
sentry at the head of the water-stairs, you follow your guide through
a series of tortuous and narrow alleys, plunge into the darkness of an
ill-smelling tunnel, and suddenly emerge, blinded with the sun-glare,
into a thoroughfare lined on either side with tiny, fascinating,
hole-in-the-wall shops, whose owners rush out and offer you their
silver, ivory, and ostrich-feather wares vociferously.
Quite unexpectedly the procession halts under a swinging sign bearing
the legend “Afrika Hotel.” The proprietor, a rotund, red-cheeked
German who looks as if he had stepped straight out of a Munich
beer-garden, escorts you pantingly up two—three—four flights of stone
stairs, lined on either side with strange native weapons and East
Coast curios, to a brick-floored cell under the roof, there being
more likelihood of catching an occasional breeze, he explains, near
the top. Wind in any form is as scarce in Zanzibar as rain is in the
Sahara, and when they do get a breath of air strong enough to stir the
window curtains it is as much of an event as a cyclone is in Kansas.
The furniture of the room, monastic in its simplicity, consists of
an iron bed, an iron table, an iron chair, and an iron washstand
supporting a tin bowl and pitcher, for anything which is not of metal
stands an excellent chance of destruction by the devastating swarms
of red ants. The bed is draped with a double thickness of mosquito
netting of so fine a mesh that the air within feels strained and
unnourishing, like milk that has been skimmed and watered, and the
heavy shutters are closed in a fruitless attempt to keep out some of
the stifling mid-day heat, though the proprietor, after glancing at
the thermometer, remarks that it isn't so hot after all, being only
120 in the shade.
[Illustration: “Zanzibar has neither dock, jetty, nor wharf,
passengers and packages alike being disembarked in small boats and
carried through the surf on the shoulders of Swahili boatmen.”
Illustration: The business portion of Zanzibar is a wilderness of
narrow streets and dim bazaars, hemmed in with tiny shops and wretched
dwellings, with here and there an ancient house dating from the
Portuguese occupation.
THE GATEWAY TO EAST AFRICA.
_Photograph by DeLord, Zanzibar._]
You are advised to go to bed in the dark, as a light would attract the
mosquitoes, and never, never, under any circumstances, to get into bed
until you have assured yourself that there are no mosquitoes inside
the curtains, though the proprietor cheerfully adds: “But you can
only get fever from the black-and-white-striped ones.” Likewise, you
are solemnly warned never to go out of doors during the day without
a topée lest you die from sunstroke (I knew one man who took off his
helmet long enough to wave good-bye to a departing friend and was dead
in an hour in consequence); never to drink other than bottled water
(at two rupees the bottle) lest you die from typhoid; never to stay
out of doors after nightfall lest you contract malaria; never to put
on your boots without first shaking them out lest a snake or scorpion
have chosen them to spend the night in; never to return late at night
from the club without getting a policeman to escort you, lest a native
thug run a knife between your shoulder-blades; and never to put
your revolver under your pillow, where it cannot be reached without
attracting attention, but to keep it beside you in the bed, so that
you can shoot through the bedclothes without warning if you should
wake up to find an intruder in your room.
The best and most interesting thing about the Afrika Hotel is its
bath, a forbidding, stone-floored room, totally devoid of furniture or
tub. It is separated from the sleeping-room by the hotel parlour, so
that lady callers unaccustomed to Zanzibar ways are sometimes a trifle
startled to see a gentleman whose only garment is a bath-towel pass
through the parlour with a hop-skip-and-jump on his way to the bath.
You clap your hands, which is the East Coast equivalent for pressing
a button, and in prompt response appears an ebony-skinned domestic
bearing on his head a Standard Oil can filled with water. Running
through a staple in the ceiling is a rope, and to the end of this rope
he attaches the can, hoisting it until it swings a dozen feet above
your head. Hanging from a hole in the side of the can is a cord. When
you are ready for your bath you stand underneath the can, jerk the
cord sharply, and the can empties itself over you like a cloudburst.
Then you clap your hands and wait until the Swahili brings more water,
when you do it all over again.
The first thing the new arrival in Zanzibar does is to bathe and
put on a fresh suit of white linen, for to appear presentable in
the terrible humidity of the East Coast requires at least four
white suits a day; and the second thing he does is to call upon the
consul, a very homesick young gentleman, who is so glad to see any
one from “God's country” that he is only too eager to spend his
meagre salary in entertaining him. If it is drawing toward sunset
you will probably find him just starting for the golf club, which is
the rendezvous at nightfall for Zanzibar's European society, whose
chief recreations, so far as I could see, are golf, gambling, and
gossip. With a sturdy, khaki-clad Swahili, a brass American eagle on
the front of his fez, trotting between the shafts of the consular
'rickshaw (the Department of State refuses to appropriate enough
money to provide our representative with a carriage), and another
pushing behind, you whirl down the bright red highway which leads
to the suburb of Bububu; past the white residency from which the
British consul-general gives his orders to the little brown man who
is permitted to play at ruling Zanzibar; past the police barracks,
where, at sight of the eagle on the 'rickshaw coolies' fezes, the
sentry on duty shouts some unintelligible jargon, a bugle blares,
and a group of native constables spring into line and bring their
hands smartly to the salute as you pass; past the Marconi station on
the cliff, where the wireless chatters ceaselessly with Bagamoyo and
Kilindini and Dar-es-Salam; until you come to a sudden halt before
a bungalow, almost hidden in a wonderful tropic garden, whose broad
verandas overlook an emerald velvet golf course which stretches from
the highway to the sea.
Playing golf in Zanzibar always struck me as one of the most
incongruous things I ever did. It seems as though one ought to devote
his energies to pirating or pearl-fishing or slave-trading in a
place with such a name. Moreover, there is such a continuous circus
procession passing along the highway—natives in _kangas_ of every
pattern and colour; Masai and Swahili warriors from the mainland;
Parsee bankers in victorias and Hindoo merchants in 'rickshaws; giant
privates of the King's African Rifles in bottle-green tunics and
blue puttees; veiled women of the Sultan's zenana out for an airing
in cumbersome, gaudily painted barouches, preceded and followed by
red-jacketed lancers on white horses; perhaps his Highness himself, a
dapper, discontented-looking young mulatto, whirling by in a big gray
racing-car—that it is quite out of the question to keep your eye on
the ball, and you play very bad golf in consequence. Another trouble
is that the caddies are all natives, and golf is discouraging enough
in itself without having to shout “Fore!” or ask for a mashie or a
putter in Swahili.
After a perfunctory round or two you go back to the club-house
veranda, where the European society of Zanzibar is seated in cane
chairs, with the English illustrated weeklies, and tall glasses with
ice tinkling in them. The talk is the talk of exiled white folk
everywhere: the news contained in the Reuter's despatches which are
posted each evening on the club bulletin-board; the condition of the
ivory market; the prospects for big game-shooting under the new German
game laws; the favourites for the next day's cricket match, the next
week's polo game, or the next month's race meet; the latest books, the
newest plays—as gathered from the illustrated weeklies; what is going
to become of Smyth-Cunninghame's widow, whose husband has just died of
fever; is it true that Major Buffington has been transferred from the
“K. A. R.” to a line regiment; and is Germany really looking for war?
That night the consul gives a dinner for you at the Zanzibar Club,
where you are served by bare-footed servants immaculate in crimson
turbans and white linen, and eat with solid silver from irreproachable
china, in a room made almost comfortable by many swinging punkahs.
After dinner you sit on the terrace in the dark, somewhere between
the ocean and the stars, and over the coffee and cigars you listen to
strange stories of “the Coast,” told by men who themselves played a
part in them. One man tells you what Stanley really said when, after
months in the jungle without seeing a white man's face, he finally
stumbled on the camp of Livingstone, and how, instead of rushing up
and throwing his arms around him and crying, “Saved at last, old
fellow; saved at last!” he lifted his helmet at sight of the gaunt,
fever-stricken man sitting in front of the tent, and said very
politely, just as he would if accosting a stranger on Fifth Avenue
or Piccadilly, “Doctor Livingstone, I believe?” Another, a wiry,
bright-eyed Frenchman, with a face tanned to the colour of mahogany,
tells of the days when the route from Tanganyika to the coast was
marked by the bleaching skeletons of slaves, and he points out to you,
across the house-tops, the squalid dwelling in which Tippoo Tib, the
greatest of all the slave-traders, died. A British commissioner, the
glow of his cigar lighting up his ruddy face, his scarlet cummerbund,
and his white mess jacket, relates in strictest confidence a chapter
of secret diplomatic history, and you learn how the German Foreign
Office shattered the British dream of an all-red Cape-to-Cairo
railway, and why England is so desirous of the Congo being placed
under international control. A captain of the King's African Rifles
holds you spellbound with a recital of the amazing exploits of the
American elephant poacher, Rogers, who, jeering at the attempts of
three governments to capture him, made himself, single-handed, the
uncrowned king of Equatoria. Then a Danish ivory-hunter breaks in, and
you hear all sorts of wild tales of life on safari, of ivory-trading
in the Lado Enclave, of brushes with the Uganda police south of
Gondokoro, and of strange tribal customs practised in the hinterland.
When the dawn begins to creep up out of the east, the Englishmen tell
the drowsy steward to bring them Scotch and sodas and the Frenchmen
order absinthes; then every one shakes hands with every one else
and you make your way back to your hotel through the narrow, silent
streets, returning the salute of the night constable sleepily.
No visitor leaves Zanzibar without going to the cemetery. Like the
palace, and the stone ship built by a former sultan, it is one
of the show places of the city. I saw it under the guidance of a
gloomy English resident, who said that he always walked there every
evening “so as to get accustomed to the place before staying in it
permanently.” Leading me across the well-kept grass to two newly dug
graves, he waved his hand in a “take-your-choice; they're-both-ready”
gesture. “Two deaths to-day?” I queried. “Not yet,” said he, “but
we always keep a couple of graves ready-dug for Europeans. In this
climate, you know, we have to bury very quickly.” For in Zanzibar, as
all along the East Coast, the white man's hardest fight is with a foe
he can feel only as a poison in his burning veins, and can see only in
the dreams of his delirium—the deadly black-water fever.
Though the streets in the outskirts of Zanzibar are wide, well
shaded, and excellently macadamised with some kind of bright-red soil
which recalls the roads outside of Colombo, in Ceylon, the business
portion of the town, where the natives chiefly live, is a labyrinth
of narrow streets and dim bazaars, hemmed in with tiny shops and
wretched dwellings, with here and there an ancient house dating
from the Portuguese occupation, impregnable as a feudal castle, its
massive doorways of exquisitely carved teakwood in sharp contrast
to the surrounding squalor. Every shop is open to the street, and
half of them, it seemed to me, are devoted to the sale of ivory
carvings, ostrich feathers, brassware, and silver-work, though the
Arab workmanship is in all cases poorly executed and crude in design.
The most typical things to be bought in Zanzibar are the quaint images
of African animals which the natives carve from the coarser grades of
ivory and which make charming, though costly, souvenirs. Nothing is
cheap in Zanzibar, or, for that matter, anywhere else in Africa, and
every purchase is a matter of prolonged and wearisome negotiation,
the seller fixing a fantastic price and lowering it gradually, as he
thinks discreet, his rock-bottom figure depending upon the behaviour
and appearance of the customer.
Zanzibar is still the chief ivory market of the world, the supplies of
both elephant and rhino ivory, so I was assured by British officials,
steadily increasing rather than diminishing. A few years ago it
was feared that the supply of ivory would soon run out, but the
indiscriminate slaughter of elephants has been checked, at least in
British territory, by strict game laws rigidly enforced. Whether from
the laxity of its laws or the indifference of its officials, German
East Africa is still the ivory-hunter's paradise, the extermination
of elephants in that colony proceeding almost unchecked. When one
remembers that African ivory brings all the way from fifty dollars to
five hundred dollars per hundredweight in the open market, and that
the tusks of a full-grown elephant weigh anywhere from one hundred
to five hundred pounds, it will be seen that the ivory-hunter's
trade is a profitable though a hazardous one. Other ivory-hunters,
instead of going after the elephants themselves, spend their time in
journeying from village to village and bartering with the natives
for the stores of ivory—some of them the produce of centuries—which
most of them possess. Unless the trader knows his business, however,
the simple-minded natives will sell him the so-called “dead” ivory
from the bottom of the pile rather than the “live” ivory of elephants
recently killed, which, because of its greater elasticity and better
colour, commands a much higher price, and, I might add, forms but a
small part of the supply. Somewhere in the neighbourhood of half a
million pounds of ivory are shipped from Zanzibar each year to make
the toilet-articles and billiard-balls and piano-keys of the world.
The population of Zanzibar is pretty evenly divided between Arabs
and Swahilis, with a considerable sprinkling of East Indians, who
play the same rôles of peddlers, petty tradesmen, and money-lenders
in the Orient that the Jews and Armenians do in the Occident. The
dress of the Swahili is as simple as it is striking: two lengths of
cotton cloth, called _kanga_, one draped about the waist and the other
about the shoulders, with an extra remnant twisted into a turban,
form the costume of men and women alike, though the Swahili women,
in addition to the _kanga_ proper, wear cotton pantalets resembling
those in fashion in ante-bellum days, edged at the ankles with neat
little frills, like those the chefs at fashionable restaurants put on
lamb chops. These _kangas_ are crudely stamped in an endless variety
of startling patterns, some of the more elaborate designs looking,
from a little distance, as though embroidered. The inventiveness of
the British, Belgian, and German designers must be sorely taxed, for
the fashions in East Africa change as rapidly as they do in Paris and
with as little warning, the _kangas_ stamped with card-pips—hearts,
diamonds, clubs, and spades—which were all the rage among Zanzibar's
dusky leaders of fashion for a time, suddenly giving place to those
bearing crude pictures of sailing-ships or Arabic quotations from the
Koran. One negro dandy whom I saw paraded the streets, the envied of
all his fellows, wearing a _kanga_ on which was printed, in endless
repetition, the British coat of arms and the loyal motto “God Save
the King!” while still another swaggered by in a garment sprinkled
over with the legend in letters six inches high “Remember the Maine!”
Though the important trade in cotton goods which we once had with East
Africa has long since passed into British and German hands, there is
a certain melancholy satisfaction in knowing that, so firmly does
the reputation of our cottons endure, the natives of all this region
still insist on the piece goods which they purchase, whether made in
Manchester or Dresden, bearing the stamp “American,” and will take no
other.
The costumes of the Arabs, on the other hand, recall all the stories
of pirates and slave-traders which one associates with this romantic
coast, for the men, ignoring the law which prohibits the carrying of
arms, swagger insolently through the streets with dagger-filled sashes
and trailing scimiters, their white _jibbahs_ flapping about their
sandalled feet and their snowy turbans cocked rakishly. The dress of
the Arab women of Zanzibar resembles the costume of no other people,
its characteristic features being the immense, doughnut-shaped turbans
and the frilled, skin-tight trousers striped like barber-poles.
[Illustration: ARAB WOMEN OF ZANZIBAR.
“Their dress resembles the costume of no other people, its
characteristic features being the immense, doughnut-shaped turbans and
the frilled, skin-tight trousers striped like barber-poles.”]
The universal medium of communication in Zanzibar and along the East
Coast is Swahili, this _lingua franca_ being generally used not only
between Arabs and natives, and between natives and Europeans, but
between Europeans themselves, the English, French, and Portuguese
traders who do business in German East Africa depending entirely upon
this mutually understood tongue for conversing with the Germans. I
remember once, in Dar-es-Salam, listening to an Englishman who knew no
French and a Frenchman who knew no English hold an animated political
argument, and later on bargain with the German hotel-keeper for
accommodations in the same outlandish tongue.
I have always found that the farther people dwell from civilisation,
the more punctilious they are about observing its usages. That is why
English officials at remote and lonely stations in India invariably
put on evening clothes before they sit down to their solitary dinners,
and why the question of precedence is not taken nearly as seriously
in London or Paris or New York as it is in Entebbe or Sierra Leone.
One would quite naturally suppose that the Europeans dwelling in those
sun-scorched, fever-ridden, God-forsaken countries along the East
Coast would adopt the careless attitude of Kipling's homesick soldier,
who longed for a land “where there ain't no Ten Commandments and a man
can raise a thirst”; but, strangely enough, the exact opposite is the
case. There is plenty of drinking throughout Africa, it is true, for
the white men dwelling there will assure you that to exist in such a
climate a man must “keep his liver afloat,” but, though heavy drinking
is the rule, the man who so far loses control of himself as to step
beyond the bounds of decency is ostracised with a promptness and
completeness unheard of in more civilised places. This respect for the
social conventions was graphically illustrated by an unpleasant little
episode which occurred during my stay in Zanzibar. A young Englishman,
who had been rubber-prospecting in the wilds of the back country for
nearly a year, celebrated his return to civilisation, or what stands
out there for civilisation, by giving a stag dinner at the club. It
was rather a hilarious affair, as such things go, and when it broke
up at dawn every one had had quite as much to drink as was good for
him, while the youthful host had had entirely too much. In fact, he
insisted on winding up the jollification by smashing all the crockery
and glassware in sight, and, when the native steward remonstrated,
he tripped him up very neatly and sat on him. Some hours later, being
sober and very much ashamed of himself, he sent a check for the damage
he had done, together with a manly letter of apology, to the board of
governors, which promptly responded by demanding his resignation. Now,
to drop a man from a club in East Africa is equivalent to marooning
him on a desert island, for out there the club is invariably the
rendezvous of the respectable European society, the only place where
one can get a European book or newspaper to read or a well-cooked
meal to eat, and the scene of those dinners, dances, card parties,
charades, and other forms of amusement which help to make existence in
that region endurable. Not content with demanding his resignation and
thus closing to him the gateway to every decent form of recreation in
Zanzibar, the virtuous board of governors notified every other club on
the coast of its action, so that when business called the youngster to
Mombasa or Dar-es-Salam or Lourenço Marques, he found himself barred
from the privileges of the clubs in those places as well. But his
punishment did not end there, for, a few days after his escapade, two
club members to whom he nodded upon the street cut him dead, while
another, a man whom he had known intimately for years, answered his
greeting by remarking, as he raised his eyebrows, “Really, sir, I
don't think I have the pleasure of your acquaintance.”
In the happy-go-lucky days before the reorganisation of our consular
service a profane and uncouth lumberman named Mulligan—the name will
do as well as another—was rewarded for certain political services
by being appointed consul at Zanzibar. At that time the American
consulate was in a building on the edge of the harbour and almost next
door to the Sultan's palace. Mulligan had not been in Zanzibar a week
before he began to complain that he was being robbed of his sleep by
the women of the royal harem, who chose the comparatively cool hour
just before sunrise in which to bathe on the sandy beach below the
consulate windows. Mulligan, after making numerous complaints without
receiving any satisfaction, openly announced that the next morning he
was disturbed he would take the law into his own hands. He did not
have to wait long for an opportunity, for, returning a few nights
later from an unusually late séance at the club, he had scarcely
fallen asleep when he was aroused by the shrieks of laughter of native
women bathing beneath his window. Springing out of bed, he caught up
a shot-gun standing in the corner, slipped in a shell loaded with
bird-shot, and, pushing the muzzle out of the window, fired at random.
The roar of the discharge was echoed by a chorus of piercing screams
and Arabic ejaculations of pain and terror, whereupon the consul,
satisfied that he had effectually frightened the disturbers of his
rest, returned to bed and to sleep. An hour later he was reawakened
by his excited vice-consul, who burst into the bedroom exclaiming,
“You'll have to get out of here quick, Mr. Consul! It won't be healthy
for you in Zanzibar after what happened this morning. There's a German
boat in the harbour and if you hurry you'll just about catch her! But
there's no time to spare.” “Now, what the devil have I got to get out
of here for, confound you?” demanded the consul, now thoroughly awake
and thoroughly angry. “Certainly not because I frightened a lot of
nigger wenches who were waking me up at four o'clock every morning
with their damned hullabaloo?” “Nigger wenches nothing!” exclaimed the
vice-consul, as he began to throw his chief's belongings into a trunk.
“When you let off that load of bird-shot this morning you peppered
the Sultan's favourite wife, and now the old man's fairly hopping
with rage and swears that he'll have your life even if you are the
American consul.” Forty minutes later ex-Consul Mulligan ascended the
gangway of a homeward-bound steamer, for those were the days before
the British protectorate, when the tyrannical sultans of Zanzibar were
laws unto themselves.
The morning before I left I went with the consul to call on
his Highness Seyyid Ali bin Hamoud bin Mohammed, the Sultan of
Zanzibar.[3] The 'rickshaw stopped with a jerk in front of the
handsome iron gates of the palace; the guard turned out and presented
arms, while a negro bugler sounded a barbaric fanfare; an official in
white linen and much gold lace met us at the entrance and escorted
us up flight after flight of heavily carpeted stairs, until we
emerged, breathless and perspiring, on the breeze-swept upper
veranda of the four-story building, which, with its long piazzas
and its uncompromising architecture, looks more than anything else
like an American summer hotel. After a quarter of an hour spent in
smoking highly perfumed cigarettes, another official announced that
his Highness would receive us, and we were ushered into a small room
furnished like an office, where a pleasant-looking young negro of
twenty-six or so was sitting at an American roll-top desk dictating
letters to an English secretary. Like every one else, he was dressed
entirely in white linen, with a red tarboosh, gold shoulder-straps,
and pumps of white buckskin. Motioning us to be seated, he offered us
more of the perfumed cigarettes, inquiring, with an Eton accent, as to
the state of my health, when I arrived, what were my impressions of
Zanzibar, when I intended to leave, and where I was going. As we were
bowing ourselves out, after ten minutes of perfunctory conversation,
the Sultan's secretary sidled up and whispered: “His Highness expects
that you will give him the pleasure of staying to luncheon.”
[3] Since this was written Sultan Ali bin Hamoud has abdicated in
favour of his cousin, Seyyid Khalifa.
The luncheon was very much the same as one would get at Sherry's
or Claridge's or the Café de Paris, except that for our special
benefit a few native dishes with strange names and still stranger
flavours had been added to the menu. The wines were irreproachable
and the Hodeidah coffee and Aleppo cigarettes could have been had
nowhere west of Suez. My eye was caught by the magnificence of the
jewel-monogrammed cigarette-case which the Sultan constantly passed
to me, and I ventured to comment on it admiringly. “Do you like it?”
said he, with a pleased smile. “It is only a trifle that I picked up
last spring in Paris. Accept it from me as a little souvenir of your
visit to Zanzibar—really—please do.” Quite naturally I hesitated, as
who would not at accepting offhand a thing worth a couple of thousand
rupees. The Sultan looked disappointed. “It is not worthy of you,” he
remarked. “Some day I shall send you something more fitting,” and he
put it back in his pocket. All the rest of my stay in Zanzibar I kept
thinking how near I came to getting that magnificent case, and what a
story it would have made to tell at dinner tables over the camembert
and coffee; and it almost spoiled my visit. As I was leaving the
palace the military secretary inquired: “Why on earth didn't you take
the cigarette case when the Sultan offered it?” “Polite hesitation,” I
replied. “I was going to accept it in just a minute.” “In the East you
should accept first and hesitate afterward,” he answered.
After luncheon I played billiards with the Sultan. He is a good
player, and it was no trouble at all to let royalty win gracefully.
The conversation turned on America. It seemed that the two Americans
whom his Highness most admired were Theodore Roosevelt and John Philip
Sousa; the one because he had visited Africa and proved himself a
real _shikari_; the other because he had immortalised the Sultan's
dominions in his _A Typical Tune of Zanzibar_. (It happened that a
month or so later I dined with Mr. Sousa in Johannesburg and told him
this incident, whereupon he offered to send the Sultan an autographed
copy of _El Capitan_. If he has forgotten to do it, this will serve to
remind him that the Sultan's address is still “The Palace, Zanzibar.”)
Incidentally his Highness mentioned that he was about to be married.
Later on the English secretary supplemented this by explaining that
his latest bride—he already had three wives—was the fifteen-year-old
daughter of a well-to-do merchant in the bazaars, with whom the
Sultan had been haggling regarding the price to be paid for the girl
for a year or more. After a time we strolled out on the breeze-swept
veranda. As I leaned over the railing I noticed something sticking up
out of the harbour and I pointed to it. “What is that, your Highness?”
I inquired. “A wreck,” he answered shortly. “A wreck! A wreck of
what?” I persisted. “The wreck of the Zanzibar navy,” he said, turning
away—and I suddenly recalled the story of the little gun-boat with
its negro crew that stood up to the great British cruiser and banged
away with its toy guns until it was sent to the bottom with every man
on board, and all at once I felt very sorry for this youth, whose
fathers held sway over a dominion as large as all that part of the
United States lying west of the Rocky Mountains, but which, thanks to
the insatiable land hunger of the European nations, has dwindled to a
territory scarcely larger than Rhode Island.
That in the not far-distant future Zanzibar will again play a part
in the drama of international politics there is but little doubt.
The island's position adjacent to the mainland, from which it is
separated by a channel less than thirty miles wide, combined with
the advantages of its deep and roomy harbour, mark it naturally as
the chief entrepôt of all East Africa, and the gate through which the
interior of the continent is destined to be opened up to European
settlement and exploitation. Being almost equidistant—some two
thousand four hundred miles—from India, the Cape, and the Canal, and
controlling the lines of cable communication with Madagascar and
Mauritius, it affords a strategic position of immense importance as
a naval base in the contingency of closing the Suez Canal in time of
war. Germany has long had a greedy eye on Zanzibar, for the nation
that holds it controls, both strategically and commercially, Germany's
East African possessions and their capital of Dar-es-Salam. That
England would be willing to turn Zanzibar over to Germany in return
for the cession of a strip of territory through German East Africa
which would permit the completion of her long-dreamed-of, and at
present indefinitely interrupted, Cape-to-Cairo trunk line, there is
every reason to believe. So I trust that the little brown man in the
white-and-gold uniform will enjoy playing at sovereignty while he
may, for if that day ever comes to pass when the red banner on his
palace flagstaff is replaced with the standard of Germany, there will
pass into the pleasant oblivion of the Paris boulevards the last of
a long line of one-time powerful, oftentimes piratical, but always
picturesque rulers, the Sultans of Zanzibar.