CHAPTER I.
Arrival at Zanzibar Island—Life at Zanzibar—The town of Zanzibar, its roadstead and buildings—The One Cocoa-nut tree and the red cliffs— Selection and purchase of goods for the journey—Residence of Prince Barghash—Busy mornings—Pleasant rides and quiet evenings.
_Sept. 21._—Twenty-eight months had elapsed between my departure from Zanzibar after the discovery of Livingstone and my re-arrival on that island, September 21, 1874.
The well-remembered undulating ridges, and the gentle slopes clad with palms and mango trees bathed in warm vapour, seemed in that tranquil drowsy state which at all times any portion of tropical Africa presents at first appearance. A pale-blue sky covered the hazy land and sleeping sea as we steamed through the strait that separates Zanzibar from the continent. Every stranger, at first view of the shores, proclaims his pleasure. The gorgeous verdure, the distant purple ridges, the calm sea, the light gauzy atmosphere, the semi-mysterious silence which pervades all nature, evoke his admiration. For it is probable that he has sailed through the stifling Arabian Sea, with the grim, frowning mountains of Nubia on the one hand, and on the other the drear, ochreous-coloured ridges of the Arab Peninsula; and perhaps the aspect of the thirsty volcanic rocks of Aden and the dry brown bluffs of Guardafui is still fresh in his memory.
But a great change has taken place. As he passes close to the deeply verdant shores of Zanzibar Island, he views nature robed in the greenest verdure, with a delightful freshness of leaf, exhaling fragrance to the incoming wanderer. He is wearied with the natural deep-blue of the ocean, and eager for any change. He remembers the unconquerable aridity and the dry bleached heights he last saw, and lo! what a change! Responding to his half formed wish, the earth rises before him verdant, prolific, bursting with fatness. Palms raise their feathery heads and mangoes their great globes of dark green foliage; banana plantations with impenetrable shade, groves of orange, fragrant cinnamon, and spreading bushy clove, diversify and enrich the landscape. Jack-fruit trees loom up with great massive crowns of leaf and branch, while between the trees and in every open space succulent grasses and plants cover the soil with a thick garment of verdure. There is nothing grand or sublime in the view before him, and his gaze is not attracted to any special feature, because all is toned down to a uniform softness by the exhalation rising from the warm heaving bosom of the island. His imagination is therefore caught and exercised, his mind loses its restless activity, and reposes under the influence of the eternal summer atmosphere.
Presently on the horizon there rises the thin upright shadows of ships’ masts, and to the left begins to glimmer a pale white mass which, we are told, is the capital of the island of Zanzibar. Still steaming southward, we come within rifle-shot of the low green shores, and now begin to be able to define the capital. It consists of a number of square massive structures, with little variety of height and all whitewashed, standing on a point of low land, separated by a broad margin of sand beach from the sea, with a bay curving gently from the point, inwards to the left towards us.
Within two hours from the time we first caught sight of the town, we have dropped anchor about 700 yards from the beach. The arrival of the British India Company’s steamer causes a sensation. It is the monthly “mail” from Aden and Europe! A number of boats break away from the beach and come towards the vessel. Europeans sit at the stern, the rowers are white-shirted Wangwana[3] with red caps. The former are anxious to hear the news, to get newspapers and letters, and to receive the small parcels sent by friendly hands “per favour of captain.”
The stranger, of course, is intensely interested in this life existing near the African Equator, now first revealed to him, and all that he sees and hears of figures and faces and sounds is being freshly impressed on his memory. Figures and faces are picturesque enough. Happy, pleased-looking men of black, yellow, or tawny colour, with long white cotton shirts, move about with quick, active motion, and cry out, regardless of order, to their friends or mates in the Swahili or Arabic language, and their friends or mates respond with equally loud voice and lively gesture, until, with fresh arrivals, there appears to be a Babel created, wherein English, French, Swahili, and Arabic accents mix with Hindi, and, perhaps, Persian.
In the midst of such a scene I stepped into a boat to be rowed to the house of my old friend, Mr. Augustus Sparhawk, of the Bertram Agency. At this low-built, massive-looking house near Shangani Point, I was welcomed with all the friendliness and hospitality of my first visit, when, three years and a half previously, I arrived at Zanzibar to set out for the discovery of Livingstone.
With Mr. Sparhawk’s aid I soon succeeded in housing comfortably my three young Englishmen, Francis John and Edward Pocock and Frederick Barker, and my five dogs, and in stowing safely on shore the yawl _Wave_, bought for me at Yarmouth by Mr. Edwin Arnold, the gig, and the tons of goods, provisions, and stores I had brought.
Life at Zanzibar is a busy one to the intending explorer. Time flies rapidly, and each moment of daylight must be employed in the selection and purchase of the various kinds of cloth, beads, and wire, in demand by the different tribes of the mainland through whose countries he purposes journeying. Strong, half-naked porters come in with great bales of unbleached cottons, striped and coloured fabrics, handkerchiefs and red caps, bags of blue, green, red, white and amber-coloured beads, small and large, round and oval, and coils upon coils of thick brass wire. These have to be inspected, assorted, arranged, and numbered separately, have to be packed in portable bales, sacks, or packages, or boxed according to their character and value. The house-floors are littered with cast-off wrappings and covers, box-lids, and a medley of rejected paper, cloth, zinc covers and broken boards, sawdust and other débris. Porters and servants and masters, employés and employers, pass backwards and forwards, to and fro, amid all this litter, roll bales over, or tumble about boxes; and a rending of cloth or paper, clattering of hammers, demands for the marking-pots, or the number of bale and box, with quick, hurried breathing and shouting, are heard from early morning until night.
Towards evening, after such a glaring day of glaring heat and busy toil, comes weariness: the arm-chair is sought, and the pipe or cigar with a cup of tea rounds off the eventful hours. Or, as sometimes the case would be, we would strike work early, and after a wholesome dinner at 4.30 P.M. would saddle our horses and ride out into the interior of the island, returning during the short twilight. Or we would take the well-known path to Mnazi-Moya—the One Cocoa-nut Tree, where it stands weird and sentinel-like over humble tombs on the crest of an ancient beach behind Shangani Point. Or, as the last and only resource left to a contemplative and studious mind, we would take our easy-chairs on the flat roof, where the cowhides of the merchant are poisoned and dried, and, with our feet elevated above our heads, watch the night coming.
If we take our ride, in a few minutes we may note, at the pleasantest hour, those local features which, with the thermometer at 95° Fahr., might have been a dangerous pleasure, or, at any rate, disagreeable. Through a narrow, crooked, plastered lane, our horses’ feet clattering noisily as we go, we ride by the tall, white-washed, massive houses, which rise to two and three stories above our heads. The residences of the European merchants and the officials here stand side by side, and at the tall doorway of each sits the porter—as comfortable as his circumstances will permit. As we pass on, we get short views of the bay, and then plunge again into the lane until we come in view of the worm-eaten old fort, crumbling fast into disuse and demolition. Years ago, behind it, I saw a market where some slaves were being sold. Happily there is no such market now.
We presently catch sight, on our right, of the entrance to the fort at which sit on guard a few lazy Baluchis and dingy-looking Arabs. On our left is the saluting battery, which does frequent service for the ignition of much powder, an antique mode of exchanging compliments with ships of war, and of paying respect to Government officials. The customs sheds are close by, and directly in front of us rises the lofty house and harem of Prince Barghash. It is a respectable-looking building of the Arab architecture which finds favour at Muscat, three stories high and whitewashed—as all houses here appear to be. It is connected by a covered gangway, about 30 feet above our heads, with a large house on the opposite side of the lane, and possesses an ambitious doorway raised 3 feet above the street, and reached by four or five broad and circular-steps. Within the lower hall are some soldiers of the same pattern as those at the fort, armed with the Henry-Martini rifle, or matchlock, sword, and targe. A very short time takes us into a still narrower lane, where the whitewash is not so white as at Shangani, the European quarter. We are in the neighbourhood of Melindi now, where the European who has not been able to locate himself at Shangani is obliged to put up with neighbours of East Indian race or Arabs. Past and beyond Melindi is a medley of tall white houses and low sheds, where wealth and squalor jostle side by side, and then we find ourselves at the bridge over the inlet of Malagash, which extends from the bay up to Mnazi-Moya, or the One Cocoa-nut, behind Shangani. The banks on either side are in view as we pass over the bridge, and we note a dense mass of sheds and poor buildings, amid hills of garbage and heaps of refuse, and numbers of half-naked negroes, or people in white clothes, giving the whole an appearance somewhat resembling the more sordid village of Boulak, near Cairo.
Having crossed the bridge from Melindi, we are in what is very appropriately termed Ngambu, or “t’other side.” The street is wide, but the quarter is more squalid. It is here we find the Wangwana, or Freedmen of Zanzibar, whose services the explorer will require as escort on the continent. Here they live very happily with the well-to-do Coastman, or Mswahili, poor Banyans, Hindis, Persians, Arabs, and Baluchis, respectable slave artisans, and tradesmen. When the people have donned their holiday attire, Ngambu becomes picturesque, even gay, and yields itself up to wild, frolicsome abandon of mirth. On working days, though the colours are still varied, and give relief to the clay walls and withered palm-frond roofs, this poor man’s district has a dingy hue, which black faces and semi-naked bodies seems to deepen. However, the quarter is only a mile and a half long, and quickening our paces, we soon have before us detached houses and huts, clusters of cocoa-nut palms and ancient mango trees crowned with enormous dark green domes of foliage. For about three miles one can enjoy a gallop along an ochreous-coloured road of respectable width, bordered with hedges. Behind the hedges grow the sugar-cane, banana, palm, orange, clove cinnamon, and jack-fruit trees, cassava, castor-oil, diversified with patches of millet, Indian corn, sweet-potatoes, and egg-plant, and almost every vegetable of tropic growth. The fields, gently undulating, display the variety of their vegetation, on which the lights and shadows play, deepening or paling as the setting sun clouds or reveals the charms of the verdure.
Finally arriving upon the crest of Wirezu hill, we have a most beautiful view of the roadstead and town of Zanzibar, and, as we turn to regard it, are struck with the landscape lying at our feet. Sloping away gradually towards the town, the tropical trees already mentioned seem, in the bird’s-eye view, to mass themselves into a thin forest, out of which, however, we can pick out clearly the details of tree and hut. Whatever of beauty may be in the scene, it is Nature’s own, for man has done little; he has but planted a root, or a seed, or a tender sapling carelessly. Nature has nourished the root and the seed and the sapling, until they became sturdy giants, rising one above another in hillocks of dark green verdure, and has given to the whole that wonderful depth and variety of colour which she only exhibits in the Tropics.
The walk to Mnazi-Moya will compel the traveller to moralize, and meditate pensively. Decay speaks to him, and from the moment he leaves the house to the moment he returns, his mind is constantly dwelling upon mortality. For, after lounging through two or three lanes, he comes to a populous graveyard, over which the wild grass has obtained supreme control, and through the stalks of which show white the fading and moss-touched headstones. Across the extensive acreage allotted to the victims of the sad cholera years, the Prince of Zanzibar has ruthlessly cut his way to form a garden, which he has surrounded with a high wall. Here a grinning skull and there a bleached thigh bone or sunken grave exposing its ghastly contents attract one’s attention. From time immemorial this old beach has been the depository of the dead, and unless the Prince prosecutes his good work for the reclamation of this golgotha (and the European officials urge it on him), the custom may be continued for a long period yet.
Beyond this cemetery is to be seen the muddy head of Malagash inlet, between which and the sea south of Shangani there lies only this antique sand bar, about two hundred yards in breadth. On the crest of the sand bar stands the One Cocoa-nut Palm which has given its name to this locality. Sometimes this spot is also known as the “fiddler’s” grave. It is the breathing place of the hard-worked and jaded European, and here, seated on one of the plastered tombs near the base of the One Cocoa-nut Palm, with only a furtive look now and then at the “sleep and a forgetting” which those humble white structures represent, he may take his fill of ocean and watch the sun go down to his daily rest.
[Illustration: RED CLIFFS BEHIND UNIVERSITIES MISSION.]
Beyond Mnazi-Moya is Mbwenni, the Universities Mission, and close behind are some peculiar red cliffs, which are worth seeing.
From the roof of the house, if we take the “last resource” already mentioned, we have a view of the roadstead and bay of Zanzibar. Generally there ride at anchor two or three British ships of war just in from a hunt after contumacious Arabs, who persist, against the orders of their prince, in transporting slaves on the high seas. There is a vessel moored closer to Frenchman’s Island, its “broken back” a memento of the Prince’s fleet shattered by the hurricane of 1872. Nearer in-shore float a number of Arab dhows, boats, lighters, steam launches, and two steamers, one of which is the famous _Deerhound_. One day I counted as a mere matter of curiosity, the great and small vessels in roadstead and harbour, and found that there were 135.
From our easy-chairs on the roof we can see the massive building occupied formerly by the Universities Mission, and now the residence of Captain Prideaux, Acting British Consul and Political Resident, whose acquaintance I first made soon after his release from Magdala in 1868. This building stands upon the extremity of Shangani Point, and the first line of houses which fronts the beach extends northerly in a gentle sweep, almost up to Livingstone’s old residence on the other side of Malagash inlet.
During the day the beach throughout its length is alive with the moving figures of hamals, bearing clove and cinnamon bags, ivory, copal and other gums, and hides, to be shipped in the lighters waiting along the water’s edge, with sailors from the shipping, and black boatmen discharging the various imports on the sand. In the evening the beach is crowded with the naked forms of workmen and boys from the “go-downs,” preparing to bathe and wash the dust of copal and hides off their bodies in the surf. Some of the Arab merchants have ordered chairs on the piers, or bunders, to chat sociably until the sun sets, and prayer time has come. Boats hurry by with their masters and sailors returning to their respective vessels. Dhows move sluggishly past, hoisting as they go the creaking yards of their lateen sails, bound for the mainland ports. Zanzibar canoes and “matepes” are arriving with wood and produce, and others of the same native form and make are squaring their mat sails, outward bound. Sunset approaches, and after sunset silence follows soon. For as there are no wheeled carriages with the eternal rumble of their traffic in Zanzibar, with the early evening comes early peace and rest.
The intending explorer, however, bound for that dark edge of the continent which he can just see lying low along the west as he looks from Zanzibar, has thoughts at this hour which the resident cannot share. As little as his eyes can pierce and define the details in that gloomy streak on the horizon, so little can he tell whether weal or woe lies before him. The whole is buried in mystery, over which he ponders, certain of nothing but the uncertainty of life. Yet will he learn to sketch out a comparison between what he sees at sunset and his own future. Dark, indeed, is the gloom of the fast-coming night over the continent, but does he not see that there are still bright flushes of colour, and rosy bars, and crimson tints, amidst what otherwise would be universal blackness? And may he not therefore say—“As those colours now brighten the darkening west, so my hopes brighten my dark future”?
[Illustration: A HOUSE AT ZANZIBAR.]
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# 3:
Wangwana (freed negroes).