CHAPTER V.

GEOGRAPHICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL.

‘To my surprise, the information concerning Zanzibar and the N. E. coast of Africa ... scarcely contains meagre phrases destitute of precision.’— (Col. Sykes’ Journal, R. G. S., vol. xxiii. 1853.) He forgets that entering from the coast is like jumping from the street into the window.—(R. F. B.)

SECTION 1.

Africa, East and West—‘Zanzibar’ explained—Menouthias—Position and Formation—The East African Current—Navigation—Aspect of the Island.

It is an old remark that Africa, the continent which became an island by the union of the twin seas in the year of grace 1869, despite her exuberant wealth and her wonderful powers of reproduction, is badly made—a trunk without limbs, a monotonous mass of painful symmetry, wanting opposition and contrast, like the uniform dark complexion of her sons and of her fauna—a solid body, like her own cocoa-nut, hard to penetrate from without, and soft within; an ‘individual of the earth,’ self-isolated by its savagery from the rest of the world. This is especially true of intertropical Africa.

The western coast was, until the last four centuries, cut off from intercourse with mankind by the storm-lashed waters of the northern approach; and to the present day the unbroken seaboard, so scanty in good harbours, and the dangerous bars and bores which defend the deadly river mouths, render it the least progressive part of the old world.

The more fortunate north-eastern and subtropical shores were enabled by their vast crévasse, the Red and riverless Sea, to communicate with Western Asia, whilst the rich productions, gold and ivory, tortoise- shell and ambergris, the hot sensuous climate—which even now induces the northern sailor to ship in the fatal West African squadron—and the amene scenery of the equatorial regions, invited, during pre-historic ages, merchants, and even immigrants, from rugged Persia and sterile Arabia.

Between the two upper coasts, eastern and western, there is, as might be expected, great similarity of grim aspect. The northern seaboards offer, for the space of a thousand miles, the same horrid aspect; deceitful roadsteads and dangerous anchorages, forbidding lines of chalky cliff and barren brown sandstone bluff; flat strands and white downs, hazed over by the spray of desert sand; and lowlands backed by maritime sub- ranges, masses of bald hill and naked mountains, streaked with dry wadis and water-courses, that bear scatters of dates and thorns, and which support miserable villages of tents or huts. The fierce and wandering tribes, Berber, Arab, and Arabo-African—an especially ‘crooked and perverse generation,’—are equally dangerous to the land traveller and to the shipwrecked mariner.

As sterile and unlovely for the same cause—the absence of tropical rains—are the southern regions of the great Nineteenth Century Island. Good harbours are even rarer than in the north, and the seas about the Cape of Hope, sweeping up unbroken from the South Pole, are yet more perilous. The highlands fringing the southern and eastern coasts arrest the humid winds, and are capable of supporting an extensive population; but the interior and the western coast, being lowlands, are wild and barren. The South African or Kafir family, which has overrun this soil, is still for the most part in the nomade state, and its ‘evident destiny’ is to disappear before the European colonist.

The central and equatorial land, 34° deep, including and bordering upon the zone of almost constant rain, is distinguished by the oppressive exuberance of its vegetation and by the consequent insalubrity of its climate. The drainage of the interior, pouring with discoloured efflux to the ocean, in large and often navigable channels, subject to violent freshes, taints the water-lines with deadly malaria. The false coasts of coralline or of alluvial deposits—a modern formation, and still forming— fringed with green-capped islets, and broken by sandy bays and by projecting capes, are exposed to swells and rollers, to surf and surge, to numbing torrents and chilling tornadoes, whilst muddy backwaters and stagnant islets disclose lagoon-valves or vistas through tangled morass, jungle, and hardly penetrable mangrove-swamp. This maremma, the home of fever, is also the seat of trade, but the tribes which occupy it soon die out.

The true coast has already risen high enough above the waters to maintain its level; and the vegetation—calabashes, palms, and tamarinds— offers a contrast to the swampy growth below. Inland of the raised seaboard are high and jungly mountains and coast-range or ghaut, in many parts yet unvisited by Europeans. Beyond these sierras begins the basin- shaped plateau of Central Equatorial Africa. The inhabitants are mostly inland tribes, ever gravitating towards the coast. They occupy stockaded and barricaded clumps of pent-houses or circular tents, smothered by thicket and veiled, especially after the heavy annual rains, with the ‘smokes,’ a dense white vapour, moisture made visible by the earth being cooler than the saturated air.[26]

I have elsewhere remarked (The Lake Regions of Central Intertropical Africa; Abeokuta and the Camaroons Mountains, &c.) the striking geological contrast between the two equatorial coasts, eastern and western. The former, south of the Guardafui granites, offers to one proceeding inland from the ocean a succession of corallines, of sandstone and of calcaires, which appear to be an offset from the section of that great zone forming the Somali country. The western coasts, after quitting the basalts and lavas of the Camaroons, are composed chiefly of the granites and syenites with their degradations of schiste, gneiss, and sandstone. Similarly, in the great Austro-American continent, one shore, that of the Brazil, is granitic, whilst the other, Chili, mainly consists of the various porphyries.

The negroes and negroids of both these inhospitable coasts, an undeveloped and not to be developed race—in this point agreeing with the fauna and flora around them—are the chief obstacles to exploration, and remarkably resemble each other. The productions of the east and west are similar. The voracious shark swims the seas, turtles bask upon the strands and islets, and the crocodile and hippopotamus haunt the rivers. The forests abound in apes and monkeys, and the open plains support the giraffe, the antelope, and the zebra, hog and wild kine (Bos Caffir and B. Brachyceros), herds of elephants and scatters of rhinoceros. The villagers breed goats and poultry. In the healthier regions they have black cattle and sheep, whilst one tribe has acclimatized the ass. The exceeding fertility of the rain-drenched plains gives an amazing luxuriance to cassava and rice, maize, and holcus, cotton, sugar-cane, and wild indigo, banana, lime and orange, ground-nuts and coffee. The hills and torrent-beds yield gold and copper, antimony, and abundance of iron. On both sides of the continent there are rich deposits of the semi-mineral copal. Coal was found by the Portuguese at Tête and in the Zambeze Valley, as related in Dr Livingstone’s First Expedition (Missionary Travels, &c., xxxi. 633-4). His second prolonged the coal- field to beyond the Valley of the Rufuma (Rovuma) river (xxi. 440), and it will probably be found to extend still further.

Dr Krapf declares (Travels, &c., p. 465) that he discovered coal, ‘the use of which is still unknown to the Abessinians,’ on the banks of the Kuang, a river said to rise in the Dembea Province, near Lake Tsana (Coloë Palus). Finally, to judge from the analogy of the South American continent, the valuable mineral will yet be struck near the western coast, south of the equator.

From time immemorial, on both sides of Africa, the continental Islands, like Aradus and Sidon, Tyre and Alexandria, have been favourite places with stranger settlers. They have proved equally useful as forts, impregnable to the wild aborigines, and as depôts for exports and imports. Second to none in importance is Zanzibar, and the future promises it a still higher destiny.

And first, of the name, which does not occur in Strabo, Pliny, or the Periplus. The log-book attributed to Arrian, of Nicomedia, calls the whole shore, ‘Continent of Azania;’ probably an adaptation, like Azan, and even Ajan, of the Arabic, Barr el Khazáin, or the Land of Tanks,[27] the coast between Ra’as Hafun and Ra’as el Khayl. So Pliny (vi. 28 and 34) speaks of the ‘Azanian Sea’ as communicating with the ‘Arabian Gulf.’ Ptolemy, however (I. 17, sec. iv. 7), has the following important passage: ‘immediately following this mart (Opone) is another bay, where Azania begins. At its beginning are the promontory Zingis (ζίγγις, Zingina promontorium), and the tree-topped Mount Phalangis.’ The name may have extended from the promontory to the coast, and from the coast to the island. Dr Krapf speaks of a tribe of the ‘Zendj’ near the Rufiji river, but I could not hear of it. It is easy to show that the Pelusian geographer’s Opone is the bay south of Ra’as, or Jurd Hafun. Like Pomponius Mela, Ptolemy evidently made his great point de départ the Aromata Promontorium et emporium in Barbarico sinu (Cape Guardafui), and he placed it N. lat. 6° 0′ 0″, instead of N. lat. 11° 50′. This error threw the whole coast 6° (in round numbers, more exactly 5° 50′) too far south, and made the world doubt the accurate position of the Nile lakes. Thus, to his latitude of Opone N. 4° add 5° 50′, and we have N. lat. 9° 50′, the true parallel of Hafun being N. lat. 10° 26′.

Amongst late authors we find the word Zanzibar creeping into use. The Adulis inscription (4th century) gives ‘Zingabene’; and its copier, the Greek monk Cosmas Indicopleustes, who proved the globe flat (6th century), calls the ‘unnavigable’ ocean beyond Berberia, the ‘Sea of Zenj,’ and the lands which it bathes ‘Zingium.’ It is found in Abu Zayd Hasan, generally known as Hunayn bin Ishak (died A.D. 873); in El Mas’udi, who describes it at some length (died A.D. 957); in El Bayruni (11th century), and in the learned ‘Nubian Geographer,’ the Sherif El Idrisi (A.D. 1153). Marco Polo (A.D. 1290), who evidently wrote his 37th chapter from hearsay, makes Zanzibar a land of blacks; and, confounding insula with peninsula (in Arabic both being Jezireh), supplies it with a circumference of 2000 miles, and vast numbers of elephants. The India Minor, India Major, and India Tertia of the mediæval Latin travellers are the Sind, Hind, and Zinj of the Arabs. Ibn Batuta (A.D. 1330, 1331), the first Arab traveller who wrote a realistic description of his voyage, has accurately placed Kilwa, which he calls ‘Kulua,’ in the ‘land of the Zunúj.’ Finally, we meet with it in El Nowayri, and in Abulfeda, the ‘Prince of Arab Geographers,’ who both died in the same year, A.D. 1331.

The word Zanj (زنج), corrupted to Zinj, whence the plural ‘Zunúj,’ is evidently the Persian Zang or Zangi (زنگ), a black, altered by the Arabs, who ignore the hard Aryan ‘Gaf’ (گ), the ‘G’ in our gulf. In the same tongue bár means land or region—not sea or sea-coast—and the compounded term would signify Nigritia or Blackland. In modern Persian Zangi still means a negro, and D’Herbelot says of the ‘Zenghis’ that ‘they are properly those called Zingari,[28] and, by some, Egyptians and Bohemians.’ Scholars have not yet shown why the Arab, so rich in nomenclature, borrowed the purely Persian word from his complement the ‘Ajam.’ They have forgotten that the Persians, who of late years have been credited with the unconquerable aversion to the sea which belongs to the Gallas and the Kafirs, were once a maritime people. ‘The indifference or rather the aversion of Persians to navigation’ (M. Guillain, i. 34, 35) must not be charged to the ancient ‘Furs.’ Between A.D. 531–579, when Sayf bin Dhu Yezin, one of the latest Himyarite rulers, wanted aid against the Christian Abyssinians, who had held southern Arabia for 72 years, he applied to Khusrau I., better known as Anushirawán, the 23rd king of the Sassanian dynasty, which began with Ardashir Babegan (A.D. 226), and which ended with Yezdegird III. (A.D. 641), thus lasting 415 years. The ‘Just Monarch’ sent his fleet to the Roman Port’ (Aden), and slew Masruk. In his day the Persians engrossed, by means of Hira, Obollah, and Sohar, the rich tracts of Yemen and Hindostan; while Basrah (Bassorah) was founded by the Caliph Omar, in order to divert the stream of wealth from the Red Sea, a diversion which will probably soon be repeated. In A.D. 758 the Persians, together with the Arabs, mastered, pillaged, and burn Canton. Much later (17th century) Shah Abbas claimed Zanzibar Island and coast as an appanage of the suzerainty of Oman.

East Africa still preserves traditions of two distinct colonizations from Persia. The first is that of the ‘Emozaydiys,’ or ‘Emozeides’ (Amm Zayd), who conquered and colonized the sea-board of East Africa, from Berberah of the Somal to Comoro and Madagascar, both included. A second and later emigration (about A.D. 1000) occupied the south Zanzibarian coast, and ruins built by the Shirazían dynasty which still lingers, are shown on various parts of the sea-board. Of these Persian occupations more will be found in the following pages. (Part 1, Chap. I, and Part 2, Chap. 2.)

Persia has left nothing of her widely extended African conquests but a name. In modern days she has become more and more a non-maritime power. She has wholly retired from the coast; and Time, who in these lands works with a will, presently obliterated almost every trace of the stranger. A few ruins at Aden and Berberah, and the white and black sheep of Ormania (Galla-land) and of Somali land, are almost the only vestiges of Persian presence north of the Equator. On the Zangian mainland wells sunk in the rock, monuments of a form now obsolete; mosques with elaborate minarets and pillars of well-cut coralline; fortified positions, loopholed enclosures, and ruined cities whose names have almost been forgotten, are the results of the civilization which they brought with them southwards.

The limits assigned by the Arab geographers to the ‘Land of the Zinj’ are elastic. While some, as Yakut, make it extend from the mouths of the Jub River (S. lat. 0° 14 30″) to Cape Corrientes (S. lat. 24° 7′ 5″) and thus include Sofala; others, with El Idrisi, separate from it the latter district, and unjustly make its southern limit the Rufiji River (S. lat. 7° 38′), thus excluding Kilwa. It should evidently extend to Mozambique Island (S. lat. 15° 2′ 2″), where the Wasawahíli meet the ‘Kafir’ races. The length would thus be, in round numbers, 15° = 900 geographical miles, whilst the breadth, which is everywhere insignificant, can hardly be estimated.

The Arabs, who love to mingle etymology with legend and fable, derive the word ‘Zanzibar’ from the exclamation of its pleased explorers, ‘Zayn za’l barr!’ (fair is this land!). Similar stories concerning Brazilian Olinda and Argentine Buenos Aíres are well known. ‘El Sawáhil,’ the shores, evidently the plural of Sáhil, is still applied to the 600 miles of maritime region whose geographical limits are the Jub River and Cape Delgado (S. lat. 10° 41′ 2”), and whose ethnographic boundaries are the Somal and the ‘Kafir’ tribes. Others derive it from El Suhayl, the beautiful Canopus which, surrounded by a halo of Arab myth, ever attracts the eye of the southing mariner. The Wasawahíli,’[29] or slave tribes, are fancifully explained by ‘Sawwá hílah,’ he ‘played tricks,’— rascals all.

The coast races who, like their neighbours the Somal, have their own African names for places, call Zanzibar Island by the generic term Kisíwa—insula. It is thus opposed to Mpoa-ni, the coast, and to Mrímá, the mainland.[30] The latter, however, is properly speaking limited to the maritime uplands between Tanga and the Pangani river. Zanzibar city is Unguja (pronounced Ungudya, not Anggouya). The word appears in an ancient settlement on the eastern coast of the island, and the place is still called Unguja Mku, Old Unguja. Some still call it Lunguja, apparently an older form. We find ‘Lendgouya’ in the Commercial Traveller Yakut (early thirteenth century); but ‘Bandgouia’ (Abd el Rashid bin Salih el Bakui, A.D. 1403) is clearly a corruption.

Finally, Zanzibar has been identified by palæogeographers with the Ptolemean Μενουθιὰς or Μενουθεσίας (iv. 9), and with the Μενουθιὰς of the Periplus (Geog. Græci Minores of R. Muller, Paris, 1855), in some copies of which Menouthesías also occurs. Its rivals, however, for this honour are Pemba, Mafiyah (the Monfia of our maps) and Bukini, the northern and north-western parts of Malagash or Madagascar.[31] Ptolemy, it may be observed, places the two important sites, Menouthias and Prasum (or Prassum) in a separate chapter (iv. 9), whereas his principal list of stations is in Book iv. chapter 7. He lays down the site of Menouthias in S. lat. 12°, and nearly opposite the Lunar Mountain, and the Lakes whence the Nile arises (S. lat. 12° 30′). The mouth of the Rhapta river and Rhapta, the metropolis of Barbaria, are in S. lat. 7°, the Rhapta promontory is in S. lat. 8° 20′ 5″, and the Prasum promontory in S. lat. 15°. By applying the correction as before, we have for Menouthias S. lat. 6° (the capital of Zanzibar being in S. lat. 6° 9′ 6″); for the Lakes, 6° 30′, which would nearly bisect Tanganyika; for Rhapta river and city, S. lat. 1° (or more exactly, S. lat. 1° 10′); the mouth of the Jub river being in S. lat. 0° 14′ 30″; the Rhapta promontory in S. lat. 2° 30′, corresponding with the coast about Patta; and finally, for Prasum S. lat. 9° 10′—Cape Delgado being in S. lat. 10° 41′ 12″.

The account given of Menouthias in the Periplus (written between A.D. 64, Vincent, and A.D. 210, Letronne[32]) is that of an eyewitness: ‘After two nychthemeral days (each of 100 miles) towards the west [here the text is evidently corrupt] comes Menouthias, altogether insulated, distant from the land about 300 stadia (30 geographical miles), low and tree-clad. In it are many kinds of birds and mountain tortoises (land turtle?). It has no other wild beasts but crocodiles (iguanas), and these do not injure man. There are in it sewn boats and monoxyles (canoes), which they use for salt-pans [here the text is defective] and for catching turtle. In this island they trap them after a peculiar fashion with baskets (the modern wigo) instead of nets, letting them down at the mouth of stony inlets’ (chap. i. 15).

The next chapter informs us: ‘From which (island) after two runs (each 50 miles)[33] lies the last emporium of the continent of Azania, called Tà Rhaptà, thus named from the before-mentioned sewn-together vessels. In it are much ivory and tortoise-shell. The men, who in this country are of the largest size, live scattered (in the mountains?), and each tribe in its own place is subject to tyrants’ (‘tyranneaulx’ or petty chiefs).

Here, then, we have Rhapta 33 leagues (100 miles = 1° 40′) beyond Menouthias. Captain Guillain (Prem. Partie, p. 115) would make the former correspond with the debouchure of the Oufidji river (Rufiji or Lufiji), in S. lat. 7° 50′. But the Periplus, unlike Ptolemy, alludes only to a port, not to a river mouth, nor does the coast-line here show any promontory. Others have proposed Point Puna (S. lat. 7° 2′ 42″), the south-western portal of the Zanzibar manche, near the modern trading port of Mbuamáji, which in former ages may have been more important. D’Anville, Vincent, and De Froberville boldly prefer Kilwa (in round numbers S. lat. 9°), which is distant 157 geographical miles from the southernmost point of Zanzibar, and I think they are right. It is safer in such matters to suspect an error of figures and of distances than of topography, especially where the geographical features are so well marked and cannot be found in other places. Computations of ancient courses and log-books can have little value except when they serve to confirm commonly topographical positions. Kilwa has ever been a central station on the Zanzibar coast, and the slaves brought from the interior are still remarkable for size. Moreover, as Dr Beke well observes (Sources of the Nile, p. 69), ‘In attempting to fix in the map of Africa the true position of Ptolemy’s lakes and sources of the Nile, we must discard all notions of their having been determined _absolutely_ by means of astronomical observations, special maps of particular localities, or otherwise, and regard them simply as derived from oral information, and as laid down _relatively_ to some well-known point or points on the coast.’[34]

Zanzibar, the principal link in the chain of islets which extends from Makdishu (Magadoxo), in the Barr el Benadir or Haven-land, to Cape Corrientes, is a long narrow reef, with the major axis disposed from N. N. W. to S. S. E., and subtending a deep bight or bend in the coast, justly enough called the Barbaric Gulf. The length is 48·25 geographical miles from Ra’as Nunguwi, the northern (S. lat. 5° 42′ 8″ Raper), to Ra’as Kizimkaz, the southern, extremity (S. lat. 6° 27′ 7″ Raper). The breadth is 18 miles from the Fort in E. long. 39° 14′ 5″ Raper’s correction, to the continental coast in E. long. (G.) 39° 32′ 5″. French travellers assume a max. length of 83 kilomètres, and a max. breadth of 33. The capital (S. lat. 6° 9′ 6″) corresponds in parallel with the Pernambucan province to the west and with Java and central New Guinea to the east. The corrected longitude (laid down by Captain Smee in 1811 as E. lat. 39° 15′) gives a difference of Greenwich time 2^{h.} 36^{m.} and 56^{s.}. From Southampton round the Cape the run is usually laid down at 8500 miles, viâ Suez 6200. The Lesseps Canal has shortened the distance from Marseille by 2000 leagues, and thus has placed Zanzibar within 1600 leagues of the great port—in fact, about the distance of the Gaboon ex- colony.

The formation of the island is madrepore, resting upon a core or base of stratified sand-stone grit, disposed in beds varying from 1·5 to 3 feet thick. The surface gently inclines towards the sea, and the lines of fracture run parallel with the shores. Three distinct formations occur to one crossing the breadth.[35] The first is a band of grit-based coralline, which runs meridionally, and is most remarkable on the eastern side. This portion, featureless and thinly inhabited, is protected from the dangerous swell and the fury of the Indian Ocean by a broad reef and scattered rocks of polypidoms. The band thins out to the north and south: in the centre, where it is widest, the breadth may be three to four miles, and the greatest height 400 feet. The coral-rag is mostly white and of many shapes, like fans, plants, and trees: the most usual form is the mushroom, with a broad domed head rising from a narrow stem. The texture is exceedingly reticulated and elastic; solid masses, however, occur where neighbouring rocks meet and bind—hence the labyrinth of caverns, raised by secular upgrowth and preserving the original formation. The ground echoes, as in volcanic countries, hollow and vault-like to the tread; the tunnels are frequently without issue for drainage, and when the rain drips in, the usual calcareous phenomena, stalactites and stalagmites, appear. Many of these caves are found on the coast as well as on the island. The carbonate of lime is very pure, and contains brown or yellow-white crystals.

A stony valley, sunk below the level of both flanks, is said to bisect the island from north to south. Into this basin fall sundry small streams, the Mohayra and others, which are lost through the crevices and caverns, and in the cracks and fissures of the grit. There are other drains, forming, after heavy downfalls, swamps and marshes, whence partly the great insalubrity of the interior. The western part of Zanzibar, with its wealth of evergreen vegetation, appears by far the most fertile. It is a meridional band of red clay and sandy hills, running parallel with the corallines of the eastern coast. Here are the most elevated grounds. I found the royal plantation Sebbé or Izimbane, 400 feet (B.P.) above sea-level, or a little higher than the Bermudas. The least productive parts are those covered with dark clay. Heavy rains deposit arenaceous matter upon the surface, and the black humus disappears. On this side of the island also many streamlets discharge into the sea, bearing at their mouths mangrove beds, whose miasmas cause agues, dysenteries, diarrhœas, and deadly fevers.

The rule established by Dampier and quoted by Humboldt directs us to expect great depth near a coast formed by high perpendicular mountains. Here, as in the rest of the Zanzibarian archipelago, the maritime line, unlike the west Atlantic islands Tenerife and Madeira, is composed of gently rolling hills. Yet seven fathoms are often found within a stone- throw of the land, whilst the encircling ledges are steep-to, marked in the charts 1/100 and 1/140. Evidently, then, the corallines are perched upon the summits of a submarine range which rises sharp and abrupt from abysmal hollows and depressions. As usual too in such formations, the leeward shore line of the island, where occur the lagoon entrances, is more varied and accidented than the eastern. At Pemba this feature will be even more remarkable.

The windward coast, in common with many parts of the continental seaboard, suffers especially from June to August from the Ras de Marée (Manuel de la Navigation et la Côte occidentale de l’Afrique), a tide race, supposed to result from the meeting of currents. It is a line of rollers neither far from nor very near the shore. The hurling and sagging surf is described to resemble the surge of a submarine earthquake; and the strongest craft, once entangled in the send, cannot escape. It would be useful to note, as at West African Lagos, the greater or less atmospheric pressure accompanying the phenomenon, and to seek a connection between it and the paroxysms of the neighbouring cyclone region. At all times sailors remark the ‘shortness’ of the waves and the scanty intervals between their succession. This peculiarity cannot be explained in the usual way by shoals and shallow water causing a ground-swell.

With respect to the great East African ocean-current, which has given rise to so many fables gravely recorded by the Arab geographers,[36] the best authorities at Zanzibar are convinced, and their log-books prove, that both its set and drift, like the Brazilian coast-stream, are in the present state of our knowledge subject to the extremes of variation. The charts and Horsburgh lay it down as a regular S.W. current; and so it is in the southern, whilst in the northern part it is hardly perceptible. Between Capes Guardafui and Delgado it flows now up then down the coast; here it trends inland, there it sets out to sea. Dr Ruschenberger relates that on Sept. 1, 1835, his ship, when south of Zanzibar, was carried 50 miles in 15 hours, and was obliged to double the northern cape. The same happened to Captain Guillain in August 1846, when he lost five days. This resulted from the superior force of the S.W. monsoon, which often drives vessels to the north 30 to 40 miles during the day and night. Lieut. Christopher (Journal, Jan. 5, 1843) reported it to be variable and violent, especially close in shore, and observed that it frequently trends against the wind. It is usually made to run to the S.W. between December and April, at the rate of 1·3 miles per hour, from Ra’as Hafun to Ra’as Aswad, and two to three miles per hour between Capes Aswad and Delgado. Shipmasters at Zanzibar have assured me that when this coastal current covers three knots an hour there is a strong backwater or counter-flow, which, like the Gulf-stream, trends to the north, and against which, with light winds, native vessels cannot make way. This counter-current has extensive limits; usually it is considered strongest between Mafiyah and Pomba. The ship St Abbs, concerning which so much has been said and written of late years, was wrecked in 1855 off St Juan de Nova of the Comoro group (S. lat. 17° 3′ 5″), and pieces of it were swept up to Brava (N. lat. 1° 6′ 8″), upwards of 1000 miles. The crew is supposed still to be in captivity amongst the Abghal tribe; and in 1865 an Arab merchant brought to Zanzibar a hide marked with letters which resembled N F B N. A writer in the _Pall Mall_ opined the letters to be ‘Wasm’ or tribal brands, justly observing that ‘all the Bedawin have these distinguishing marks,’ but forgetting that he was speaking of the analphabetic Somal, to whom such knowledge does not extend. As we might expect, the Mozambique stream, south of Cape Delgado, always flows southerly with more or less westing. The rate is said to vary from 20 to 80 miles a day.

Our hydrographical charts are correct enough to guide safely into and out of port any shipmaster who will sound, and can take an angle. As, however, the navigation is easy, so accidents are common. Any land- lubber could steer a ship from Bombay to Karachi (Kurrachee), and yet how many have been lost! Often, too, it is in seamanship as in horsemanship, when the best receive the most and the heaviest falls. In May 1857 the Jonas, belonging to Messrs Vidal, was sunk by mistaking Chumbi Island for its neighbour Bawi. Three or four days afterwards the Storm King of Salem, Messrs Bertram, ran aground whilst hugging Chumbi in order to distance a rival. The number of reefs and shoals render it always unadvisable to enter the port at night, and in the heaviest weather safe riding-ground is found between Zanzibar Island and the continent.

[Illustration: ZANZIBAR FROM THE SEA.]

Vessels from the south making Zanzibar in the N.E. monsoon, the trade- wind of December to March, leave Europa Island to the west, and the Comoro group and S. Juan de Nova on the east. Keeping well in mid- channel, they head straight for Mafiyah. They hug Point Puna, avoiding Latham’s Bank,[37] and they work up by Kwale and the Chumbi Island. Ships from the north have only to run down the mid-channel, between Pemba and the continent, and then to pass west of Tumbatu. Those sailing southward from Zanzibar at this season pass along-shore, down the Mozambique Channel. Vessels from the south making Zanzibar in May to September, the height of the S.W. monsoon—the anti-N.E. trade—sail up the same passage. They must beware of falling to leeward; and those that neglect ‘lead and look-out’ are ever liable to be carried northwards to Pemba by the counter-current before mentioned, which may, however, now be a wind-current. At this season ship-masters missing the mark have sometimes made 3° to 4° of easting, and have preferred beating down to Mafiyah and running up again, rather than face the ridicule of appearing viâ the northern passage. Those leaving the Island in the S.W. monsoon stand north up channel, well out in E. lon. 9° 42′ to 43′, beat south of Cape Delgado, pass between the Comoro group and the mainland, and thus catch the Mozambique gulfstream. The brises solaires blow strongest off Madagascar in June and July. They fall light in August and September.

The aspect of Zanzibar from the sea is that of coralline islands generally—a graceful, wavy outline of softly rounded ground, and a surface of ochre-coloured soil, thickly clothed with foliage alternating between the liveliest leek-green and the sombrest laurel, the only variety that vegetation knows in this land of eternal verdure. Everywhere the scenery is similar; each mile of it is a copy of its neighbour; and the want of variety, of irregularity, of excitement, so to speak, soon makes itself felt. Zanzibar ignores the exhilaration of pure desert air, and the exaltation produced by the stern aspect of mountain regions or by a boundless expanse of Pampa and Sahara. Without a single element of sublimity, soft and smiling, its sensuous and sequestered scenery has no power to spur the thought, to breed an idea within the brain. The oppressive luxuriance of its growth combined with the excess of damp heat, and possibly the abnormal proportion of ozone, are the most unfavourable conditions for the masculine. The same is the case in Mazanderan, Malabar, Egypt, Phœnicia, California, and other Phre-kah—lands of the sun. And the aspect of that everlasting, beginning-less, endless verdure tends, as on the sea-board of the Brazil, to produce sensations of melancholy and depression. We learn at last to loathe thee,

‘gay green, Thou smiling Nature’s universal robe!’

Landing upon the island, you find a thin strip of bright yellow sand separating the sea from a curtain of vegetation, which forms a continuous wall. In some parts madrepore rock, looped and caverned by the tide, and covered with weeds and testaceæ, whose congeners are fossilized in the stone, rises abruptly a few feet above the wave. At other places a dense growth of tangled mangrove jungle exposes during the ebb a sheet of black and sticky mire, into which man sinks knee- deep. The regularity of the outline is broken by low projecting spits and by lagoons and backwaters, which bite deep into the land. Their pestilential, fatal exhalations veil the low grounds with a perpetual haze, and the excess of carbon is favourable to vegetable as it is deleterious to animal life.

Passing over the modern sea-beach, with its coarse grasses, creepers, and wild flowers—mostly the Ipomæa—and backed by towering trees, cocoas, mangos, and figs, we often observe in the interior distinct traces of an old elevation, marked by lines of water-worn pebbles and by coarse gravels overlying greasy blue clay. This is the home of the copal. Beyond it the land rises imperceptibly, and breaks into curves, swells, and small ravines, rain-cut and bush-grown, sometimes 40 feet deep. The soil is now a retentive red or yellow argile, based upon a detritus of coralline, hardened, where pressed, into the semblance of limestone, or upon a friable sand-stone-grit of quartz and silex. The humus of the richest vegetable substance, and excited by the excess of humidity and heat, produces in abundance maize, millet, and various panicums; tomatoes and naturalized vegetables, muhogo (the cassava), and Palma Christi; coffee, cotton, and sugar-cane; clove, nutmeg, and cinnamon trees; foreign fruits, like the Brazilian Cajú, the passion-flower and the pine-apple; the Chinese Leechi; bananas and guavas, the Raphia and the cocoa, twin queens of the palms; limes and lemons, oranges and shaddocks, the tall tamarind, the graceful Areca, the grotesque calabash and Jack-tree, colossal sycamores and mangos, whose domes of densest verdure, often 60 feet high and bending, fruit-laden, to the earth, make our chesnuts, when in fullest dress, look half-naked and in rags.

The uplands, especially in the western part of the island, are laid out in Máshámha or plantations, whose regular lines of untrimmed clove-trees are divided by broad sunny avenues. Here and there are depressions in the soil, where heavy rains slowly sinking have nursed a tangled growth of reeds and rushes, sedge and water-grass. About the Mohayra and the Búbúbú—the principal of the ποταμοι πλειστοι of the Periplus—mere surface-drains, choked with fat juncaceæ and with sugar-cane growing wild, there is a black soil of prodigious fertility, whose produce may, so to speak, be seen to grow. This sounds like exaggeration; but I well remember, at Hyderabad, in Sind, that during the inundation of the Indus we could perceive in the morning that the maize had lengthened during the night, and the same is the case with certain ‘toadstools’ and fungi in the Brazil.

Upon this waste of rank vegetation the sun darts an oppressive and malignant beam. In the driest season the ‘mangrove heaviness’ of the western coast and the cadaverous fœtor announce miasma; after the rains the landscape is redolent of disease and death.

The cottages of small proprietors and slaves strew the farms. They are huts of wattle and rufous loamy dab, to which large unbaked bricks of red clay are sometimes preferred. The usual cajan pent-roof forms deep dark eaves, propped by untrimmed palm-boles. These dwellings are unwholesome, because none boast of a second storey; they are not even built upon piles, and thus their sole defence against the surrounding malaria is the shrubbery planted by nature’s hand. Sickness seems generally, both in the island and on the continent, to follow turning up fresh soil, and the highlands are often more subject to miasma than the lowlands.

The lines of communication consist of mere footpaths, instead of the broad roads required for the ventilation of the country. When the produce of the land is valuable the lanes are lined with cactus, milk- bush (euphorbia), and succulent plants, whose foliage shines with metallic lustre. Set in little ridges, the hedge-rows of pine-apple, with its large pink and crimson fruit, passing, when ripe, into a reddish-yellow, form a picturesque and pleasant fence. At a distance from the town the paths become rough and solitary. Nearer, they are well beaten by negroes of both sexes and all ages, carrying fuel or baskets of fruit upon their heads, or bringing water from the wells, or loitering under shady trees to cheapen the cocoa-nut, manioc, and broiled fish, offered by squatting negresses for their refection.

SECTION 2.

Meteorological Notes—The Double Seasons, &c.

The characteristic of meteorology at Zanzibar, as generally the case in the narrow equatorial zone, is the extreme irregularity of its phenomena. Here weather seems to be all in confusion; hardly two consequent years resemble each other. In 1853-4, for instance, the seasons, if they may so be called, were apparently inverted; heavy showers fell during the dries, and a drought occupied the place of the wet monsoon. Sometimes the rains will begin with, this year (1857) they ended with, a heavy burst. Now April is a fine month, then the downfall will last through June.

I may also remark one great difference of climate between the eastern and western coasts of intertropical Africa. Whilst Zanzibar is supersatured with moisture, Angola, on the same parallel, is a comparatively dry, sandy, and sunburnt region. Kilwa, upon the eastern coast, and in S. lat. 8° 57′, is damp and steamy. S. Paulo de Loanda, upon the opposite shore (S. lat. 8° 48′), suffers from want of water. We find the same contrast in the South American continent. The middle Brazil is emphatically a land of rains, whilst Peru and Chili require artificial irrigation supplied by melted snow. Evidently the winds charged with moisture, the N. E. and S. E. trades and their modifications, discharge themselves upon the windward sides of continents, especially when these are fringed with cold sierras, which condense the vapour and render the interior a lee land.

In 1847 the Geographical Society of Bombay sent a barometer to Zanzibar, and requested that a meteorological register might be kept. Their wishes were not immediately carried into effect; but after a time the Eurasian apothecary in charge of the Consulate filled up in a rude way during nine months a weather-book, with observations of the barometer, of two thermometers attached and unattached, of wet and dry bulbs, of evaporation and of rainfall. In the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society (xxiii. of 1853), Colonel Sykes published a ‘record, kept during eleven months in 1850, of the indications of several intertropical instruments at Zanzibar,’ unhappily without those of pressure.[38]

The result of nine months’ observations is that the thermometer shows a remarkably limited range of temperature and an extreme variation of only 18°-19°. A storm, however, will make the mercury fall rapidly through 6°-7°. The climate is far more temperate than the inexperienced expect to find so near the equator. It is within the limits of the true Trades. The land and sea breezes laden with cool moisture blow regularly, and the excessive humidity spreads a heat-absorbing steam-cloud between sun and earth. The medium temperature of January is 83° 30′; of February, the hottest month, 85° 86′ (according to Colonel Sykes 83° 40′); and of March, 82° 50′. This high and little-varying mean then gradually declines till July, the coolest month (77° 10′). The mean average of the year is 79° 15′-90′. In September and October the climate has been compared with that of southern Europe. On the other hand, the atmosphere supports an amount of moisture unknown to the dampest parts of India.

The barometer, so near the equator, is almost uniformly sluggish and quiescent. Its range diurnal and annual is here at a min. It seldom, except under varying pressure of storms or tornadoes, rises or falls above or below 30 inches at sea level, and a few tenths represent the max. variation. It must be observed, however, on both coasts of Africa, within 6°-7° of the Line, this instrument requires especial study for nautical purposes. Here it is an imperfect indicator, because, affected from great distances, it rises without fine weather and it falls without foul. At Zanzibar the case of a whaling captain is quoted for wasting in vain precautions nearly two months. Moreover, sufficient observations have not yet been accumulated in the southern hemisphere. Where there is so little expansion in the mercurial column the convexity and concavity of the column-head must be carefully examined with a magnifying-glass, and by a reflecting instrument the smallest change could be correctly measured. The trembling of the aneroid needle, sometimes ranging through a whole inch during the gusts of the highly electrical tornado, also calls for observation. The sympiesometer is held to be even more sensitive than the mercurial barometer, especially before storms, and ignorance of its peculiarity has often ‘frightened a reef in’ at unseasonable times. The same was found to be the case, in high latitudes, by Lieut. Robertson, R.N., when sailing under Captain Ross (1818), between N. lat. 51° 39′ and 76° 50′.

Observations with the altitude and azimuth determined the variation of the needle in 1857 to be between 9°-10° (W.). If this be correct, it is gradually easting. In 1823 Captain Owen found it to be 11° 7′ (W.).[39] So, upon the opposite coast, the variation laid down in our charts of 1846 as 20° (W.) has gradually declined to between 18° 30′ and 19° (W.).

Of exceptional meteoric phenomena I can speak only from hearsay, no written records existing upon the island. A single earthquake is remembered. In the early rains of 1846, at about 4 P.M., a shock, accompanied by a loud rumbling sound, ran along the city sea-front, splitting the Sayyid’s palace, the adjacent mosque, and the side-walls of the British Consulate, in. a direction perpendicular to the town. It was probably the result of igneous disturbance below the coralline, and it tends to prove that the island was originally an atoll: some, however, have explained it by a land-slip. Three meteors are known since 1843. In December of that year a ball of fire was visible from windows facing the north; it disappeared without a report. The most remarkable was a bolis, which, about 6 P.M. on October 25, 1855, took a N.W. by W. path, burned during ten or eleven minutes, and frightened the superstitious burghers into fits. Water-spouts commonly appear during the month of April, and in the direction of the mainland: the people disperse them by firing guns.

Frost and snow are of course unheard of at Zanzibar, and hail, not uncommon in the interior, never (?) falls upon the island or the coast. During the wet season generally, especially when the heats are greatest, the hills of Terrafirma are veiled with clouds, and sheet-lightning plays over the horizon. The islanders assure the stranger that storms of thunder and lightning are rare, and that few accidents happen from the electric fluid. M. Alfred May, for instance, declares that thunder is heard only three or four times a year. The same is said in West African Yoruba, in parts of the Brazil, and even in Northern Syria—Damascus, for instance. It would be curious to inquire what produces this uniform immunity under climatic conditions so different. At Zanzibar, however, the phenomenon is irregular as the seasons. I was told of several deaths by the ‘thunderbolt,’ and in the year 1857 the S.W. monsoon was ushered in almost daily by a tempest. Lieutenant-Colonel Hamerton, when sailing about the island, lost by lightning his Baloch Sarhang (boatswain); he himself felt a blow upon the shoulder like that of a falling block. No blood appeared upon the side, but it was livid to the hip, and for some days the patient was decidedly ‘shaky.’ Some explained his escape by his wearing flannel; others by his standing near the davits of a longboat, which were twisted like wax by the electric fluid.

The mainlands of Zanzibar and of Mozambique are subject, as might be expected, to tornados, which much resemble those of the West African coast. Accompanying the formation and the dispersion of the nimbus, they are often violent enough to wreck small craft. Caught in a fine specimen, I was able to observe all the normal phenomena,—the building up of the warning arch, the white eye or gleam under the soffit, the wind blowing off shore, the apparent periodicity of throbs, and the frantic rage of the short-lived squall. The cyclones and hurricanes of the East Indian Islands rarely extend to Zanzibar. During 14 years there was but one tourbillon strong enough to uproot a cocoa-tree. It passed over the city about midnight, overthrowing the Mábandani or roof-sheds, and it was followed by a burst of rain. Colonel Sykes (loco cit.) remarks, philosophically explaining the why, ‘Another peculiar feature in the climatology of Zanzibar is that there is seldom any dew experienced.’ The reverse is the case, as might be known by the strength of the nightly radiation. Captain Guillain (i. 2, 72) declares that the rosées which accompany the rains are sufficient for watering the ground, and observes (p. 94), I presume concerning those who remain in the open air, ‘Rester à terre entre huit heurs du soir et le lever du soleil c’est s’exposer à une mort très probable, sinon certaine.’ The sunset, never followed by twilight, is accompanied by a sudden coolness which, as in equatorial, and even sub-tropical regions generally, causes a rapid precipitation of vapour. The dews are cold and clammy, and the morning shows large beads in horizontal streaks of moisture on perpendicular surfaces. I often remarked the deposition of dew when light winds were blowing; of course it did not stand in drops, but it wetted the clothing. This I believe is an exception to the general rule. At sunset the old stager will not sit or walk in the open air, although, as in Syria, he will expose himself to it at nine or ten p. m., when the night has acquired its normal temperature. As in the west coast squadron, so here, there is an order that all men on deck after sunset must wear their blanket-coats and trowsers, and many an unfortunate sailor has lost his life by sleeping in the streets, thus allowing the dew to condense upon his body while under the influence of liquor. Experienced travellers have taught themselves, even in the hottest seasons of the hottest equinoctial regions, to air the hut with a ‘bit of fire’ before sundown and sunrise, and it is doubtless an excellent precaution against ‘chills.’

Zanzibar Island, lying in S. lat. 6°, has the sun in zenith twice a year: the epochs being early March and October; more exactly, March 4 and October 9. Hence it has two distinct summers; the first in February, the second in September. It has double rains; the ‘Great Masika’ in April to June, and the ‘Little Masika’ in October to November. It has two winters; the shorter in December, and in July the longer, which is much more marked than the former. There are only three months of N.E. trade (Azyab)[40] to nine of S.E. and S.W. (Kausi). The regularity of these seasons is broken by a variety of local causes, and there is ever, I repeat, the normal instability of equinoctial climates. Theory appears often at fault upon these matters. A fair instance is Mr Cooley’s assertion, that about Kilima-njaro the ‘rainy season is also the hot season.’ Theoretically, of course, the period of the sun’s northing and of the great rains should be, north of the equator, the hot season; but where tropical downfalls are heavy, the excessive humidity intercepting the solar rays, and the valleys and swamps refrigerated by the torrents, make the rainy season the cold weather. From June to September the natives of Fernando Po (N. lat. 4°) die, like those of eastern intertropical Africa, of catarrh, quinsey, and rheumatism. Even in India the Goanese call the rains ‘o inverno,’ and Abba Gregorius makes the wet weather the winter of Abyssinia. About Kilima-njaro the hot and dry season opens with the end and closes with the beginning of the hot monsoon.

The natives of Zanzibar distribute the year into five seasons. A far simpler division here applicable, as in Western India, is made by those local trades the monsoons, between whose two unequal lengths are long intervals of calms and of variable winds. These are the Mausim or N.E. monsoon, and the Hippalus or S.W.

1. The Kaskazi or Kazkazi (vulgarly Kizkazi), to which the Arabs limit the term El Mausim (Monsoon), is _the_ season during which the Azyab (ازيب) or N.E. trade blows. The wind begins about mid-November; from mid-December to mid-February its strength is greatest, and it usually ends about mid-March. In 1857, however, the Kaskazi opened with light showers, and continued in full force till March 24; usually the last vessels from Cutch and Bombay enter port about March 10. This is the first of the two hot seasons, and midsummer may be placed in February and March. A fine, cool sea-breeze from the N.E. usually prevails between 8 a.m. and late in the afternoon. When it is absent the weather is sultry and oppressive, the northerner feels suffocated; the least exertion brings on profuse perspiration, and the cuticular irritation produces boils and ‘prickly heat.’ The nights are close and stifling enough to banish rest and sleep. As has been shown, the thermometer does not stand high, but the frequent flashes of sheet-lightning playing over the northern and western sky show a surcharge of electricity. The public health would suffer severely but for the frequent cooling showers which, especially at the end of the Kaskazi, are succeeded by several days of pleasant weather. This is the agriculturist’s spring. Sesamum, holcus, rice, and other cereals, are sown upon lands previously burned for manure. It is the traveller’s opportunity for visiting the interior of the island and the worst parts of the coast, but—‘bad is the best.’

2. The Msika (or Másika) Mku, Greater rain or rains. About the end of March the change of monsoon is ushered in by heavy squalls from the S.E. and by tornados blowing off land. Presently the Hippalus breaks, and extends from early May into October. In May native craft make India after a run of 20 to 25 days; after the end of August they rarely attempt the voyage. This Kausi or Hippalus is usually called S.W. monsoon, but it has mostly an eastern deflection, possibly modified by the westerly land-breezes. The Arabs divide it, as will be seen, into three portions. First, the Kaus proper,[41] in Kisawahili Kausi (قوسی), from mid-April to early August, the period of the greatest strength. Second, Kipupwe or first winter—July and early August; and third, the Dayman, which ends the Kausi.

Presently appear the rains which have followed the northing sun. The same observation was made by the Austrian mission on the White River in N. lat. 4° 30′. On the coast we can distinctly trace their progress. In 1857 the downfall began in Feb. 15, at Usumbara (S. lat. 5°), where the clouds are massed and condensed by a high plateau, leading to lofty, snow-capped mountains. In 1854 I found that the rainy season opened at Berberah of the Somal (N. lat. 10° 25′) on April 15; and in early June they reach Bombay (N. lat. 18° 53′). Concerning the movement of the wet season in inner intertropical Africa I have already written in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society (xxix. 207).

The heaviest rains at Zanzibar Island begin the wet season about mid- April, and last 30 to 40 days; they do not end, however, till early June. Some observers remark that the fall is greatest at low water and during the ebb-tides of the Syzygies. It is, however, rare to have a week of uninterrupted rain, as in eastern India and sometimes in the Brazil. The discharge is exceedingly uncertain. Some years number 85 inches, others 108. During the first eight months of 1857 and the last four months of 1858, we find a total of 120·21 inches. In 1859 it reached 167, doubling the average of Bombay (76·55), and nearly trebling that of Calcutta (56·83). We may compare these figures with those of Europe and the United States. England has 31·97 inches; France, 25·00; Central Germany, 20·00; Hungary, 16·93; Boston, 38·19 (about the same at Beyrut in Syria); Philadelphia, 45·00; and St Louis, Mo., 31·97. Of these 167 inches (1859), 104·25 fell during the Msika Mku. The number of wet days ranges from 100 to 130 per annum. According to the people, rain has diminished of late years; perhaps it is the result of felling cocoas, and of disforesting the land for cloves. In 1857, the Great Msika was preceded by a few days of oppressive heat, which ended (March 24) in a highly electrical storm, like those which usher in the rains of western India, and suddenly the cool S.W. began to blow. For some time we had daily showers, now from the N.E., then from the S.W., with high winds and loud thunderings; the rains, however, did not show in earnest before April 10.

The islanders like the Msika to open with showers strong enough to bind the land, but not so violent as to carry off the manure deposited by the year’s decayed vegetation. After this the water should fall in heavy ropy torrents, with occasional breaks of sunshine and fine weather; when this lasts thirty days, and is succeeded by frequent showers, good crops are expected. The downfall is heavier in the interior of the island than about the city, which, situated upon a point, escapes many a drenching. It must, however, be borne in mind that the phenomena of the rains, like those of the sea and air, are essentially irregular. In some seasons there will be only half-a-dozen rainy afternoons; in others as many rainy mornings. There are years of great drought, and there are seasons when the sun does not appear for six weeks in succession. Usually heavy rain is not expected after 11 A.M., and showers are rare after 2 P.M. As I subsequently remarked in the east African interior—the Fluminenses of the Brazil still preserve the tradition—there is a curious regularity and periodicity in the hours of downfall, often extending over many days. This phenomenon may have done much towards creating the ‘rain- doctor.’

During the Msika the horizon is obscured, dangerously indeed for ships: the wind veers round to every point of the compass; the sky is murky and overcast; huge purple nimbi, like moving mountains, float majestically against the wind, showing strong counter-currents in the upper aërial regions. From afar the island appears smothered in blue mist, and often the cloudrock splits into two portions, one of which makes for the coast. Even during the rare days of sunshine the distances, owing to the continuous humidity, are rarely clear, and the exhalations make refraction extensive. A high tension of vapour is the rule. For the first three hours after sunrise the land is often obscured by ‘smokes,’ a white misty fog, often deepening to a drizzling rain; this lasts until 10 A.M., about which time the sea-breeze begins to blow.

The Msika is much feared by the native population, and the interior of the island becomes a hot-bed of disease. The animal creation seems to breathe as much water as air. The want of atmospheric weight, and consequently of pressure upon the surface of the body, renders the circulation sluggish, robs man of energy, and makes him feel how much better is sleep than waking. Europeans, speaking from effect, complain that the ‘heavy’ air produces an unnatural drowsiness—it is curious to see how many of our popular books make humidity increase the weight of the atmospheric column. During this season the dews of sunset are deemed especially fatal to foreigners. At times the body feels cold and clammy when the thermometer suggests that it should be perspiring: super- saturation is drawing off the vital heat. The lungs are imperfectly oxygenized, and, in general belief, positive is exchanged for negative electricity. The hair and skin are dank and sodden; indeed, a dry cutis is an unattainable luxury. Iron oxydizes with astonishing rapidity; shoes exposed to the air soon fall to pieces; mirrors are clouded with steam; paper runs and furniture sweats; the houses leak; books and papers are pasted together; ink is covered with green fur; linens and cottons grow mouldy, and broadcloths stiffen and become boardy.

This excess of damp is occasionally varied by the extreme of dryness. The hot wind represents the Khamasin of Egypt, the Sharki (or Sh’luk) of Syria, the Harmattan of west Africa, and the Norte of the southern Brazil, Paraguay, and the Argentine Confederation. At such times the air apparently abounds in oxygen and in ozone. Cotton cloth feels hard and crisp; even the water is cooled by the prodigious evaporation. Books and papers curl up and crack, and strangers are apt to suffer from nausea and fainting fits.

3. The Kipupwe, first winter or cold season—July and early August. The bright azure of the sky, the surpassing clearness of the water, and the lively green colours of the land, are not what we associate with the idea of the ‘disease of the year.’ The Kausi or S.W. monsoon still blows, but in this second or post-pluvial phase its strength is diminished. As on the western coast the mornings are misty, the effect of condensation and of excessive evaporation, the sun pumping up vapour from the rapidly desiccating ground; but about four hours after sunrise a strong sea-breeze sets in, giving a little life and elasticity to the exhausted frame. When the ‘doctor’ fails the heat is oppressive, and the sunsets are often accompanied by an unpleasant closeness. The beginning of the Kipupwe is held to be universally sickly. The Hindus, who declare that all cold coming from the south is bad, suffer from attacks of rheumatism and pneumonia. The charms of the season induce Europeans to despise the insidious attacks of malaria: they commit imprudences and pay for them in severe fevers. The rare but heavy showers that now fall are termed ‘Mcho;’ they separate the greater from the lesser Msika.

4. Daymán (in Kisawahili Daymáni) ends the Kausi or S. W. monsoon, and extends through August and part of October. Though the sun is nearly perpendicular the air is cooled by strong south-westerly breezes. At this time yams, manioc, and sweet potatoes grow, making it a second spring, whilst the harvest of rice and holcus assimilates it to the temperate autumn.

5. The Vuli (Fuli)[42] or Msika Mdogo, second rains or Little Msika. This season lasts but three weeks, beginning shortly after the sun has crossed the zenith of Zanzibar in the southern declination, and embracing part of October and November. It is not considered a healthy time by the islanders. The autumnal rains are sometimes wanting upon the continent, and the land then suffers as severely from drought as northern Syria does when the ‘former rain’ fails. After the Vuli recommences the Kaskazi, and the N. E. trade again blows. The sun is distant, the thermometer does not range high, yet the temperature of houses sheltered from the breeze becomes overpowering, and without the ‘doctor’ the city would hardly be habitable. At times the Trade freshens to a gale that blows through the day. The Hindus suffer severely from this ‘Báorá’ (blast), and declare that it brings on fits of ‘Mridi’ (refroidissement), here held dangerous. During the whole of the Azyab monsoon the people prefer hot sun and a clear, which is always a slightly hazy-blue, sky. They dislike the clouds and heavy showers called Mvua[43] ya ku pandia, or harvest rains, which are brought up at times by the N. N. West wind. On the other hand, when the Kausi or S. West monsoon blows, they hold an overcast sky the best for health, and they dread greatly the ‘rain-sun.’ The peasants take advantage of the dryness, and prepare, by burning, the land for maize, sesamum, and rice.

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.

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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:

This is ignored by Captain Guillain (Appendix, vol. iii.), who makes the Wasawahili retain all the names of the Arab months.

Footnote 45:

In 1870, for instance, it was kept in Syria on the 11th of ‘Adar’ (March), old style, and on Adar 23rd, new style.

Footnote 46:

According to Captain Guillain, in 1846-7 it corresponded with August 29 (the New Year’s Day of Abyssinia and Egypt in 1844); in 1848 with August 28; and in 1850, 51, 52 with August 27. He was also informed that the Vuli began 20 days after the Nau-roz, and lasted 30 (Sept. 20 to Oct. 20), that the Msika (which he writes Mouaka) begins 90 days after the 110th (Dec. 20 to March 20), and that the Mcho’o commences 20 days after the 280 (June 10 to July 1). That author, moreover, remarks that as the new Persian calendar adds to every century 22 days, instead of our 24 days, the Nau-roz thus falls behind ours 48 hours in each hundred years. Thus between 1829 and 1879, the New Year’s Day should occur between the 28th and 29th August.

Footnote 47:

In some cases an emetic will cut short the enemy. The allopathic remedies are evacuants, cooling lotions applied to the head, and sulphate of quinine (4 to 12 grains three or four times per diem), with appropriate treatment for complications. Calomel and tartar emetic must be avoided on account of their depressing effects. Liquor arsenicalis and the Tinctura Warburgii (Warburg’s Drops), which is said to have failed in yellow fever, have cured malignant, inveterate, and chronic cases. The Persians at one time in Zanzibar besieged Colonel Hamerton’s door for this ‘Ab-i-hayyát’—water of life. The invaluable wet sheet and the Turkish bath were unknown at Zanzibar in 1857.

Footnote 48:

Mr Lyons M’Leod says (vol. ii. 347) that a ‘very handsome jet-black parrot’ is to be procured there.

Footnote 49:

The χελώνη ὀρεινὴ, or mountain-tortoise of the Periplus (chap. i. 15), may have been a turtle or terrapin. A small quantity of tortoise-shell is sold on the island by Malagashes (Madagascarians) and Comoro men.

Footnote 50:

The iguana abounds on the West Coast of Africa, and in the Bonny River, where the huge hideous lizard is Ju-Ju—obnoxious to the honours of divinity.

Footnote 51:

So Dr Roschenberger mentions at Zanzibar a coluber called boa- constrictor, and peculiar to America.

Footnote 52:

I have not seen the ‘Fishes of Zanzibar,’ published in 1867 by Lieut.- Col. Playfair, H.M.’s Consul, and Dr Günther (Van Voorst, 1, Paternoster Row).

Footnote 53:

The eel-shaped fishes with green bones have the reputation of causing stomach-pains and vomiting. I may observe that the Oriental mind readily connects venom and verdant colours.

Footnote 54:

Nází, in Kisawahili, is the fruit, Mnází the tree: in this case the initial letter is evidently a contraction of Mti, a tree. The name for the sun-dried meat, ‘kobra,’ is borrowed from the Hindustani ‘khopra.’

Footnote 55:

I shall speak of the clove in a subsequent chapter.

Footnote 56:

The Hindu anna, which contains four pice, is here reckoned at eight.

Footnote 57:

The mango pickles of Makdishu are described by Ibu Batutah in A.D. 1331.

Footnote 58:

Missionary of the Southern Baptist Connexion. He published a book of Travels in Western Africa, and a Grammar and Dictionary of the Yoruba language, printed by the Smithsonian Institution (May, 1858).

Footnote 59:

The ‘hot amourist’ pronounces this drink to be الامساک کثير

Footnote 60:

The seeds cannot easily be digested. Thus the lower regions of Fernando Po are a thicket of guava, suggesting the Jackal-coffee of the Neilgherries.

Footnote 61:

According to my friend Mr P. L. Simmonds (The Journal of Applied Science) this bast fetches readily £14 to £15 per ton, and ‘although the paper makers will buy any quantity brought to market, it is to be regretted that they will offer no combined assistance to facilitate the obtaining larger supplies of this important product.’

Footnote 62:

The Inzimbati (a leguminosa) and Invoulí of Capt. Guillain.

Footnote 63:

Palpably a corruption of the Portuguese Grâo—grain generally.

Footnote 64:

I have read in some book that the ‘Pywaree’ of Guiana is made from the masticated and fermented juice of the cassava-‘flower’—probably for— ‘flour.’

Footnote 65:

I heard also of antimony on the Brazilian coast, opposite the Island of S. Sebastião, in the Province of S. Paulo, but I have not seen any specimens of it.