| By Author | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Title | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Language |
|
Download this book: [ ASCII ] Look for this book on Amazon Tweet |
Title: Zanzibar; city, island, and coast
Author: Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.
*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Zanzibar; city, island, and coast" ***
COAST ***
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcriber’s Note:
This version of the text cannot represent certain typographical effects.
Italics are delimited with the ‘_’ character as _italic_. Superscripted
characters are prefixed with ‘^’ and delimited by ‘{ }’.
Footnotes have been gathered at the end of each chapter.
Minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected. Please
see the transcriber’s note at the end of this text for details regarding
the handling of any textual issues encountered during its preparation.
ZANZIBAR.
VOL. I.
[Illustration: ANCIENT TOMB AT TONGO-NI.]
ZANZIBAR:
CITY, ISLAND, AND COAST.
BY
RICHARD F. BURTON.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18, CATHERINE ST., STRAND.
1872.
[_All Rights reserved._]
---------------------
JOHN CHILDS AND SON, PRINTERS.
TO
THE MEMORY OF MY OLD AND LAMENTED FRIEND,
=John Frederick Steinhaeuser=
(F.R.C.S., ETC. ETC., STAFF SURGEON, BOMBAY ARMY),
THIS NARRATIVE OF A JOURNEY,
IN WHICH FATE PREVENTED HIS TAKING PART,
IS INSCRIBED
WITH THE DEEPEST FEELINGS OF AFFECTION AND REGRET.
CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
--------------
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
PREPARATORY 1
CHAPTER II.
ARRIVAL AT ZANZIBAR ISLAND 16
CHAPTER III.
HOW THE NILE QUESTION STOOD IN THE YEAR OF GRACE 1856 38
CHAPTER IV.
A STROLL THROUGH ZANZIBAR CITY 66
CHAPTER V.
GEOGRAPHICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL 116
SECT. I. AFRICA, EAST AND WEST—‘ZANZIBAR’ EXPLAINED— 116
MENOUTHIAS—POSITION AND FORMATION—THE EAST
AFRICAN CURRENT—NAVIGATION—ASPECT OF THE
ISLAND
II. METEOROLOGICAL NOTES—THE DOUBLE SEASONS, &c. 150
III. CLIMATE CONTINUED—NOTES ON THE NOSOLOGY OF 176
ZANZIBAR—EFFECTS ON STRANGERS
IV. NOTES ON THE FAUNA OF ZANZIBAR 197
V. NOTES ON THE FLORA OF ZANZIBAR 218
VI. THE INDUSTRY OF ZANZIBAR 252
CHAPTER VI.
VISIT TO THE PRINCE SAYYID MAJID.—THE GOVERNMENT OF ZANZIBAR 256
CHAPTER VII.
A CHRONICLE OF ZANZIBAR.—THE CAREER OF THE LATE ‘IMAM,’ 276
SAYYID SAID
CHAPTER VIII.
ETHNOLOGY OF ZANZIBAR.—THE FOREIGN RESIDENTS 312
CHAPTER IX.
HORSEFLESH AT ZANZIBAR.—THE OUTSKIRTS OF THE CITY, AND THE 346
CLOVE PLANTATIONS
CHAPTER X.
ETHNOLOGY OF ZANZIBAR.—THE ARABS 368
CHAPTER XI.
ETHNOLOGY OF ZANZIBAR.—THE WASAWAHILI AND THE SLAVE RACES 407
CHAPTER XII.
PREPARATIONS FOR DEPARTURE 469
APPENDIX.
THE UKARA OR UKEREWE LAKE 490
PREFACE.
I feel that the reader will expect some allusion to the circumstances
which have delayed, till 1871, the publication of a journal ready to
appear in 1860. The following letter will explain the recovery of a long
report, forwarded by me in 1857, under an address, very legibly written
in ink, upon its cover, to the late Dr Norton Shaw, then Secretary Royal
Geographical Society of Great Britain.
‘No. 9, of 1865.
‘_General Department,
Bombay Castle, 28th February, 1865._
‘To
The Under Secretary of State for India,
London.
‘Sir,
No. 9, A.
The Secretary
R. Geog. Society,
Whitehall Place,
London.
With reference to the packet addressed, as per margin, which was sent to
you viâ Southampton from the Separate Department, by the Overland Mail
of the 14th instant, I have the honour to subjoin for your information
copy of a note on the subject from the Hon. W. E. Frere, dated the 5th
idem.
‘When searching the strong box belonging to the Bombay Branch of the
Royal Asiatic Society yesterday I found the accompanying parcel,
directed to the Secretary Royal Geographical Society, with a pencil note
upon it, requesting that it might be sent to the Secretary of State,
Foreign Office. From the signature in the corner, R. F. B., I conclude
that it must be the manuscript he sent to Colonel Rigby at Zanzibar, and
which, from some statements of Mr Burton (to which I cannot at present
refer, but of which I have a clear recollection), never reached its
destination.[1]
‘I have not been able to discover when or how the parcel was received,
nor how the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society was to send it to
the Foreign Office, except through Government. I therefore send it to
you, and perhaps you would send it to the Under Secretary at the India
House, with the above explanation, and request that it be sent to its
direction.
I have, &c.,
(Signed) C. RAVENSCROFT,
Acting Chief Secretary to Government.’
* * * * * * *
It is not a little curious that, as my first report upon the subject of
Zanzibar was diverted from its destination, so the ‘Letts’ containing my
excursions to Sa’adani and to Kilwa also came to temporary grief.
Annexed by a skipper on the West African coast, appropriated by his
widow, and exposed at a London bookseller’s stall (labelled outside,
‘Burton Original MS. Diary in Africa’), it was accidentally left by the
buyer, an English Artillery officer, in the hall of one of H. M.’s
Ministers of State. Here being recognized, it was kindly and courteously
returned to me. The meteorological observations made by me on the East
African seaboard and at other places during the discovery of the Lakes
were also, I would remark, mislaid for years, deep hidden in certain
pigeon-holes at Whitehall Place. May these three accidents be typical of
the fate of my East African Expedition, which, so long the victim of
uncontrollable circumstance, appears now, after many weary years, likely
to emerge from the shadow which overcast it, and to occupy the position
which I ever desired to see it conquer.
The two old documents are published with the less compunction as
Zanzibar, though increasing in importance and now the head-quarters of
an Admiralty Court and of two Mission-Schools, with a printing-press and
other civilized appliances, has not of late been worked out. The best
authorities are still those who appeared about a quarter of a century
ago, always excepting, however, the four magnificent volumes, Baron Carl
Clare von der Decken’s Reisen in Ost-Afrika, in den Jahren 1859 bis
1861, which I first saw at Jerusalem: there too I had the pleasure of
making acquaintance with Dr Otto Kersten, who accompanied the
unfortunate traveller during the earlier portion of his peregrinations,
and who has so ably and efficiently performed his part as editor. Had a
certain publisher carried out his expressed intention of introducing a
resumé of this fine work in English dress to the British public, I
should have saved myself the trouble of writing these volumes: the
Reisen, however, in the original form are hardly likely to become
popular. Moreover, the long interval of a decade has borne fruit: it has
given me time to work out the subject, and, better still, to write with
calmness and temper upon a theme of the most temper-trying nature,—chap.
xii. vol. II. will explain what is meant. Finally, I have something
important to say upon the subject of the so-called Victoria Nyanza Lake.
I had proposed to enrich the Appendix with extracts from Arab and other
mediæval authors, who have treated of Zanzibar, Island and Coast. Such
an addition, however, would destroy all proportion between the book and
its subject: I have therefore confined myself to notes on commerce and
tariffs of prices in 1857 to 1859, to meteorological observations, and
to Capt. Smee’s coasting voyage, which dates from January, 1811. The
latter will supply an excellent birds-eye view of those parts of the
Zanzibar mainland which were not visited by the East African Expedition.
RICHARD F. BURTON.
_London, Oct. 15, 1871._
ZANZIBAR.
-------
PART I.
THE CITY AND THE ISLAND.
‘Of a territory within a fortnight’s sail of us, we scarcely know more
than we do of much of Central Africa, infinitely less than we do of the
shores of the Icy Sea.’—TRANS. BOMBAY GEOG. SOC., vol. xii.
‘Si fueris sapiens, sapientibus utere factis,
Si ignarus mordax, utere dente tuo.’
FR. JOÃO DE SANT’ ANGELO.
[Illustration:
ZANZIBAR.
(ISLAND & COAST)
_London, Tinsley Brothers._
]
ZANZIBAR.
---
CHAPTER I.
PREPARATIONS FOR DEPARTURE.
‘We were now landed upon the Continent of Africa, the most desolate,
desert, and inhospitable country in the world, even Greenland and Nova
Zembla itself not excepted.’—DEFOE.
I could not have believed, before Experience taught me, how sad and
solemn is the moment when a man sits down to think over and to write out
the tale of what was before the last Decade began. How many thoughts and
memories crowd upon the mind! How many ghosts and phantoms start up from
the brain—the shreds of hopes destroyed and of aims made futile; of ends
accomplished and of prizes won; the failures and the successes alike
half forgotten! How many loves and friendships have waxed cold in the
presence of new ties! How many graves have closed over their dead during
those short ten years—that epitome of the past!
‘And when the lesson strikes the head,
The weary heart grows cold.’
* * * * * *
The result of a skirmish with the Somal of Berberah (April 19, 1855)
was, in my case, a visit ‘on sick leave’ to England. Arrived there, I
lost no time in recovering health, and in volunteering for active
Crimean service. The campaign, however, was but too advanced; all
‘appointments’ at head-quarters had been filled up; and new comers, such
as I was, could look only to the ‘Bashi Buzuks,’ or to the ‘Turkish
Contingent.’
My choice was readily made. There was, indeed, no comparison between
serving under Major-General W. F. Beatson, an experienced Light-Cavalry
man who had seen rough work in the saddle from Spain to Eastern
Hindustan; and under an individual, half-civilian, half-reformed
Adjutant-General, whose specialty was, and ever had been, foolscap—
literally and metaphorically.
In due time I found myself at the Dardanelles, Chief of Staff in that
thoroughly well-abused corps, the Bashi Buzuks. It were ‘actum agere’ to
inflict upon the reader a _réchauffé_ of our troubles,—how the military
world declared us to be a band of banditti, an irreclaimable savagery;
how a man, who then called himself H. B. M.’s Consul—but who has long
since incurred the just consequences of his misconduct—packed the press,
because General Beatson had refused him a lucrative contract; how we
awoke one fine morning to find ourselves in a famous state of siege and
blockade, with Turkish muskets on the land side, and with British
carronades on the water-front; and how finally we, far more sinned
against than sinning, were reported by Mr Consul Calvert to
Constantinople as being in a furor of mutiny, intent upon battle and
murder and sudden death. These things, and many other too personal for
this occasion, will fit better into an autobiography.
The way, however, in which I ‘came to grief’ (permit me the phrase)
deserves present and instant record: it is an admirable comment upon the
now universally accepted axiom, ‘surtout, pas de zèle,’ and upon the
Citizen-king’s warning words, ‘Surtout, ne me faites pas des affaires.’
The Bashi Buzuks, some 3000 sabres, almost all well mounted and better
armed, were pertinaciously kept pitched on a bare hill-side, far from
the scene of action and close to the Dardanelles country town, that gay
and lively Turkish Coventry, at the Hellespont-mouth. In an evil hour I
proposed, if my General, who wanted nothing better, would allow me, to
proceed in person to Constantinople and to volunteer officially for the
relief of the doomed city, Kars.
Ah, Corydon, Corydon, quæ te dementia cepit?
And I _did_ proceed to Stamb’ul; and I _did_ volunteer; and a neat hit,
indeed, was that same public-spirited proceeding!
It would be a lively imagination that could conceive the scene of storm
which resulted from my brazen-faced procedure. The picture has its comic
side when looked back upon through the mellowing medium of three long
lustres. The hopeful eagerness of the volunteer; the ‘proper pride’ in
one’s corps, that had come forward for an honourable action; the fluent
proof that we could convoy rations enough for the gallant and deserted
Ottoman garrison, diplomatically left for months to slow death by
starvation; and—the blank and stunned surprise at the hurricane of wrath
which burst from the high authority to whose ambassadorial ear the
project was entrusted.
Reported home as a ‘brouillon’ and turbulent, I again turned lovingly
towards Africa—Central and Intertropical—and on April 19, 1856, I
resolved to renew my original design of reaching the unknown regions,
and of striking the Nile-sources viâ the Eastern coast. For long ages, I
knew, explorers had been working, literally, as well as figuratively,
against the stream; and, as the ancients had succeeded by a flank march,
so the same might be done by us moderns. My Ptolemy told me the tale in
very plain and emphatic terms, and although his shore-line shows great
inaccuracies, his traditions of the interior, derived from mariners of
Tyre and from older writers, appeared far more reliable:—
‘He (_scil._ the Tyrian) says that a certain Diogenes, one of those
sailing to India, ... having the Troglyditic region on the right, after
25 days reached the Lakes whence the Nilus flows, and of which the
Promontory of the Rhapta is a little more to the south.’[2]
Amongst my scanty literary belongings on our march to the Tanganyika
Lake was a paper (De Azaniâ Africæ littore Orientali, Commentatio
Physiologica, Bonviæ, Formis Caroli Gengii, MDCCCLII.) kindly sent to me
by the author, Mr George F. de Bunsen. It quoted that same passage which
was a frequent solace to me during our 18 months’ wanderings, and I
still preserve the pamphlet as a memory.
Nor had I forgotten Camoens:—
‘And there behold the lakes wherein the Nile
is born, a truth the ancients never knew;
see how he bathes, ’gendering the crocodile,
th’ Abassian land, where man to Christ is true.
behold, how lacking ramparts (novel style!)
he fights heroic battle with the foe.
see Meroe, island erst of ancient fame,
Nobá amongst the peoples now its name.’[3]
_Lusiad_, Canto x. 95.
This is happier and truer to antiquity than the doubts of José Basilio
da Gama:—
‘—the sombre range
Virginal, ne’er by foot of man profaned,
Where rise Nile’s fountains, if such fountains be.’
_O Uruguay_, Canto v.
I consulted my excellent friend the late Dr Barth, of Timbuktu, about
following the footsteps of pilot Diogenes the Fortunate. He replied in a
kind and encouraging letter, hinting, however, that no prudent man would
pledge himself to discover the Nile sources. The Royal Geographical
Society benevolently listened once more to my desire of penetrating into
the heart of the Dark Continent. An Expeditionary Committee was formed
by Sir Roderick I. Murchison, the late Rear-admiral Beechey (then
President of the Society), Colonel Sykes, Chairman of the Court of
Directors of the Hon. East Indian Company, Mr Monckton Milnes (Lord
Houghton), Mr Francis Galton, the South African traveller, and Mr John
Arrowsmith. I did not hear, strange to say, till many years had passed,
of the active part which Vice-admiral Sir George Back, the veteran
explorer of the Arctic regions, had taken in urging the expedition, and
in proposing me as its head. Had it been otherwise, this recognition of
his kindness would not have come so tardily.
The Committee obtained from Lord Clarendon, then H. M.’s Secretary of
State for Foreign Affairs, the sum of £1000, and it was understood that
the same amount would be advanced by the then ruling Court of Directors.
Unfortunately it was found wanting. I received, however, on Sept. 13,
1856, formal permission, ‘in compliance with the request of the Royal
Geographical Society, to be absent from duty as a regimental officer
under the patronage of H. B. Majesty’s Government, to be despatched into
Equatorial Africa, for a period not exceeding two years, calculated from
the date of departure from Bombay, upon the pay and allowances of my
rank.’ So wrote the Merchant-Sultans.
I was anxious again to take Lieut. John Hanning Speke, because he had
suffered with me in purse and person at Berberah, and because he, like
the rest of the party, could obtain no redress. Our misfortunes came
directly from Aden, indirectly from England. I had proposed to build a
fort at Berberah, and to buy all the non-Ottoman ports on the western
shores of the Red Sea for the trifle of £10,000. In those days of fierce
outcry against ‘territorial aggrandisement’ the Court of Directors
looked with horror at such a firebrand proposal, and they were lost in
wonder that a subaltern officer should dare to prepare for the Suez
Canal, which Lord Palmerston and Mr Robert Stephenson had declared to be
impracticable. Therefore the late Dr Buist, editor of the Bombay
_Times_, had his orders to write down the ‘Somali Expedition.’ He was
ably assisted by a certain Reverend gentleman, then chaplain at Aden,
who had gained for himself the honourable epithet of Shaytan Abyaz, or
White Devil, while the apathy of the highest political authority—the
Resident at Aden, Brigadier Coghlan—and the active jealousy of his
assistant, Captain Playfair, also contributed to thwart all my views,
and to bring about, more or less directly, the bloody disaster which
befell us at Berberah. For this we had no redress. The Right Honourable
the Governor-General of India, the late Lord Dalhousie, of pernicious
memory, thought more of using our injuries to cut off the slave-trade
than of doing us justice, although justice might easily have been done.
After keeping us waiting from April 23, 1855, to June 13, 1857, the
spoliator of Oude was pleased to inform us, laconically and disdaining
explanation, that he ‘could not accede to the application.’[4]
Nothing could persuade the Court of Directors to dispense with the
services of Lieut. Speke, who had, like myself, volunteered for the
Crimea, and who, at the end of the War, had resolved to travel for the
rest of his leave. I persuaded him to accompany me as far as Bombay,
trusting that the just and generous Governor, the late Lord Elphinstone,
who had ever warmly supported my projects, and that my lamented friend
James Grant Lumsden, then Member of Council, would enable us, despite
official opposition at home, to tide over all obstacles.
I have been prolix upon these points, which suggest that the difficulty
of reaching the Lunar Mountains, or the ‘Invisos Fontes,’ were in
London, not in Africa; that the main obstacles were not savages and
malaria, but civilized rivalry and vis inertiæ; and that the requisites
for success were time, means, and freedom from official trammels. Hardly
had we reached Cairo (Nov. 6, 1856), and had inspected an expedition
fitted out by H. H. the late Abbas Pasha, and admirably organized by the
late Marie Joseph Henri Leonie de Lauture, Marquis d’Escayrac (generally
known as Comte d’Escayar de Lauture), when an order from the Court of
Directors summoned me back to give evidence at some wretched Court-
martial pending on Colonel A. Shirley. The document being so worded that
it could not be obeyed, we—Lieut. Speke and I—held on our way.
And even when outward bound, I again got into trouble, without being
able, as was said of Lord Gough, to get out again. A short stay at Suez,
and the voyage down the Red Sea, taught me enough of Anglo-Indian
mismanagement and of Arab temper, to foresee some terrible disaster.
Again that zeal! Instead of reporting all things couleur de rose, I sent
under flying seal, through the Royal Geographical Society, with whom I
directly corresponded, a long memorandum, showing the true state of
affairs, for transmission to the home branch of the Indian Government.
This ‘meddling in politics’ was ‘viewed with displeasure by Government,’
and reminded me of the old saying—
‘Wha mells wi’ what anither does,
May e’en gang hame and shoe his goose.’
The result was a ‘wig’ received in the heart of Africa, and—curious
coincidence!—accompanying that sheet of foolscap was a newspaper
containing news of the Jeddah massacre (June 15, 1858), and of our
farcical revenge for the deaths of Messrs Page, Eveillard, and some
fourteen souls, nearly the whole Christian colony.[5] It need hardly be
mentioned that this catastrophe showed the way to others, especially to
the three days ‘Tausheh’ of Damascus in 1860.
Fortune had now worked her little worst. We had a pleasant passage to
Bombay (Nov. 23, 1856), where affairs assumed a brighter aspect, as we
began preparing for the long exploration. Lord Elphinstone, after an
especial requisition, allowed Lieut. Speke to accompany me. He also
kindly ordered the Hon. East India Company’s sloop of war Elphinstone,
Captain Frushard, I.N., to convoy us, knowing how much importance
Orientals attach to appearances—especially to first appearances. My
‘father’ Frushard gained nothing by the voyage but the loss of his pay;
therefore is my gratitude to him the greater. Nor must I forget to
record the obliging aid of Mr, now Sir Henry L. Anderson, Secretary to
the Government of Bombay; he enabled us to borrow from the public stores
a chronometer, surveying instruments, and other necessaries.
Judging that a medical officer would be useful, not only to the members
of the expedition, but would also prove valuable in lands where the art
of healing is not held destructive, and where Medici are not called
‘Caucifici et Sanicidæ,’ Lord Elphinstone also detached the late Dr J.
F. Steinhaeuser, then staff-surgeon, to accompany us. Unfortunately the
order came too late. No merchantman happened then to be leaving Aden for
Zanzibar, and during the south-west monsoon native craft will not
attempt the perilous passage. Nothing daunted, my old and tried friend
crossed the Straits to Berberah, with the gallant project of marching
down country to join us in the south; nor did he desist till it became
evident, from his slow rate of progress, that he could not make Zanzibar
in time. The journey through the North-eastern horn of Africa would
alone have given a title to Fame. Its danger and difficulty were
subsequently proved (October 2, 1865) by the wounding of Baron Theodore
von Heughlin and by the murder of Baron von der Decken, Dr Link, and
others of his party.[6]
The absence of Dr Steinhaeuser lost the East African Expedition more
than can be succinctly told. A favourite with ‘natives’ wherever he
went, a tried traveller, a man of literary tastes and of extensive
reading, and better still, a spirit as staunch and determined as ever
attempted desperate enterprise,—he would doubtless have materially
furthered our views, and in all human probability Lieut. Speke would
have escaped deafness and fever-blight, I paralysis and its consequent
invalidism. We afterwards wandered together over the United States, and
it is my comfort, now that he also is gone, to think that no unkind
thought, much less an unfriendly word, ever broke our fair
companionship. His memory is doubly dear to me. He was one of the very
few who, through evil as well as through good report, disdained to abate
an iota of his friendship, and whose regard was never warmer than when
all the little world looked its coldest. After long years of service in
pestilential Aden, the ‘Coal-hole of the East,’ he died suddenly of
apoplexy at Berne, when crossing Switzerland to revisit his native land.
At that time I was wandering about the Brazil, and I well remember
dreaming, on what proved to be the date of his death, that a tooth
suddenly fell to the ground, followed by a crash of blood. Such a
friend, indeed, becomes part of oneself. I still feel a pang as my hand
traces these lines.
NOTE.
‘The Bashi Bazuks, commanded by General Beatson, were displaying all
the violence and rapacity of their class, little, if at all,
restrained by the presence of their English officers.’ Thus writes Mr
John William Kaye in ‘Our Indian Heroes’ (_Good Words_, June, 1851),
for the greater glorification of a certain General Neill, whose
principal act of heroism was to arrest a ‘Jack-in-Office Station
Master.’ Mr Kaye is essentially an official writer, but even official
inspiration should not be allowed directly to misstate fact.
-----
Footnote 1:
Mr Frere’s memory is unusually short. I intrusted the MS. to the
Eurasian apothecary of the Zanzibar Consulate, and I suspected (Lake
Regions of Central Africa, vol. i. chap. i.) that it had come to an
untimely end. The white population at Zanzibar had in those days a
great horror of publication, and thus is easily explained how a parcel
legibly addressed to the Royal Geographical Society had the honour of
passing eight years in the strong box of the ‘Bombay Branch of the
Royal Asiatic Society.’
Footnote 2:
Georg. lib. i. ix. The concluding words are ὧν ἐστι τὸ τῶν Ῥαπτῶν
ἀκροτήριον ὀλιγῴ νοτιώτερον. There is no reason why Bilibaldus
Pirkimerus (Bilibaldi Pirckeymher), Lugd. 1535, should render it,
‘quibus _Rhaptum promontorium_ paululum est Australius.’
Footnote 3:
When the Portuguese counselled the Abyssinians to wall their
settlements against the Gallas, the former replied like Spartans, ‘No;
we keep stones to build churches and temples, but we defend our
country with our arms and hands!’ The Coptic ‘Nob’ signifies gold
(Ritter Erdkunde, French translation, 142), the Camoensian ‘Noba’ is
therefore more correct than our modern Nubia, which we find in the
monk Burchard (A.D. 1250), ‘Æthiopia quæ hodie Nubia dicitur.’ De
Barros (1. iii. xii.) prefers ‘a gente dos Nobis.’ I have been tempted
to add a stanza which is _not_ translated from Camoens.
95 (_a_)
‘And see the twain from Albion’s chalky shore
go forth th’ Egyptian mystic veil to rend:
the farthest font of Nilus they explore,
those mighty waters whence the rivers trend,
then, O dire Chance! O Fortune hard and sore!
of all their fatal labours view the end—
that lies self-victimed in his natal land,
this lives afar on friendless foreign strand.’
Footnote 4:
The losses of the Somali expedition (not including those of the Arab
and Somali attendants) were as follows:—
Lt. Stroyan, I.N. (killed), lost Co.’s Rupees 1750
Lt. Speke (wounded) do. 4100
Lt. Burton (do.) do. 1950
Lt. Herne do. 500
Shaykh Ahmed do. 120
——
Total, Company’s Rupees 8420
Footnote 5:
I could not resist the temptation of printing ‘wig’ and newspaper
paragraph side by side in the Appendix (ii. 428) to my ‘Lake Regions
of Central Africa.’
Footnote 6:
Proceedings Royal Geographical Society, May 5, 1866. The lamented
travellers’ notes have now (1869-70) being published under the title
of ‘Baron Carl Claus von der Decken’s Reisen in Ost-Afrika in den
Jahren 1859 bis 1861. Bearbeitet von Otto Kersten (who accompanied the
first expedition). London. Asher.’
CHAPTER II.
ARRIVAL AT ZANZIBAR ISLAND.
‘There is probably no part of the world where the English Government has
so long had a Resident, where there are always some half-a-dozen
merchants and planters, of which we know so little as of the capital and
part of the kingdom of one of the most faithful of our allies, with whom
we have for half a century (since 1804) been on terms of intimacy.’—
TRANSACTIONS BOMBAY GEOG. SOC., 1856.
On December 2, 1856—fourteen long years ago!—we bade adieu to the foul
harbour of Bombay the Beautiful, with but a single sigh. The warm-
hearted Mr Lumsden saw us on board, wrung our hands with friendly
vigour, and bade us go in and win—deserve success if we could not
command it. No phantom of the future cast a shadow upon our sunny path
as we set out, determined either to do or die. I find my journal brimful
of enthusiasm. ‘Of the gladdest moments in human life, methinks, is the
departure upon a distant journey into unknown lands. Shaking off with
one mighty effort the fetters of Habit, the leaden weight of Routine,
the cloak of many Cares and the slavery of Home, man feels once more
happy. The blood flows with the fast circulation of childhood.
Excitement lends unwonted vigour to the muscles, and the sudden sense of
freedom adds a cubit to the mental stature. Afresh dawns the morn of
life; again the bright world is beautiful to the eye, and the glorious
face of nature gladdens the soul. A journey, in fact, appeals to
Imagination, to Memory, to Hope,—the three sister Graces of our moral
being.’[7]
The 18½ days spent in sailing 2400 direct miles ‘far o’er the red
equator’ were short for our occupations. I read all that had been
written upon the subject of Zanzibar, from Messer Marco Miglione to the
learned Vincent, who always suspected either the existence or the place
of the absurd ‘Maravi Lake.’ We rubbed up our acquaintance with the
sextant and the altitude and azimuth; and we registered barometer and
thermometer, so as to have a base for observations ashore. The nearest
reference point of known pressure to Zanzibar was then Aden, distant
above 1000 miles. Under all circumstances the distance was undesirable;
moreover, violent squalls between the Persian Gulf and Cape Guardafui
sometimes depress the mercury half an inch. I shall again refer to this
point in Chapter V.
‘Father Frushard’ was genial, as usual, and under his command every soul
was happy. We greatly enjoyed the order, coolness, and cleanliness of a
ship of war, after the confusion, the caloric, and the manifold
impurities of a Red Sea passenger-packet. Here were no rattling, heaving
throbs, making you tremulous as a jelly in the Caniculi; no coal-smoke,
intrusive as on a German Eisen-bahn; no thirst-maddened (cock-)
‘roaches’ exploring the entrance to man’s stomach; no cabins rank with
sulphuretted hydrogen; no decks whereon pallid and jaundiced passengers
shake convulsed shoulders as they rush to and from the bulwarks and the
taffrail. Also no ‘starboard and larboard exclusiveness’; of flirting
abigails tending portly and majestic dames, who look crooked beyond the
salvation-pale of their own very small ‘set’; no peppery civilians
rubbing skirts against heedless ‘griffins’; nor fair lips maltreating
the ‘hapless letter H’; nor officers singing lullabies to their
etiolated _enfants terribles_, and lacking but one little dispensation
of nature—concerning which Humboldt treats—to become the best of wet-
nurses. The ‘Elphinstone’ belonged not to the category ‘Shippe of
Helle,’ one of whose squadron I have described in an old voyage to a
certain ‘Unhappy Valley.’ We would willingly have prolonged our cruise
with the jovial captain, and with the good fellows and gallant gentlemen
in the gun-room, over many and many a league of waves.
Of course we had no adventures. We saw neither pirate nor slaver. The
tract seemed desert of human life; in fact, nothing met our eyes but
flying-fish at sea, gulls and gannets near shore. The stiff N. East
trade never quite failed us, even when crossing the Line, and the
Doldrums hardly visited us with a tornado or two—mere off-shore squalls.
The good old heart of teak, then aged 33 years, made an average of 150,
and an exceptional run of 200 knots, in 24 hours. This was indeed ‘gay
sailing on the bosom of the Indian Sea.’ After 16 days (Dec. 18), before
the solar lamp had been removed, our landfall, a long, low strip at
first sky-blue and distance-blurred, had turned purple, and had robed
itself in green and gold, with a pomp and a glory of vegetation then new
to us. This was Pemba, one of the three continental islands composing
the Zanzibarian archipelago: the Arabs call it Jazirat el Khazrá (Green
Island), and no wonder! Verdant and fresh enough must this huge
conservatory, this little and even richer Zanzibar, appear to their
half-closed ‘peepers,’ dazed and seared by the steely skies and brazen
grounds of Mángá[8] (Arabia generally) and Maskat (Muscat), and by the
dreadful glare and ‘damnable blue’ of the Persian Gulf and the Indian
Ocean. We are soon to visit this emerald isle, therefore no more of it
at present.
All had hoped to run in that night, but Fate or our evil deeds in the
last life otherwise determined. The wind fell with the sun, and during
the five minutes of crepuscule we anchored in the sandy bay-strand under
Tumbatu Island, S.W. of Point Nunguwi (Owen’s Nangowy), the north cape
of its big insular brother, Zanzibar. Like the items of this archipelago
generally, it is a long cairn-shaped reef of coralline, with its greater
length disposed N.S. This well-known norm of great peninsulas has been
explained by a sudden change in the earth’s centre of gravity, which
caused the waters to rush furiously from the northern hemisphere towards
the south pole. As usual, the burning suns, the tepid winds, the sopping
dews, and the copious rains clothe the thin soil with an impervious coat
of verdure, overhanging the salt-waters, and boasting a cultivation that
would make spring in green Erin look by its side autumn—rusty and
yellow-brown.
We landed, and curiously inspected the people of Tumbatu, for we were
now beyond Semitico-Abyssinian centres, and we stood in the presence of
another and a new race. They are called by the Omani Arabs Makhádim—
helots or serviles—and there is nothing free about them save their
morals. Suspicious and fearful, numerous and prolific, poor and ill-
favoured, they show all the advantages and the disadvantages of an
almost exclusive ichthyophagism. Skilful in divination, especially by
Báo or geomancy, they have retained, despite El Islam, curious practices
palpably derived from their wild ancestry of the Blackmoor shore. They
repair, for the purpose of ‘clear-seeing,’ to a kind of Trophonius cave,
spend the night in attack of inspiration, and come forth in the morning
‘Agelasti, mæsti, cogitabundi.’ Similarly the Nas-Amun (Nasamone) slept,
for insight into futurity, upon their ancestral graves. The wild
highlanders of the East African ghauts have an equally useful den in
their grim mountains; and on the West African coast the Krumen consult
the ‘Great Debbil,’ who lives in a hole amongst the rocks of Grand
Cavalla. The traveller who, _pace_ my friends of the Anthropological
Society, postulates spiritualism or spiritism (as M. Allan Kardec has
it), will save himself much mystification, and he will soon find that
every race has had, and still has, its own Swedenborg.
The men of Tumbatu at their half-heathen wakes, lay out the corpse,
masculine or feminine, and treat it in a way which reminds us of
Hamlet’s (Act v. 1) ‘Where be your gibes now? your gambols, your songs?’
A male friend will say to his departed chum—
‘O certain person! but a few days ago I asked thee for cocoa-nut-water
and tobacco, which thou deniedest to me—enh? Where is now the use of
them?’
‘Fellow!’ a woman will address the dead, ‘dost thou remember making
fierce love to me at such and such a time? Much good will thy love do me
now that thou art the meat of ugly worms!’
Their abuse is never worse than when lavished by a creditor upon a
defunct debtor.
The idea underlying this custom is probably that which suggested the
Irish wake—a test if the clay be really inanimate. Nor would I despise,
especially during prevalence of plague or yellow fever, in lands where
you are interred off-hand, any precaution, however barbarous, against
the horrors and the shudders of burying alive. Certain Madras Hindoos,
after filling _its_ mouth with milk and rapping its face with a shankh
or conch-shell, grossly insult, as only the ‘mild Hindu’ of Bishop Heber
can, all its feminine relatives. The practice is also found in the New
World. The Aruacas (Arrawaks) of Guiana opened the eyes of the corpse,
and switched them with thorns; smeared the cheeks and lips with lard,
and applied alternately sweet and bitter words. This was a curious
contrast to the customs of the Brazilian Tupys and the Bolivian Moxos,
who, according to Yves d’Evreux and Alcide d’Orbigny, met every morning
to bewail their losses, even of their grandfathers and great-
grandfathers!
As darkness came on we saw the sands sparkling with lights, here
stationary like glow-worms or the corpusant; there flitting about like
ignes fatui or fire-flies. Such was the spectacle seen by Columbus and
Pedro Gutierrez (‘gentleman of the king’s bedchamber’) on the memorable
night when Bahaman Guanaháni was discovered. The fishermen burn dry
grass and leaves, and the blaze, like the Arabs’ ‘fire of hunting,’
which dazzles the eye of the gazelle, attracts shoals that are easily
speared. Some carried torches in canoes: now the flame floated in
crimpled water, which broke up its reflection into a scatter of
brilliants; then it reposed upon mirror-like smooths, the brand forming
the apex of a red pyramid which seemed to tremble with life, whilst the
boat was buried in the darkness of death. And so ‘fishy’ are these
equinoctial seas, that gangs of old women and children may be seen at
Pemba, and on the coast, converting their body-clothes into nets, and
filling pots, hand over hand, with small fry. I have seen them myself,
although a certain critic says, ‘No.’
The people of Tumbatu, like the Greeks, have their good points. They are
skilful pilots and stout seamen, diligent in gathering their bread from
the waters, and comparatively industrious, considering their enervating,
prostrating climate. Their low, jungly ledge wants the sweet element,
compelling them to fetch it from Zanzibar—their mainland; hence
travellers have described the islet as uninhabited. The people are
mentioned as Moslems by Yakut (early 13th century), and this island of
‘Tambat’ was made a refuge for the inhabitants of Languja or Zanzibar.
We inquired in vain about the fort which the Arabs are said to have
built there. The skins of Tumbatu are sooty, the effect, according to
some, according to others the concomitant, of humid heat. The reader
must not charge me with ‘trimming’ between the rival schools of ‘race
_versus_ climate, the cause of complexion.’ Many peoples betray but a
modicum of chromatic and typical change. On the other hand, I have found
an approximation of colour as well as of form between the Anglo-American
and the Luso-Brazilian; and I have enlarged upon this chromatic heresy,
if heresy it be, in the Highlands of the Brazil (Vol. i. chap.
xxxviii.). Finally, when speaking of the permanence of type, it is well
to bear in mind that our poor observations hardly extend over 2500
years.
The next morning placed us at the base of our operations, and we were on
deck with Aurora. The stout ship ‘Elphinstone,’ urged by the cool land
breeze, slid down the channel, the sea-river that separates the low-
lying and evergreen Zanzibar Island from its reflection, the Mpoa-ni.[9]
We were sensibly affected by the difference between the Sawáhil, this
part of the East African sea-board which begins at the Juba River, and
the grim physiognomy of Somaliland, Region of Fragrant Gums, with its
sandy horrors of Berberah, and its granitic grandeurs of Guardafui,
which popular apprehension refers to Garde à vous, and which Abyssinian
Bruce, according to Ritter (Erdkunde, 2nd Division, § 8), altered, to
Gardefan, the Straits of Burial.[10] We were in the depths of the
‘dries,’ as they are called in West Africa, in the local midwinter, yet
this land was gorgeous in its vestment when others would be hybernating
in more than semi-nudity.
Truly prepossessing was our first view of the then mysterious island of
Zanzibar, set off by the dome of distant hills, like solidified air,
that form the swelling line of the Zanzibar coast. Earth, sea, and sky,
all seemed wrapped in a soft and sensuous repose, in the tranquil life
of the Lotus Eaters, in the swoon-like slumbers of the Seven Sleepers,
in the dreams of the Castle of Indolence. The sea of purest sapphire,
which had not parted with its blue rays to the atmosphere—a frequent
appearance near the equator—lay basking, lazy as the tropical man, under
a blaze of sunshine which touched every object with a dull burnish of
gold. The wave had hardly energy enough to dandle us, or to cream with
snowy foam the yellow sandstrip which separated it from the flower-
spangled grass, and from the underwood of dark metallic green. The
breath of the ocean would hardly take the trouble to ruffle the fronds
of the palm which sprang, like a living column, graceful and luxuriant,
high above its subject growths. The bell-shaped convolvulus (Ipomæa
Maritima), supported by its juicy bed of greenery, had opened its pink
eyes to the light of day, but was languidly closing them, as though
gazing upon the face of heaven were too much of exertion. The island
itself seemed over-indolent, and unwilling to rise; it showed no trace
of mountain or crag, but all was voluptuous with gentle swellings, with
the rounded contours of the girl-negress, and the brown-red tintage of
its warm skin showed through its gauzy attire of green. And over all
bent lovingly a dome of glowing azure, reflecting its splendours upon
the nether world, whilst every feature was hazy and mellow, as if viewed
through ‘woven air,’ and not through vulgar atmosphere. Most of my
countrymen find monotony in these Claude-Lorraine skies, with the
pigment and glazing _on_. I remember how in Sind they used to bless the
storm-cloud, and stand joyously to be drenched in the rain which rarely
falls in that leather-coloured land. Zanzibar, however, must be seen on
one of her own fine days: like Fernando Po and Rio de Janeiro, the
beauty can look ‘ugly’ enough when she pleases.
As we drew nearer and vision became more distinct, we found as many
questions for the pilot as did Vasco da Gama of old. Those prim
plantations which, from the offing, resembled Italian avenues of
oranges, the tea-gardens of China, the vines of romantic Provence, the
coffee plantations of the Brazil, or the orange-yards of Paraguay, were
the celebrated clove-grounds, and the largest, streaking the central
uplands, were crown property. We distinctly felt a heavy spicy perfume,
as if passing before the shop of an Egyptian ‘attar,’ and the sensorium
was not the less pleasantly affected, after a hard diet of briny N.E.
Trade. Various legends of hair-oil rubbed upon the bulwarks have made
many a tricked traveller a shallow infidel in the matter of smelling the
land. But we soon learned that off Zanzibar, as off ‘Mozámbic,’ the
fragrant vegetation makes old Ocean smile, pleased with the grateful
smell, as of yore. The night breeze from the island is cool and heavy
with clove perfume, and European residents carefully exclude the land-
wind from their sleeping-rooms.
For a little while we glided S. by E. along the shore, where the usual
outlines of a city took from it the reproach of being a luxuriant
wilderness. The first was ‘Bayt el Ra’as, a large pile, capped with a
dingy pent-house of cajan (cocoa leaves), and backed by swelling ground—
here bared for cultivation, there sprinkled with dense dark trees,
masses of verdure sheltering hut and homestead. Followed at the distance
of a mile, the Royal Cascine and Harem of Mto-ni, the Rivulet.[11] Our
ancient ally ‘Sayyid Said, Imam of Maskat and Sultan of Zanzibar and the
Sawahil,’ had manifestly not attempted African copies of his palaces in
Arabian Shináz and Bat’hah, pavilions with side-wings and flanking
towers, the buildings half castle half château, so much affected by the
feudal lords of Oman. He preferred an Arabo-African modification, here
valuable for ‘sommer-frisch.’
The demesne of Mto-ni has a quaint manner of Gothic look, pauperish and
mouldy, like the schloss of some duodecimo Teutonic Prince, or long-
titled, short-pursed, placeless, and pensionless German Serenity in the
days now happily gone by, when the long drear night of German do-
nothingness has fled before the glorious daybreak of 1866-1870. We can
distinguish upon its long rusty front a projecting balcony of dingy
planking, with an extinguisher-shaped roof, dwarfed by the luxuriant
trees arear, and by the magnificent vegetation which rolls up to its
very walls. Mto-ni takes its name from a runnel which, draining the
uplands, supplies the ‘Palace,’ and trickles through a conduit into the
sea. We shall presently visit it.
Entering the coral reef which defends this great store-house of Eastern
Intertropical Africa, I remarked that the lucent amethyst of the waters
was streaked and patched with verdigris green; the ‘light of the waves’
being caused by shoals, whose golden sands blended with the blue of
heaven. The ‘Passes of Zanzibar’ reminded me in colouration of the
‘Gateways of Jeddah,’ and as the coral reefs cut like razors, they must
be threaded with equal care. So smooth was the surface within the walls,
that each ship, based upon a thread of light, seemed to hover over its
own reflected image.
And now we could distinguish the normal straight line of Arab town,
extending about a mile and a half in length, facing north, and standing
out in bold relief, from the varied tints and the grandeur of forest
that lay behind. A Puritanical plainness characterized the scene—
cathedrals without the graceful minarets of Jeddah, mosques without the
cloisters of Cairo, turrets without the domes and monuments of Syria;
and the straight stiff sky-line was unrelieved except by a few
straggling palms. In the centre, and commanding the anchorage, was a
square-curtained artless fort, conspicuous withal, and fronted by a
still more contemptible battery. To its right and left the Imam’s
palace, the various Consulates, and the large parallelogrammic buildings
of the great, a tabular line of flat roofs, glaring and dazzling like
freshly white-washed sepulchres, detached themselves from the mass, and
did their best to conceal the dingy matted hovels of the inner town.
Zanzibar city, to become either picturesque or pleasing, must be viewed,
like Stambul, from afar.
We floated past the guard-ship, an old 50-gun frigate of Dutch form and
Bombay build, belonging to ‘His Highness the Sayyid;’ it was modestly
named Shah Allum (Alam), or ‘King of the World.’ The few dark faces on
board bawled out information unintelligible to our pilot, and showed no
colours, as is customary when a foreign cruizer enters the port. We set
this down to the fact of their being blacks—‘careless Ethiopians.’ But
flags being absent from all the masts, and here, as in West Africa and
in the Brazil, every ‘house’ flies its own bunting, we decided that
there must be some cause for the omission, and we became anxious
accordingly.
But not for such small matter would the H. E. I. C.’s ship-of-war
‘Elphinstone’ have the trouble of casting loose and of loading her guns
gratis. With the Sayyid’s plain blood-red ensign at the main, and with
union-jack at the fore, she cast anchor in Front Bay, and gallantly
delivered her fire of 21. Thereupon a gay bunting flew up to every truck
ashore and afloat, whilst the brass carronades of the ‘Victoria,’
another item of the Maskat navy, roared a response of 22, and, curious
to say, did not blow off a single gunner’s arms. We had arrived on the
fortieth or last day of Moslem mourning; and the mourning was for Sayyid
Said, our native friend and ally, who had for so many years been calling
for volunteers and explorers, and from whom the East African expedition
had been taught to expect every manner of aid except the pecuniary.
We lost no time in tumbling into a gig and in visiting the British
Consulate, a large solid pile, coloured like a twelfth-cake, and shaped
like a claret-chest, which lay on its side, comfortably splashed by the
sea. Lieut.-Colonel Atkins Hamerton, of the Indian Army, H.B.M.’s Consul
and H. E. I. C.’s agent, to whom I was directed to report arrival, was
now our mainstay, but we found him in the poorest state of health. He
was aroused from lethargy by the presence of strangers, and after the
usual hospitable orders my letters were produced and read. Those
entrusted to me by Lord Elphinstone, and by his Eminence the learned and
benevolent Cardinal Wiseman, for whom he had the profoundest respect,
pleased him greatly; but he put aside the missive of the Royal
Geographical Society, declaring that he had been terribly worried for
‘copy’ by sundry writing and talking members of that distinguished body.
I can even now distinctly see my poor friend sitting before me, a tall,
broad-shouldered, and powerful figure, with square features, dark, fixed
eyes, hair and beard prematurely snow-white, and a complexion once fair
and ruddy, but long ago bleached ghastly pale by ennui and sickness.
Such had been the effect of the burning heats of Maskat and ‘the Gulf,’
and the deadly damp of Zanzibar, Island and Coast. The worst symptom in
his case—one which I have rarely found other than fatal—was his
unwillingness to quit the place which was slowly killing him. At night
he would chat merrily about a remove, about a return to Ireland; he
loathed the subject in the morning. To escape seemed a physical
impossibility, when he had only to order a few boxes to be packed, and
to board the first home-returning ship. In this state the invalid
requires the assistance of a friend, of a man who will order him away,
and who will, if he refuses, carry him off by main force.
Our small mountain of luggage was soon housed, and we addressed
ourselves seriously to the difficulties of our position. That night’s
rest was not sweet to us. I became as the man of whom it was written—
‘So coy a dame is Sleep to him,
That all the weary courtship of his thoughts
Can’t win her to his bed.’
After the disaster in Somali-land, I was pledged, at all risks and under
all circumstances, to succeed; and now St Julian, host and patron of
travellers, had begun to show me the rough side of his temper. The
Consul was evidently unfit for the least exertion. He had in his
‘godowns’ dozens of chests and cases which he had not the energy to
open. H. H. Sayyid Said had left affairs in a most unsatisfactory state.
His eldest son, the now murdered Sayyid Suwayni, heir to Maskat, and
famous as an anglophobe, had threatened to attack Zanzibar; a menace
which, as will afterwards appear, he attempted to carry out. The cadet
Sayyid Majid, installed by his father chief of the African possessions,
was engrossed in preparations for defence. Moreover, this amiable young
prince having lately recovered from confluent small-pox, an African
endemic which had during the last few years decimated the islanders, was
ashamed to display a pock-marked face to the ‘public,’ ourselves
included. The mainland of Northern Zanzibar about Lamu was, as usual on
such occasions, in a state of anarchy. Every man seized the opportunity
of slaying his enemy, or of refusing to pay his taxes. An exceptionally
severe drought had reduced the southern coast of Zanzibar to a state of
famine.
Briefly, the gist of the whole was that I had better return to Bombay.
But rather than return to Bombay, I would have gone to Hades on that
20th of December, 1856.
NOTE.
Since these pages were penned the _Bombay Gazette_ of November 11, 1870,
announced the death of H. H. Sayyid Majid, Sultan of Zanzibar, and the
succession of his brother—Sayyid Burghush.
-----
Footnote 7:
Somewhat boisterous, but true. (Note 14 years afterwards.)
Footnote 8:
Literally rock, rocky ground. Hence the Arabs are called Wámánga. Mr
Cooley (‘Inner Africa Laid Open,’ p. 61) blunders pitiably about this
word.
Footnote 9:
This is the ‘Poane’ of ‘O Muata Cazembe’ (p. 323), and there rightly
translated, ‘Costa de Zanzibar.’ Mr Cooley (p. 14, ‘The Memoir on the
Lake Regions, &c., reviewed.’ London, Stanford, 1864) thus misleads
his readers: ‘The Cazembe knew the name of only one place on the
coast—Mpoáni, near the Querimba Islands.’ The word literally means ‘on
the coast,’ or simply ‘the coast.’ In the Zangian dialects the
terminative ‘-ni’ has two senses. Now it is a locative, signifying on,
in, by, or near, as, e.g., Nyumba-ni, ‘at home’ (in the house);
Mfu’ua-ni, at the place near the Mfu’u tree. Then it is almost
pleonastic, as Kisiwa-ni, ‘the island,’ and Kisima-ni, ‘the well.’
Mpoa-ni, a word in general use, is a literal Kisawahili translation of
the Arabic Sawáhil (plural of Sáhil), ‘the shores,’ strictly speaking
between Mtangata and the Rufiji River. Hence, possibly, the Greeks
drew their name, ‘Αιγιαλος.’ The latter is usually identified with the
modern Arabic Sayf Tawíl, the long strand, not ‘bold or declining
shore,’ as translated by Captain Owen. It extends southwards from the
Ra’as el Khayl to Ra’as Awaz (Cape of Change) in the Barr el Khazáin
(Ajan or Azania). Of the latter more in Sect. 1, Chapter V.
Footnote 10:
De Barros by a slip of the pen writes (Decades i. 5, 9) Guadrafu. I
should explain the corrupted ‘Guardafui’ not as usual by ‘Cabo
d’Orfui,’ but as a European version of Jurd Hafun,—highland or crest
of Hafun. Jurd, in Arabic, means the mountain-top, opposed to the
Wusut, shoulders or half-way slopes, and to the Sahl, or low lands.
The modern Arabic name of the ancient Aromata Promontarium is Ra’as
Asir, the captive headland, a term especially applied to the
projection of land, some 2000 feet high, which, viewed from the south,
extends farthest seaward to the north-east, as I saw when sailing from
Zanzibar to Aden. Hafun, supposed to be the Mosyllum Promontorium of
Pliny and the Opone of Ptolemy, the Khakhui of El Idrisi; the Jafuni
of El Masudi; the Carfuna of other Arab geographers, and the Orfui of
the moderns, means the surrounded, i.e. by water, because almost an
island. Lieutenant Crittenden, I.N. (Aden, April 10, 1848.
Transactions of the Bombay Geographical Society), describes it as a
headland of lime and sandstone nearly square, and 600 to 700 feet
high. He remarks that after the Elephas Mons it is the only point on
the coast concerning which there can be no mistake. The sites are
thus—
Ras Asir (Guardaful)
North Easternmost point
of Africa N.lat. 11° 50′ 0″ Raper (11° 4′ 4″ Norris)
Ras Hafun, Easternmost
point of Africa N.lat. 10° 26′ 48″ " (10° 27′ 48″ ” )
—— —— —— —— —— ——
Difference 1° 23′ 52″ 1° 13′ 16″
Lieutenant Carless, I.N., makes
the difference of meridian arc 0° 4′ 50″
Footnote 11:
Yet we read of the ‘great river Matoney,’ and of ‘travellers crossing
the great River Mtony.’ Mto, in the language of Zanzibar, is a river
or a rivulet; also a pillow. The Quilimani River signifies simply
kilima-ni, (water) from the mountain. The meaning of Quilimansi (the
Obi—Webbe—Nile of Makdishu, Webbe Shebayli, of late christened the
Haines River, and called Quilimancy by De Barros, from a settlement
now unknown) is still under dispute. It cannot grammatically be made
to mean ‘mountain-stream, or a mountain with streams,’ as Dr Krapf has
it.
CHAPTER III.
HOW THE NILE QUESTION STOOD IN THE YEAR
OF GRACE 1856.
Αὐτὴ μεν ἤδε τῆς περιῤῥύτου χθονος.
This is the finial of th’ encircling earth.
SOPH. PHIL.
In this chapter I propose briefly to place before the reader the various
shiftings of opinion touching the Nile Sources, and especially to show
what had been done for Zanzibar and her coast by the theoretical and
practical men of Europe between A.D. 1825 and the time of our landing on
the Sawáhil, or East African shores.
The details given to Marinus of Tyre by the Arabian merchants, and their
verification by the obscure Diogenes, together with the notices of the
African lakes on the lower part of the Upper Nile, brought home about
A.D. 60 by Nero’s exploring Centurions, were never wholly forgotten by
Europe, which thus unlearned to derive with Herodotus the Nile from
Western Africa.[12] As the pages of Marco Polo show, not to quote the
voyage of ‘Sinbad the Sailor,’ Arabs and Persians still frequented these
shores; and the Hindu Banyans, established from time immemorial upon the
Zanzibar coast, had diffused throughout India some information touching
the wealthy land. The veteran geographer of Africa, Mr James Macqueen,
has commented upon the curious fact that the Padmavan of Lieut. Francis
Wilford (vol. iii. of the old Asiatic Researches, ‘Course of the River
Cali,’ as supposed to be derived from the Puranas) is represented by the
beds of floating water-lilies crossed by Captains Speke and Grant, and
upon the resemblance between the Amara, or Lake of the Gods, with the
Amara people on the N. E. of the so-called Nyanza Lake. These, however,
appear to be mere coincidences, or at best the results of tales learned
upon the coast by the Hindu trader. Before leaving Bombay I applied to
that eminent Sanskritist the Rev. J. Wilson, D.D., for any notices of
East Africa which might occur in the sacred writings of the Hindus. He
replied that there were none; and I had long before learned that Col.
Wilford himself had acknowledged his pandit to have been an impudent
impostor.
At the end of the 15th century came the Portuguese explorers, with
Strabo, Pliny, and Ptolemy, in their hands, and followed by a multitude
of soldiers, merchants, and missionaries, who invested the intertropical
maritime regions of Africa, east and west. The first enthusiasm,
however, soon passed away. The Portuguese were supplanted by the Dutch,
by the English, and by the French; whilst Ptolemy and the Periplus were
ousted by Pigafetta, Dapper, and other false improvers of their
doctrines. The Ptolemeian Lakes were marched about and counter-marched
in every possible way. The ‘Mountain of the Moon,’ prolonged across
Africa under the name Jebel Kumri, really became ‘Lunatic Mountains.’
The change from good to bad geography is well illustrated by two charts
published in 1860, by H. E. the Conde de Lavradio. The first is the fac-
simile of a map in the British Museum, by Diogo Homem, in 1558. It makes
the Nile spring from two great reservoirs. But the second, bearing the
name of Antonio Sances (1623), already reduces these lakes to one
central Caspian, which sends forth the Nile, the Congo, and the Zambeze,
and which, greatly shrunken, still deforms our maps under the name of
Marave. Similarly, the ‘Complete System of Geography,’ by Emanuel Bowen
(1747), places the Zambre Lake in S. lat. 4°-11°, the ‘centre from which
proceed all the rivers in this part of Africa,’ including the Nile.
How popular the subject continued to be may be guessed from the fact
that Daniel Defoe (1661-1731), cast his African reading into a favourite
form with him, the ‘Adventures of Captain Singleton.’ He lands his hero
about March, 1701, a little south of Cape Delgado, causes him to cross
several seas and rivers, the latter often flowing northwards, and after
a year’s wandering, brings him out at the Dutch settlements on the Gold
Coast.
Upon the general question of modern Nile literature the curious reader
will consult the well-studied writings of M. Vivien de Saint-Martin. The
valuable paper ‘On the Knowledge the Ancients possessed of the Sources
of the Nile,’ by my friend W. S. W. Vaux (Transactions of the Royal
Society of Literature, vol. viii., New Series), treats of exploration up
the river, beginning from the Ionian colony, established in the upper
river by Psammetichus (circa A.C. 600), and extending to the present
day. The learned article by Mr John Hogg, ‘On some old Maps of Africa,
in which certain of the Central and Equatorial Lakes are laid down in
nearly their true positions,’[13] (Transactions of the Royal Society of
Literature, vol. viii.), supplies a compendium of old cartography.
I proceed now to the practical part of this chapter, namely, the actual
visits of inspection to Zanzibar, and their results. Until the end of
the last century, our knowledge was derived almost entirely from those
‘domini Orientalis Africæ,’ the Portuguese. The few exceptions were Sir
James Lancaster, who opened to the English the Orient seas. He wintered
at the island in 1591; Captain Alexander Hamilton (new account of the
East Indies, 1688-1723, Hakluyt’s Collection, viii. 258); and M.
Saulnier de Mondevit, commanding the king’s Corvette, La Prévoyance. The
latter, who, in 1786, visited the principal points of Zanzibar,
published a chart with ‘Observations sur la côte du Zangueibar’
(Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, vol. vi.), and recommended a French
establishment at ‘Mongalo.’
In February, 1799, Captain Bissel, R.N., commanding H. M.’s ship
Orestes, with the Leopard carrying Admiral Blankett’s flag, touched at
the island for refreshments when beating up against the N. E. monsoon
towards the Red Sea. He briefly but faithfully described its geography,
and he laid down sailing directions which to this day are retained in
Horsburgh. Since then many coasting voyages have been made by naval
officers and others, who collected from natives, with more or less
fidelity, details concerning the inner country. As early as 1811,
Captain Smee and Lieutenant Hardy were sent by the Bombay government to
gather information on the eastern seaboard of Africa, and they brought
back sundry novel details (Transactions Bombay Geographical Society,
1844, p. 23, &c.). Between the years 1822-1826 the whole coast line was
surveyed by Captain (afterwards Admiral) W. F. Owen, and by his
officers, Captains Vidal, Boteler, and others. Their charts and plans of
the littoral, despite sundry inaccuracies, such as placing Zanzibar
Island five miles west of its proper position, excited general
attention, and were justly termed by a modern author miranda tabularum
series. During this Herculean labour, which occupied three years, some
300 of the officers and crew fell victims to the climate of the Coast,
to the hardships of boat-work, and to the ferocity of the natives. In
1822 Sir Robert Townsend Fairfax, Governor and Commander-in-Chief of the
Mauritius, after a crusade against the slave-trade in the dominions of
Radáma, King of the Hovas, commissioned Captain (afterwards Admiral)
Fairfax Moresby, of H. M.’s ship Menai, to draft a treaty between
England and Maskat for limiting the traffic. The mission was successful.
The sale of Somalis, a free people, was made piracy; and the Sayyid’s
vessels were subject to seizure by the Royal, including the Company’s,
cruizers, if detected carrying negroes ‘to the east of a line drawn from
Cape Delgado, passing south of Socotra and on to Diu, the west point of
the Gulf of Cambay.’[14] In 1822, the Sayyid’s assent having been
formally accorded, Captain Moresby left the coast.
In January, 1834, Captain Hart, of H. M.’s ship Imogene, visited
Zanzibar, and submitted to the Imperial government brief notes,
appending a list of the Sayyid’s squadron then in the harbour, with
their age, tonnage, armature, and other particulars. Still geographers
declared that Zanzibar was a more mysterious spot to England and India
than parts of Central Africa and the shores of the Icy Sea.[15] During
the same year the energetic Mr W. Bollaert matured the plan of an
expedition, to be conducted by himself, from Zanzibar across the
continent. It was laid before the Geographical Society in 1837, but it
was not carried out, funds being deficient. In 1835 the U. S. frigate
Peacock visited the island during a treaty-making tour, and was supplied
with all her wants gratis, the port officials declaring that ‘H. H. the
Sultan of Muscat had forbidden them to take any remuneration.’ The
surgeon, Dr Ruschenherger (Narrative of a Voyage round the World in
1835-1837), left a realistic description of the city in those its best
days. He acknowledges the hospitalities of ‘Captain Hasan bin Ibrahim,
of the Arab Navy,’ superintendent of the ‘Prince Said Carlid.’ The
latter was the late Sayyid Khalid, then 16 years old. The book, being
written by a ‘Dutch-American’ in 1835, is of course bitterly hostile to
England. We are told that the keel of the Peacock, passing between
Tumbatu Island and Zanzibar, scraped over coral reefs not in Owen’s
charts—which may be true. Followed the American Captains Fisher,
Drinker, Abbott, and Osgood, and Mr Ross Brown, then a young traveller
in a trading-vessel. He also published a readable account of the rising
settlement.
When Admiral Sir Charles Malcolm, a name endeared to eastern
geographers, was giving energy and impulse to exploration in Western
Asia, the late Lieut. W. Christopher, I. N., commanding the H. E. I.
C.’s brig-of-war Tigris, was sent to Zanzibar; he made a practical
survey of the coast, and he touched at many places now famous—Kilwa
(Quiloa), Mombasah, Brava, Marka, Gob-wen (or the Jub River), and
Makdishu, or Hanir, by the Portuguese called Magadoxo. He explored the
lower waters of a large stream, the Webbe (River) Ganana, or Shebayli
(Leopard), which he injudiciously named the Haines River; and he visited
Giredi and other settlements till then unknown. He wrote (May 8, 1843) a
highly interesting and comprehensive account of the seaboard, which was
published in the Journal of the Geographical Society (vol. xiv. of
1844). His plans, charts, and other valuable memoranda were forwarded to
the Bombay Government, and the enterprising traveller died in July,
1848, at the early age of 36, from the effects of a wound received
before Multan.
The honour of having made the first systematic attempt to explore and to
open up the Zanzibar interior, is due to the establishment popularly
known as the ‘Mombas Mission;’ its energetic members proved that it was
possible to penetrate beyond the coast, and their discoveries excited a
spirit of inquiry which led to the exploration of the Lake Regions. In
1842 the Rev. Dr J. Lewis Krapf, being refused readmittance to Shoa,
received a ‘Macedonian call’ to East Africa; in other words, he
undertook in 1842, with the approbation of the Church Missionary
Society, a coasting voyage to East Africa south of the line. Having
visited Zanzibar Island he journeyed northwards (March 1844), and met
with a kind reception at Mombasah where he accidentally landed; finally
he established his head-quarters amongst the Wanyika tribe at Rabai Mpia
near Mombasah, which then became the base of his operations. He was
joined (June 1846) by the Rev. J. Rebmann of Gerlingen in Würtemberg,
and by Messrs Erhardt and Wagner—the latter a young German mechanic, who
died shortly after arrival. In June 2, 1851, came Messrs Conrad
Diehlmann and Christian Pfefferle, who soon died. They were followed by
three mechanics, Hagemann, Kaiser, and Metzler, who returned home, and
by M. Deimler who retired to Bombay. M. Rebmann after visiting Kadiaro
(Oct. 14, 1847) made in May 11, 1843 the first of three important
journeys into the ‘Jagga’ highlands, and discovered, or rather
rediscovered, the much vexed Kilima-njaro. The existence of this
mountain bearing eternal snows in eastern intertropical Africa is thus
alluded to in the Suma de Geographia of Fernandez de Enciso (1530):
‘West of this port (Mombasah) stands the Mount Olympus of Ethiopia,
which is exceedingly high, and beyond it are the “Mountains of the
Moon,” in which are the sources of the Nile.’ The discovery was
confirmed by Dr Krapf, who after visiting (also in 1848) Fuga, the
capital of Usumbara, made two journeys (in 1849 and 1851) into Ukambani.
During the first he confirmed the position of Kilima-njaro, and he
sighted another snowy peak, Kenia, Kegnia, or Kirenia.
The assertions of the missionaries were variously received. M. Vaux was
thereby enabled to explain a statement in the Metereologica of
Aristotle, where the first or main stream of the Nile is supposed to
flow out of the mountain called Silver. Dr Beke accepted the meridional
snowy range, and here placed his Mountains of the Moon, a hypothesis
first advanced in 1846. The sceptics were headed by Mr W. D. Cooley, who
in 1854 had published his ‘Claudius Ptolemy and the Nile.’ He had
identified the mountain of Selene (σελήνη) with the snowy highland of
‘Semenai’ or ‘Samien’ in northern Abyssinia, and thus by adopting a mere
verbal resemblance he had obtained a system of truly ‘lunatic
mountains.’ Some years before (Journal Royal Geographical Society, vol.
xv. 1845) appeared his paper entitled, ‘The Geography of N’yassi, or the
great lake of Southern Africa investigated,’ a complicated misnomer. The
article was written in a clear style and a critical tone, showing ample
reading but lacking a solid foundation of fact. It began as usual with
Pigafetta and de Barros, and it ended with Gamitto and Monteiro; the
peroration, headed ‘Harmony of Authorities,’ was a self-gratulation, a
song of triumph concerning the greatness of hypothetical discoveries,
which were soon proved to be purely fanciful. Not one man in a million
has the instincts of a good comparative geographer, and the author was
assuredly not that exceptional man. His monograph did good by awaking
the scientific mind, but it greatly injured popular geography. It
unhappily asserted (p. 15) that ‘in every part of eastern Africa to
which our inquiries have extended, snow is quite unknown.’ And the
author having laid down his law bowed before it, and expected Fact as
well as the Public to do the same; he even attacked the text of Ptolemy,
asserting that the passages treating of the Nile sources and the Lunar
Mountains were an interpolation of a comparatively recent date. In June
and November 1863 the late Baron von der Decken, accompanied by Dr
Kersten, an accomplished astronomical observer, ascended some 1300 feet,
saw a clearly defined limit of perpetual snow at about 17,000 feet, and
by a rough triangulation gave the main peak of Kilima-njaro an elevation
of 20,065 feet. Still Mr Cooley, with singular want of candour, denied
existence to the snow. It was the same with his ‘Single Sea,’ which
under the meaningless and erroneous name ‘N’yassi’ again supplanted
Ptolemy’s Lakes, and this want of acumen offered the last insult to
African geography. Thus was revived the day when the Arab and Portuguese
geographers made the three Niles (of Egypt, Magadoxo, and Nigritia)
issue from one vast reservoir, and thus were the school maps of the
world disfigured during half a generation. The lake also was painfully
distorted, simply that it might ‘run parallel to the line of volcanic
action drawn through the Isle de Bourbon, the north of Madagascar, and
the Comoro Islands, and to one of the two lines predominating on the
coasts of southern Africa wherever there are no alluvial flats.’ It
abounded, moreover, in minor but significant errors, such as confounding
‘Zanganyika,’ a town or tribe, with Tanganyika, the name of the Lake. Of
late years Mr Cooley has once more shifted his position, and has
declared that he did not intend to provide central intertropical Africa
between ‘Monomotapa’ and Angola with a single lake. The whole of his
paper on the ‘Geography of N’yassi’ means that if it mean anything. He
is not, however, the only Proteus—hard to find and harder to bind—
amongst African geographers.
To conclude this notice of the ‘Mombas Mission,’ Dr Krapf again visited
Fuga, where he was followed by Mr Erhardt, and finally the two
missionaries ran down the coast, touched at Kilwa, and extended their
course to Cape Delgado. In August 1855 Dr Krapf, after 18 years’
residence in Africa, bade it farewell; he did not revisit it except for
a few months in 1867, when he acted dragoman to the Abyssinian
Expedition. In January 1856 appeared what has been called the ‘Mombas
Mission Map’ (Skizze nach J. Erhardt’s Original), the result of
exploration and of notices collected from the natives. It was
accompanied by a ‘Memoir of the Chart of East and Central Africa,
compiled by J. Erhardt and J. Rebmann.’ This production was ‘remarked
upon’ by Mr Cooley (Jan. 8, 1856), and in turn his remarks were remarked
upon by Herr Petermann. The peculiar feature of the chart was a ‘monster
slug’-like inland Sea extending from the line to S. Lat. 14°,—an
impossible Caspian some 840 miles long × 200 to 300 in breadth. I have
already explained that this error arose by the fact that the three chief
caravan routes from the Zanzibar coast abut upon three several lakes
which, in the confusion of African vocabulary—Nyassa being corrupted to
N’yassi, and Nyanza also signifying water—were naturally thrown into
one. It was, however, to ascertain the existence of this slug-shaped
article that the East African Expedition of 1856-59 was sent out.
The most valuable results of Dr Krapf’s labours are his works on the
Zanzibarian languages, and these deserve the gratitude of every
traveller and student of African philology. The principal are,
Messrs Krapf’s and Isenberg’s imperfect outline of the Galla language
(London, 1840).
Messrs Krapf and Isenberg, ‘Vocabulary of the Galla Language,’ London,
1840.
Tentamen imbecillum Translationis Evangelii Joannis in linguam Gallorum,
London, 1841.
Messrs Krapf’s, Isenberg’s, and Mühleisen-Arnold’s Vocabulary of the
Somali tongue (1843).
(Three chapters of Genesis translated into the ‘Soahilee’ language, with
an introduction by W. W. Greenhough: printed in the Journal of the
American Oriental Society, 1847, had appeared in the mean time.)
Gospel according to St Luke translated into Kinika, 12mo, Bombay, 1848.
Gospel according to St Mark translated into Kikamba, 8vo, Tübingen,
1850.
Outline of the elements of the Ki-suaheli language, 8vo, Tübingen, 1850.
Vocabulary of 6 East-African languages, small folio, Tübingen, 1850.
Mr Erhardt’s vocabulary of the Enguduk Iloigob or Masai tongue, 8vo,
Ludwigburg, 1857.
Besides these there are (1860) in MSS., 1. the entire New Testament
(Kisawahili). 2. A complete Dictionary of Ki-suahili. 3. The Gospel
according to St Matthew (Kikamba). 4. Matthew and Genesis in Galla, &c.,
&c., &c.
Dr Krapf’s last work, a relation historique, appeared in 1860 (Travels,
Researches, and Missionary Labours, &c., &c., with an Appendix by Mr P.
G. Ravenstein, F.R.G.S. London, Trübner and Co.). I venture to suggest
that he might reprint with great advantage to African students his
various journals, scattered through the numbers of the ‘Church
Missionary Intelligencer.’ We want them, however, printed textually,
with explanatory notes embodying subsequent information.
Meanwhile the difficulties of East African exploration were complicated
by a terrible disaster. M. Maizan, an Ensigne de Vaisseau, resolved to
explore the inner lake regions viâ the Zanzibar coast, and in 1844 his
projects were approved of by his government. After the rains of 1845 he
landed at the little settlement Bagamoyo, and when barely three days
from the seaboard, he was brutally murdered at the village of Dege la
Mhora, by one P’hazi Mazungéra, chief of the Wakamba, a sub-tribe of the
Wazaramo. The distinguished hydrographer Captain Guillain was sent in
the brig of war Le Decouëdic, to obtain satisfaction for this murder,
and the following sentence concludes his remarks upon the subject (Chap.
1, pp. 17-20); ‘Tout ce que je veux, tout ce que je dois me rappeler de
Maizan, c’est qu’il était intelligent, instruit, courageux, et qu’il a
péri misérablement à la fleur de l’âge (æt. 26) au début d’une
enterprise ou il aurait pu rencontrer la gloire.’ I have also described
(Lake Regions of Central Africa, 1. Chap. 3), from information collected
on the spot, the young traveller’s untimely end; and it is still my
opinion that the foul murder was caused more or less directly by the
Christian merchants of Zanzibar. Dr Krapf’s account of the catastrophe
(Travels, p. 421) abounds in errors. Captain Guillain was also sent on a
kind of bagman’s tour, a hawker carrying echantillons of French cloth
and other produce offered to the Arab market. Mayotta having been ceded
in 1841 by the Sakalawa chief, Andrian Souli, to the French government,
which occupied it militarily in 1843, the first idea was to make of it a
second and a more civilized Zanzibar. The coasting voyages and a few
short inland trips were thought worthy of being published in three bulky
volumes (Documents sur l’Histoire, la Géographie, et la Commerce de
l’Afrique Orientale, recuellis et rédigés par M. Guillain, &c.; publiés
par ordre du Gouvernement. Paris, Bertrand). The additions to Captain
Owen’s survey are unimportant, but the French officer has diligently
collected ‘documents pour servir,’ which will be useful when a history
of the coast shall be written. The worst part of the book is the
linguistic; a sailor, however, passing rapidly through or along a
country, can hardly be expected to learn much of the language.
Meanwhile an important theory concerning the Nile Sources was published
by my friend, Dr Charles T. Beke. He had surveyed and explored (Nov.
1840-May 1843) the Abyssinian plateau and the lowlands near the Red Sea,
and he had determined the water-parting of the streams which feed the
Nile and the Indian Ocean (Journal Royal Geographical Society, vol.
xii). Whilst Ritter (Erdkunde) and other geographers made the White
River rise between N. lat. 7° and 8° and even 11°, whilst Messrs Antoine
d’Abbadie and Ayrton were searching for the Coy Fountains in Enaria and
Kaffa (N. lat. 7° 49′ and E. long. 36° 2′ 9″); and whilst Mr James
Macqueen located ‘the sources of the chief branch of the Bahr-el-abiad
in about N. lat. 3°’ (Preface xxiv. Geographical Survey of Africa,
London, Fellowes, 1840), and ‘at no great distance from the equator’
(Ibid. 235), Dr Beke announced at the Swansea meeting of the British
Association, that he would carry the Caput Nili to S. lat. 2°-3° and E.
long. 34°; moreover that he would place it ‘at a comparatively short
distance from the sea coast, within the dominions of the Imam of
Maskat.’ Rightly judging the eastern coast to be the easiest road into
central intertropical Africa, Dr Beke, then secretary to the
Geographical Society of London, collected a subscription for exploring
the Nile Sources, viâ Zanzibar, and sent out Dr Friedrich Bialloblotsky
to attempt the discovery. This Professor of Hebrew and literary man
presented in February 1849 his credentials to H. M. the Sayyid and to
Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton. The latter, backed by Dr Krapf, sent back the
explorer to Egypt, without allowing him even to set foot upon the East
African shore, and he was justified in so doing. The recent murder of M.
Maizan had thrown the coast into confusion, the assassin was at large,
and the motives which prompted the deed were still actively at work
within the Island of Zanzibar. Dr Bialloblotsky could speak no eastern
tongue, at least none that was intelligible in S. Africa; he was
completely untrained to travel, he collected ‘meteoric’ dust during a
common storm at Aden—_magno cum risu_ of the Adenites; he did not know
the difference between a sextant and a quadrant, and he asked Lieut.-
Colonel Hamerton what a young cocoanut was.
Dr Beke, in his character of ‘Theoretical Discoverer of the Nile
Sources,’ has published the following studies.
‘On the Nile and its Tributaries,’ a statement of his then novel views
(Oct. 28, 1846, and printed in the Journal Royal Geographical Society,
vols, xvii., xviii. of 1847-8). ‘The Sources of the Nile: being a
General Survey of the Basin of that River, and of its Head-streams, with
the History of Nilotic Discovery’ (London, Madden, 1860). The appendix
contains a summary of Dr Bialloblotsky’s projected journey.
‘On the Mountains forming the eastern side of the Basin of the Nile, and
the origin of the designation, “Mountains of the Moon,” applied to
them.’ This paper, being refused by the Royal Geographical Society, was
read (August 30, 1861) before the British Association at Manchester.
‘Who discovered the Sources of the Nile?’ A letter to Sir Roderick I.
Murchison (Madden, Leadenhall-street, 1863).
‘On the Lake Kurá of Arabian Geographers and Cartographers.’ This paper
argues that the equatorial Lake Kura-Kawar, drawn by an Arab, and
published in Lelewel’s “Geographie du Moyen Age,” represents the lakes
and marshes of N. lat. 9°.
Dr Beke, it appears, doubly deserves the title ‘Theoretical Discoverer
of the Nile Sources.’ He has lately transferred the Caput from S. lat.
2°-3° to S. lat. 10° 30′-11°, and from E. long. 34° to E. long. 18°-19°,
making the stream pass through 43° of latitude, and measuring diagonally
one-eighth of the circumference of the globe. (‘Solution of the Nile
Problem,’ Athenæum, Feb. 5, 1870). The Nile is thus identified with the
Kasai, or Kassavi, the Casais of P. J. Baptista (the Pombeiro), the
Casati of Douville, the Casasi of M. Cooley, the Cassabe of M. J. R.
Graça, the Kasaby of Mr Macqueen, and the Kasye or Loke of Dr
Livingstone. These ‘New Sources’ are in the ‘primæval forests of Olo-
Vihenda and Djikoe or Kibokoe (the Quiboque of the Hungarian officer
Ladislaus Magyar), in the Mossamba Mountains, about 300 miles from the
coast of Benguela. Mr Keith Johnston, jun. believes that the Lufira-
Luapula river is the lower course of the Kassavi or Kassabi, which is
usually made to rise in S. lat. 12°, near the Atlantic seaboard, and
after flowing N. E. and N. as far as about S. lat. 8°, to turn eastward
instead of continuing to the N. W. and W. He makes it, however, the true
head of the Congo, not of the Nile.
Amongst minor explorations, I may mention that of Mr Henry C. Arcangelo,
who in 1847 ascended the Juba or Govind River. It is, however, doubtful
how far his explorations extended. He was followed in 1849 by Captain
Short. In November, 1851, a party of three Moors or Zanzibar Arabs
landed at ‘Bocamoio’ (the Bagamoyo roadstead village where M. Maizan
disembarked), travelled with 40 carriers to the Lake ‘Tanganna’
(Tanganyika), crossed it in a boat which they built, visited the Muata
Cazembe, and reached, after six months, the Portuguese Benguela. The
late Mr Consul Brand communicated, through the Foreign Office, this
remarkable journey, in which Africa had been crossed, with few
difficulties, from sea to sea, and it excited the attention of the Royal
Geographical Society (Journal, vol. xxiv. of 1854).
In 1852 Sir Roderick I. Murchison propounded his theory of the basin-
shaped structure of the African interior. This was an important advance
upon the great plateau of Lacépède (Mémoire, etc., dans les Annales du
Musée de l’Histoire Nat., vi. 284), and it abolished the gardens and
terraces of Ritter (Erdkunde, le Plateau ou la Haute Afrique). About the
same time Col. Sykes recommended that an expedition be sent from
Mombasah to explore the ‘Arcanum Magnum,’ opining that the discovery of
Kilima-njaro and Kenia had limited the area of the head-waters between
S. lat. 2°-4° and E. long. (G.) 32°-36°, almost exactly the southernmost
position of the Nyanza Lake. In March, 1855, Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton
forwarded concise but correct notices, ‘On various points connected with
the H.M. Imam of Muskat,’ which was published in the Bombay Selections
(No. 24). In Dec. 10, 1855, followed Mr James Macqueen’s paper on the
‘Present state of the Geography of some parts of Africa (read at the
Royal Geographical Society, April 8 and June 10, 1850), with ‘Notes on
the Geography of Central Africa,’ taken from the researches of
Livingstone, Monteiro, Graça, and others (Journal Royal Geographical
Society, vol. xxvi. 109). They show great critical ability. The map
accompanying the memoir separated the ‘Tanganyenka’ from the Nyassa
Lake; moreover, it disposed the greater axes of these several waters as
they should be, nearly upon a meridian. Maps still suffered from that
incubus the N’yassi or Single Sea, stretching between S. lat. 7°-12°,
and distorted by its ‘historien géographe’ from the N. S. position
occupied by the half-dozen lakes which compose it[16] to a N. W. and S.
E. rhumb. As afterwards appeared, Mr Macqueen had confused the
Tanganyika and Nyanza waters by placing the centre of the former in
long. (G.) 29°. This, however, was not suspected when my excellent and
venerable friend gave me the rough proofs of his paper, which travelled
with me into Central Africa. Mr Macqueen has also done good by editing
(Journal Royal Geographical Society, vol. xxx.) the Journeys of Silva
Porto with the Arabs from Benguela to Ibo and Mozambique, and by other
labours too numerous to be specified.
A pause in East African exploration followed the departure of Dr Krapf.
M. Erhardt, whose project of entering viâ Kilwa was not supported, had
joined his brother missionaries in India. M. Rebmann alone remained at
Rabai Mpia. And whilst under H. H. Abbas Pasha a large and complete
Egypto-European expedition was, after the old fashion, organized to
ascend the stream, ‘ad investigandum caput Nili’ (Seneca, Nat. Quæst.
vi. 8), the new and practicable route from the Zanzibar coast seemed to
have been clean forgotten.
During this lull we landed, as the reader has been told in the last
chapter, upon the African isle ‘Menouthias.’
NOTE.
I may be excused in here alluding to an assertion often repeated by the
‘Geographer of N’gassi,’ in his Memoir on the ‘Lake Regions of East
Africa reviewed’ (London, Stanford, 1864). He makes me ‘the easy dupe of
the most transparent personal hostility, which wore the respectable mask
of the Royal Geographical Society,’ and he assures me that I left
England ‘indoctrinated’ as to what lake or lakes I should find in
Central Africa, and so forth.
This fretfulness of mortified vanity would not have been noticed by me
had it not been so unfair to the Royal Geographical Society. In the
preface of my Memoir (pp. 4-8, Journal Royal Geographical Society, vol.
xxix.), I was careful to print all the instructions of the Expeditionary
Committee, and I only regretted that they were not more detailed. It is
absurd to assert of a traveller that he ‘visited the lake regions with a
confirmed inclination to divide the lake.’ What interest can he have in
bringing home any but the fullest and most exact details? The petty
differences between himself and the Royal Geographical Society, which Mr
Cooley assumes all the world to know, were utterly unknown to me when I
left England in 1856; and, greatly despising such things, I have never
since inquired into the subject. Returning home in 1859, I learned with
surprise that the Comparative Geographer’ still stood upon his ‘Single
Sea,’ and considered any one who dared to make two or three of it his
personal enemy. That such should be the mental state of a gentleman who
has not, they say, taken leave of his wits, was a phenomenon which
justified my wonder; nor could I believe it till the pages of the
_Athenæum_ proceeded to give me proof positive. It is melancholy to see
a laborious literary man, whose name might stand so high, thus display
the caput mortuum of his intellect.
P.S. Another mortuary notice! My good old friend Mr Macqueen has also
passed away at a ripe age, leaving behind him the memory of a laborious
and useful life, especially devoted to the cause of Africa and the
Africans.
-----
Footnote 12:
The ‘Father of History’ evidently held to the theory that the modern
Bahr el Ghazal (explored of late by Mr Petherich and by the
unfortunate Tinné family) was the head reservoir of the White Nile.
Nor is it impossible that in long-past ages the lakes or waters in
question were fed by a watershed whose eastern declivities still
discharge themselves into the higher basin.
Footnote 13:
In 1859 I had written (Journal Royal Geographical Society, vol. xxix.
272) ‘The Nyanza, as regards name, position, and even existence, has
hitherto been unknown to European geographers; but descriptions of
this “sea” by native travellers have been unconsciously transferred by
our writers to the Tanganyika of Ujiji, and even to the Nyassa of
Kilwa.’ Mr Hogg proposes to show that such was not the case. But the
map by John Senex (1711) throws into one three or at least two waters.
Mercator (Kauffman) lays the ‘Garava’ lakelet almost parallel with the
Zaflan (Zambeze) or Kilwa Lake. Walker (1811) and Lizars (1815) fit in
the Tanganyika correctly, whilst the Nyassa is wholly incorrect.
Of the five maps one only, that of John Senex, deserves consideration.
‘This great lake placed here by report of the negroes,’ alludes, I
believe, to legends of the Bahari-ngo (the ‘great sea,’ vulgarly,
Baringo), of which many East African travellers have heard. One Rumu
wa Kikandi, a native of Uemba, described the water to Dr Krapf as
lying five days’ journey from Mount Kenia: in the Introduction to his
last travels (p. xlviii.), however, the enterprising missionary
identifies it with the so-called Nyanza or Ukerewe Lake. I was told of
it by the Wakamba at Mombasah in 1857. The Père Léon d’Avanchers
(Bulletin de la Société de Géographie, vol. xvii. 164) also collected,
when travelling on the East African coast, in August, 1858,
information concerning Baharingo, as he writes it. Senex finally
disconnects it with the Nile, and indeed gives it no drainage at all.
I cannot but think that Mr Hogg’s learning and research have
considerably strengthened my position, and that the so-called Nyanza
Lake was, curious to say, the least known, and at the same time the
nearest, to European geographers.
Footnote 14:
This ‘restrictive treaty’ was published in No. 24 of the Bombay
Selection (1856), under the head of ‘Persian Gulf.’
Footnote 15:
We must not, however, forget that in ‘all-enlightened England’
Smollett could complain of the ‘people at the other end of the island
knowing as little of Scotland as of Japan.’
Footnote 16:
The ‘Nyassi’ is, in fact, a general reservoir into which are thrown
the Lakes Tanganyika, the Nyassa, the Shirwa, and the four smaller
waters, the Liemba, the Bangweolo, the Moero of the great river
Chambeze, and the Liemba drained by the Lufira-Luapula stream. The
latter, lying between S. lat. 10°-12°, have lately been reported by Dr
Livingstone (Map of the Lake Region of Eastern Africa), showing the
Sources of the Nile recently discovered by Dr Livingstone, with notes,
&c., by Keith Johnston, jun. (Johnston); and we have a Sketch Map of
Dr Livingstone’s recent Explorations—Eine Kartenskizze, &c. From Dr
Petermann’s Geographische Mittheilungen, Part V., for May, 1870
(Gotha, Perthes).
CHAPTER IV.
A STROLL THROUGH ZANZIBAR CITY.
‘E dahi se foi à Ilha de Zanzibar, que he aquèm de Mombaça vinte leguas
e tão pegada à terra firma que as náos que passarem per entre ellas, hão
de ser vistas.’—DE BARROS, 1, vii. 4.
And first of the Port.
Zanzibar harbour is a fine specimen of the true Atoll, barrier or
fringing reef, built upon a subsiding foundation, probably of sandstone.
The original lagoon, charged with sediment and washings from the
uplands, must have burst during some greater flood, and split into
narrow water-ways the one continuous coralline rim. The same influences
may account for the gaps in the straight-lined reef whose breach gave a
name to Brazilian Pernambuco.
The port varies in depth from 9 to 13 fathoms, with overfalls, and the
rise of the tide is 13 feet. Here the Hormos Episalos (statio fluctuosa,
or open roadstead of the Periplus, chap. 8) has been converted into a
basin by the industry of the lithophyte. These ants of the ocean have
built up an arc of
‘Sea-girt isles,
That, like to rich and various gems, inlay
The unadorned bosom of the deep.’
There is a front harbour and a back bay. The latter enables ships
landing cargo to avoid the heavy swell of the N.E. monsoon. The two are
separated by Ras Changáni[17]—Sandy Point. The name, corrupted to
Shangany, has attached itself in our charts to the whole city.
These coral-based islet clumps are readily made in these seas. The rough
ridges of a ‘wash,’ where currents meet, are soon heaped with sea-weed,
with drift-wood, and with scatters of parasitical testaceæ, which
decaying form a thin but fruitful soil. Seeds brought by winds, waves,
and birds then germinate; and matter, animal as well as vegetable, is
ever added till a humus-bed is formed for thick shrubbery and trees.
Unless deposition and vegetation continue to bind the rock, it is liable
to be undermined by the sea, when it forms banks dangerous to
navigation.
Dr Ruschenberger, repeated by a modern traveller, informs us that there
are ‘four minor reefs, looking like great arks, whose bows and sterns
hang bushing over the waters.’ As all the plans show, there are five.
The northernmost link of the broken chain is Champáni (not ‘Chapany’),
the Isle des Français of French charts. It became a God’s-acre for
Europeans, whose infidel corpses here, as at Maskat, and in ancient
Madeira before the days of Captain Cook, had during less latitudinarian
times the choice of the dunghill of the cove, or of a hole in the
street. Formerly it was frequented by turtle-fishers and egg-seekers:
‘black Muhogo,’[18] however, has been scared away by visions of fever-
stricken, yellow-faced ghosts rising ghastly from the scatter of
Christian graves. The bit of sandy bush, distinguished from its
neighbours by absence of tall trees, is frequented (1857) by naval and
commercial Nimrods, with ‘shooting irons’ and ‘smelling dogs,’ curs with
clipped ears and shorn tails, bought from bumboat men: _en bon
chasseurs_, they shoot the Sayyid’s little antelopes which troop up
expecting food; and sometimes these sportsmen make targets of certain
buff-coloured objects imperfectly seen through the bushes. The
mouldering sepulchres in their neglected clearings make the prospect of
a last home here peculiarly unsavoury, almost as bad as in Brazilian
Santos. Yet there are traditions of French picnics visiting it to eat
monkey—a proceeding which might have been interrupted _en ville_.
Westward the line of natural breakwaters is prolonged by Kibondiko, Le
Ponton, or the Hulk. A mere mass of jungle, it has never been utilized.
The eye, however, rests with pleasure upon the sheet of sparkling foam
tumbling white over its coralline outliers, backed by dark purple-blue
distance, and fronted by tranquil, leek-green shoal water. Connected
with its neighbour by a reef practicable at low tides, it is separated
from Changu, or Middle Island, by ‘French channel,’ deep enough for men-
of-war. The shoals about it supply a small rock-oyster. The Crustacea,
however, is uncultivated, and amongst Moslems it is _escargot_ to the
typical John Bull.
The most important is Báwi or Turtle Island, a low, dry bank, slightly
undulated, with a beautifully verdant undergrowth, fringed and tasseled
with the tallest cocoas. The Chelonian (K’hasa) of the East coast, eaten
in April and May, by no means equals that of Fernando Po or of
Ascension; moreover, here no man is master of the art and mystery of
developing callipash and callipee. Turtle, cooked by a ‘cook-boy,’
suggests the flesh of small green Saurians (Susmár), which the haughty
Persians of Firdausi thus objected to their Semitic neighbours—
‘Can the Arab’s greed thus have grown so great,
From his camels’ milk and his lizards’ meat,
That he casts on Kayyanian crowns his eye?
Fie on thee! thou swift-rolling world, O fie!’
The tortoise-shell, so often mentioned in the Periplus as an export from
Menouthias (chap. xv.) and Rhapta (chap. xvii.), has until lately been
neglected. Like Bombay Calabar, and our Isle of Dogs in the olden time,
the few acres of Turtle Island were used to ‘keep antelopes, goats, and
other beasts of delight,’ while vicious baboons were deported to it from
the city. Below it is the celebrated ‘Harpshell Bank,’ now mercilessly
spoiled. Southernmost is Chumbi Island, alias La Passe, which, mistaken
for the Turtle, has caused, many a wreck. These mishaps are not always
accidental. One day Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton saw, through his glass, the
master of a Frenchman deliberately stow himself and his luggage in the
gig, put off, and leave his ship to run her nose upon the nearest reef.
These islands form the well-known ‘Passes,’ channels intricate with
lithodom-reefs and mollusk-beds. They number four, namely, the northern
or English Pass, between Champáni and Zanzibar; the N. W. or French
Pass, between Kibondiko and Changu; the great or middle, between Changu
and Báwi; and the western, south of Báwi. The principal entrance was
buoyed by the late Sayyid, but these precautions soon disappeared.
Within the line of break-waters is the anchorage, which may be
pronounced excellent; ships ride close to shore in 7 to 8 fathoms, and
the area between the islets and the island may be set down at 3·8 square
miles. It presents an animated scene. Mosquito fleets of ‘ngaráwa’ or
monoxyles cut the wavelets like flying proas, under the nice conduct of
the sable fishermen, who take advantage of the calm weather. The
northerners from about Brava have retained the broad-brimmed straw hat,
big as an average parasol. Like that of Malabar, Morocco, and West
Africa, it was adopted by their Portuguese conquerors. The machua or
‘little boats’ of the Lusiads, which De Barros calls ‘Sambucos,’[19] are
still the same, except that a disproportioned sail of merkani (American
domestics), based upon a pair of outriggers, now supplies the primitive
propeller,
‘d’humas folhas de palma bem tecidas.’
The outrigger is rarely neglected. Here and there a giant shark shoots
up from the depths, and stares at the fishermen with a cruel, fixed, and
colourless eye, that makes his blood run cold. Only the poorest of poor
devils will venture into a ‘dug-out,’ which is driven before the wind or
paddled with a broad, curved, spoon-like blade. These Matumbi, or
hollowed logs, form a curious national contrast with the launches and
lighters that land European merchandise; ponderous and solid squares,
their build shows nothing graceful or picturesque.
The N. E. monsoon is now (December) doing its duty well, and bringing
various native craft from Madagascar, Mozambique, the minor islands of
the Indian Ocean, Bombay and Guzerat, the Somali coast, the Red Sea,
Maskat, and the Persian Gulf. Numbering 60 to 70, they anchor close in
shore—O Semites and Hamites, wondrously apathetic!—where the least sea
would bump them to bits. About half a mile outside the ‘country
shipping,’ ride, in 5 to 6 fathoms, half a dozen square-rigged
merchantmen—Americans, French, and Hamburgers; England is not
represented. What with bad water, and worse liquor, the Briton finds it
hard to live at Zanzibar. All are awaiting cargoes of copal and ivory,
of hides, and of the cowries which we used to call ‘blackamoor’s teeth.’
The quaintest and freshest local build is to us the Mtepe, which the
Arabs call Muntafiyah.[20] This lineal descendant of the Ploaria Rhapta
(Naviculæ Consutæ, Periplus, chap. 16), that floated upon these seas 20
centuries ago, is a favourite from Lamu to Kilwa. The shell has a beam
one-third of its length, and swims the tide buoyantly as a sea-bird.
This breadth, combined with elasticity, enables it to stand any amount
of grounding and bumping, nor is it ever beached for the S. W. monsoon.
It is pegged together, not nailed, and mostly, as the old traveller
says, ‘sewn, like clothes, with twine.’ The tapering mast, raking
forwards, carries any amount of square matting, by no means air-tight,
and the stern is long and projecting, as if amphisbænic. The swan-throat
of the arched prow is the cheniscus of the classical galley-stem.
Necklaced with strips of hide and bunches of talismans, it bears a red
head; and the latter, as in the ark of Osiris and in the Chinese junk,
has the round eyes painted white,—possibly, in the beginning holes for
hawsers. The ‘Mtepe’ carries from 12 to 20 tons, and can go to windward
of everything propelled by wind.
The Badan, from Sur, Sohar, and Maskat, has a standing plank-covering,
and being able to make 11 knots an hour is preferred by passengers, Arab
loafers, and sorners, one being allowed per ton in short trips. Descried
from afar through the haze, her preposterous sail has caused the
Zanzibarites to fly their flags in anticipation of home news; nearer,
the long, narrow, quoin-shaped craft, with towering stern-post and
powerful rudder, like the caudal fin of some monstrous fish, presents an
exceptional physiognomy. The uncouth Arab Dau (dow) dates probably from
the days of the Phœnicians, and is found all over the Indian Ocean. She
ranges from 50 to 500 tons, and her sharp projecting bow makes her deck
nearly a quarter longer than the keel, giving her, when under weigh, a
peculiar stumbling, shambling, tottering gait. The open poop is a mass
of immense outworks, and there is the normal giant steering-tackle,
often secured only by lashings: a single mast is stepped a little ahead
of amidships; it rakes forward, as is the rule of primitive craft, and
it supports a huge square sail of coarse material. The Kidau (small dow)
is similar, but with open stern-cabins; it is generally sewn together
with coir or rope of cocoa fibre, and caulked with the same. The bottom
is paid over with a composition of lime and shark’s-oil, which,
hardening under water, preserves the hull from sea-worms. Thus sheathed,
ships which have made two feet of leakage become tight as if newly
coppered. Similarly, the Irish fishermen coat their craft with marl and
oil. Talc and tallow are employed in different parts of Europe: and the
Chinese use a putty of oil and burnt gypsum; according to others, a
composition of lime and resin of the Tongshu-tree applied over the oakum
of bamboo (Astley, 4, 128).
The ‘Grab’ (properly ‘Ghurab,’ meaning a raven) is an overgrown
Pattimar. A model of the latter craft, primitive and Hindu, was
submitted to the British public during _the_ Great Exhibition. Rigged
barque-like, it is wondrous ark-like and uncouth. Baghlahs (she-mules)
and Ganjas (Ghancheh), from Cutch, are old tubs with low projecting
prows and elevated sterns, elaborately carved and painted. Low down in
the fore, their lean bows split like giant wedges the opposing waves,
which hiss and seethe as they fly past in broad arrow-heads. Dangerous
in heavy seas, these coffins are preserved by popular prejudice for the
antique and by the difficulty of choosing other models. Add sundry
Batelas, with poop-cabinets, closed and roomy, some with masts struck,
others ready to weigh anchor—I am not writing, gentle reader, a report
on Moslem naval architecture—and you have an idea of the outlandish
fleet, interesting withal, which bethrongs the port of Zanzibar.
The much-puffed squadron of the late Sayyid, stationed during his life
at Mto-ni, and now being divided amongst the rival heirs, flanks with
its single and double tiers of guns these peaceful traders, of whom, by-
the-by, some are desperate pirates. The number is imposing; but the
decks have no awnings against the weather, the masts are struck and
stripped to save rigging, the yards lie fore-and-aft upon the booms, the
crews consist of half-a-dozen thievish, servile ‘sons of water’ (M’áná
Májí); rats and cockroaches compose the live stock; the ammunition is
nowhere, and though the quarter and main decks are sometimes swept,
everything below is foul with garbage and vermin. The exteriors are
dingy; the interiors are so thoroughly rotted by fresh water that the
ships are always ready to go down at their anchors. The whole thing is a
mistake amongst Arabs, who are fitted only for a ‘buggalow,’ or at best
a ‘grab.’ The late Sayyid once attempted English sailors, who behaved
well as long as they did what they pleased, especially in the minor
matters of ’baccy and grog; but when the dark-faced skipper began loud
speaking and tall threats, they incontinently thrashed him upon his own
quarterdeck, and were perforce ‘dismissed the service.’ Every captain in
the R. N. Maskat, besides impudently falsifying the muster-rolls, will
steal the fighting-lanterns, the hammocks, and other articles useful at
home; whilst the care-takers sell in the bazar, junk, rope, and line;
copper bolts, brass-work, and carpenter’s chests bearing the government
mark. When a ship is wanted an Arab Nakhoda (here called Náhozá), a
Muallim or sailing-master, and a couple of Sukkanis (pilots), are sent
on board with a crew composed of a few Arab non-commissioned officers
and ‘able seamen,’ Baloch, Maskatis, and slaves. The commander, who
receives some 50 dollars per lunar month, kills time with the cognac
bottle; the sailing-master (7 dollars) dozes like a lap-dog in his own
arm-chair on the quarter-deck; and the seamen do nothing, Jack helping
Bill. One of these vessels sent to England a few years ago lost, by want
of provisions and bad water, 86 out of its crew—100 men; and can we
wonder at it? A single small screw-steamer, carrying a heavy gun, and
manned and commanded by Europeans, would have been more efficient in
warfare, and far more useful in peace, than the whole squadron of hulks.
It is, however, vain to assure the Arab brain that mere number is not
might; and, indeed, so it is when people believe in it.
The high and glassless windows of H. M.’s Consulate enable us to
prospect the city. Zanzibar, in round, numbers 6° south of the line,
occupies the western edge and about the midway length of the coral reef
that forms the island. The latter is separated by a Manche or channel
from the continent, a raised strip of blue land, broken by tall and
remarkable cones all rejoicing in names still mysterious enough to
flutter the traveller’s nerves. The inclination of the island from
N.N.W. to S.S.E. shelters the harbour from the Indian Ocean, whilst the
bulge of the mainland breaks the force of dangerous Hippalus, the S.W.
monsoon. The minimum breadth of the Manche is 16 geographical miles;
from the Fort to the opposite coast there are 24, and from the bottom of
Menai Bay 35. The Periplus gives to the Menouthian Channel about 300
stadia, in round numbers 30 geographical miles: 600 common stadia
correspond, within a fraction of the real measurement, with a degree of
latitude (1° = 1/360 of the earth’s circumference). Marinus of Tyre and
Ptolemy, however, unduly reduced the latter to 500 stadia.
Zanzibar city is built upon a triangular spit, breaking the line of its
wide, irregular, and shallow bay. The peninsula is connected with the
island by an isthmus some 300 yards wide, and it is backed by swamp and
lagoon, bush and forest. Arc-shaped, with the chord formed by the sea-
frontage, and the segment of the circle facing landwards, its greatest
length is from N.E. to S.W., and it is disposed beachways, like the sea-
ports of Oman. The front is a mere ‘dicky,’ a clean show concealing
uncleanness. Instead, however, of a neat marine parade and a T-shaped
pier, the foreground is a line of sand fearfully impure. Corpses float
at times upon the heavy water; the shore is a cess-pool, and the younger
blacks of both sexes disport themselves in an absence of costume which
would startle even Margate. Round-barrelled bulls, the saints of the
Banyans, and therefore called by us ‘Brahmani,’ push and butt, by way of
excitement, the gangs of serviles who carry huge sacks of cowries, and
pile high their hides and logwood. Others wash and scrape ivory, which
suggested to a young traveller the idea that the precious bone, here so
plentiful, is swept up by the sea. At night the front often flares as if
on fire. The cause is lime-burning on the shore, in small, round, built-
up heaps.
Another evil, arising from want of quay and breakwater, is that the sea
at times finds its way into the lower parts of the town. The nuisance
increases, as this part of the Island appears to be undergoing
depression, not an uncommon process in fictile madrepore formations. Off
Changáni Point, where in 1823 stood a hut-clump and a mosque, four
fathoms of water now roll. The British Consulate, formerly many yards
distant from the surf, must be protected by piles and rubble. Some of
the larger houses have sunk four, and have sloped nine feet from terrace
to ground, owing to the instability of their soppy foundations. The
‘Tree-island’ of our earliest charts has been undermined and carried
away bodily by the waves; whilst to the north the sea has encroached
upon Mto-ni, where the Sayyid’s flag-staff has four times required
removal. On the other hand, about 15 years ago, the ‘Middle Shoal’ of
the harbour was awash; now it is high and dry.
In 1835 Dr Ruschenberger estimated the census of Zanzibar at 12,000
souls, of whom two-thirds were slaves. In 1844 Dr Krapf proposed 100,000
as the population of the island, the greater number living in the
capital. Captain Guillain, in 1846, gave 20,000 to 25,000, slaves
included. I assumed the number, in 1857, as 25,000, which during the
N.E. monsoon, when a large floating population flocks in, may rise to
40,000, and even to 45,000. The Consular report of 1849 asserts it to be
‘about 60,000.’
The city is divided into 18 quarters (Mahallat), each having its own
name; and when travellers inform us that it is called ‘Hamuz,’ Moafilah,
or Baur, they simply take a part for the whole.[21] The west-end boasts
the best houses, chiefly those which wealthy natives let to stranger
merchants. The Central, or Fort quarter, is the seat of government and
of commerce, whilst few foreigners inhabit the eastern extremities, the
hottest and the most unhealthy. The streets are, as they should be under
such a sky, deep and winding alleys, hardly 20 feet broad, and
travellers compare them with the threads of a tangled skein. In the
west-end a pavement of Chunam, or tamped lime, is provided with a
gutter, which secures dryness and cleanliness—it is the first that I
have seen in an African city. As we go eastward all such signs of
civilization vanish; the sun and wind are the only engineers, and the
frequent green and black puddles, like those of the filthy Ghetto, or
Jews’ quarter, at Damascus, argue a preponderance of black population.
Here, as on the odious sands, the festering impurities render strolling
a task that requires some resolution, and the streets are unfit for a
decent (white) woman to walk through. I may say the same of almost every
city where the negro element abounds.
As in the coast settlements of the Red Sea and of Madagascar, the house
material is wholly coral rag, a substance at once easily worked and
durable—stone and lime in one. The irregularity of the place is
excessive, and it is by no means easy to describe its peculiar
physiognomy. The public buildings are poor and mean. The mosques which
adorn Arab towns with light and airy turrets, breaking the monotony of
square white tenements, magnified claret-chests, are here in the
simplest Wahhabi form. About 30 of these useful, but by no means
ornamental, ‘meeting-houses’ are scattered about the city for the use of
the ‘established church.’ They are oblong rooms, with stuccoed walls,
and matted floors; the flat roofs are supported by dwarf rows of square
piers and polygonal columns; whilst Saracenic arches, broad, pointed,
and lanceated, and windows low-placed for convenience of expectoration,
with inner emarginations in the normal shape of scallops or crescents,
divide the interior. Two Shafei mosques, one called after Mohammed Abd
el Kadir, the other from Mohammed el Aughan (Afghan), have minarets,
dwindled turrets like the steeples of Brazilian villages; another boasts
of a diminutive cone, most like an Egyptian pigeon-tower; and a fourth
has a dwarf excrescence, suggesting the lantern of a light-house. The
Shiahs, who are numerous, meet for prayer in the Kipondah quarter, and
the Kojahs have a ruined mosque outside the city.
The best houses are on the Arab plan familiar to travellers in Ebro-land
and her colonies. The type has extended to France and even to Galway,
where we still find it in the oldest buildings. A dark narrow entrance
leads from the street, and the centre of the tenements is a hypæthral
quadrangle, the Iberian Patio or Quintal. We miss, however, the shady
trees, the sweet flowers, and bright verdure with which the southern
European and the Hispano-American beautify their dwellings. Here the
‘Dár’ is a dirty yard, paved or unpaved, usually encumbered with piles
of wood or hides, stored for sale, and tenanted by poultry, dogs,
donkeys, and lounging slaves. A steep and narrow, dark and dangerous
staircase of rough stone, like a companion-ladder, connects it with the
first floor, the ‘noble-quarter.’ There are galleries for the several
storeys, and doors opening upon the court admit light into the rooms.
Zanzibarian architecture, as among ‘Orientals’ generally, is at a low
ebb. The masonry shows not a single straight line; the arches are never
similar in form or size; the floors may have a foot of depression
between the middle and the corners of the room; whilst no two apartments
are on the same level, and they seldom open into each other. Joiner’s
work and iron-work must both be brought from India.
The ‘azotéas’[22] flat roofs, or rather terraces, are supported by
mangrove-trunks, locally called ‘Zanzibar rafters,’ and the walls, of
massive thickness, are copiously ‘chunam’d.’ Here the inmates delight to
spread their mats, and at suitable seasons to ‘smell the air.’ Bándá or
bándáni, pent-roofed huts of plaited palm-leaf (makuti or cajan) garnish
the roofs of the native town. Europeans do not patronize these look-
outs, fires being frequent and the slaves dangerous. Some foreigners
have secured the comfort of a cool night by building upper cabins of
planking, and have paid for the enjoyment in rheumatism, ague, and
fever.
Koranic sentences on slips of paper, fastened to the entrances, and an
inscription cut in the wooden lintel, secure the house from witchcraft,
like the crocodile in Egypt; whilst a yard of ship’s cable drives away
thieves. The higher the tenement, the bigger the gateway, the heavier
the padlock, and the huger the iron studs which nail the door of heavy
timber, the greater is the owner’s dignity. All seems ready for a state
of siege. Even the little square holes pierced high up in the walls, and
doing duty as ventilators, are closely barred. As heat prevents the use
of glass in sleeping-rooms, shutters of plain or painted plank supply
its place, and persiennes deform the best habitations. The northern
European who sleeps for the first time in one of these blockhouses
fairly realizes the first sensations of a jail. Of course the object is
defence, therefore the form is still common to Egypt and Zanzibar, Syria
and Asia Minor.
Arabs here, as elsewhere, prefer long narrow rooms (40 feet × 15 to 20),
generally much higher than their breadth, open to the sea-breeze, which
is the health-giver; and they close the eastern side-walls against the
‘fever-wind,’ the cool, damp, spicy land-draught. The Sala or reception-
hall is mostly on the ground-floor. It contrasts strongly with our
English apartments, where the comfortless profusion and confusion of
furniture, and where the undue crowding of ornamental ornaments, spoil
the proportions and ‘put out’ the eye. The protracted lines of walls and
rows of arched and shallow niches, which take the place of tables and
consoles, are unbroken save by a few weapons. Pictures and engravings
are almost unknown; chandeliers and mirrors are confined to the wealthy;
and the result, which in England would be bald and barn-like, here
suggests the coolness and pleasing simplicity of an Italian villa—in
Italy. A bright-tinted carpet, a gorgeous but tasteful Persian rug for
the daïs, matting on the lower floor, which is of the usual chunam; a
divan in old-fashioned houses; and, in the best of the modern style,
half a dozen stiff chairs of East Indian blackwood or China-work,
compose the upholstery of an Arab ‘palazzo.’ In the rooms of the few who
can or will afford such trifles, ornaments of porcelain or glassware,
and French or Yankee knicknacks fill the niches. Of course the inner
apartments are more showily dressed, but these we may not explore.
About half way down the front of the city we debouch upon the ‘Gurayza’
or fort. The material is the usual coral-rag, cemented with lime of the
same formation, rudely burnt, and the style as well as the name (Igreja-
Ecclesia) recall to mind the Portuguese of the heroic sixteenth century.
It is one of those naïve, crenelated structures, flanked by polygonal
towers, each pierced for one small gun, and connected by the
comparatively low curtains, in which our ancestors put their trust. A
narrow open space runs round it, and it is faced by a straight-lined
detached battery, commanding the landing, and about 12 yards long. The
embrasures of this outwork are so close that the first broadside would
blow open the thin wall; and the score of guns is so placed that every
bullet striking the fort must send a billet or two into the men that
serve them. A ‘_place d’armes_,’ about 50 feet wide, divides the two,
and represents the naval and military arsenal—two dozen iron carronades
lying piled to the right of the first entrance, and as much neglected
and worm-eaten as though they belonged to our happy colony, Cape Coast
Castle. Amongst the guns of different calibre we find a few fine old
brass pieces, one of which bears the dint of a heavy blow. They are
probably the plunder of Hormuz or of Maskat, where the small matter of a
‘piece of ham wrapped up in paper’[23] caused, in the middle of the
seventeenth century, a general massacre of the Portuguese.’
The gateway is the usual intricate barbican. Here in olden times, after
the prayers of el Asr (3 p.M.) the governor and three judges, patriarchs
with long grey beards, unclean white robes, and sabres in hand, held
courts of justice, and distributed rough-and-ready law to peaceful
Banyans, noisy negroes, and groups of fierce Arabs. The square bastion
projecting from the curtain now contains upper rooms for the Baloch
Jemadar (commandant). The ground-floor is a large vestibule, upon whose
shady masonry-benches the soldiery and their armed slaves lounge and
chat, laugh and squabble, play and chew betel. On the left of the outer
gate is a Cajan shed, where native artists are setting up carriages for
the guns whose lodging is now the hot ground. The experiment of firing a
piece was lately tried; it reared up and fell backwards, smashing its
frail woodwork and killing two artillery ‘chattels.’
Travellers have observed that a launch could easily dismantle this
stronghold. It was once, the legend runs, attacked and taken by a single
‘Jack,’ for the honour of whose birthplace Europe and America vainly
contend. Determined to liberate two brother-tars from the ignoble
bilboes, he placed himself at the head of a party consisting of a
Newfoundland dog. He fell upon the guard _sabre au poing_, and, left
master of the field, he waved his bandanna in vinous triumph from the
battlements. Sad to relate, this Caucasian hero succumbed to Hamitic
fraud. The discomfited slaves rallied. Holding a long rope, they ran
round and round the enemy, till, wound about like a windlass or a silk
cocoon, he was compelled to surrender at discretion.
The interior of the fort is jammed with soldiers’ huts, and divided into
courts by ricketty walls. Here, too, is the only jail in Zanzibar. The
stocks (Makantarah), the fetters, the iron collars, and the heavy waist-
chains, do not prevent black man from conversationizing, singing comic
songs, and gambling with pebbles. The same was the case with our gruel-
houses—‘Kanji-Khanah,’ vulgò ‘Conjee-Connah’—in British India. The
Sepoys laughed at them and at our beards. The Bombay Presidency jail is
known to Arabs as El Bistan (El Bostan, the Garden), because the courts
show a few shrubs, and with Ishmaelites a ‘Bistan’ has ever an _arrière
pensée_ of Paradise. But the most mutinous white salt that ever floored
skipper would ‘squirm’ at the idea of a second night in the black-hole
of Zanzibar. Such is the Oriental beau-ideal of a prison—a place whose
very name should develope the goose-skin, and which the Chinese
significantly call ‘hell.’
In my day foreigners visited the prison to see its curio, a poor devil
cateran who had beaten the death-drum whilst his headman was torturing
M. Maizan. An Arab expedition sent into the interior returned with this
wretch, declaring him to be the murderer in chief, and for two years he
lay chained in front of the French Consulate. Since 1847 he was heavily
ironed to a gun, under a mat-shed, where he could neither stand up nor
lie down. The fellow looked fat and well, but he died before our return
from the interior in 1859.
Below the eastern bastion of the ‘Gurayza’ is the most characteristic
spot in Zanzibar city, the Salt Market, so called from the heaps of
dingy saline sand offered for sale by the Maskati Arabs and the
Mekranis. Being near the Custom House, it is always thronged, and like
the bazars of Cairo and Damascus it gives an exaggerated idea of the
population. There are besides this three other ‘Suk.’ The Suk Muhogo, or
Manioc market, to the south of the city, supplies the local staff of
life. It is the sweet variety of Jatropha, called in the Brazil Aypim,
or Macacheira, and known to us as white cassava: it will not make wood-
meal, called κατ’ ἔξοχην, farinha, the flour. The poisonous Manioc
(Jatropha Manihot) must be soaked in water, or rasped, squeezed, and
toasted, to expel its deleterious juice, which the Brazilian ‘Indians,’
and the people of the Antilles, convert by boiling into sugar, vinegar,
and cassareep for ‘pepper-pot’—I heard of this ‘black cassava’ in inner
East Africa. The Suk Muhogo sells, besides the negro’s daily bread,
cloth and cotton, grain and paddy, vegetables, and other provisions. The
shops are the usual holes in the wall, raised a foot above the street,
and the owners sit or squat, writing upon a knee by way of desk, with
the slow, absorbing reed-pen and the clotted clammy fluid called ink.
Behind, and hard by, is the fish-market, which is tolerably supplied
between 4 and 6 p.m.—in the morning you buy the remnants of the last
day. Further eastward, in the Melindini quarter, is the Suk Melindi,
where the butchers expose their vendibles. As in most hot countries, the
best articles are here sold early, at least before 7 a.m. A scarcity of
meat is by no means rare at Zanzibar, and sometimes it has lasted four
or five months.
In the Furzani quarter, eastward of and close to the salt bazar, stands
the Custom House. This is an Arab bourse, where millions of dollars
annually change hands under the foulest of sheds, a long, low mat-roof,
supported by two dozen rough tree-stems. From the sea it is conspicuous
as the centre of circulation, the heart from and to which twin streams
of blacks are ever ebbing and flowing, whilst the beach and the waters
opposite it are crowded with shore-boats, big and small. Inland, it is
backed by sacks and bales, baskets and packages, hillocks of hides, old
ship’s-tanks, piles of valuable woods, heaps of ivories, and a
heterogeneous mass of waifs and strays; there is also a rude lock-up,
for ware-housing the more valuable goods. A small adjacent square shows
an unfinished and dilapidated row of arches, the fragments of a new
Custom House. It was begun 26 or 27 years ago (1857), but Jayaram, the
benevolent and superstitious Hindu who farmed the customs it is said for
$150,000 per annum, had waxed fat under the matting, and was not sure
that he would thrive as much within stone and lime. This is a general
idea throughout the nearer East. The people are full of saws and
instances concerning the downfall of great men who have exposed
themselves to the shafts of misfortune by enlarging their gates or by
building for themselves two-storeyed abodes. But the hat it seems has
lately got the better of the turban, and there will be a handsome new
building, half paid by the Prince and half by his farmer of Customs.
An open space now leads us to the finest building in the city, the
palace of the late Sayyid, which we visit in a future chapter. I may
remark that it is the workhouse style, though hardly so ignoble as that
of H. Hellenic Majesty; but at Zanzibar the windows are far higher up,
and the jail-like aspect is far more pronounced. Beyond it commences the
east-end, and here lives my kind friend M. Cochet, Consul de France. He
came, expecting to find civilization, whist in the evening, ladies’
society, and the pianoforte: he had been hoaxed in Paris about Colonel
Hamerten’s daughters. He is thoroughly disgusted. Even the Consular
residence is the meanest of its kind. No wonder that M. Le Capitaine
Guillain was ‘froissé dans son amour-propre national’ when he entered
it.
Far better, and more open to the breeze, is the house of the hospitable
M. Bérard, agent to Messrs Rabaud Frères, of Marseille. The one
disadvantage of the site is the quantity of Khoprá, or cocoa-nut meat,
split and sun-dried. It evolves, especially at night-time, a noxious
gas, and the strongest stomachs cannot long resist the oily, nausea-
breeding odour which tarnishes silver, and which produces fatal
dysentery. The Zanzibar trade, with the exception of cloves, is not
generally aromatic. Copal, being washed in an over-kept solution of
soda, smells not, as was remarked to the ‘Dragon of Wantley,’ like
balsam. And ton upon ton of cowries, strewed in the sun, or piled up in
huge heaps till the mollusc decays away, can hardly be deemed Sabæan or
even commonly wholesome.
To our right, in rear of the fronting ‘dicky,’ and at both flanks of the
city, is the native town,—a filthy labyrinth, a capricious arabesque of
disorderly lanes, and alleys, and impasses, here broad, there narrow;
now heaped with offal, then choked with ruins. It would be the work of
weeks to learn the threading of this planless maze, and what white man
would have the heart to learn it? Curiosity may lead us to it in
earliest morning, before the black world returns to life. During the day
sun or rain, mud or dust, with the certain effluvia of carrion and
negro, make it impossible to flâner through the foul mass of densely
crowded dwelling-places where the slaves and the poor ‘pig’ together.
The pauper classes are contented with mere sheds, and only the mildness
of the climate keeps them from starving. The meanest hovels are of palm-
matting, blackened by wind or sun, thatched with cajan or grass, and
with or without walls of wattle-and-dab. They are hardly less wretched
than the west Ireland shanty. Internally the huts are cut up into a
‘but’ and a ‘ben,’ and are furnished with pots, gourds, cocoa rasps, low
stools hewn out of a single block, a mortar similarly cut, trays, pots,
and troughs for food, foul mats, and kitandahs or cartels of palm-fibre
rope twisted round a frame of the rudest carpenter’s work. The better
abodes are enlarged boxes of stone, mostly surrounded by deep,
projecting eaves, forming a kind of verandah on poles, and shading
benches of masonry or tamped earth, where articles are exposed for sale.
The windows are loop-holes, and the doors are miracles of rudeness.
Lastly, there are the wretched shops, which supply the few wants of the
population.
We are now at the mouth of the Lagoon, which, at high tides, almost
encircles the city. I am told that of late years the natives have built
all round this backwater. In 1857 the Eastern or landward side was hush
and plantation. As the waters retired they left behind them a rich
legacy of fevers and terrible diseases; especially in the inner town, a
dead flat, excluded from the sea breeze, and exposed to the pestiferous
breath of the maremma.
Ships anchoring off this inlet soon stock French Islet. The whalers and
American and Hamburg vessels, that prefer Changáni Point and the west
end of the city, often escape without a single case of sickness.
Similarly at Havannah, crews exposed to breezes from the Mangrove swamps
have lost half their numbers by yellow fever; and the history of our
West Indian settlements proves, if proof be required, how fatal is night
exposure.
Zanzibar, city and island, is plentifully supplied with bad drinking
water. Below the old sea-beach, and near the shore, it is necessary only
to scrape a hole in the soft ground. Throughout the interior the wells,
though deep, are dry during the hot season, and the people flock to the
surface-draining rivulets. West Africans generally will not drink rain-
water for fear of dysentery; and so with us—when showers fell in large
drops men avoided it, or were careful to consume it soon lest it should
putrefy. The purest element is found at Kokotoni, a settlement on the N.
W. coast of the island, and in the Bububu, a settlement some five miles
north of the city, where Sayyid Suleyman bin Hamid, once governor of
Zanzibar, had a small establishment, and where Hasan bin Ibrahim built a
large house called Chuweni or Leopard’s Place. So at São Paulo de Loanda
the drinking water must be brought from the Bengo river. The best near
the city is from a spring which rises behind the royal Cascine, Mto-ni.
Here the late Sayyid built a stone tank and an aqueduct 2000 yards long,
which, passing through his establishment, came out upon the beach. Casks
could then be filled by the hose, but soon the masonry channel got out
of repair, and sailors will not willingly drink water flowing through a
dwelling-house.
The produce of the town greatly varies. Some wells are hard with
sulphate and carbonate of lime, whilst others are salt as the sea
itself; and often, as in Sind and Cutch, of two near together one
supplies potable and the other undrinkable water. A few to the south of
the city are tolerably sweet. The pits are numerous, and a square shaft,
usually from 12 to 15 feet deep, may be found at every 40 or 50 yards.
There are no casings; the edges are flush with the filthy ground about
them, and the sites must frequently be changed, as the porosity of the
coral rock and the regular seaward slope direct the drainage into them.
Similarly, nearer home the bright sparkling element is not unfrequently
charged with all the seeds of disease. When rain has not fallen for some
time the water becomes thick as that of a horsepond, and when allowed to
stand it readily taints. I could hardly bear to look at the women as
they filled with cocoa-shells the jars to be carried off upon their
heads.
Formerly Europeans were not allowed, for religious reasons, to ship
water from the wells near the town. Also, cask-filling was carried on at
low tide, to prevent the supply of the Mto-ni being brackish, and the
exhalations of the black mud were of course extra-dangerous. It is no
wonder that dysentery and fever resulted from the use of such a
‘necessary.’ The French frigate Le Berceau, after watering here, was
visited by the local pest, and lost 90 men on her way home. Even in
January, the most wholesome month, Lieut. Christopher had 16 deaths
amongst his scanty crew. In this case, however, the lancet, so fatal
near the Line, and the deadly Zerámbo, or toddy-brandy, were partly to
blame. As early as 1824 Captain Owen condemned the supply of Zanzibar,
as liable to cause dysentery. It has this effect during and after heavy
rains, unless allowed to deposit its animal and vegetable matter. During
the second visit of H. M. S. Andromache, in August, 1824, Commander
Nourse and several of his officers spent one night in a country house,
after which the former and the greater number of the latter died. The
water, as well as the air, doubtless tended to cause the catastrophe. In
the dry season the element sometimes produces, according to natives and
strangers, obstinate costiveness. Between Zanzibar and the Cape, five
brigs lost collectively 125 men from fever, dysentery, and inflammation
of the neck of the vesica; whilst others were compelled to start their
casks, and to touch at different ‘aguadas’ en route. Hence skippers
learned to fear and shun Zanzibar. During her 14 months’ exploration of
the island and the coast the Ducouëdic lost 16 men; and to keep up a
crew of 122 to 128, no less than 226 hands were transferred to her from
the naval division of Bourbon and Madagascar. Each visit to Unguja was
followed by an epidemic attack. Formerly as many as seven whalers lay in
harbour at one time; now (1857) they prefer to water and refresh at
Nossi-beh, Mayotta, and especially at the Seychelles, a free port, with
a comparatively cool and healthy climate, where supplies are cheap and
plentiful.
Besides the lagoon and the water nuisances there is yet another. The
drainage of the Zanzibar water-front is good, owing to the slope of the
site seaward. But at low tides, and after dark, when the sulphuretted
hydrogen is not raised from the sands by solar heat, a veil of noxious
gas overhangs the shore, whose whole length becomes exceedingly
offensive. This is caused by the shironi (latrinæ) opening upon the
water edge. ‘Intermural sepulture’ is also here common, though not after
the fashion of West African Yoruba; and the city contains sundry
unenclosed plots of ground, in which dwarf lime-plastered walls, four to
five feet long, fancifully terminated above, and showing, instead of
epitaph, a china saucer or bits of porcelain set in the stone, denote
tombs.
Drainage and cleanliness are panaceas for the evils of malaria where
tropical suns shine. Drainage of swamps and lagoons can improve S’a
Leone, and can take away the stink from South African barracks. Zanzibar
city, I contend, owes much of its fatality to want of drainage, and it
might readily be drained into comparative healthiness. But the East
African Arab holds the possibility of pestilence and the probability of
fever to be less real evils than those of cutting a ditch, of digging a
drain, or of opening a line for ventilation. The Dollar-hunters from
Europe are a mere floating population, ever looking to the deluge in
prospect, and of course unwilling to do every man’s business, that is—to
drain.
Such was Zanzibar city when I first walked through it. Though dating
beyond the days of Arab history, and made, by its insular and central
situation, the depôt of the richest trade in Eastern Africa, its present
buildings are almost all modern. At the beginning of this our nineteenth
century it consisted of a fort and a ragged line of huts, where the ‘Suk
Muhogo’ now stands. Dr Ruschenberger (1835) satisfied himself that ‘the
town of Zanzibar and its inhabitants possess as few attractions for a
Christian stranger as any place and people in the wide world.’ As late
as 1842 this chief emporium of a most wealthy coast boasted but five
store-houses of the humblest description, and the east end was a palm
plantation. Since my departure the city, as the trade returns show, has,
despite unfavourable political circumstances, progressed. A Catholic
mission, sent by France, has established an hospital, and two schools
for boys and girls, and the English Central African Mission has followed
suit. These establishments must differ strangely from the normal thing—
the white-bearded pedagogue, hugging his bones or rocking himself before
a large chintz-covered copy of the Koran, placed upon a stand two feet
high, so as to be above man’s girdle, and, when done with, swathed in
cloth and stowed away. A change, too, there must be in the pupils;
formerly half a dozen ragged boys, some reciting with nasal monotonous
voices sentences to be afterwards understood by instinct, others
scraping the primitive writing-board with a pointed stick.
We will now return to the centre of attraction, the Salt Bazar, and
prospect the people. The staple material is a double line of black youth
and negresses sitting on the ground, with legs outstretched like
compasses. At each apex of the angle is a little heap of fruit, salt,
sugar, sun-dried manioc, greasy fritters, redolent fish, or square
‘fids’ of shark-flesh,[24] the favourite ‘kitchen’ with Wasawahíli and
slaves; it brings from Maskat and the Benadir a goût so high that it
takes away the breath. These vendors vary the tedium of inaction by mat-
making, plaiting leaves, ‘palavers,’ and ‘pow-wows,’ which argue an
admirable conformation of the articulating organs and a mighty lax
morality. Sellers, indeed, seem here to double the number of buyers, and
yet somehow buying and selling goes on.
Motley is the name of the crowd. One officer in the service of His
Highness stalks down the market followed by a Hieland tail, proudly, as
if he were lord of the three Arabias. Negroes who dislike the whip clear
out like hawk-frightened pigeons. A yellow man, with short, thin beard,
and high, meagre, and impassive features, he is well-dressed and
gorgeously armed. Observe that he is ‘breek-less’: trowsers are ‘un-
Arab,’ and unpopular as were the servile braccæ amongst the Romans. The
legs, which, though spare are generally muscular and well-turned, appear
beneath the upper coat, which falls to the knee. He adheres to the
national sandals, thick soles of undyed leather, with coloured and
spangled straps over the instep, whilst a narrow thong passes between
the big toe and its neighbour. The foot-gear gives him that peculiar
strut which is deemed dignified, and if he has a long walk before him—a
very improbable contingency—he must remove his chaussure. I never yet
saw a European who could wear the sandal without foot-chafing.
Right meek by the side of the Arab’s fierceness appears the Banyan, the
local Jew. These men are Bhattias from Cutch in western India; unarmed
burghers, with placid, satisfied countenances, and plump, sleek, rounded
forms, suggesting the idea of happy, well-to-do cows. Such is the effect
of a diet which embraces only bread, rice, and milk, sweetmeats,
vegetables, and clarified butter. Their skins are smoother and their
complexions are lighter than the Arabs’; their features are as high
though by no means so thin. They wear the long mustachio, not the beard,
and a Chinese pig-tail is allowed to spring from the poll of the
carefully shaven head. These top-knots are folded, when the owners are
full-dressed, under high turbans of spotted purple or crimson stuff
edged with gold. The latter are complicated affairs, somewhat suggesting
the oldest fashion of a bishop’s mitre; bound round in fine transverse
plaits, not twisted like the Arabs’, and peaked in the centre above the
forehead with a manner of horn. Their snowy cotton coats fit close to
the neck, like collarless shirts; shawl-girt under the arms, they are
short-waisted as the dresses of our grandmothers; the sleeves are tight
and profusely wrinkled, being nearly double the needful length, and the
immaculate loin-cloth displays the lower part of the thigh, leaving the
leg bare. Their slippers of red leather are sharp-toed, with points
turning upwards and backwards, somewhat as in the knightly days of
Europe.
Another conspicuous type is the Baloch mercenary from Mekran or Maskat.
A comely, brown man, with regular features, he is distinguished from the
Arab by the silkiness and the superior length of his flowing beard,
which is carefully anointed after being made glossy with henna and
indigo. He adheres to his primitive matchlock, a barrel lengthened out
to suit the weak powder in use, damascened with gold and silver, and
fastened to the frail stock by more metal rings than the old French
‘Brown Bess’ ever had. The match is about double the thickness of our
whipcord, and is wound in many a coil round the stalk or stock. A curved
iron, about four inches long, and forked in the upper part to hold the
igniter, plays in a groove cut lengthways through the wood and the
trigger, a prolongation of the match-holder, guides the fire into the
open priming-pan. When the match is not immediately wanted it is made
fast to a batten under the breeching. (A parenthesis. Were I again to
travel in wet tropical lands, I should take with me two flint-guns,
which could, if necessary, be converted into matchlocks. Of course they
would shoot slow, but they would not want caps, and they would prove
serviceable when the percussion gun and the breech-loader would not.)
This mercenary carries also two powder-gourds, one containing coarse
material for loading, the other a finer article, English, if possible,
for priming. He is never without flint, steel, and tinder; and disposed
about his person are spare cartridges in reed cases. His sabre is of the
Persian form; his dagger is straighter and handier than that of the
Arab; and altogether his tools, like his demeanour, are those of a
disciplined, or rather of a disciplinable, man.
The wildest and most picturesque figures are the half-breeds from the
western shores of the Persian Gulf—light brown, meagre Ishmaels and
Orsons, who look like bundles of fibre bound up in highly-dried human
skin. Their unkempt elf-locks fall in mighty masses over unclean,
saffron-stained shirts, which suggest the ‘night-gown’ of other days,
and these are apparently the only articles of wear. Their straight,
heavy swords hang ever ready by a strap passing over the left shoulder;
their right hands rest lovingly upon the dagger-hafts, and their small
round targes of boiled hippopotamus hide—one of the ‘industries’ of
Zanzibar—apparently await immediate use. Leaning on their long
matchlocks, they stand cross-legged, with the left foot planted to the
right of the right, or vice versâ, and they prowl about like beasts of
prey, as they are, eyeing the peaceful, busy crowd with a greedy cut-
throat stare, or with the suspicious, side-long glance of a cat o’
mountain.
These barbarian ‘Gulf Arabs’ differ singularly from the muscular porters
of Hazramaut, in whose Semitic blood there is a palpable African
mixture. They hobble along in pairs, like the Hammals of Constantinople,
carrying huge bales of goods and packs of hides suspended from a pole,
ever chaunting the same monotonous grunt-song, and kicking out of the
way the humped cows that are munching fruit and vegetables under the
shadow of their worshippers, the Banyans. Add half a dozen pale-skinned
‘Khojahs,’ tricky-faced men with evil eyes, treacherous smiles, fit for
the descendants of the ‘Assassins,’ straight, silky beards, forked after
the fashion of ancient Rustam, and armed with Chinese umbrellas.
Complete the group by throwing in a European—how ghastly appears his
blanched face, and how frightful his tight garb!—stalking down the
streets in the worst of tempers, and using his stick upon the mangy
‘pariah dogs’ and the naked shoulders of the ‘niggers’ that obstruct
him. At times the Arabs, when their toes or heels are trampled upon,
will turn and fiercely finger their daggers; but a fear which is by no
means personal prevents their going further.
Such is the aristocracy of the land. As in all servile societies, every
white man (i.e. non-negro) is his white neighbour’s equal; whilst the
highest black man (i.e. servile) ranks below the lowest pale-face.
Far more novel to us is the slave population, male and female. What
first strikes every stranger is the scrupulous politeness and the
ceremonious earnestness of greetings when friends meet. The idea of
standing in the broiling sun to dialogue as follows is not a little
remarkable:
_A._ Yambo (pronounced Dyambo) or Hali gáná?—The state!
_B._ Yambo Sáná—My state is very (good).
_A._ Siyambo (or amongst the Arabized Wasawahíli, Marhabá)—Right
welcome!
_B._ Hast thou eaten and slept?
_A._ I have made my reverential bow!
_B._ Yambo?
_A._ Siyambo Sáná!
_B._ Like unto gold?
_A._ Like unto gold!
_B._ Like unto coral?
_A._ Like unto coral!
_B._ Like unto pearl?
_A._ Like unto pearl!
_B._ The happiness—Kua-heri! (farewell!).
_A._ In happiness let us meet, if Allah please!
_B._ Hem!
_A._ Hem! (drawn out as long as possible).
The fact is they are going about ‘Ku amkía,’ to salute their friends,
and to waste time by running from house to house. Even freemen generally
begin their mornings thus, and idle through the working hours.
The males tie, for only garb, a yard of cotton round the waist, and let
it fall to the knees; bead necklaces and similar trash complete the
costume. Like all negroes they will wear, if possible, the shock-head of
wool, which is not pierceable by power of any sun; and they gradually
unclothe down to the feet, which, requiring most defence, are the least
defended—‘Fashion’ must account for the anomaly. To the initiated eye
the tattoo distinguishes the vast confusion of races. The variety of
national and tribal marks, the stars, raised lumps and scars, the
beauty-slashes and carved patterns, further diversified by the effects
of pelagra, psoris, and small-pox, is a Chinese puzzle to the new-comer.
Domestic slaves, bearing their burdens on the head, not on the shoulder,
are known by a comparatively civilized aspect. They copy their masters,
and strangers remark that the countenance is cheerful and not destitute
of intelligence. The Bozals, or freshly-trapped chattels, are far more
original and interesting. See those Nyassa-men, with their teeth filed
to represent the cat or the crocodile, chaffing some old Shylock, an
Arab dealer in human flesh and blood; or those wild Uzegura-men, with
patterned skins and lower incisors knocked out, like the Shilluks to the
west of the Nile, scowling evilly, and muttering curses at the Nakhuda
(skipper) from Súr, the professional kidnapper of their kind.
The ‘fairer’ half of black world is not less note-worthy. There is the
tall and sooty-skinned woman from Uhiáo, distinguished by the shape of
her upper lip. A thorn-pierced hole is enlarged with stalks of green
reed till it can admit a disk of white-painted wood nearly as big as a
dollar. The same is the system of the Dors, the tribe dwelling north of
the equator and west of the Nile; their lip-plates equal the thick end
of a cheroot; and the ‘pelele’ of the southern regions is a similar disk
of bamboo, ivory, or tin, which causes the upper lip to project some two
inches beyond the nose-tip, giving it an anserine proportion. In the
elder women the ornament is especially hideous. As a rule, the South
American ‘Indians’ pierce for their labrets the lower lip, evidently the
more unclean fashion—no wonder that kissing (should I say osculation?)
is unknown. Yet even amongst the Somal, if you attempt to salute a
woman—supposing that you have the right—she will draw back in horror
from the act of incipient cannibalism. Often the lip-disk is absent, and
then through the unsightly gap a pearly tooth is seen to gleam, set off
by the outer darkness of ‘Spoonbill’s’ skin. This woman, broad-
shouldered and thick-waisted, is almost as stalwart as her Mhiás, whose
tattoo (chale) is a single line forked at both ends:[25] in others the
cuticle and cutis are branded, worked, and raised in an intricate
embroidery over all the muscular trunk. An abnormal equality of strength
and stature between the sexes prevails amongst many African tribes,
especially the agricultural, where women are the workers. The same may
be observed in parts of North Britain and of northern Europe. The
difference in this matter between the Teutonic and the Latin races never
struck me so strongly as when seeing German families land at Rio de
Janeiro.
The half-caste Zanzibar girl enviously eyes the Arab woman, a heap of
unwashed cottons on invisible feet, with the Maskat masque exposing only
her unrecognizable eyeballs. The former wears a single loose piece of
red silk or chequered cotton. Her frizzly hair is twisted into pigtails;
her eyelids are stained black; her eye-brows are lengthened with paint;
her ear-rims are riddled with a dozen holes to admit rings, wooden
buttons, or metal studs, whilst the slit lobes, distended by elastic
twists of coloured palm-leaf, whose continual expansion prodigiously
enlarges the aperture, are fitted with a painted disk, an inch and a
half in diameter. The same device was practised (according to the
missionary Gumilla) by the Aberne tribe of the Orinoco. If pretty, and
therefore wealthy, she wears heavy silver earrings run through the shell
of the ear; her thumbs have similar decorations, and massive bangles of
white metal adorn, like manacles and fetters, her wrists and ancles. One
wing of her nose is bored to admit a stud—even the patches of Europe
were not more barbarous. The Zanzibarian slave girl shaves her head
smooth, till it shows brown and shiny like a well-polished cocoa-nut;
and she drags along her ‘hopeful’—she has seldom more than one—a small
black imp, wholly innocent of clothing. The thing already carries on its
head a water-jar bigger than its own ‘pot-belly,’ and it screams Ná-kujá
(I come!) to other small fry disporting itself more amusingly.
-----
Footnote 17:
Changa (large sands), in the plural Michanga, sands (of great extent).
Mchanga (sand generally), at Mombasah and on the coast which preserve
the older dialect, becomes Mtángá, and means a sandy place. The
islanders of Zanzibar, for instance, will say Nti (the land or earth),
the continentals, Nchi: these prefer Ku Changanyika (to meet
together), those Ku Tanganyika. Foreigners often confound chyá with
jyá, and pronounce, for instance, Msijyáná for Msichyáná—a lass. The
Arabs, who cannot articulate the ch, convert it into their familiar
sh, e. g. Ku Shimba for Ku Chimba (to dig).
Footnote 18:
Manioc, often erroneously written Mahogo.
Footnote 19:
I have described (Pilgrimage to El Medinah and Meccah) the modern
Sambúk of the Red Sea, and find the word ‘Sonboúk’ in the French
translation of Ibn Batutah. Sir Gardner Wilkinson quotes Athenæus, who
makes the ‘Sambuca’ (a musical instrument) ‘resemble a ship with a
ladder placed over it.’
Footnote 20:
It is written Mutaifiyah in the Arab Chronicle of Mombasah History,
translated and included in Captain Owen’s work (Voyages to Africa,
vol. i. 416, Arabia, etc., London, Bentley, 1833).
Footnote 21:
The quarters, beginning from Changáni, the most western, are, the
Baghani, which contains the English Consulate; the Mnazi-Moya to the
south, with a grave-yard, and a bazar where milk and grain are sold;
the Fuga adjoining it, the Zambarani, the Kajifichemi, the Kunazemi,
and the Námbo to the south-east; the Gurayzani, containing the fort;
and the Furdani with the Custom House; the Kipondah, where the French
Consulate is; the Ziwani (Mitha-pani of the Hindus) further to the
south; the Suk Muhogo, where manure and fish are sold; the Melindi, or
Melindini, occupied by Hindus, and boasting a bazar; and lastly the
Mnawi, the Kokoni, and the Fungu extend to the easternmost quarter,
the Malagash, where the Lagoon, an inlet of the sea, bounds the city.
I did not hear any of the three names mentioned in the text; they are
probably now obsolete.
Footnote 22:
The Iberian name (in Arabic الستح, El Sat’h) of the flat roof-terrace,
borrowed from the dry lands of Western Asia.
Footnote 23:
Chap. 7. Captain Hamilton’s ‘New Account of the East Indies.’
Footnote 24:
The Arabs here call the shark ‘jarjúr,’ the Wasawahíli p’hápá. I do
not know why Captain Guillain (ii. 391) says, ‘le requin, nommé par
les Arabs _lebah_—‘Lebah is the Somali name for a lion.
Footnote 25:
Uhiáo is the Iáo of Mr Cooley, who calls the people M’yau (Mhiáo) and
Miyáo (Wahiáo). They are the ‘Monjou’ of Salt, and the Mujao of the
Portuguese. M. Macqueen (On the Geography of Central Africa) says,
‘The inhabitants on the west side of the Lake are called Yoah, and are
Mohammedans.’ They are still pagans. Capt. Guillain (1, 390) remarks,
‘Les historiens Portuguais nous paraissent avoir donné au pays le nom
que les indigènes donnent à ses habitants. Moudjâou, ou plutôt Moniâo
et, par contraction, M’iâo signifie un homme du pays de Iáo.’ Uhiáo
would be the country; Mhiáo and Wahiáo (singular and plural), its
people.
CHAPTER V.
GEOGRAPHICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL.
‘To my surprise, the information concerning Zanzibar and the N. E. coast
of Africa ... scarcely contains meagre phrases destitute of precision.’—
(Col. Sykes’ Journal, R. G. S., vol. xxiii. 1853.) He forgets that
entering from the coast is like jumping from the street into the
window.—(R. F. B.)
SECTION 1.
Africa, East and West—‘Zanzibar’ explained—Menouthias—Position and
Formation—The East African Current—Navigation—Aspect of the Island.
It is an old remark that Africa, the continent which became an island by
the union of the twin seas in the year of grace 1869, despite her
exuberant wealth and her wonderful powers of reproduction, is badly
made—a trunk without limbs, a monotonous mass of painful symmetry,
wanting opposition and contrast, like the uniform dark complexion of her
sons and of her fauna—a solid body, like her own cocoa-nut, hard to
penetrate from without, and soft within; an ‘individual of the earth,’
self-isolated by its savagery from the rest of the world. This is
especially true of intertropical Africa.
The western coast was, until the last four centuries, cut off from
intercourse with mankind by the storm-lashed waters of the northern
approach; and to the present day the unbroken seaboard, so scanty in
good harbours, and the dangerous bars and bores which defend the deadly
river mouths, render it the least progressive part of the old world.
The more fortunate north-eastern and subtropical shores were enabled by
their vast crévasse, the Red and riverless Sea, to communicate with
Western Asia, whilst the rich productions, gold and ivory, tortoise-
shell and ambergris, the hot sensuous climate—which even now induces the
northern sailor to ship in the fatal West African squadron—and the amene
scenery of the equatorial regions, invited, during pre-historic ages,
merchants, and even immigrants, from rugged Persia and sterile Arabia.
Between the two upper coasts, eastern and western, there is, as might be
expected, great similarity of grim aspect. The northern seaboards offer,
for the space of a thousand miles, the same horrid aspect; deceitful
roadsteads and dangerous anchorages, forbidding lines of chalky cliff
and barren brown sandstone bluff; flat strands and white downs, hazed
over by the spray of desert sand; and lowlands backed by maritime sub-
ranges, masses of bald hill and naked mountains, streaked with dry wadis
and water-courses, that bear scatters of dates and thorns, and which
support miserable villages of tents or huts. The fierce and wandering
tribes, Berber, Arab, and Arabo-African—an especially ‘crooked and
perverse generation,’—are equally dangerous to the land traveller and to
the shipwrecked mariner.
As sterile and unlovely for the same cause—the absence of tropical
rains—are the southern regions of the great Nineteenth Century Island.
Good harbours are even rarer than in the north, and the seas about the
Cape of Hope, sweeping up unbroken from the South Pole, are yet more
perilous. The highlands fringing the southern and eastern coasts arrest
the humid winds, and are capable of supporting an extensive population;
but the interior and the western coast, being lowlands, are wild and
barren. The South African or Kafir family, which has overrun this soil,
is still for the most part in the nomade state, and its ‘evident
destiny’ is to disappear before the European colonist.
The central and equatorial land, 34° deep, including and bordering upon
the zone of almost constant rain, is distinguished by the oppressive
exuberance of its vegetation and by the consequent insalubrity of its
climate. The drainage of the interior, pouring with discoloured efflux
to the ocean, in large and often navigable channels, subject to violent
freshes, taints the water-lines with deadly malaria. The false coasts of
coralline or of alluvial deposits—a modern formation, and still forming—
fringed with green-capped islets, and broken by sandy bays and by
projecting capes, are exposed to swells and rollers, to surf and surge,
to numbing torrents and chilling tornadoes, whilst muddy backwaters and
stagnant islets disclose lagoon-valves or vistas through tangled morass,
jungle, and hardly penetrable mangrove-swamp. This maremma, the home of
fever, is also the seat of trade, but the tribes which occupy it soon
die out.
The true coast has already risen high enough above the waters to
maintain its level; and the vegetation—calabashes, palms, and tamarinds—
offers a contrast to the swampy growth below. Inland of the raised
seaboard are high and jungly mountains and coast-range or ghaut, in many
parts yet unvisited by Europeans. Beyond these sierras begins the basin-
shaped plateau of Central Equatorial Africa. The inhabitants are mostly
inland tribes, ever gravitating towards the coast. They occupy stockaded
and barricaded clumps of pent-houses or circular tents, smothered by
thicket and veiled, especially after the heavy annual rains, with the
‘smokes,’ a dense white vapour, moisture made visible by the earth being
cooler than the saturated air.[26]
I have elsewhere remarked (The Lake Regions of Central Intertropical
Africa; Abeokuta and the Camaroons Mountains, &c.) the striking
geological contrast between the two equatorial coasts, eastern and
western. The former, south of the Guardafui granites, offers to one
proceeding inland from the ocean a succession of corallines, of
sandstone and of calcaires, which appear to be an offset from the
section of that great zone forming the Somali country. The western
coasts, after quitting the basalts and lavas of the Camaroons, are
composed chiefly of the granites and syenites with their degradations of
schiste, gneiss, and sandstone. Similarly, in the great Austro-American
continent, one shore, that of the Brazil, is granitic, whilst the other,
Chili, mainly consists of the various porphyries.
The negroes and negroids of both these inhospitable coasts, an
undeveloped and not to be developed race—in this point agreeing with the
fauna and flora around them—are the chief obstacles to exploration, and
remarkably resemble each other. The productions of the east and west are
similar. The voracious shark swims the seas, turtles bask upon the
strands and islets, and the crocodile and hippopotamus haunt the rivers.
The forests abound in apes and monkeys, and the open plains support the
giraffe, the antelope, and the zebra, hog and wild kine (Bos Caffir and
B. Brachyceros), herds of elephants and scatters of rhinoceros. The
villagers breed goats and poultry. In the healthier regions they have
black cattle and sheep, whilst one tribe has acclimatized the ass. The
exceeding fertility of the rain-drenched plains gives an amazing
luxuriance to cassava and rice, maize, and holcus, cotton, sugar-cane,
and wild indigo, banana, lime and orange, ground-nuts and coffee. The
hills and torrent-beds yield gold and copper, antimony, and abundance of
iron. On both sides of the continent there are rich deposits of the
semi-mineral copal. Coal was found by the Portuguese at Tête and in the
Zambeze Valley, as related in Dr Livingstone’s First Expedition
(Missionary Travels, &c., xxxi. 633-4). His second prolonged the coal-
field to beyond the Valley of the Rufuma (Rovuma) river (xxi. 440), and
it will probably be found to extend still further.
Dr Krapf declares (Travels, &c., p. 465) that he discovered coal, ‘the
use of which is still unknown to the Abessinians,’ on the banks of the
Kuang, a river said to rise in the Dembea Province, near Lake Tsana
(Coloë Palus). Finally, to judge from the analogy of the South American
continent, the valuable mineral will yet be struck near the western
coast, south of the equator.
From time immemorial, on both sides of Africa, the continental Islands,
like Aradus and Sidon, Tyre and Alexandria, have been favourite places
with stranger settlers. They have proved equally useful as forts,
impregnable to the wild aborigines, and as depôts for exports and
imports. Second to none in importance is Zanzibar, and the future
promises it a still higher destiny.
And first, of the name, which does not occur in Strabo, Pliny, or the
Periplus. The log-book attributed to Arrian, of Nicomedia, calls the
whole shore, ‘Continent of Azania;’ probably an adaptation, like Azan,
and even Ajan, of the Arabic, Barr el Khazáin, or the Land of Tanks,[27]
the coast between Ra’as Hafun and Ra’as el Khayl. So Pliny (vi. 28 and
34) speaks of the ‘Azanian Sea’ as communicating with the ‘Arabian
Gulf.’ Ptolemy, however (I. 17, sec. iv. 7), has the following important
passage: ‘immediately following this mart (Opone) is another bay, where
Azania begins. At its beginning are the promontory Zingis (ζίγγις,
Zingina promontorium), and the tree-topped Mount Phalangis.’ The name
may have extended from the promontory to the coast, and from the coast
to the island. Dr Krapf speaks of a tribe of the ‘Zendj’ near the Rufiji
river, but I could not hear of it. It is easy to show that the Pelusian
geographer’s Opone is the bay south of Ra’as, or Jurd Hafun. Like
Pomponius Mela, Ptolemy evidently made his great point de départ the
Aromata Promontorium et emporium in Barbarico sinu (Cape Guardafui), and
he placed it N. lat. 6° 0′ 0″, instead of N. lat. 11° 50′. This error
threw the whole coast 6° (in round numbers, more exactly 5° 50′) too far
south, and made the world doubt the accurate position of the Nile lakes.
Thus, to his latitude of Opone N. 4° add 5° 50′, and we have N. lat. 9°
50′, the true parallel of Hafun being N. lat. 10° 26′.
Amongst late authors we find the word Zanzibar creeping into use. The
Adulis inscription (4th century) gives ‘Zingabene’; and its copier, the
Greek monk Cosmas Indicopleustes, who proved the globe flat (6th
century), calls the ‘unnavigable’ ocean beyond Berberia, the ‘Sea of
Zenj,’ and the lands which it bathes ‘Zingium.’ It is found in Abu Zayd
Hasan, generally known as Hunayn bin Ishak (died A.D. 873); in El
Mas’udi, who describes it at some length (died A.D. 957); in El Bayruni
(11th century), and in the learned ‘Nubian Geographer,’ the Sherif El
Idrisi (A.D. 1153). Marco Polo (A.D. 1290), who evidently wrote his 37th
chapter from hearsay, makes Zanzibar a land of blacks; and, confounding
insula with peninsula (in Arabic both being Jezireh), supplies it with a
circumference of 2000 miles, and vast numbers of elephants. The India
Minor, India Major, and India Tertia of the mediæval Latin travellers
are the Sind, Hind, and Zinj of the Arabs. Ibn Batuta (A.D. 1330, 1331),
the first Arab traveller who wrote a realistic description of his
voyage, has accurately placed Kilwa, which he calls ‘Kulua,’ in the
‘land of the Zunúj.’ Finally, we meet with it in El Nowayri, and in
Abulfeda, the ‘Prince of Arab Geographers,’ who both died in the same
year, A.D. 1331.
The word Zanj (زنج), corrupted to Zinj, whence the plural ‘Zunúj,’ is
evidently the Persian Zang or Zangi (زنگ), a black, altered by the
Arabs, who ignore the hard Aryan ‘Gaf’ (گ), the ‘G’ in our gulf. In the
same tongue bár means land or region—not sea or sea-coast—and the
compounded term would signify Nigritia or Blackland. In modern Persian
Zangi still means a negro, and D’Herbelot says of the ‘Zenghis’ that
‘they are properly those called Zingari,[28] and, by some, Egyptians and
Bohemians.’ Scholars have not yet shown why the Arab, so rich in
nomenclature, borrowed the purely Persian word from his complement the
‘Ajam.’ They have forgotten that the Persians, who of late years have
been credited with the unconquerable aversion to the sea which belongs
to the Gallas and the Kafirs, were once a maritime people. ‘The
indifference or rather the aversion of Persians to navigation’ (M.
Guillain, i. 34, 35) must not be charged to the ancient ‘Furs.’ Between
A.D. 531–579, when Sayf bin Dhu Yezin, one of the latest Himyarite
rulers, wanted aid against the Christian Abyssinians, who had held
southern Arabia for 72 years, he applied to Khusrau I., better known as
Anushirawán, the 23rd king of the Sassanian dynasty, which began with
Ardashir Babegan (A.D. 226), and which ended with Yezdegird III. (A.D.
641), thus lasting 415 years. The ‘Just Monarch’ sent his fleet to the
Roman Port’ (Aden), and slew Masruk. In his day the Persians engrossed,
by means of Hira, Obollah, and Sohar, the rich tracts of Yemen and
Hindostan; while Basrah (Bassorah) was founded by the Caliph Omar, in
order to divert the stream of wealth from the Red Sea, a diversion which
will probably soon be repeated. In A.D. 758 the Persians, together with
the Arabs, mastered, pillaged, and burn Canton. Much later (17th
century) Shah Abbas claimed Zanzibar Island and coast as an appanage of
the suzerainty of Oman.
East Africa still preserves traditions of two distinct colonizations
from Persia. The first is that of the ‘Emozaydiys,’ or ‘Emozeides’ (Amm
Zayd), who conquered and colonized the sea-board of East Africa, from
Berberah of the Somal to Comoro and Madagascar, both included. A second
and later emigration (about A.D. 1000) occupied the south Zanzibarian
coast, and ruins built by the Shirazían dynasty which still lingers, are
shown on various parts of the sea-board. Of these Persian occupations
more will be found in the following pages. (Part 1, Chap. I, and Part 2,
Chap. 2.)
Persia has left nothing of her widely extended African conquests but a
name. In modern days she has become more and more a non-maritime power.
She has wholly retired from the coast; and Time, who in these lands
works with a will, presently obliterated almost every trace of the
stranger. A few ruins at Aden and Berberah, and the white and black
sheep of Ormania (Galla-land) and of Somali land, are almost the only
vestiges of Persian presence north of the Equator. On the Zangian
mainland wells sunk in the rock, monuments of a form now obsolete;
mosques with elaborate minarets and pillars of well-cut coralline;
fortified positions, loopholed enclosures, and ruined cities whose names
have almost been forgotten, are the results of the civilization which
they brought with them southwards.
The limits assigned by the Arab geographers to the ‘Land of the Zinj’
are elastic. While some, as Yakut, make it extend from the mouths of the
Jub River (S. lat. 0° 14 30″) to Cape Corrientes (S. lat. 24° 7′ 5″) and
thus include Sofala; others, with El Idrisi, separate from it the latter
district, and unjustly make its southern limit the Rufiji River (S. lat.
7° 38′), thus excluding Kilwa. It should evidently extend to Mozambique
Island (S. lat. 15° 2′ 2″), where the Wasawahíli meet the ‘Kafir’ races.
The length would thus be, in round numbers, 15° = 900 geographical
miles, whilst the breadth, which is everywhere insignificant, can hardly
be estimated.
The Arabs, who love to mingle etymology with legend and fable, derive
the word ‘Zanzibar’ from the exclamation of its pleased explorers, ‘Zayn
za’l barr!’ (fair is this land!). Similar stories concerning Brazilian
Olinda and Argentine Buenos Aíres are well known. ‘El Sawáhil,’ the
shores, evidently the plural of Sáhil, is still applied to the 600 miles
of maritime region whose geographical limits are the Jub River and Cape
Delgado (S. lat. 10° 41′ 2”), and whose ethnographic boundaries are the
Somal and the ‘Kafir’ tribes. Others derive it from El Suhayl, the
beautiful Canopus which, surrounded by a halo of Arab myth, ever
attracts the eye of the southing mariner. The Wasawahíli,’[29] or slave
tribes, are fancifully explained by ‘Sawwá hílah,’ he ‘played tricks,’—
rascals all.
The coast races who, like their neighbours the Somal, have their own
African names for places, call Zanzibar Island by the generic term
Kisíwa—insula. It is thus opposed to Mpoa-ni, the coast, and to Mrímá,
the mainland.[30] The latter, however, is properly speaking limited to
the maritime uplands between Tanga and the Pangani river. Zanzibar city
is Unguja (pronounced Ungudya, not Anggouya). The word appears in an
ancient settlement on the eastern coast of the island, and the place is
still called Unguja Mku, Old Unguja. Some still call it Lunguja,
apparently an older form. We find ‘Lendgouya’ in the Commercial
Traveller Yakut (early thirteenth century); but ‘Bandgouia’ (Abd el
Rashid bin Salih el Bakui, A.D. 1403) is clearly a corruption.
Finally, Zanzibar has been identified by palæogeographers with the
Ptolemean Μενουθιὰς or Μενουθεσίας (iv. 9), and with the Μενουθιὰς of
the Periplus (Geog. Græci Minores of R. Muller, Paris, 1855), in some
copies of which Menouthesías also occurs. Its rivals, however, for this
honour are Pemba, Mafiyah (the Monfia of our maps) and Bukini, the
northern and north-western parts of Malagash or Madagascar.[31] Ptolemy,
it may be observed, places the two important sites, Menouthias and
Prasum (or Prassum) in a separate chapter (iv. 9), whereas his principal
list of stations is in Book iv. chapter 7. He lays down the site of
Menouthias in S. lat. 12°, and nearly opposite the Lunar Mountain, and
the Lakes whence the Nile arises (S. lat. 12° 30′). The mouth of the
Rhapta river and Rhapta, the metropolis of Barbaria, are in S. lat. 7°,
the Rhapta promontory is in S. lat. 8° 20′ 5″, and the Prasum promontory
in S. lat. 15°. By applying the correction as before, we have for
Menouthias S. lat. 6° (the capital of Zanzibar being in S. lat. 6° 9′
6″); for the Lakes, 6° 30′, which would nearly bisect Tanganyika; for
Rhapta river and city, S. lat. 1° (or more exactly, S. lat. 1° 10′); the
mouth of the Jub river being in S. lat. 0° 14′ 30″; the Rhapta
promontory in S. lat. 2° 30′, corresponding with the coast about Patta;
and finally, for Prasum S. lat. 9° 10′—Cape Delgado being in S. lat. 10°
41′ 12″.
The account given of Menouthias in the Periplus (written between A.D.
64, Vincent, and A.D. 210, Letronne[32]) is that of an eyewitness:
‘After two nychthemeral days (each of 100 miles) towards the west [here
the text is evidently corrupt] comes Menouthias, altogether insulated,
distant from the land about 300 stadia (30 geographical miles), low and
tree-clad. In it are many kinds of birds and mountain tortoises (land
turtle?). It has no other wild beasts but crocodiles (iguanas), and
these do not injure man. There are in it sewn boats and monoxyles
(canoes), which they use for salt-pans [here the text is defective] and
for catching turtle. In this island they trap them after a peculiar
fashion with baskets (the modern wigo) instead of nets, letting them
down at the mouth of stony inlets’ (chap. i. 15).
The next chapter informs us: ‘From which (island) after two runs (each
50 miles)[33] lies the last emporium of the continent of Azania, called
Tà Rhaptà, thus named from the before-mentioned sewn-together vessels.
In it are much ivory and tortoise-shell. The men, who in this country
are of the largest size, live scattered (in the mountains?), and each
tribe in its own place is subject to tyrants’ (‘tyranneaulx’ or petty
chiefs).
Here, then, we have Rhapta 33 leagues (100 miles = 1° 40′) beyond
Menouthias. Captain Guillain (Prem. Partie, p. 115) would make the
former correspond with the debouchure of the Oufidji river (Rufiji or
Lufiji), in S. lat. 7° 50′. But the Periplus, unlike Ptolemy, alludes
only to a port, not to a river mouth, nor does the coast-line here show
any promontory. Others have proposed Point Puna (S. lat. 7° 2′ 42″), the
south-western portal of the Zanzibar manche, near the modern trading
port of Mbuamáji, which in former ages may have been more important.
D’Anville, Vincent, and De Froberville boldly prefer Kilwa (in round
numbers S. lat. 9°), which is distant 157 geographical miles from the
southernmost point of Zanzibar, and I think they are right. It is safer
in such matters to suspect an error of figures and of distances than of
topography, especially where the geographical features are so well
marked and cannot be found in other places. Computations of ancient
courses and log-books can have little value except when they serve to
confirm commonly topographical positions. Kilwa has ever been a central
station on the Zanzibar coast, and the slaves brought from the interior
are still remarkable for size. Moreover, as Dr Beke well observes
(Sources of the Nile, p. 69), ‘In attempting to fix in the map of Africa
the true position of Ptolemy’s lakes and sources of the Nile, we must
discard all notions of their having been determined _absolutely_ by
means of astronomical observations, special maps of particular
localities, or otherwise, and regard them simply as derived from oral
information, and as laid down _relatively_ to some well-known point or
points on the coast.’[34]
Zanzibar, the principal link in the chain of islets which extends from
Makdishu (Magadoxo), in the Barr el Benadir or Haven-land, to Cape
Corrientes, is a long narrow reef, with the major axis disposed from N.
N. W. to S. S. E., and subtending a deep bight or bend in the coast,
justly enough called the Barbaric Gulf. The length is 48·25 geographical
miles from Ra’as Nunguwi, the northern (S. lat. 5° 42′ 8″ Raper), to
Ra’as Kizimkaz, the southern, extremity (S. lat. 6° 27′ 7″ Raper). The
breadth is 18 miles from the Fort in E. long. 39° 14′ 5″ Raper’s
correction, to the continental coast in E. long. (G.) 39° 32′ 5″. French
travellers assume a max. length of 83 kilomètres, and a max. breadth of
33. The capital (S. lat. 6° 9′ 6″) corresponds in parallel with the
Pernambucan province to the west and with Java and central New Guinea to
the east. The corrected longitude (laid down by Captain Smee in 1811 as
E. lat. 39° 15′) gives a difference of Greenwich time 2^{h.} 36^{m.} and
56^{s.}. From Southampton round the Cape the run is usually laid down at
8500 miles, viâ Suez 6200. The Lesseps Canal has shortened the distance
from Marseille by 2000 leagues, and thus has placed Zanzibar within 1600
leagues of the great port—in fact, about the distance of the Gaboon ex-
colony.
The formation of the island is madrepore, resting upon a core or base of
stratified sand-stone grit, disposed in beds varying from 1·5 to 3 feet
thick. The surface gently inclines towards the sea, and the lines of
fracture run parallel with the shores. Three distinct formations occur
to one crossing the breadth.[35] The first is a band of grit-based
coralline, which runs meridionally, and is most remarkable on the
eastern side. This portion, featureless and thinly inhabited, is
protected from the dangerous swell and the fury of the Indian Ocean by a
broad reef and scattered rocks of polypidoms. The band thins out to the
north and south: in the centre, where it is widest, the breadth may be
three to four miles, and the greatest height 400 feet. The coral-rag is
mostly white and of many shapes, like fans, plants, and trees: the most
usual form is the mushroom, with a broad domed head rising from a narrow
stem. The texture is exceedingly reticulated and elastic; solid masses,
however, occur where neighbouring rocks meet and bind—hence the
labyrinth of caverns, raised by secular upgrowth and preserving the
original formation. The ground echoes, as in volcanic countries, hollow
and vault-like to the tread; the tunnels are frequently without issue
for drainage, and when the rain drips in, the usual calcareous
phenomena, stalactites and stalagmites, appear. Many of these caves are
found on the coast as well as on the island. The carbonate of lime is
very pure, and contains brown or yellow-white crystals.
A stony valley, sunk below the level of both flanks, is said to bisect
the island from north to south. Into this basin fall sundry small
streams, the Mohayra and others, which are lost through the crevices and
caverns, and in the cracks and fissures of the grit. There are other
drains, forming, after heavy downfalls, swamps and marshes, whence
partly the great insalubrity of the interior. The western part of
Zanzibar, with its wealth of evergreen vegetation, appears by far the
most fertile. It is a meridional band of red clay and sandy hills,
running parallel with the corallines of the eastern coast. Here are the
most elevated grounds. I found the royal plantation Sebbé or Izimbane,
400 feet (B.P.) above sea-level, or a little higher than the Bermudas.
The least productive parts are those covered with dark clay. Heavy rains
deposit arenaceous matter upon the surface, and the black humus
disappears. On this side of the island also many streamlets discharge
into the sea, bearing at their mouths mangrove beds, whose miasmas cause
agues, dysenteries, diarrhœas, and deadly fevers.
The rule established by Dampier and quoted by Humboldt directs us to
expect great depth near a coast formed by high perpendicular mountains.
Here, as in the rest of the Zanzibarian archipelago, the maritime line,
unlike the west Atlantic islands Tenerife and Madeira, is composed of
gently rolling hills. Yet seven fathoms are often found within a stone-
throw of the land, whilst the encircling ledges are steep-to, marked in
the charts 1/100 and 1/140. Evidently, then, the corallines are perched
upon the summits of a submarine range which rises sharp and abrupt from
abysmal hollows and depressions. As usual too in such formations, the
leeward shore line of the island, where occur the lagoon entrances, is
more varied and accidented than the eastern. At Pemba this feature will
be even more remarkable.
The windward coast, in common with many parts of the continental
seaboard, suffers especially from June to August from the Ras de Marée
(Manuel de la Navigation et la Côte occidentale de l’Afrique), a tide
race, supposed to result from the meeting of currents. It is a line of
rollers neither far from nor very near the shore. The hurling and
sagging surf is described to resemble the surge of a submarine
earthquake; and the strongest craft, once entangled in the send, cannot
escape. It would be useful to note, as at West African Lagos, the
greater or less atmospheric pressure accompanying the phenomenon, and to
seek a connection between it and the paroxysms of the neighbouring
cyclone region. At all times sailors remark the ‘shortness’ of the waves
and the scanty intervals between their succession. This peculiarity
cannot be explained in the usual way by shoals and shallow water causing
a ground-swell.
With respect to the great East African ocean-current, which has given
rise to so many fables gravely recorded by the Arab geographers,[36] the
best authorities at Zanzibar are convinced, and their log-books prove,
that both its set and drift, like the Brazilian coast-stream, are in the
present state of our knowledge subject to the extremes of variation. The
charts and Horsburgh lay it down as a regular S.W. current; and so it is
in the southern, whilst in the northern part it is hardly perceptible.
Between Capes Guardafui and Delgado it flows now up then down the coast;
here it trends inland, there it sets out to sea. Dr Ruschenberger
relates that on Sept. 1, 1835, his ship, when south of Zanzibar, was
carried 50 miles in 15 hours, and was obliged to double the northern
cape. The same happened to Captain Guillain in August 1846, when he lost
five days. This resulted from the superior force of the S.W. monsoon,
which often drives vessels to the north 30 to 40 miles during the day
and night. Lieut. Christopher (Journal, Jan. 5, 1843) reported it to be
variable and violent, especially close in shore, and observed that it
frequently trends against the wind. It is usually made to run to the
S.W. between December and April, at the rate of 1·3 miles per hour, from
Ra’as Hafun to Ra’as Aswad, and two to three miles per hour between
Capes Aswad and Delgado. Shipmasters at Zanzibar have assured me that
when this coastal current covers three knots an hour there is a strong
backwater or counter-flow, which, like the Gulf-stream, trends to the
north, and against which, with light winds, native vessels cannot make
way. This counter-current has extensive limits; usually it is considered
strongest between Mafiyah and Pomba. The ship St Abbs, concerning which
so much has been said and written of late years, was wrecked in 1855 off
St Juan de Nova of the Comoro group (S. lat. 17° 3′ 5″), and pieces of
it were swept up to Brava (N. lat. 1° 6′ 8″), upwards of 1000 miles. The
crew is supposed still to be in captivity amongst the Abghal tribe; and
in 1865 an Arab merchant brought to Zanzibar a hide marked with letters
which resembled N F B N. A writer in the _Pall Mall_ opined the letters
to be ‘Wasm’ or tribal brands, justly observing that ‘all the Bedawin
have these distinguishing marks,’ but forgetting that he was speaking of
the analphabetic Somal, to whom such knowledge does not extend. As we
might expect, the Mozambique stream, south of Cape Delgado, always flows
southerly with more or less westing. The rate is said to vary from 20 to
80 miles a day.
Our hydrographical charts are correct enough to guide safely into and
out of port any shipmaster who will sound, and can take an angle. As,
however, the navigation is easy, so accidents are common. Any land-
lubber could steer a ship from Bombay to Karachi (Kurrachee), and yet
how many have been lost! Often, too, it is in seamanship as in
horsemanship, when the best receive the most and the heaviest falls. In
May 1857 the Jonas, belonging to Messrs Vidal, was sunk by mistaking
Chumbi Island for its neighbour Bawi. Three or four days afterwards the
Storm King of Salem, Messrs Bertram, ran aground whilst hugging Chumbi
in order to distance a rival. The number of reefs and shoals render it
always unadvisable to enter the port at night, and in the heaviest
weather safe riding-ground is found between Zanzibar Island and the
continent.
[Illustration: ZANZIBAR FROM THE SEA.]
Vessels from the south making Zanzibar in the N.E. monsoon, the trade-
wind of December to March, leave Europa Island to the west, and the
Comoro group and S. Juan de Nova on the east. Keeping well in mid-
channel, they head straight for Mafiyah. They hug Point Puna, avoiding
Latham’s Bank,[37] and they work up by Kwale and the Chumbi Island.
Ships from the north have only to run down the mid-channel, between
Pemba and the continent, and then to pass west of Tumbatu. Those sailing
southward from Zanzibar at this season pass along-shore, down the
Mozambique Channel. Vessels from the south making Zanzibar in May to
September, the height of the S.W. monsoon—the anti-N.E. trade—sail up
the same passage. They must beware of falling to leeward; and those that
neglect ‘lead and look-out’ are ever liable to be carried northwards to
Pemba by the counter-current before mentioned, which may, however, now
be a wind-current. At this season ship-masters missing the mark have
sometimes made 3° to 4° of easting, and have preferred beating down to
Mafiyah and running up again, rather than face the ridicule of appearing
viâ the northern passage. Those leaving the Island in the S.W. monsoon
stand north up channel, well out in E. lon. 9° 42′ to 43′, beat south of
Cape Delgado, pass between the Comoro group and the mainland, and thus
catch the Mozambique gulfstream. The brises solaires blow strongest off
Madagascar in June and July. They fall light in August and September.
The aspect of Zanzibar from the sea is that of coralline islands
generally—a graceful, wavy outline of softly rounded ground, and a
surface of ochre-coloured soil, thickly clothed with foliage alternating
between the liveliest leek-green and the sombrest laurel, the only
variety that vegetation knows in this land of eternal verdure.
Everywhere the scenery is similar; each mile of it is a copy of its
neighbour; and the want of variety, of irregularity, of excitement, so
to speak, soon makes itself felt. Zanzibar ignores the exhilaration of
pure desert air, and the exaltation produced by the stern aspect of
mountain regions or by a boundless expanse of Pampa and Sahara. Without
a single element of sublimity, soft and smiling, its sensuous and
sequestered scenery has no power to spur the thought, to breed an idea
within the brain. The oppressive luxuriance of its growth combined with
the excess of damp heat, and possibly the abnormal proportion of ozone,
are the most unfavourable conditions for the masculine. The same is the
case in Mazanderan, Malabar, Egypt, Phœnicia, California, and other
Phre-kah—lands of the sun. And the aspect of that everlasting,
beginning-less, endless verdure tends, as on the sea-board of the
Brazil, to produce sensations of melancholy and depression. We learn at
last to loathe thee,
‘gay green,
Thou smiling Nature’s universal robe!’
Landing upon the island, you find a thin strip of bright yellow sand
separating the sea from a curtain of vegetation, which forms a
continuous wall. In some parts madrepore rock, looped and caverned by
the tide, and covered with weeds and testaceæ, whose congeners are
fossilized in the stone, rises abruptly a few feet above the wave. At
other places a dense growth of tangled mangrove jungle exposes during
the ebb a sheet of black and sticky mire, into which man sinks knee-
deep. The regularity of the outline is broken by low projecting spits
and by lagoons and backwaters, which bite deep into the land. Their
pestilential, fatal exhalations veil the low grounds with a perpetual
haze, and the excess of carbon is favourable to vegetable as it is
deleterious to animal life.
Passing over the modern sea-beach, with its coarse grasses, creepers,
and wild flowers—mostly the Ipomæa—and backed by towering trees, cocoas,
mangos, and figs, we often observe in the interior distinct traces of an
old elevation, marked by lines of water-worn pebbles and by coarse
gravels overlying greasy blue clay. This is the home of the copal.
Beyond it the land rises imperceptibly, and breaks into curves, swells,
and small ravines, rain-cut and bush-grown, sometimes 40 feet deep. The
soil is now a retentive red or yellow argile, based upon a detritus of
coralline, hardened, where pressed, into the semblance of limestone, or
upon a friable sand-stone-grit of quartz and silex. The humus of the
richest vegetable substance, and excited by the excess of humidity and
heat, produces in abundance maize, millet, and various panicums;
tomatoes and naturalized vegetables, muhogo (the cassava), and Palma
Christi; coffee, cotton, and sugar-cane; clove, nutmeg, and cinnamon
trees; foreign fruits, like the Brazilian Cajú, the passion-flower and
the pine-apple; the Chinese Leechi; bananas and guavas, the Raphia and
the cocoa, twin queens of the palms; limes and lemons, oranges and
shaddocks, the tall tamarind, the graceful Areca, the grotesque calabash
and Jack-tree, colossal sycamores and mangos, whose domes of densest
verdure, often 60 feet high and bending, fruit-laden, to the earth, make
our chesnuts, when in fullest dress, look half-naked and in rags.
The uplands, especially in the western part of the island, are laid out
in Máshámha or plantations, whose regular lines of untrimmed clove-trees
are divided by broad sunny avenues. Here and there are depressions in
the soil, where heavy rains slowly sinking have nursed a tangled growth
of reeds and rushes, sedge and water-grass. About the Mohayra and the
Búbúbú—the principal of the ποταμοι πλειστοι of the Periplus—mere
surface-drains, choked with fat juncaceæ and with sugar-cane growing
wild, there is a black soil of prodigious fertility, whose produce may,
so to speak, be seen to grow. This sounds like exaggeration; but I well
remember, at Hyderabad, in Sind, that during the inundation of the Indus
we could perceive in the morning that the maize had lengthened during
the night, and the same is the case with certain ‘toadstools’ and fungi
in the Brazil.
Upon this waste of rank vegetation the sun darts an oppressive and
malignant beam. In the driest season the ‘mangrove heaviness’ of the
western coast and the cadaverous fœtor announce miasma; after the rains
the landscape is redolent of disease and death.
The cottages of small proprietors and slaves strew the farms. They are
huts of wattle and rufous loamy dab, to which large unbaked bricks of
red clay are sometimes preferred. The usual cajan pent-roof forms deep
dark eaves, propped by untrimmed palm-boles. These dwellings are
unwholesome, because none boast of a second storey; they are not even
built upon piles, and thus their sole defence against the surrounding
malaria is the shrubbery planted by nature’s hand. Sickness seems
generally, both in the island and on the continent, to follow turning up
fresh soil, and the highlands are often more subject to miasma than the
lowlands.
The lines of communication consist of mere footpaths, instead of the
broad roads required for the ventilation of the country. When the
produce of the land is valuable the lanes are lined with cactus, milk-
bush (euphorbia), and succulent plants, whose foliage shines with
metallic lustre. Set in little ridges, the hedge-rows of pine-apple,
with its large pink and crimson fruit, passing, when ripe, into a
reddish-yellow, form a picturesque and pleasant fence. At a distance
from the town the paths become rough and solitary. Nearer, they are well
beaten by negroes of both sexes and all ages, carrying fuel or baskets
of fruit upon their heads, or bringing water from the wells, or
loitering under shady trees to cheapen the cocoa-nut, manioc, and
broiled fish, offered by squatting negresses for their refection.
SECTION 2.
Meteorological Notes—The Double Seasons, &c.
The characteristic of meteorology at Zanzibar, as generally the case in
the narrow equatorial zone, is the extreme irregularity of its
phenomena. Here weather seems to be all in confusion; hardly two
consequent years resemble each other. In 1853-4, for instance, the
seasons, if they may so be called, were apparently inverted; heavy
showers fell during the dries, and a drought occupied the place of the
wet monsoon. Sometimes the rains will begin with, this year (1857) they
ended with, a heavy burst. Now April is a fine month, then the downfall
will last through June.
I may also remark one great difference of climate between the eastern
and western coasts of intertropical Africa. Whilst Zanzibar is
supersatured with moisture, Angola, on the same parallel, is a
comparatively dry, sandy, and sunburnt region. Kilwa, upon the eastern
coast, and in S. lat. 8° 57′, is damp and steamy. S. Paulo de Loanda,
upon the opposite shore (S. lat. 8° 48′), suffers from want of water. We
find the same contrast in the South American continent. The middle
Brazil is emphatically a land of rains, whilst Peru and Chili require
artificial irrigation supplied by melted snow. Evidently the winds
charged with moisture, the N. E. and S. E. trades and their
modifications, discharge themselves upon the windward sides of
continents, especially when these are fringed with cold sierras, which
condense the vapour and render the interior a lee land.
In 1847 the Geographical Society of Bombay sent a barometer to Zanzibar,
and requested that a meteorological register might be kept. Their wishes
were not immediately carried into effect; but after a time the Eurasian
apothecary in charge of the Consulate filled up in a rude way during
nine months a weather-book, with observations of the barometer, of two
thermometers attached and unattached, of wet and dry bulbs, of
evaporation and of rainfall. In the Journal of the Royal Geographical
Society (xxiii. of 1853), Colonel Sykes published a ‘record, kept during
eleven months in 1850, of the indications of several intertropical
instruments at Zanzibar,’ unhappily without those of pressure.[38]
The result of nine months’ observations is that the thermometer shows a
remarkably limited range of temperature and an extreme variation of only
18°-19°. A storm, however, will make the mercury fall rapidly through
6°-7°. The climate is far more temperate than the inexperienced expect
to find so near the equator. It is within the limits of the true Trades.
The land and sea breezes laden with cool moisture blow regularly, and
the excessive humidity spreads a heat-absorbing steam-cloud between sun
and earth. The medium temperature of January is 83° 30′; of February,
the hottest month, 85° 86′ (according to Colonel Sykes 83° 40′); and of
March, 82° 50′. This high and little-varying mean then gradually
declines till July, the coolest month (77° 10′). The mean average of the
year is 79° 15′-90′. In September and October the climate has been
compared with that of southern Europe. On the other hand, the atmosphere
supports an amount of moisture unknown to the dampest parts of India.
The barometer, so near the equator, is almost uniformly sluggish and
quiescent. Its range diurnal and annual is here at a min. It seldom,
except under varying pressure of storms or tornadoes, rises or falls
above or below 30 inches at sea level, and a few tenths represent the
max. variation. It must be observed, however, on both coasts of Africa,
within 6°-7° of the Line, this instrument requires especial study for
nautical purposes. Here it is an imperfect indicator, because, affected
from great distances, it rises without fine weather and it falls without
foul. At Zanzibar the case of a whaling captain is quoted for wasting in
vain precautions nearly two months. Moreover, sufficient observations
have not yet been accumulated in the southern hemisphere. Where there is
so little expansion in the mercurial column the convexity and concavity
of the column-head must be carefully examined with a magnifying-glass,
and by a reflecting instrument the smallest change could be correctly
measured. The trembling of the aneroid needle, sometimes ranging through
a whole inch during the gusts of the highly electrical tornado, also
calls for observation. The sympiesometer is held to be even more
sensitive than the mercurial barometer, especially before storms, and
ignorance of its peculiarity has often ‘frightened a reef in’ at
unseasonable times. The same was found to be the case, in high
latitudes, by Lieut. Robertson, R.N., when sailing under Captain Ross
(1818), between N. lat. 51° 39′ and 76° 50′.
Observations with the altitude and azimuth determined the variation of
the needle in 1857 to be between 9°-10° (W.). If this be correct, it is
gradually easting. In 1823 Captain Owen found it to be 11° 7′ (W.).[39]
So, upon the opposite coast, the variation laid down in our charts of
1846 as 20° (W.) has gradually declined to between 18° 30′ and 19° (W.).
Of exceptional meteoric phenomena I can speak only from hearsay, no
written records existing upon the island. A single earthquake is
remembered. In the early rains of 1846, at about 4 P.M., a shock,
accompanied by a loud rumbling sound, ran along the city sea-front,
splitting the Sayyid’s palace, the adjacent mosque, and the side-walls
of the British Consulate, in. a direction perpendicular to the town. It
was probably the result of igneous disturbance below the coralline, and
it tends to prove that the island was originally an atoll: some,
however, have explained it by a land-slip. Three meteors are known since
1843. In December of that year a ball of fire was visible from windows
facing the north; it disappeared without a report. The most remarkable
was a bolis, which, about 6 P.M. on October 25, 1855, took a N.W. by W.
path, burned during ten or eleven minutes, and frightened the
superstitious burghers into fits. Water-spouts commonly appear during
the month of April, and in the direction of the mainland: the people
disperse them by firing guns.
Frost and snow are of course unheard of at Zanzibar, and hail, not
uncommon in the interior, never (?) falls upon the island or the coast.
During the wet season generally, especially when the heats are greatest,
the hills of Terrafirma are veiled with clouds, and sheet-lightning
plays over the horizon. The islanders assure the stranger that storms of
thunder and lightning are rare, and that few accidents happen from the
electric fluid. M. Alfred May, for instance, declares that thunder is
heard only three or four times a year. The same is said in West African
Yoruba, in parts of the Brazil, and even in Northern Syria—Damascus, for
instance. It would be curious to inquire what produces this uniform
immunity under climatic conditions so different. At Zanzibar, however,
the phenomenon is irregular as the seasons. I was told of several deaths
by the ‘thunderbolt,’ and in the year 1857 the S.W. monsoon was ushered
in almost daily by a tempest. Lieutenant-Colonel Hamerton, when sailing
about the island, lost by lightning his Baloch Sarhang (boatswain); he
himself felt a blow upon the shoulder like that of a falling block. No
blood appeared upon the side, but it was livid to the hip, and for some
days the patient was decidedly ‘shaky.’ Some explained his escape by his
wearing flannel; others by his standing near the davits of a longboat,
which were twisted like wax by the electric fluid.
The mainlands of Zanzibar and of Mozambique are subject, as might be
expected, to tornados, which much resemble those of the West African
coast. Accompanying the formation and the dispersion of the nimbus, they
are often violent enough to wreck small craft. Caught in a fine
specimen, I was able to observe all the normal phenomena,—the building
up of the warning arch, the white eye or gleam under the soffit, the
wind blowing off shore, the apparent periodicity of throbs, and the
frantic rage of the short-lived squall. The cyclones and hurricanes of
the East Indian Islands rarely extend to Zanzibar. During 14 years there
was but one tourbillon strong enough to uproot a cocoa-tree. It passed
over the city about midnight, overthrowing the Mábandani or roof-sheds,
and it was followed by a burst of rain. Colonel Sykes (loco cit.)
remarks, philosophically explaining the why, ‘Another peculiar feature
in the climatology of Zanzibar is that there is seldom any dew
experienced.’ The reverse is the case, as might be known by the strength
of the nightly radiation. Captain Guillain (i. 2, 72) declares that the
rosées which accompany the rains are sufficient for watering the ground,
and observes (p. 94), I presume concerning those who remain in the open
air, ‘Rester à terre entre huit heurs du soir et le lever du soleil
c’est s’exposer à une mort très probable, sinon certaine.’ The sunset,
never followed by twilight, is accompanied by a sudden coolness which,
as in equatorial, and even sub-tropical regions generally, causes a
rapid precipitation of vapour. The dews are cold and clammy, and the
morning shows large beads in horizontal streaks of moisture on
perpendicular surfaces. I often remarked the deposition of dew when
light winds were blowing; of course it did not stand in drops, but it
wetted the clothing. This I believe is an exception to the general rule.
At sunset the old stager will not sit or walk in the open air, although,
as in Syria, he will expose himself to it at nine or ten p. m., when the
night has acquired its normal temperature. As in the west coast
squadron, so here, there is an order that all men on deck after sunset
must wear their blanket-coats and trowsers, and many an unfortunate
sailor has lost his life by sleeping in the streets, thus allowing the
dew to condense upon his body while under the influence of liquor.
Experienced travellers have taught themselves, even in the hottest
seasons of the hottest equinoctial regions, to air the hut with a ‘bit
of fire’ before sundown and sunrise, and it is doubtless an excellent
precaution against ‘chills.’
Zanzibar Island, lying in S. lat. 6°, has the sun in zenith twice a
year: the epochs being early March and October; more exactly, March 4
and October 9. Hence it has two distinct summers; the first in February,
the second in September. It has double rains; the ‘Great Masika’ in
April to June, and the ‘Little Masika’ in October to November. It has
two winters; the shorter in December, and in July the longer, which is
much more marked than the former. There are only three months of N.E.
trade (Azyab)[40] to nine of S.E. and S.W. (Kausi). The regularity of
these seasons is broken by a variety of local causes, and there is ever,
I repeat, the normal instability of equinoctial climates. Theory appears
often at fault upon these matters. A fair instance is Mr Cooley’s
assertion, that about Kilima-njaro the ‘rainy season is also the hot
season.’ Theoretically, of course, the period of the sun’s northing and
of the great rains should be, north of the equator, the hot season; but
where tropical downfalls are heavy, the excessive humidity intercepting
the solar rays, and the valleys and swamps refrigerated by the torrents,
make the rainy season the cold weather. From June to September the
natives of Fernando Po (N. lat. 4°) die, like those of eastern
intertropical Africa, of catarrh, quinsey, and rheumatism. Even in India
the Goanese call the rains ‘o inverno,’ and Abba Gregorius makes the wet
weather the winter of Abyssinia. About Kilima-njaro the hot and dry
season opens with the end and closes with the beginning of the hot
monsoon.
The natives of Zanzibar distribute the year into five seasons. A far
simpler division here applicable, as in Western India, is made by those
local trades the monsoons, between whose two unequal lengths are long
intervals of calms and of variable winds. These are the Mausim or N.E.
monsoon, and the Hippalus or S.W.
1. The Kaskazi or Kazkazi (vulgarly Kizkazi), to which the Arabs limit
the term El Mausim (Monsoon), is _the_ season during which the Azyab
(ازيب) or N.E. trade blows. The wind begins about mid-November; from
mid-December to mid-February its strength is greatest, and it usually
ends about mid-March. In 1857, however, the Kaskazi opened with light
showers, and continued in full force till March 24; usually the last
vessels from Cutch and Bombay enter port about March 10. This is the
first of the two hot seasons, and midsummer may be placed in February
and March. A fine, cool sea-breeze from the N.E. usually prevails
between 8 a.m. and late in the afternoon. When it is absent the weather
is sultry and oppressive, the northerner feels suffocated; the least
exertion brings on profuse perspiration, and the cuticular irritation
produces boils and ‘prickly heat.’ The nights are close and stifling
enough to banish rest and sleep. As has been shown, the thermometer does
not stand high, but the frequent flashes of sheet-lightning playing over
the northern and western sky show a surcharge of electricity. The public
health would suffer severely but for the frequent cooling showers which,
especially at the end of the Kaskazi, are succeeded by several days of
pleasant weather. This is the agriculturist’s spring. Sesamum, holcus,
rice, and other cereals, are sown upon lands previously burned for
manure. It is the traveller’s opportunity for visiting the interior of
the island and the worst parts of the coast, but—‘bad is the best.’
2. The Msika (or Másika) Mku, Greater rain or rains. About the end of
March the change of monsoon is ushered in by heavy squalls from the S.E.
and by tornados blowing off land. Presently the Hippalus breaks, and
extends from early May into October. In May native craft make India
after a run of 20 to 25 days; after the end of August they rarely
attempt the voyage. This Kausi or Hippalus is usually called S.W.
monsoon, but it has mostly an eastern deflection, possibly modified by
the westerly land-breezes. The Arabs divide it, as will be seen, into
three portions. First, the Kaus proper,[41] in Kisawahili Kausi (قوسی),
from mid-April to early August, the period of the greatest strength.
Second, Kipupwe or first winter—July and early August; and third, the
Dayman, which ends the Kausi.
Presently appear the rains which have followed the northing sun. The
same observation was made by the Austrian mission on the White River in
N. lat. 4° 30′. On the coast we can distinctly trace their progress. In
1857 the downfall began in Feb. 15, at Usumbara (S. lat. 5°), where the
clouds are massed and condensed by a high plateau, leading to lofty,
snow-capped mountains. In 1854 I found that the rainy season opened at
Berberah of the Somal (N. lat. 10° 25′) on April 15; and in early June
they reach Bombay (N. lat. 18° 53′). Concerning the movement of the wet
season in inner intertropical Africa I have already written in the
Journal of the Royal Geographical Society (xxix. 207).
The heaviest rains at Zanzibar Island begin the wet season about mid-
April, and last 30 to 40 days; they do not end, however, till early
June. Some observers remark that the fall is greatest at low water and
during the ebb-tides of the Syzygies. It is, however, rare to have a
week of uninterrupted rain, as in eastern India and sometimes in the
Brazil. The discharge is exceedingly uncertain. Some years number 85
inches, others 108. During the first eight months of 1857 and the last
four months of 1858, we find a total of 120·21 inches. In 1859 it
reached 167, doubling the average of Bombay (76·55), and nearly trebling
that of Calcutta (56·83). We may compare these figures with those of
Europe and the United States. England has 31·97 inches; France, 25·00;
Central Germany, 20·00; Hungary, 16·93; Boston, 38·19 (about the same at
Beyrut in Syria); Philadelphia, 45·00; and St Louis, Mo., 31·97. Of
these 167 inches (1859), 104·25 fell during the Msika Mku. The number of
wet days ranges from 100 to 130 per annum. According to the people, rain
has diminished of late years; perhaps it is the result of felling
cocoas, and of disforesting the land for cloves. In 1857, the Great
Msika was preceded by a few days of oppressive heat, which ended (March
24) in a highly electrical storm, like those which usher in the rains of
western India, and suddenly the cool S.W. began to blow. For some time
we had daily showers, now from the N.E., then from the S.W., with high
winds and loud thunderings; the rains, however, did not show in earnest
before April 10.
The islanders like the Msika to open with showers strong enough to bind
the land, but not so violent as to carry off the manure deposited by the
year’s decayed vegetation. After this the water should fall in heavy
ropy torrents, with occasional breaks of sunshine and fine weather; when
this lasts thirty days, and is succeeded by frequent showers, good crops
are expected. The downfall is heavier in the interior of the island than
about the city, which, situated upon a point, escapes many a drenching.
It must, however, be borne in mind that the phenomena of the rains, like
those of the sea and air, are essentially irregular. In some seasons
there will be only half-a-dozen rainy afternoons; in others as many
rainy mornings. There are years of great drought, and there are seasons
when the sun does not appear for six weeks in succession. Usually heavy
rain is not expected after 11 A.M., and showers are rare after 2 P.M. As
I subsequently remarked in the east African interior—the Fluminenses of
the Brazil still preserve the tradition—there is a curious regularity
and periodicity in the hours of downfall, often extending over many
days. This phenomenon may have done much towards creating the ‘rain-
doctor.’
During the Msika the horizon is obscured, dangerously indeed for ships:
the wind veers round to every point of the compass; the sky is murky and
overcast; huge purple nimbi, like moving mountains, float majestically
against the wind, showing strong counter-currents in the upper aërial
regions. From afar the island appears smothered in blue mist, and often
the cloudrock splits into two portions, one of which makes for the
coast. Even during the rare days of sunshine the distances, owing to the
continuous humidity, are rarely clear, and the exhalations make
refraction extensive. A high tension of vapour is the rule. For the
first three hours after sunrise the land is often obscured by ‘smokes,’
a white misty fog, often deepening to a drizzling rain; this lasts until
10 A.M., about which time the sea-breeze begins to blow.
The Msika is much feared by the native population, and the interior of
the island becomes a hot-bed of disease. The animal creation seems to
breathe as much water as air. The want of atmospheric weight, and
consequently of pressure upon the surface of the body, renders the
circulation sluggish, robs man of energy, and makes him feel how much
better is sleep than waking. Europeans, speaking from effect, complain
that the ‘heavy’ air produces an unnatural drowsiness—it is curious to
see how many of our popular books make humidity increase the weight of
the atmospheric column. During this season the dews of sunset are deemed
especially fatal to foreigners. At times the body feels cold and clammy
when the thermometer suggests that it should be perspiring: super-
saturation is drawing off the vital heat. The lungs are imperfectly
oxygenized, and, in general belief, positive is exchanged for negative
electricity. The hair and skin are dank and sodden; indeed, a dry cutis
is an unattainable luxury. Iron oxydizes with astonishing rapidity;
shoes exposed to the air soon fall to pieces; mirrors are clouded with
steam; paper runs and furniture sweats; the houses leak; books and
papers are pasted together; ink is covered with green fur; linens and
cottons grow mouldy, and broadcloths stiffen and become boardy.
This excess of damp is occasionally varied by the extreme of dryness.
The hot wind represents the Khamasin of Egypt, the Sharki (or Sh’luk) of
Syria, the Harmattan of west Africa, and the Norte of the southern
Brazil, Paraguay, and the Argentine Confederation. At such times the air
apparently abounds in oxygen and in ozone. Cotton cloth feels hard and
crisp; even the water is cooled by the prodigious evaporation. Books and
papers curl up and crack, and strangers are apt to suffer from nausea
and fainting fits.
3. The Kipupwe, first winter or cold season—July and early August. The
bright azure of the sky, the surpassing clearness of the water, and the
lively green colours of the land, are not what we associate with the
idea of the ‘disease of the year.’ The Kausi or S.W. monsoon still
blows, but in this second or post-pluvial phase its strength is
diminished. As on the western coast the mornings are misty, the effect
of condensation and of excessive evaporation, the sun pumping up vapour
from the rapidly desiccating ground; but about four hours after sunrise
a strong sea-breeze sets in, giving a little life and elasticity to the
exhausted frame. When the ‘doctor’ fails the heat is oppressive, and the
sunsets are often accompanied by an unpleasant closeness. The beginning
of the Kipupwe is held to be universally sickly. The Hindus, who declare
that all cold coming from the south is bad, suffer from attacks of
rheumatism and pneumonia. The charms of the season induce Europeans to
despise the insidious attacks of malaria: they commit imprudences and
pay for them in severe fevers. The rare but heavy showers that now fall
are termed ‘Mcho;’ they separate the greater from the lesser Msika.
4. Daymán (in Kisawahili Daymáni) ends the Kausi or S. W. monsoon, and
extends through August and part of October. Though the sun is nearly
perpendicular the air is cooled by strong south-westerly breezes. At
this time yams, manioc, and sweet potatoes grow, making it a second
spring, whilst the harvest of rice and holcus assimilates it to the
temperate autumn.
5. The Vuli (Fuli)[42] or Msika Mdogo, second rains or Little Msika.
This season lasts but three weeks, beginning shortly after the sun has
crossed the zenith of Zanzibar in the southern declination, and
embracing part of October and November. It is not considered a healthy
time by the islanders. The autumnal rains are sometimes wanting upon the
continent, and the land then suffers as severely from drought as
northern Syria does when the ‘former rain’ fails. After the Vuli
recommences the Kaskazi, and the N. E. trade again blows. The sun is
distant, the thermometer does not range high, yet the temperature of
houses sheltered from the breeze becomes overpowering, and without the
‘doctor’ the city would hardly be habitable. At times the Trade freshens
to a gale that blows through the day. The Hindus suffer severely from
this ‘Báorá’ (blast), and declare that it brings on fits of ‘Mridi’
(refroidissement), here held dangerous. During the whole of the Azyab
monsoon the people prefer hot sun and a clear, which is always a
slightly hazy-blue, sky. They dislike the clouds and heavy showers
called Mvua[43] ya ku pandia, or harvest rains, which are brought up at
times by the N. N. West wind. On the other hand, when the Kausi or S.
West monsoon blows, they hold an overcast sky the best for health, and
they dread greatly the ‘rain-sun.’ The peasants take advantage of the
dryness, and prepare, by burning, the land for maize, sesamum, and rice.
The Wasawahili, like the Somal and many other races, have attempted to
conform the lunar with the solar year, a practice which may date from
the days when the Persians were rulers of the Zanzibar coast. They also
give their own names to the lunar months of the Moslem; and, curiously
enough, they begin the year, not with Muharram, but with the ninth month
(Shaw wal), which they call ‘Mfunguo Mosi,’ or First Month. The next,
Zu’l Ka’adeh, is Mfunguo Mbili, Second Month, and so on till Rajah,
Shaa’-ban (or Mlisho) and Ramazan, which retain their Arab names.[44]
Amongst the Somal, five months, namely, from the second to the fifth,
are known by the old Semitic terms. The month, as amongst all savage and
semi-civilized tribes, begins with sighting the moon; and the Wasawahili
reckon like the Jews, the modern Moslems, and the Chinese, 12 of 29 and
30 days alternately. ‘The complete number of months with God’ being,
says the Koran, ‘twelve months,’ good followers of the Prophet ignore
the Ve-adar, second or embolical Adar, which the Hebrews inserted after
every third year, and retain their silly cycle of 354 days. The
Wasawahili add 10 to 12 days to the Moslem year, and thus preserve the
orderly recurrence of the seasons. The sage in charge of the local
almanac is said to live at Tumbatu: he finds his New Year’s Day by
looking at the sun, by tracing figures upon the ground, and by comparing
the results with Arabic calendars. Their weeks begin, as usual with
Moslems, on Friday (Ejúmá for Juma), the Saturday being Juma Mosi, or
one day after Friday, and so forth. Thursday, however, is Khamisi. This
subdivision of time, though suggested by the quarters of the earth’s
satellite, is known only to societies which have advanced toward
civilization. Thus in Dahome we find a week of four days; and even China
ignores the seven-day week.
‘The universal festivals,’ says the late Professor H. H. Wilson (Essays
on the Religion of the Hindus, ii. 155), ‘are manifestly astronomical,
and are intended to commemorate the revolutions of the planets, the
alternations of the seasons, and the recurrence of cyclical intervals of
longer or shorter duration.’ The Nau-roz (نوروز) or New Year’s Day,
here, as in Syria, locally pronounced Nay-roz, was established in
ancient Ariana, according to Persian tradition, by Jamshid, King of
Kings, in order to fix the vernal equinox.[45] It is the Holi of the
Hindus, and after the East has kept this most venerable festival for
3000 years, we still unconsciously celebrate the death and resurrection
of the eternal sun-god. The Beal-tinne is not yet forgotten in Leinster,
nor is the maypole wholly obsolete in England. As early as the days of
the Kuraysh, there was an attempt to reconcile the lunar with the solar
year, and the Nau-roz, though palpably of Pagan origin, has been adopted
by all the maritime peoples professing El Islam. Even the heathen-hating
Arab borrowed it for his convenience from the Dualists and Trinitarians
of Fars and Hindustan. Hence the æras called Kadmi and Jelali. In this
second solar æra the Nau-roz was transferred by the new calendar from
the vernal equinox to Sept. 14, A.D. 1079, and was called Nau-roz i
Mízán (نوروز مِنران). Amongst the Wasawahili it is known as Siku Khu ya
Mwáká, the Great Day of the year.
For the purpose of a stable date, necessary both to agriculture and to
navigation, and also for the determination of the monsoons, the people
who ignore the embolismal month, and who have no months for the solar
year, add, I have said, 10 to 12 days to each lunar year, the true
difference being 16 days 9 hrs. 0 min. and 11·7 secs. Thus the
contrivance is itself rude; moreover the Wasawahili often miscalculate
it. Between A.D. 1829 and A.D. 1879, it would fall on 28-29 August. In
1844 they made it commence at 6 p. m., August 28, immediately after full
moon: in 1850-2 they began it on August 27, and in 1856 on August
26.[46]
Sundry quasi superstitious uses are made of the 10 embolismal days
following the Nau-roz. Should rains—locally called Miongo—fall on the
first day, showers are prognosticated for the tenth; if on the second,
the twentieth will be wet; and so forth till the tenth, which if rainy
suggests that the Kausi or S.W. monsoon will set in early. The seasons
of navigation are thus reckoned. The Vuli rains are supposed to begin 30
days, counting from the twentieth, after Nauroz. On the eightieth (some
say the ninetieth) day are expected thunder, lightning, and heavy rains
at the meeting of the monsoons (mid-November), and so forth. Possibly
this may be a reflection of the Hindu idea which represents the Garbhas
to be the fetuses of the clouds, and born 195 days after conception.
With us the people mark the periods by saints’ days. The Bernais say—
Après le jour de la Sainte Luce,
Les jours s’allongent le saut d’une puce.
The Escuara proverb declares—
Sanct Seimon etu Juda,
Negua eldu da.
(‘At St Simon and St Jude, water may be viewed.’)
The basis of the following calculation is thoroughly Kisawahili—
S’el pleut le jour de Saint Médard, (June 8)
Il pleut quarante jours plus tard.
Nor is our popular doggrel less so—
Saint Swithin’s Day, if thou dost rain,
For forty days it will remain.
Saint Swithin’s Day, if thou be fair,
For forty days ’twill rain nae mair.
The Wasawahili also calculate their agricultural seasons from the stars
called Kilímia, a name probably derived from Ku lima, to plough. I
believe them to be Pleiades, but my sudden departure from the coast
prevented my making especial inquiries. When this constellation is in
the west at night the peasants say, ‘Kilímia, if it sets during the
rains, rises in fair weather,’ and vice versâ. Also Kilímia appearing in
the east is a signal for the agriculturist to prepare his land.
SECTION 3.
Climate continued—Notes on the Nosology of Zanzibar—Effects on
Strangers.
The climate of Zanzibar Island is better than that of the adjacent
continent. Here many white residents have escaped severe fever; but upon
the coast the disastrous fate of Captain Owen’s surveyors, the loss of
life on board our cruisers, and the many deaths of the ‘Mombas Mission,’
even though, finding the sea-board dangerous, they built houses on the
hills which lead to the mountain region of Usumbara, prove that malaria
is as active in eastern as in western Africa. Colonel Hamerton once
visited the Pangani river during the month of August: of his 19 men,
three died, and all but one suffered severely. Perhaps we should not
find a similar mortality in the present day, when the lancet has been
laid aside for the preventive treatment by quinine and tonics. It has,
however, been asserted that the prophylactic use of the alkaloid, which
was such a success in western Africa, did not prove equally valuable on
the eastern coast.
Yet Zanzibar, with its double seasons and its uniformly heated and humid
atmosphere, accords ill, even where healthiest, with the irritable
temperament of northern races. Here, contrary to the rule of Madagascar,
the lowlands over which the fresh sea-breeze plays are the only parts
where the white stranger can land and live; the interior is non
habitabilis æstu. Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton, called upon in March, 1844,
by Sir George Arthur, governor of Bombay, to report upon the island,
wrote in September of the same year, ‘The climate of the [insular] coast
is not unhealthy for Europeans, but it is impossible for white men to
live in the interior of the island, the vegetation being rank and
appearing always to be going on; and generally fever contracted in the
interior is fatal to Europeans.’ Colonel Sykes (loco cit.) questions
this assertion as being ‘contrary to all other testimony.’ Every
traveller, however, knows it to be correct. As in the lovely climates of
the Congo River and the South Sea Islands, corporal lassitude leads to
indolence, languor, and decline of mental energy, which can be recovered
only by the bracing influence of the northern winter. Many new arrivals
complain of depressing insomnia, with alternations of lethargic sleep: I
never enjoyed at Zanzibar the light refreshing rest of the desert. Yet
the island is a favourable place for the young African traveller to
undergo the inevitable ‘seasoning fever’, which upon the coast or in the
interior might prove fatal. The highlands, or the borders of the great
central basin, are tolerably healthy, but an invalid would find no
comforts there—hardly a waterproof roof. He should not, however, risk
after recovery a second attack, but at once push on to his goal;
otherwise he will expend in preparation the strength and bottom required
to carry out his explorations. With a fresh, sound constitution, he may
work hard for three years, and even if driven home by ill health he may
return in comparative safety within a reasonable time.
No European, unless thoroughly free from organic disease, should venture
to remain longer than three or four years at Zanzibar: the same has been
observed of Baghdad, and of the Euphrates valley generally. Lurking
maladies will be brought to a crisis, and severe functional derangements
are liable to return. The stranger is compelled to take troublesome
precautions. He may bathe in cold water, sweet or salt, but he must
eschew the refreshment of the morning walk: during the rains, when
noxious mists overhang the land, the unpleasant afternoon is the only
safe time for exercise. Flannel must always be worn despite the
irritability of the ever-perspiring skin: even in the hottest weather
the white cotton jackets and overalls of British India are discarded for
tweeds, and for an American stuff of mixed cotton and wool. Extra warm
clothing is considered necessary as long as the ‘mugginess’ of ‘msika-
weather’ lasts. Sudden exposure to the sun is considered dangerous, and
the carotid, jugular, and temporal arteries must be carefully protected
from cold as well as from heat. Hard work, either of mind or body, is
said to produce fever as surely as sitting in draughts or as wearing
insufficient clothing. The charming half-hour following sunset is held
dangerous, especially in hot weather; yet most tantalizing is the cool
delicious interval between the burning day and the breathless night.
Natives of the country rarely venture out after dark: a man found in the
streets may safely be determined to be either a slave or a thief—
probably both.
Directions for diet are minute and vexatious. The stranger is popularly
condemned to ‘lodging-house hours’—breakfast at 9 A.M., dinner at 3
P.M., tea at 8 P.M., bed at 10 P.M. He is told also to live temperately
but not abstemiously, and never to leave the stomach too long empty. I
should prescribe for him, contrary to the usual plan, an abnormal amount
of stimulants, port and porter, not claret nor Rhine-wine. It is evident
that where appetite is wanting, and where nourishing food is not to be
obtained, the ‘patient’ must imbibe as much nutriment as he safely can.
In these lands a drunkard outlives a water-drinker, despite Theodoret,
‘vinum bibere non est malum, sed intemperanter bibere perniciosum est’;
and here Bacchus, even ‘Bacchus uncivil,’ is still ‘Bacchus the healer.’
As usual old stagers will advise a stranger recovering from fever to
strengthen himself with sundry bottles of port, and yet they do not
adopt it as a preventive—‘experto crede Ricardo.’ The said port may be
Lisbon wine fortified with cheap spirits, liquorice, and logwood—in
fact, what is regimentally called ‘strong military ditto;’ yet I have
seen wonders worked by the much-debased mixture. Again, Europeans are
told to use purgatives, especially after sudden and strong exercise,
when the ‘bile is stirred up.’ As an amateur chronothermalist—thanks to
my kind old master, the late Dr Dickson—I should suggest tonics and
bitters, which often bring relief when the nauseous salts and senna
aggravate the evil. Also, in all debilitating countries, when the blood
is ‘thin,’ laxatives must be mild, otherwise they cause instead of
curing fever; in fact, double tonics and half purgatives should be the
rule. Above all things convalescents should be aided by change of air,
if only from the house of sickness to that of a neighbour, or to a ship
in port. The most long-lived of white races are the citizens of the
United States: they are superior to others in mental (or cerebral)
energy; they are men of spare, compact fibre, and of regular habits;
they also rarely reside more than two or three years at a time on the
island. On the other hand, the small French colony has lost in 15 years
26 men: they lived imprudently, they drank sour Bordeaux, and when
attacked with fever they killed themselves by the abuse of quinine.
Swallowing large doses upon an empty stomach, they irritated the
digestive organs, and they brought on cerebral congestion by ‘heroic
practice’ when constipated.
According to the Arabs and Hindus of Zanzibar, ague and fever are to be
avoided only by perspiring during sleep under a blanket in a closed
room—a purgatory for a healthy hot-blooded man in this damp tepid
region. I found the cure-almost-as-bad-as-the-disease precaution adopted
by the Spanish colonists at my salubrious residence—Fernando Po, West
Africa. Only two officers escaped ‘chills,’ and they both courageously
carried out the preventive system: on the other hand, it was remarked
that they looked more aged, and they appeared to have suffered more from
the climate, than those who shook once a month with ‘rigors.’ There is
certainly no better prescription for catching ague than a coolth of skin
during sleep: having purchased experience at a heavy price, it is my
invariable practice when awaking with a chilly epiderm to drink a glass
of water ‘cold without,’ and to bury myself for an hour under a pile of
blankets. Every slave-hut has a cartel or cot, and the savages of the
coast, like those of the Upper Nile, carry about wooden stools for fear
of dysentery. I have mentioned how our sailors dig their graves.
So much for the male sex. European women here, as in the Gulf of Guinea,
rarely resist the melancholy isolation, the want of society, and the
Nostalgia—Heimweh or Home-sickness—so common, yet so little regarded in
tropical countries. Under normal circumstances Equatorial Africa is
certain death to the Engländerin. I am surprised at the combined folly
and brutality of civilized husbands who, anxious to be widowers, poison,
cut the throats, or smash the skulls of their better-halves. The thing
can be as neatly and quietly, safely and respectably, effected by a few
months of African air at Zanzibar or Fernando Po, as by the climate of
the Maremma to which the enlightened Italian noble condemned his spouse.
The nosology of Zanzibar is remarkable for the prevalence of urinary and
genital diseases; these have been roughly estimated at 75 per cent.
Syphilis spreads wide, and where promiscuous intercourse is permitted to
the slaves it presents formidable symptoms. The ‘black lion,’ as it is
popularly called—in Arabic El Tayr or El Faranj; in Kisawahili, Bubeh,
Kiswendi, or T’hego—will destroy the part affected in three weeks:
secondaries are to be feared; noses disappear, the hair falls off, and
rheumatism and spreading ulcers result. Gonorrhœa is so common that it
is hardly considered a disease. Few strangers live long here without
suffering from irritation of the bladder, the result, it is said, of
hard lime-water: and the common effect of a cold or of stricture is
severe vesical catarrh. Sarcocele and hydrocele, especially of the left
testis, according to the Arabs, attack all classes, and are attributed
to the relaxing climate, to unrestrained sexual indulgence, and
sometimes to external injury. These diseases do not always induce
impotence or impede procreation. The tunica vaginalis is believed to
fill three times: as in elephantiasis the member is but a mass of flesh,
a small meatus only remaining. The deposition of serum is enormous; I
have heard of six quarts being drawn off. The natives punctuate with a
heated copper needle, and sometimes thus induce tetanus: Europeans add
injections of red wine and iodine. The latter is also applied with
benefit in the early stage to sarcocele; and both complaints have
yielded, it is said, to the galvanic current. Strangers are advised at
all times to wear suspensory bandages.
Elephantiasis of the legs and arms, and especially of the scrotum,
afflicts, it is calculated, 20 per cent. of the inhabitants: Arabs and
Hindus, Indian Moslems and Africans, however dissimilar in their habits
and diet, all suffer alike. It is remarked that the malady has never
attacked a pure white, European or American: perhaps the short residence
of the small number accounts for the apparent immunity. Similarly, in
the Brazil I have never seen a European stranger subject to the leprosy,
or to the goître, so prevalent in the great provinces of São Paulo and
Minas Geraes. The Banyans declare that a journey home removes the
incipient disease, or at least retards its progress: it recurs, however,
on return to Zanzibar. The scrotum will often reach the knees; I heard
of one case measuring in circumference 41 inches, more than the
patient’s body, whilst its length (33 inches) touched the ground. There
is no cure, and the cause is unknown. The people attribute it to the
water, and possibly it may spring from the same source which produces
goître and bronchocele.
Syphilitic and scorbutic taints appear in ulcers and abscesses. The
helcoma resembles that of Aden: it generally attacks the legs and feet,
the parts most distant from the centre of circulation; the toes fall of,
and the limb becomes distorted. Phagædenic sores are most common amongst
the poor and the slaves, who live on manioc, fruit, and salt shark often
putrid. Large and painful phlegemonous abscesses, attacking the muscular
tissue, occasion great constitutional disturbance: they heal, however,
readily after suppuration. Scabies, yaws (Frambæsia), psoriasis, and
‘craw-craw,’ inveterate as that of Malabar or the Congo River, commonly
result from personal uncleanliness, unwholesome food, and insufficient
shelter and clothing. That frightful malady Lupus presents pitiable
objects.
The indigenous diseases which require mention are fevers, bowel-
complaints, and pulmonary affections.
Fevers at Zanzibar have been compared with Aaron’s rod; at times they
seem to swallow up every other disease, and generally they cause the
greatest amount of mortality. As at Muhamreh, and on the swampy margins
of the Shat el Arab (Persian Gulf), the constitution worn out, and the
equilibrium of the functions deranged by moist heat and sleeplessness,
especially during and after the heavy rains of the S. West monsoon, thus
relieve themselves. Persians and northern Asiatics are even more liable
to attacks than Europeans; and, as in Egypt, rude health is rare. Some
Indian Moslems have fled the country, believing themselves bewitched.
Arabs born on the island, and the Banyans, who seldom suffer much from
the fever, greatly dread its secondary symptoms. The ‘hummeh,’ or
intermittent type, is remarkable for the virulence and persistency of
the sequelæ, which the Arabs call ‘Nazlah’ (metastasis), or defluxion of
humours—‘dropping into the hoofs’ as the grooms say. Cerebral and
visceral complications, with derangements of the liver and spleen,
produce obstinate diarrhœas, dysenteries, and a long dire cohort of
diseases. Men of strong nervous diathesis escape with slight
consequences in the shape of white hair, boils, bad toothaches,
neuralgias, and sore tongues. The weak lose memory, or virility, or the
use of a limb, the finger-joints especially being liable to stiffen;
many become deaf or dim-sighted, not a few are subject to paralysis in
its various forms, whilst others, tormented by hepatitis, constipation,
and disorders of the bowels and of the digestive organs, never
completely recover health. In this country all attribute to the moon at
the ‘springs’ what we explain by coincidence and by the periodicity of
disease. For months, and possibly for years, the symptoms recur so
regularly that even Europeans will use evacuants and quinine two or
three days before the new and full moons. In such cases, I repeat,
change of climate is the best aid to natura curatrix.
The malignant typhus is rare at Zanzibar: it raged, however, amongst the
crew of a French ship wrecked on the northern end of the island, when
the men were long exposed to privations and over-fatigue. Intermittents
(ague and fever) are common as colds in England. They are mild and
easily treated;[47] but they leave behind during convalescence a
dejection and a debility wholly incommensurate with the apparent
insignificance of the attack, and often a periodical neuralgia, which
must be treated with tonics, quinine, and chiretta.
The bilious remittent is, par excellence, the fever of the country, and
every stranger must expect a ‘seasoning’ attack. It was inordinately
fatal in the days when, the lancet being used to combat inflammation,
the action of the heart was never restored. Our grandfathers, however,
bled every one for everything, and for nothing: there were old ladies
who showed great skill in ‘blooding’ cats. In 1857 men had escaped this
scientific form of sudden death, but the preventive treatment so ably
used on the West coast of Africa had not been tried. The cure at
Zanzibar was an aperient of calomel and jalap. Castor oil was avoided as
apt to cause nausea. Quinine was administered, but often in quantities
not sufficient to induce the necessary chinchonization, and the
inexperienced awaited too long the period of remission, administering
the drug only during the intervals. Diaphoretics of nitrate of potash,
camphor mixture, and the liquor acet. ammon. were used to reduce the
temperature of the skin. The most distressing symptom, ejection of bile,
was opposed by saline drinks, effervescing draughts, diluted prussic
acid, a mustard plaister, or a blister. The hair was shaved or closely
cut, and evaporating lotions were applied to the head. The extreme
restlessness of the patient often called for a timid narcotic; in these
days, however, the invaluable hydrate of chloral, Sumbul and chlorodyne
were unknown, and soporifics were used, as it were under protest, being
believed to cause constipation. Extreme exhaustion was not vigorously
attacked with medical and other stimulants; and thus many sank under the
want of ammonia and wine. I have since remarked the same errors of
treatment in the West African coast; the patient was often restricted to
the acidity-breeding rice water, arrowroot, and similar ‘slops.’ When he
pined for brandy and beef-tea, the safe plan of consulting his instincts
was carefully ignored.
In strong constitutions the initiatory attack of remittents is followed
after a time by the normal intermittent, and the traveller may then
consider himself tolerably safe. In some Indian cases ague and fever
have recurred regularly for a whole year after the bilious remittent.
The bilious remittent of Zanzibar is preceded by general languor and
listlessness, with lassitude of limbs and heaviness of head, with chills
and dull pains in the body and extremities, and with a frigid sensation
creeping up the spine. Then comes a mild cold fit, succeeded by flushed
face, full veins, an extensive thirst, dry, burning heat of skin, a
splitting headache, and nausea, and by unusual restlessness, or by
remarkable torpor and drowsiness. The patient is unable to stand; the
pulse is generally full and frequent, sometimes thready, small, and
quick; the bowels are constipated, and the tongue is furred and
discoloured; appetite is wholly wanting. During my first attack, I ate
nothing for seven days; and despite the perpetual craving thirst, no
liquid will remain upon the stomach. Throughout the day extreme weakness
causes anxiety and depression; the nights are worse, for restlessness is
aggravated by want of sleep. Delirium is common in the nervous-bilious
temperament. These symptoms are sometimes present several days before
the attack, which is in fact their exacerbation. A slight but distinctly
marked remission often occurs after the 4th or 5th hour—in my own case
they recurred regularly between 2 and 3 A.M. and P.M.—followed by a
corresponding reaction. When an unfavourable phase sets in, all the
evils are aggravated; great anxiety, restlessness, and delirium wear out
the patient; the mind wanders, the body loses all power, the ejecta
become offensive; the pulse is almost imperceptible; the skin changes
its dry heat for a clammy cold; the respiration grows loaded, the
evacuations pass involuntarily; and after perhaps a short apparent
improvement, stupor, insensibility, and sinking usher in death. On the
other hand, if the fever intends yielding to treatment, it presents
after the 7th day marked signs of abatement; the tongue is clearer, pain
leaves the head and eyes, the face is no longer flushed; nausea ceases
after profuse emesis of bile, and a faint appetite returns.
After the mildest attacks of the Zanzibar remittent, the liver acts with
excessive energy: sudden exercise causes a gush or overflow of bile,
which is sufficient to bring on a second attack. The debility, which is
inordinate, may last for months. It is often increased by boils, which
follow one another in rapid succession, and which sometimes may be
counted by scores. Besides the wet cloth, the usual remedy to cause
granulation, and to prevent the sore leaving a head, is to stuff it with
camphor and Peruvian bark. When boils appear behind the head, the brain
is sometimes affected by them, and patients have even sunk under their
sufferings. The recovery, indeed, as in the case of the intermittent
type, is always slow and dubious, relapses are feared, and for six weeks
there is little change for the better; the stomach is liable to severe
indigestion; the body is emaciated, and the appetite is excessive, or
sickly and uncertain. The patient suffers from toothaches and swelled
face, catarrh, hepatitis, emesis, and vertigo, with alternations of
costiveness and the reverse. As I have already said, change of air and
scene is at this stage more beneficial than all the tonics and
preventives in the pharmacopœia. Often a patient lying apparently on his
death-bed recovers on hearing that a ship has arrived, and after a few
days on board he feels well.
Diarrhœa and dysentery are mostly sporadic; the former, however, has at
times attacked simultaneously almost every European on the Island. It is
generally the result of drinking bad water or sour wine, of eating
acescent or unripe fruit, and of imprudent exposure. Dysentery is
especially fatal during the damp and rainy weather. It was often
imprudently treated with mere astringents, and without due regard to the
periods of remission, and to the low form which inevitably accompanies
it. As in remittents, the patient was weakened, and his stomach was
deranged, with ‘slops,’ when essence of meat was required. The anti-
diarrhœa or anti-cholera pill of opium, chalk, and catechu has been
fatal wherever English medicine has extended; witness the Crimean
campaign, where the bolus killed many more than did the bullet. A
complication, rarely sufficiently considered, is the hepatic
derangement, from which almost all strangers must suffer after a long
residence in the Tropics. At Zanzibar some Europeans were compelled to
give up breakfasting, to the manifest loss of bulk, stamina, and
muscular strength—vomiting after the early meal, especially when eaten
with a good appetite, was the cause. Yet it was a mere momentary nausea,
and when the mouth had been washed no inconvenience was felt.
Catarrh and bronchitis are common in February and in the colder months
of July and August. Of endemic pulmonary diseases, pneumonia, asthma,
and consumption—the latter aggravated by the humid atmosphere—are
frequent amongst the higher classes, especially the Arab women
debilitated by over-seclusion. The incidental maladies are tropical
rheumatisms, colics, hæmorrhoids, and rare attacks of ophthalmia,
simple, acute, and purulent. Hæmorrhoids are very common both on the
Island and the coast; the people suffer as much as the Turks in Egypt
without wearing the enormous bag-trowsers which have been so severely
blamed.
Of the epidemics, the small-pox, a gift of Inner Africa to the world, is
fatal as at Goa or Madagascar. Apparently propagated without contact or
fomites, it disfigures half the population, and it is especially
dangerous to full-blooded Africans. About three years ago (1857) a
Maskat vessel imported a more virulent type. Shortly before my arrival,
numbers had died of the confluent and common forms, and isolated cases
were reported till we left the Island. All classes were equally
prejudiced against vaccination. The lymph sent from Aden and the
Mauritius was so deteriorated by the journey that it probably never
produced a single vesicle (1857).
Until 1859 cholera was unknown even by name. Col. Hamerton, however,
declared that in 1835 hundreds were swept off by an epidemic, whose
principal symptoms were giddiness, vomiting and purging, the peculiar
anxious look, collapse, and death. It did not re-appear for some years;
but in a future chapter I shall notice the frightful ravages which it
made on the East African coast at the time of my return from the
interior.
Hard water charged with lime and various salts, combined with want of
vegetables, renders constipation a common ailment at Zanzibar. Amongst
the rich it mostly arises from indolence, and from the fact that all are
greatly addicted to aphrodisiacs. The favourite is a pill composed of 3
grains of ambergris, and 1 grain of opium, the latter ingredient in the
case of an ‘Afímí’ (opium-eater) must be proportioned to his wants.
‘Doctors’ in my day were unknown at Zanzibar. Formerly, two Indians
practised; since their departure the people killed and cured themselves.
Amongst Arabs, and indeed Moslems generally, every educated man has a
smattering of the healing art. H. H. the late Sayyid was a ‘hakím’ of
great celebrity. A physician is valuable on the Island; throughout the
African interior he is valueless in a pecuniary sense, as every patient
expects to be kept and fed. The midwives are usually from Cutch; Arabs,
however, rarely consent to professional assistance. The Prince kept in
his establishment two sages femmes from Maskat.
SECTION 4.
Notes on the Fauna of Zanzibar.
The list of Zanzibarian Fauna and Flora is not extensive. In the
plantations the Komba or Galago abounds, and there is a small and pretty
long-tailed monkey (cercopithecus griseo-viridis) with black face, green
back, and grey belly: it is playful and easily tamed. This, as well as a
large species of bat, is pronounced delicious by curious gourmands. The
French ‘tigre’ and the English ‘panther’ (Felis Serval) is a leopard
about 18 inches high, and of disproportionate length, with a strong
large arm; the upper part of the skull vanishes as in the cheeta, and
the throat is so thick that no collar will keep its place. This felis is
destructive in the interior of the Island; and in parts of the Continent
the people fear it more than they do the lion: it is trapped in the
normal cage, and is speared without mercy. Two kinds of civets (Viverra
civetta, and V. genetta),[ one small, the other bigger than a Persian
(Angora) cat, are kept confined, and are scraped once a week for their
produce. As in all Arab towns, the common cat abounds; it has a long
tail and ears, a wild look, and a savage temper. This Asiatic
importation is never thoroughly domesticated in Africa, and seems always
aspiring to become a ‘cat o’ mountain’: on the West coast it is
difficult to keep cats in the house after kittening. The feline
preserves its fur in Zanzibar Island: at Mombasah there is or was a
breed more grotesque than the Manx, and completely bald like the Chinese
dog. The so-called ‘Indian badger’ (Arctonyx collaris, Cuv.) digs into
the graves and devours the dead. The rodents are grey squirrels, small
rabbits (?), large rats, some of peculiar but not of unknown species,
and mice, probably imported by the shipping. The ‘wild boars’ are pigs
left by the Portuguese: strangers mistaking the tusks often describe
them as ‘horned’ (chœropotamus). The Saltiana antelope is common: it
smells strongly of musk, and its flesh resembles the rat’s.
A fine large fish-hawk, with gold-fringed eye and yellow legs, bluish-
black plume, and grey neck-feathers, haunts the Island and the coast:
the other raptores are the brown kites (F. chilla), the scavengers of
Asia and Africa. As at Aden, so here, there are no common crows or
sparrows; the place of the former is taken by the African species
(corvus scapulatus), with white waistcoat, popularly called the ‘parson
crow,’ and the latter appears in the shape of the Java variety, which,
introduced about thirty years ago (1857) by Captain Ward, a Salem ship-
captain, has multiplied prodigiously. Green birds, like Amedavats,
muscicapæ of sorts, especially the ‘king-crow’ of India, here called
‘Drongo,’ abound; and visitors, like the French savant on the Dead Sea,
speak of a humming-bird, a purely New World genus, probably mistaking
for it a large hawk-moth. The parroquet resembles the small green
species of India: it is tamed and taught to talk. Zanzibar cannot boast
of the Madagascar parrot, a plain, brown, thick-bodied bird, celebrated
for distinct articulation.[48] Martens do not build at Zanzibar (?):
they halt at the Island in their migrations; and one kind, it has been
remarked, never remains longer than four to five days. After the rains
the lagoons are covered with wild-duck, mallard, and widgeon. The snipe
(jack, common, and solitary), a bird which everywhere preserves its fine
game flavour, is found on the Island and in the central Continent.
Sandpipers (charadrius hiaticula) run on the beach, and the waters
support various kinds of cranes, gulls, and terns.
When fewer ships visited the port, the sand-spit projecting from
‘Frenchman’s Island’ was covered with bay-turtle[49] (chelone esculenta
or Midas), which the negroes were too indolent or ignorant to catch. The
iguanas or harmless crocodiles (οὐδένα δὲ ἀνθρώπων ἀδικοῦσιν) of the
Periplus, have not yet been killed out of Zanzibar—and there are several
species.[50] Until lately the true crocodile was found in a small sweet
stream about eight miles south of the town, and the monsters swarm in
every river of the mainland.
Snakes are neither numerous nor deadly: possibly the climate, as in
Ireland and Bermuda, is too damp for them. I heard of a python[51]
resembling that of Madagascar and India; it is 13 feet long, and thick
as a man’s thigh. Its favourite habitat is in sugar-cane patches near
water, and it is occasionally fatal to a dog. There are water-snakes in
the harbour, like those once supposed to be peculiar to Western India.
The people speak of a green ‘whip-snake’—vaguest of terms—whose vertebræ
appear through the skin, and there are the usual legends of a venomous
tree-serpent which can shoot itself like an arrow. The pagan Mganga or
Medicine-man ties above the snake-wound a circle of wire with two small
bits of wood strung upon it. This, he says, prevents the venom
ascending; and doubtless the ligature is for half an hour or so
effective. The people have ‘Fiss’ or serpent-stones, which suggest the
Irish murrain-stones. Englishmen of undoubted character have recounted
cures effected by this remedy, which was so mysterious before capillary
attraction robbed it of its marvel.
There is a variety of small tiliquæ, and of large black earth-lizards.
One species, with melancholy chirrup and unpleasant aspect, supplies the
people with Herodotean tales. It is, they say, a hermaphrodite, and its
flanks are torn by its young during parturition. The chameleon also
suffers from the popular belief that it kills men with its breath.
Scorpions are small, and not so common as in the interior: the animal is
mashed and applied as a poultice to its own wound, which may derive some
benefit from the moisture. Centipedes haunt houses that are not cleaned
and whitewashed, and millipedes abound in every plantation.
The fish supply is variable[52] as the climate. Sometimes it is
excellent; at other times none but the poorest will eat it, and there
are many species considered always poisonous.[53] It is most abundant in
the S. West monsoon, when small fry may be caught in the still waters of
the harbour. Sharks are large and numerous, especially near Chumbi (La
Passe) Island, where all the best fish is netted; hut these tigers of
the sea do not injure the bathers on the beach. Though the shark is
easily hooked in the very harbour, many cargoes of its salted meat are
annually imported from Oman. The liver-oil is used to anoint the body:
and when Europe requires a succadeneum for huile de morue, I shall
recommend to her this shark-oil as an article of superior nauseousness.
The whale fishery reminds us of what it was on the Brazilian coast a
century ago. The mammals are sometimes found in soundings, and a wounded
sperm-whale lately entered Zanzibar harbour. In May, June, and July,
ships of 200 to 600 tons visit the waters south of Mafiyah Island; if
the capricious leviathan be not found there and then, it is waste time
to cruise about. In July, and at the beginning of the N. East monsoon,
schools migrate up the coast in search of food as far as the Red Sea.
From 30 to 60 lbs. of ambergris have been brought in one year to the
island, and a little of it is exported to Europe. This high-priced
article (1 lb. = £14) is taken from the rectum of the spermaceti whale:
it seems to have caused constipation and disease, and the oil drawn from
these fish is yellow and bad. The Arabs burn it in pastiles, and use it
not only internally but externally like musk. Old travellers report that
the Somal taught camels to hunt for it by the scent, in the same way as
pigs learn to find truffles; and the tale has been told to modern
travellers. The main virtue of ambergris is probably its heavy price.
The celebrated ‘Sir’ (Seer) fish, a corruption from Shir Mahi (شير ماهی)
or ‘tiger fish,’ so called on account of its armature, known to the
Arabs as Kunad (کناد) and in parts of India termed ‘Surmá,’ appears, for
about a fortnight, at Zanzibar during its period of migration northwards
in May and June. There are also ‘pomfrets,’ scates, soles which are
small and not prized, and red and gدrey mullet, excellent in July,
August, and September. The remora and the flying-fish enter the harbour;
the hippocampus is known; there are mangrove-oysters, ‘oysters growing
on trees’—a favourite subject with all old and with many new African
travellers—and a small well-flavoured, rock oyster, a favourite relish
with Europeans, caught about Chumbi Island. I saw no lobsters, so common
in the Camaroons river of Western Africa. The sands abound in Medusæ, or
jelly-fish, and in a large cray-fish, which the Arabs consider wholesome
for invalids: it makes a rather insipid salad, but it is excellent when
dressed after the fashion of the Slave Coast. The receipt is worth
giving, and may be found useful in England. The meat, taken out after
boiling, is pounded and mixed with peppers and seasoning. It is then
restored to the shell, the whole is baked in the oven, and, served up
piping hot, it forms an admirable ‘whet.’ Another kind of shell-fish is
indeed a ‘soft crab;’ when cooked it seems to melt away, no meat
remaining within: a third, also soft, is red even before being boiled.
On every unfrequented strip of sand or weed small crabs gather in
thousands; most of them have only one large claw, and their colours are
a brilliant pink, pearly white, violet, and tender red.
The seas are little explored (1857), and there are legends of
ichthyological marvels which remind us of European romantic zoology. I
was told by Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton of a fish, possibly one of the
Murænidæ, measuring nine feet long by three in diameter: the shape was
somewhat like a leech, both extremities being similar; the _ribs_
resembled, but were rather flatter than, those of a bullock, and the
flesh had the appearance of beef. A specimen, he said, had lately been
brought from Kipombui, a small harbour opposite Zanzibar; the prey,
however, is always cut up as soon as caught. This reminds us of the
‘full-sized devil-fish’ of the West Indian seas. The Arabs describe a
monstrous polypus, with huge eyes and arms 10 feet long: they declare
that it has entangled bathers and pulled them down close to shore. It
is, in fact, the ‘piuvre,’ so famed of late; and since I left Zanzibar a
French illustrated newspaper showed one of these horrors grappling with
a man of war’s gig. Thus Oppian described a fish that smothered mariners
with its monstrous wings, and drew them under water wrapped in a lethal
embrace. Nieuhoff (Brazil, 1640) mentions a ‘lamprey’ at Pernambuco that
‘snatched all that fell in this way (both men and dogs that swam
sometimes after the boat) into the water.’ Finally, Carsten Niebuhr
(Arabia, chap. i. p. 140. 1762) declares that ‘the cuttle-fish is
dangerous to swimmers and divers, of whom it lays hold with its long
claws; these do not wound, but produce swelling, internal pains, and
often an incipient paralysis.’
Sponge is found in abundance, but when dry it decays. Fine conchological
collections were chiefly made in former years. The merchants spoiled the
market by supplying whole cargos for watch-dials and for polishing
porcelain. Slaves still fasten their canoes to the several banks in the
roadstead, and find in the transparent waters the murex and other prized
specimens. The harp-shell and ‘double-harp’ are found upon the softer
sands enveloped in the folds of their owners; thus parasites cannot ruin
their beautiful and brilliant hues. The ‘Kheti,’ or common cowrie, is
picked up when the tide is out in vast quantities by the coast people,
from Ra’as Hafun to Mozambique. Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton was fortunate
enough in those early days to obtain two specimens of the Cypræa
Broderipii, or orange-cowrie, with a stripe down the dorsum. Exaggerated
ideas of its value had been spread, and it was reported that £500 had
been offered for a single shell. The cowrie trade of Zanzibar was begun
by M. E. P. Herz, of Hamburg. He made a daring speculation, and
supplanted in Western Africa the rare and expensive Hindostan shell by
the coarse, cheap Cypræa of this coast. During the last century the
Portuguese used to export cowries for Angola from the Rio das
Caravelhas, in Brazilian Porto Seguro. The success of M. Herz’s
investment opened a mine of wealth. M. Oswald (senior), afterwards
Prussian Consul-general at Hamburg, commenced as half-owner of a small
vessel which shipped cowries at Zanzibar, and traded with them for palm-
oil at Appi Vista, Whydah, Porto Novo, and lastly Lagos, on the Slave
Coast. As the sack was bought for $O.50 to $1.44, and sold for $8 to $9,
the trip cleared $24,000 (£4800), paid half in coin, half in ‘oil;’ and
the single vessel soon increased to three. The owner was an excellent
ship-master, who carefully supplied his employées with maps, charts, and
sailing directions. He died in 1859, leaving a self-insuring fleet of 18
sail. In 1863 his sons had raised the number to 24, and they kept up
large establishments at Lagos and Zanzibar.
The retail cowrie trade was solely in the hands of Moslems; the Banyans
would not sanction the murder of their possible grandmothers. On the
Continent, as on the Island, the shells are sunned till the fish dies
and decays, spreading a noxious fœtor through the villages. The
collection is then stored in holes till exported to Zanzibar. There the
European wholesale merchant garbles, washes, and stows away the shells
in bags for shipment. They are sold by the ‘Jizleh,’ a weight varying
according to the size of the shell: from 3 to 3.50 sacks would be the
average. The price of the Jizleh presently rose to $7, to $8, and in
1859 it was about $9. Seven vessels were then annually engaged in
carrying cargoes from Zanzibar to Lagos and its vicinity. This rude
money finds its way to Tinbuktu (Timbuctoo) and throughout Central
Africa, extending from the East to places as yet unvisited by Europeans.
Of late years, however, the increased metallic currency has caused the
cowrie trade to fall off, and the steady rate of decrease shows that
shell money is doomed.
Here, as in Western India, the rains bring forth a multitude of pests.
The rooms when lighted at night are visited by cockroaches and flying
ants; scarabæi and various mantidæ; moths and ‘death’s heads’ of
marvellous hideousness. Giant snails (achatinæ), millepedes, and beetles
crawl over the country, and the firefly glances through the shade.
Mosquitos are said not to be troublesome, but in an inner room I found
curtains necessary; the house-fly is a torment to irritable skins.
Fleas, and the rest of the ‘piquante population,’ are most numerous
during the north-east monsoon. The bug, which was held to be an
importation, is now thoroughly naturalized upon the Island; in the
interior it is as common as in the cities of Egypt and of Syria, where a
broken rafter will discharge a living shower. I could not, however, hear
anything of the ‘Pási bug,’ which, according to Dr Krapf, causes
burnings, chills, and fever. He made it to rival the celebrated Meeanee
(Muganaj) bug, the Acarus Persicus, whose exceedingly poisonous bite was
supposed to be fatal. In the Lake Regions of Central Africa (1.371) I
have conjectured that the word is a corruption for Papazi, a carrapato,
or tick. So Dr Krapf writes in the German way ‘Sansibar’ for Zanzibar.
The ants in Zanzibar, as in the Brazil, require especial study, and
almost every kind of tree appears to have its peculiar tenantry. Upon
the clove there is a huge black pismire whose nip burns like fire; as it
has a peculiarly evil savour, tainting even the unaromatic ‘bush,’ it is
mashed and stuffed up the nostrils as a cure for snake-bites. The Copal
is colonized by a semi-transparent ginger-coloured formica, whose every
bite draws blood, and the mango-leaf is doubled up by a smaller variety
into the semblance of a bird’s nest. The horrible odour in parts of the
bush, which young African travellers attribute to malaria and which
often leads them to suspect the presence of carrion, generally proceeds
from ants: I remarked this especially when visiting Abeokuta and other
places in West Africa. Throughout the interior ‘drivers,’ as they are
sensibly termed on the Guinea Coast, visit the huts in armies, and soon
clear them of all offal. A small black ant attacks meat, and the best
way to procure a clean skeleton is to expose the body near its haunt;
beware, however, of cats and dogs. As in Africa generally, the termite
is a plague; this small animal greatly obstructs civilization by the
ravages which it commits upon books and manuscripts.
Few, if any, domestic animals are aborigines of the Island, and of those
imported none thrive save Bozal negroes and asses. Cattle brought to
Zanzibar die after the first fortnight, unless protected from sun, rain,
and dew, and fed with dry fodder. The fatality resulting from the use of
green meat leads here, as in the Concan and at Cape Coast Castle, to the
impression that the grass is poisonous. At some places in the mainland,
Pangani for instance, cattle will not live—this is certainly the effect
of tsetse. At Cape Coast Castle horses always die; at Accra they
survive, if not taken away from the sea-board: in 1863, during a short
march through the country, I found an abundance of the tsetse, or
‘spear-fly.’ The specimens sent by me to England were lost with other
collections in the ill-fated ‘Cleopatra.’ As has lately been shown, the
tsaltsal of Bruce is mentioned in Deut, xxviii. 42, in Isa. xviii. 5,
and in Job xli. 7. The word is translated fish-spear, harpoon, locust;
but it is not proved that tsaltsal and tsetse are the same fly, and the
similarity of the two words may be the merest coincidence. The Banyans
of Zanzibar, who, having no local deity like their more favoured
brethren of Aden and Maskat, keep cattle for religious purposes, never
sell their beasts, and energetically oppose their being slaughtered.
Bullocks cost from $8 to $16, and are generally to be bought.
Sheep are principally the black-faced Somali, with short round knotted
tails, which lose fat from rich grazing: in their own desert country
they thrive upon an occasional blade of grass growing between the
stones. The excessive purity of the air doubtless favours assimilation
and digestion, and as the diet of the desert Arabs proves, life under
such circumstances can be supported by a minimum of food. I believe that
in early times the Persians introduced this animal into Somali and
Galla-land. The Wakwafi, who are rich in black cattle, contemptuously
call their Galla neighbours ‘Esikirieshi,’ or short-tailed sheep,’ from
the article forming their only wealth. The Somali muttons are the
cheapest, averaging from $1 to $3. There is also a ‘Mrima’ race, with
rufous ginger-coloured, hairy coats, and lank tails like dogs: others,
again, have a long, massive caudal appendage like Syrian or Cape
wethers. These cost $2 to $5, and are considered a superior article. The
most expensive are from the Island of Angazíjah, or Great Comoro, and
they are often worth from $8 to $9. As a rule, Zanzibar mutton, like
that of the Brazil, is much inferior to beef, and presents a great
contrast with the celebrated gram-feds’ of India.
Caponized goats in these regions are larger, fatter, and cent. per cent,
dearer than sheep: I have heard of $15 to $16 being paid for the Comoro
animal. The meat is preferred to mutton: my objection to it is the want
of distinct flavour. Yet goats are always offered as presents in the
interior. Some of the bucks brought from the Continent have a peculiarly
ungoatly appearance, with black points and dark crosses upon their tan-
coloured backs and shoulders, and with long flowing jetty manes like the
breast hair of a Bukhti or Bactrian camel. They must be kept out of the
sun, and fed on vetches as well as grass, otherwise they will die during
the rains from an incurable nasal running.
A stunted Pariah dog is found upon the Island and the Continent: here,
as in Western Africa, it is held, when fattened, to be a dish fit for a
(Negro) king. Some missionaries have tasted puppy stew—perhaps puppy
pie—and have pronounced the flesh to be sweet, glutinous, and palatable.
The horse is now a recognized article of consumption in Europe; the cat
has long served its turn, as civet de lapin, without the honours of
publicity; and the day may come when ‘dog-meat’ will appear regularly in
the market. I have often marvelled at the prejudices and squeamishness
of those races who will eat the uncleanest things, such as pigs, ducks,
and fowls, to which they are accustomed, and yet who feel disgust at the
idea of touching the purest feeders, simply because the food is new. It
is indeed time to enlarge the antiquated dietary attributed to the
Hebrew lawgiver, and practically to recognize the fact that, in the
temperates at least, almost all flesh is wholesome meat for man.
European dogs at Zanzibar require as much attention as white babies, but
these die whilst those live. They must be guarded from heat and cold,
sun and rain, dew and wind. Their meals must be light and regular, soup
taking the place of meat. They must be bathed in warm water, their coats
should be carefully dried, they are sent to bed early, and their
smallest ailments require the promptest treatment with sulphur, ‘oil,’
and other specifics, otherwise they will never live to enjoy the
honourable status of pères et mères de familles. The great object is to
breed from them as soon as possible, and the Creoles thrive far better
than even the acclimatized strangers. Arabs have been known to pay $50
for a good foreign watch-dog, hoping thus to escape the nightly
depredations of the half-starved slaves. They are kind masters, great
contrasts to the brutally cruel Negro, whose approximation to the lower
animals causes him to tyrannize over them. On the West Coast of Africa
the black chiefs often offer considerable sums for English dogs; but
none save the lowest ‘palm-oil rough’ would condemn the ‘friend of man’
to this life of vile African slavery. It is really pathetic to meet one
of these unfortunate exiles in the interior, where a white face is
rarely seen: the frantic display of joy, and the evident horror at being
left behind, have more than once made me a dog-stealer.
At Zanzibar, as upon the Continent, fowls may be bought in every
village, the rate being 6 to 12 for the dollar, which a few years ago
procured 36. They are lean, for want of proper food; ill flavoured, from
pecking fish; and miserably small, the result of breeding in—the eggs
are like those of pigeons. Yet they might be greatly improved; the
central regions of Africa show splendid birds, with huge bodies and the
shortest possible legs. This variety is found in the Brazil; and at
Zanzibar the mixture of blood has produced a kind of bantam with a large
foot. The black-boned variety of poultry, and that with the upright
feathers—the ‘frizzly fowl’ of the United States—are also bred here.
Capons are manufactured by the blacks of Mayotte and Nosi-béh (Great
Island). How is it that the modern English will eat hens, when their
great grandfathers knew how to combine the flavour of the male with the
tenderness of the female bird?
Peacocks are brought, as in the days of the Ophir trade, from Cutch.
Madagascar sends hard, tasteless geese and common ducks, and Mozambique
supplies turkeys which are here eaten by Arabs. A local superstition
prevents pigeon-breeding in the house: the birds are found wild on the
opposite coast, but Moslems will not use them as food. The Muscovy duck,
an aborigine of the Platine Valley, has of late years been naturalized—
it is a favourite with Africans, who delight in food which gives their
teeth and masticatory apparatus the hardest and the longest labour. The
only gallinaceous bird which Africa has contributed to civilization, the
Guinea-hen, here called the ‘Abyssinian cock,’ is trapped by slaves upon
the mainland, and is brought to the Island for sale. As might be
expected so near their mother-country, there are seven or eight
varieties of this valuable fowl, and until late years some of the rarest
and the most curious have been unwittingly used for the table. In every
part of the Arab world the Guinea-fowl has a different name: in Syria,
for instance, it is called Dik el Rumi (not Dik el Habash) or Roman
(Greek) cock, a term generally given to the turkey. It is curious on a
coast of estuaries and great river-mouths that the flamingo was not seen
by us.
SECTION 5.
Notes on the Flora of Zanzibar.
The prosperity of Zanzibar, the Island, has hitherto depended upon the
cocoa and the clove-tree. The former grows in a broad band around the
shore: on the Continent it follows the streams as far as 60 miles
inland. In Zanzibar the Arab saying that ‘cocoa and date cannot co-
exist,’ is literally correct; near Mombasah town, however, there is a
fruit-bearing phœnix, and on the promontory, fronting the fort, there is
a plantation of small stunted trees. Everywhere on the Pangani river we
found the ‘brab,’ a wild phœnix, as the word derived from the Portuguese
‘brabo,’ corrupted from ‘bravo,’ or rather in the feminine (palma)
‘brava,’ suggests; and it would appear that the cultivated variety might
be induced to thrive. The country was almost denuded of the cocoa to
make room for cloves, when the late Sayyid threatened confiscation to
those who did not plant in proportion of one to three. There are now
(1857) extensive nurseries in the Máshámbá (plantations), and as this
palm bears after six or seven years, it soon recovered its normal
status. Many trees are prostrated by gusts and tornados: the Hindus
replant them by digging a hole, and hauling up the bole with ropes made
fast to the neighbouring stems—this simple contrivance is here unknown.
The Wasawahili have many different names for the nut, viz. Kidáka, too
green when it falls to the ground for any use but fuel; Dáfú, or Kitále,
when the milk is drinkable, the husk is burned, and the shell is made
into a ladle (maghraf); the Koróma, when the meat is fit to eat, and
Nází,[54] the full-grown nut ready for oil-making. This most useful of
plants supplies, besides meat, wine and spirits, syrup and vinegar,
cords, mats, strainers, tinder, firewood, houses and palings, boats and
sails—briefly, all the wants of barbarous life. Every part of it may be
pressed into man’s service, from the sheath of the first or lowest leaf,
used as a sieve, to the stalk of the young fruit, which, divested of the
outer coat, is somewhat like our chestnut. During the hot N. East
monsoon the refrigerating, diuretic milk is a favourite with strangers,
and much feared by natives. A respectable man is derided if seen eating
a bit of ripe cocoa-nut, a food for slaves and savages from the far
west, but he greedily consumes the blanc-mange-like pulp of the Dáfu,
which is supposed, probably from its appearance, to secrete virility.
Rasped, the ripe kernel enters into many dishes; the cream squeezed from
it is mixed with boiled rice, and the meat, kneaded with wheat-flour and
clarified butter, is made, as at Goa, into scone-like cakes. No palm-
wine is so delicious as that of the cocoa-tree, and the vinegar is
proportionally good. The Zerambo, or distillation from ‘toddy,’ is
adulterated with lime, sugar, and other ingredients, which render it
unpalatable as it is pernicious.
Formerly there were many cocoa-nut oil-mills in the town; now (1857)
they are transferred to the plantations where Sesamum (Simsim) is also
crushed. The ‘Engenho’ is ruder than in the Brazil. A camel, blind-
folded to prevent it eating the oil-cake or striking work, paces slowly
round the ‘horse-walk,’ moving a heavy beam; this rolls a pestle of 6
inches in diameter in a conical wooden mortar, flat-rimmed above, and 4
feet deep, by 3 wide. Formerly as many as 70,000 lbs. were exported in a
single vessel. Now the people save trouble by selling the dried nut, and
when oil is wanted for home use they press and bruise it in water, which
is then boiled; consequently, though the tree again begins to cover the
Island Coast, the oil is three times dearer than at Bombay. It is
calculated that 12,000,000 nuts were exported last year (1856) for the
soap and candle trades, and a single French house has an establishment
capable of curing 50,000 per diem. Demand has prodigiously raised the
price of this article. In 1842 the thousand cost from $2 to $2.50; in
1857 it was $12.50. Though the coir of Zanzibar is remarkably fine and
was much admired at Calcutta, little use is made of it: some years ago
certain Indian Moslems tried to obtain a contract from the local
Government, and did not succeed, prepayment being the first thing
insisted upon.[55]
The constitutional indolence of the people, their dislike to settled and
regular work, and their Semitic unwillingness to venture money, have,
despite cheap labour and low ground-rents, prevented the Island from
taking to its most appropriate industry—sugar-growing. Refiners are
agreed that the cane in Zanzibar and Pemba is equal to that in any part
of Asia. About three years ago (1857) the late Sayyid established a
factory at his estate of Mohayra under a Frenchman, M. Classun, an
assistant, and 32 supervisors. Compelled to live in the interior, they
sickened, and died off, and thus Mauritius lost another dangerous rival.
A superior article was also made by the Persians, but they all caught
fever, and either perished or disappeared. The sugar now grown is
consumed on the Island, and there is only one steam-mill belonging to
the Sayyid.
Cotton is said to thrive upon the Island, but the irregular rains must
often damage the crop. At present a small quantity for domestic use is
brought from the coast, where there are plots of the shrub growing
almost wild. In the drier parts of the Benadir, however, the material
for hand-made cloth must be brought from India, mostly from Surat.
The virgin soils of Zanzibar, in fact, labour under only one
disadvantage,—the fainéantise of the people, but that one is all in all,
hence complaints concerning the expense. In the West India plantations 1
head was allowed per acre of cane, per 2 acres of cotton, and per 3
acres of coffee. Here 4 head would hardly do the work; slave labour is
bad, and free labour is worse.
Coffee was once tried in the Island, but the clove soon killed it; now
not a parcel is raised for sale. The berry, which was large and
flavourless, was not found to keep well. The overrich soil produces an
undue luxuriance of leafage, and the shrub lacks its necessary
wintering.
In the Brazil the richest lands are given to coffee, the next best to
sugar, and the worst to cotton and cereals. The Zanzibar coast from
Mombasah to Mozambique produces small quantities of coffee. Here great
care is given to it; the berry has a peculiarly dry and bitter flavour,
pleasant when familiar, and producing when first taken wakefulness and
nervous excitement. At present the Island imports her supplies from
Malabar and Yemen. The consumption is not great; the Arabs, who hold it
a necessary of life at home, here find it bilious, and end by changing
it for betel-nut. The coast growth sells in small lots, at various
prices, and may become an article of export. In the African interior the
shrub is indigenous between Northern Unyamwezi (S. Lat. 1° 0′) and
Southern Abyssinia (N. Lat. 10°); and, as it is found on the Western
Coast growing wild about the Rivers Nunez and Pongo (N. Lat. 10° 1′), it
probably extends in a broken band across the Continent. There appear to
be many varieties of the shrub. In Karagwah the wild bean is little
bigger than a pin’s head. Harar exports a peculiarly large species,
which sells as Mocha, and the Mozambique coffee does not at all resemble
in flavour that of West Africa. Dr Livingstone (Missionary Travels,
chap. x.) tells us that coffee brought from Southern Arabia to Angola by
the Jesuits was spread probably by agency of birds to 300 leagues from
the coast. It has long been ‘monkeys’ food,’ but it is now worked by the
ex-slavers.
Indigo here, as well as in most parts of intertropical Africa, grows
wild. The great expense of establishments, with the time and trouble,
the skill and attention required for the manufacture, will leave it in
the hands of Nature for many years to come.
Tobacco might be raised: the plant extends thoughout Eastern and Central
Africa, wherever the equinoctial rains fall. Usumbara exports to
Zanzibar stiff, thin, round cakes which have been pounded in wooden
mortars, and neatly packed in plantain leaves. It is dark and well-
flavoured: sailors pronounce it to be very ‘chawable.’ Here it sells at
two pice,[56] or 3/4_d._, per cake; at Usumbara it commands about one-
fifth of that price, paid in cloth and food.
The oil palm (Elæis Guineensis), whose produce has done so much for the
Guinea Coast and the fatal Bight of Biafra, is found, I am told, on the
Island of Pemba, and at other places near Zanzibar. About the Lake
Tanganyika it grows in abundance; the fruit, however, is a raceme, like
the date’s, not a spike, as in the Bonny river. The ‘Mchikichi’ is,
therefore, a different and probably an unknown species. Like that of
West Africa, it supplies wine as well as oil (The Lake Regions of
Central Africa, vol. ii. p. 59). The palm-oil might easily be introduced
into Zanzibar, and would doubtless thrive; but the people have enough to
do without it.
The Mbono or Palma Christi springs up spontaneously, as in most tropical
regions, throughout Zanzibar Island and on the coast. The Hindus say of
a man with more vanity than merit, ‘The castor shrub grows where other
plants can’t.’ The seed is toasted in iron pots, pounded, and boiled to
float the oil. After aloes it is the popular cathartic, and it is rubbed
upon the skin to soften the muscles, with an effect which I leave to the
nasal imagination.
Cinnamon and nutmeg trees were planted by the late Sayyid, and
flourished well on some soils. The latter takes nine years, it is said,
before bearing fruit, and gives trouble—two fatal objections in Arabs’
eyes. The spice is now imported from India. When at Kazah of Unyamwezi I
saw specimens brought, it is said, from the Highlands of Karagwah, but
the plentiful supply from the farther East would prevent this trade
being here developed. The cacao shrub (chocolate), which thrives so well
at Prince’s Island and Fernando Po in the Biafran Bight, has never, I
believe, been tried in Zanzibar.
The Mpira, or caoutchouc tree, flourishes in the Island, and on the
adjacent Continent. The people of Eastern Madagascar tap it in the cold
season, and have sent large cargoes to America. Mr Macmillan, U. S.
Consul, Zanzibar, offered $1000 for good specimens, but the Wasawahili
would not take the trouble to make a few incisions. I heard of two
varieties, a ficus and a lliana; there are probably many more: about the
Gaboon river the valuable gum is the produce of a vine or climber, with
an edible fruit, and the people have learned to extract a coarse
article, and to adulterate it till it is hardly tradeable. Here they use
the thinner branches, well oiled for suppleness, as ‘bakurs’—the
policeman’s truncheon, the cat-o’-nine-tails, the ‘Chob,’ and the
‘Palmatorio’ of E. Africa. I may here remark that our gourd-shaped
articles resist the climate of Zanzibar, whilst the squares and the
vulcanized preparations become sticky and useless. The London-made
blankets of smooth and glazed caoutchouc are so valuable that no
traveller should be without them: those that are not polished, however,
cannot be called waterproof; becoming wet inside, they are unpleasantly
cold. For exposure to the sun white impermeables must be preferred to
black, and a first-rate article is required; our cheap boots and cloaks
soon opened, and when exposed to great heat they were converted into a
viscid mass.
The tamarind, as in India, is a splendid tree, but the fruit, though
used for acidulated drinks, is not prepared for exportation. A smooth-
rooted sarsaparilla, of lighter colour than the growth of the Brazil and
Jamaica, is found wild upon the Island and the coast. The orchilla,
which gives its name to the Insulæ Purpurariæ, has been tried, and,
resembling that of the Somali country, it gives good colour. This lichen
chooses the forks of trees in every lagoon. In the Consular report by
Lieutenant-Colonel Playfair on the trade of Zanzibar for the year 1863,
I find—‘Orchilla is obtained from the more arid parts of the coast to
the north: none grows on the Island.’
The people of Zanzibar are fond of fruits, especially the mango, the
orange, the banana, and the pine-apple. All of these, however, except
the plantain—the bread-fruit of Africa—are seedlings, and engrafting is
not practised. Wall-fruit is of course unknown.
The mango, originally imported from India, and as yet unplanted in the
central regions, is of many varieties, which lack, however,
distinguishing names. Two kinds are common—a large green fruit like the
Alphonse (Affonso) of Western India, and a longer pome, with bright red-
yellow skin, resembling the Goanese ‘Kola.’ These, with care, might
rival the famous produce of Bombay: even in their half-wild state the
flavour of turpentine is hardly perceptible. The fruit is said to be
heating, and to cause boils. The Arabs spoil its taste by using steel
knives: with the unripe fruit they make, however, excellent jams, and
pickles[57] eaten in broths of fowl or meat. The pounded kernels are
administered in dysenteries, but the relish or sauce of which the Gaboon
people are so fond is unknown here and even in India. The fruit is most
plentiful during the N. East monsoon.
There are many varieties of the orange, all, however, inferior to the
produce of the Azores and the Brazil, of Malta and the Mozambique. The
‘native’ fruit, supposed to be indigenous, is green, not so sweet as the
kinds grown by the Portuguese, and the coat must be loosened by two
days’ exposure to the sun or it can hardly be removed. It seldom ripens
before the beginning of July, and it is best in August. The Persian
variety, from about Bandar Abbas, comes to market in early May; it has
grown common since 1842, and it has excelled its original stock. The
peel is loose and green, and the meat, when cleared of pips, tastes
somewhat like currants. The small brick-red Mandarin is good, and
resembles the African and Brazilian Tangerine. The trees want care, they
run to wood, the fruit is often covered with a hard, rough, thick, and
almost inseparable rind, and the inside is full of bitter seeds, pithy
placenta, and fluffy skins. The wild oranges upon the Island and the
Continent resemble those which we call Seville. As a rule the ‘golden
apple’ abounds from May to October. It is considered cooling,
antibilious, and antiseptic, especially when eaten before other food in
the early morning. Thus it was a saying in the Brazil that the physician
does not enter that house where orange-peel is strewed about. In West
Africa the Rev. Mr Brown[58] of Texas judged the fruit harshly, and
predicted the death of a brother missionary who was too fond of it. Many
boxes and bags of oranges are carried as presents from Zanzibar to the
northern ports (Banadir), Aden, and even Bombay; ‘Gulf-Arabs,’ who have
not such luxuries at home, will here devour a basket-full at a sitting.
The sweet limes of Zanzibar are considered inferior to none by those who
enjoy the sickly ‘mawkish’ flavour: the acid limes are cheap, plentiful,
and aromatic; they are second only to those grown about Maskat, the ne
plus ultra of perfume and flavour. The Pamplemouse or Shaddock, the
Pummalo of Bombay (Citrus Decumana), has been planted upon the Island,
but the people declare that it will not ripen: the same is said of the
citron, and the Zanzibarians ignore the Persian art of preserving it.
Bananas at Zanzibar are of two varieties, red and yellow: they are not
remarkable for delicacy of taste. In the highlands of the interior, as
Usumbara and Karagwah, the ‘musa’ may be called the staff of life. The
plantain, in India termed ‘horse-plantain,’ is a coarse kind, sometimes
a foot long, and full of hard black seeds: Europeans fry it in butter,
and the people hold it to be a fine ‘strong’ fruit. The musa bears
during all the year in Zanzibar, but it is not common in May and June.
The pine-apple of the New World grows almost wild in every hedgerow and
bush: cultivation and planting near running water would greatly improve
it. At present the crown is stuck in the earth, and is left to its fate
wherever the place may be. Strangers are advised to remove the thick
outer rind, including all the ‘eyes,’ which, adhering to the coats of
the stomach, have caused inflammation, dysentery, and death. The ananas
ripens in the cold season: when it is found throughout the twelve months
the people predict that next year it will fail. It is, in fact, a
biennial, like the olive in Palestine.
The especial fruits of the poor are the Fanas or ‘Jack’ of India, and an
even more fetid variety, the ‘Doriyan,’ which certain writers call the
‘Aphrodisiac dorion.’ Some Europeans have learned to relish the evil
savour, and all declare the Jack to be very wholesome. Hindus refuse to
touch it, because it is ‘heating food:’ they say the same, however, of
all fruits with saccharine juices. The nuts are roasted, and eaten with
salt, as in India, and the villagers fatten their poultry with ‘the rind
and the rotten.’
The bread-fruit, and the curious growth (Ravenala) known as the
‘Travellers’ Tree,’ were introduced from the Seychelles Islands: the
young plants, however, were soon uprooted and strewed about the fields.
Grapes, both white and red, look well, but, as in the Tropical Brazil,
the bunches never ripen thoroughly; in fact, the same cluster will
contain berries of every age, from the smallest green to the oldest
purple. This is a great disadvantage when making wine, and requires to
be corrected by syrup. The grape can hardly be expected to thrive where
the hot season, as in parts of the New World, is also the rainy season.
Like the produce of the Gold Coast, the stones are large and bitter, and
the skin is tart, thick, and leathery. Bacchus, though he conquered
India and founded Nysa, seems to disdain the equinoctial regions.
According to the French another variety should be introduced, and
perhaps the ground-grape of the Cape might succeed better. There are
many varieties of the vine in the Central Continent, but the people have
hardly learned to eat the fruit: at Zanzibar certain Arabs tried it with
sugar and rose-water, and suffered in consequence from violent colics.
We read in ‘El Bakui’ (A.D. 1403) that some vines bear three crops per
annum.
The water-melon, most wholesome of fruits in warm climates, is found in
Zanzibar and in the Lake Regions of the interior: the best are said to
grow about Lamu and Brava. It is a poor flavourless article, white-
yellow (not white and pink) inside, dry, and wanting the refreshing
juice; it is fit only for boiling, and its edible seed is the best part.
The growth of the papaw is truly tropical; a single year suffices to
hang the tree with golden fruit, which is eaten raw and boiled. Hindus,
as usual, object to its ‘heat;’ the Arabs make from the pips, which
taste like celery, a sherbet, which is said to have peculiar
effects.[59]
The ‘Khwemwé’ tree bears a nut with a hard reticulated skin: this is
roasted like the chestnut, and it affords a small quantity of oil. The
Sita-phal (Annona squamosa) and its congener, the Jam-phal, or sour-sop
(A. reticulata), grow wild over the Island and the Coast; as in the
Brazil, little attention is paid to them; this ‘custard-apple’ is here
considered to be a wholesome fruit. The guava is popularly called
Zaytun, which means ‘olive,’ a quasi-sacred fruit, possibly on the
principle that in England many growths become palms about Easter-time.
It runs wild around Mombasah, and spreads over much ground by a peculiar
provision of nature:[60] the guavas are said not to ripen well; yet on
the West coast they are excellent. The Jamli, a well-known Indian tree
(Eugenia Jambu), whose somewhat austere, subacid fruit resembles the
damson or bullace, is everywhere common. In A.D. 1331 the traveller Ibn
Batutah found El Jammún (الجمّون) at Mombasah.
The interior of the Island produces the ‘Fursád,’ a small stunted
variety of the Persian red mulberry; the ‘Tút,’ or white species, grows
in every jungle from the shore of the Mainland to Fuga, in Usumbara, and
suggests the possibility of rearing silk-worms. The pomegranate here, as
on the Coast, gives a fruit which is hardly eatable: during the season
Omani ships bring a supply of the very best description from the Jebel
el Akhzar (the Green Mountain), near Maskat, and apples from the Persian
Gulf. The Badam, locally called Bídam (the Persian almond), is here
barren; the broad polished leaves are used as platters by the vegetarian
Hindus. The Chinese Rambotang or Leechee is neglected, and the fruit is
poor. The Ber (jujube) is unusually well-flavoured; according to Moslem
custom, the Arab dead are washed with an infusion of the leaves. That
South American growth the Mbibo or Cashew (Caju) tree abounds here and
on the continental sea-board: the nuts are roasted, the pulp is eaten,
though its astringent quince-like flavour is by no means pleasant, and
the juice is distilled, as at Goa. After pressure, the yield, exposed
two or three days for fermentation, produces the celebrated ‘Cauim’
(Caju-ig) of the Brazilian Tupy-Guarani race, a wine here unknown. The
still yields at first a watery spirit, which by cohobation becomes as
fiery and dangerous as new rum. The lower orders like it; the effects,
they say, last out the week.
The principal wild trees are the following. The fan palm, a native of
the Island and the Continent, supplies the chief African industry—mat-
making. The ‘Toddy palm’ is found everywhere; the fruit is eaten, but no
one cares to draw off the beverage. The Dom, or Theban palm (Hyphene
Thebaica), is a rare variety, and the wood is used chiefly for ladder
rungs. Gigantic Raphias, called by the Arabs Nakhl el Shaytan, ‘the
Devil’s palm,’ throw over the streams fronds 30 and 40 feet long: these,
cut, stripped, and bound into rafts, are floated down and exported from
the Mainland to the Island; the material is soft and good for hut-
making. The graceful Areca palm flourishes everywhere, especially upon
the banks of the Pangani river: at the mouth of this stream a saw-mill
might be set up for a few dollars, and I have no doubt that it would
yield large profits, and extend its business as far as the Red Sea.
The Bombax, or silk-cotton tree (Eriodendrum anfractuosum), the Arab
Díbáj and the Kisawahili Msufi, common in East as in West Africa,
affords a fibre usually considered too short and brittle for weaving,
but I have seen Surat cotton very nearly as bad. The contents of the
pericarp have been used for pillow stuffings: the only result (_dicunt_)
was a remarkable plague of pediculi. The Kewra, or frankincense tree of
India, abounds. The red beans of the Abrus Precatorius are used by the
poor and by the wild people as ornaments; even the mixed Luso-African
race of Annobom will wear huge strings of this fruit, our original
‘carat.’ The soft-wooded Baobab, Mbuyu or calabash tree (Adansonia
digitata), grows rapidly to a large size upon the Island as upon the
Eastern and Western coasts. It is a tree of many uses. The trunk, often
girthing 40 feet, forms the water-tank, the trough, the fisherman’s
Monoxyle; the fibrous bark is converted into cloth, whose tough network
is valued by the natives; the fruit pulp is eaten, and the dried shells
serve as Buyu, or gourds. I have repeatedly alluded to this tree in the
Lake Regions of Central Africa, and I shall offer other notices of it in
the following pages. Of late the Mbuyu or Baobab has brought itself into
notice as affording a material more valuable for paper than straw,
esparto or wood pulp, and its superiority to other African basts, has
been acknowledged in England.[61] The Mpingo (Dalbergia Melanoxylum)
gives a purple timber, not a little like rosewood. The ‘African oak,’ a
species of teak, is reported to exist; but this tree does not extend far
north of Mozambique. The ‘P’hun’ is a stately growth, whose noble shaft,
often 80 feet high, springs without knot or branch, till its head
expands into a mighty parachute. It is more ornamental than useful,—the
wood is soft, full of sap, like our summer timber, and subject to white
ants. In these hot, wet, and windy tropical regions some trees,
especially those without gum or resinous sap, grow too fast, and are
liable to rot, whilst others take many years to mature, and are almost
unmanageably hard and heavy. Hence we have had timber-cutting
establishments set up by our Government at a large expense in the Brazil
and in West Africa, but the produce never paid the voyage to England.
The woods known to commerce are the ‘Líwá,’ a white-veined, faintly-
perfumed, bastard sandal from Madagascar: it is used for the sacred fire
by the poorer Parsees. Granadille wood is exported from the Mainland to
Europe, where it is worked for the bearings of mills and for the mouth-
pieces and flanges of instruments. The Arabs call it ‘Abnús,’ and the
Sawahili ‘Mpingo,’ both signifying ebony, which it resembles in
appearance, though not in qualities. Less brittle than ebony, and harder
than lignum vitæ, it spoils the saw; and being very heavy, it refuses to
absorb grease or water. It makes good ram-rods, and the Usumbara people
have cut it into pipe-bowls long before our briar-root was dreamed of.
The sweet-smelling ‘Kalambak’ (Vulg. Columbo), once common upon the
Island, is now brought from Madagascar. There are two kinds,—one poor
and yellow, like our box, the other hard, heavy, and dark red. Its fine
grain takes the high polish of mahogany, and it would make good desks
and work-boxes. Comoro men and Indian carpenters turn out rude furniture
of this wood, which is wilfully wasted: in felling and shaping it the
plantation-slaves, who ignore the saw, chip away at least half. The
smoke is said, to keep off mosquitos. The mango, the jack, the copal
tree, and many others, give fine hard woods for cabinet work.
Planks and scantling, cross-beams and door-panels, are made of two fine
trees, the ‘Mtimbati’ and the ‘Mvúle.’[62] The negro carpenters always
sacrifice, I have said, a tree to make a plank, and the latter is so
heavy that for all light erections, such as upper rooms, boards must be
imported from Europe. The Mtimbati is the more venous; rungs of ladders,
well kept and painted, will last 15 years. The enduring Mvúle, a close-
grained yellow wood, is rare upon the Island, but common in the Coast
jungles. As is the case with the Kalambak, there is no tariff for these
trees: what to-day is sold at a bazar auction for $1 may in a week fetch
$8. A good practical account of the medicinal plants and timbers of
Madagascar and Mozambique, Zanzibar and the Seychelles, will be found in
appendices A. B. vol. ii. of Mr Lyons McLeod’s ‘Travels in Eastern
Africa, with a Narrative of a Residence in Mozambique.’ Captain Guillain
may also be consulted, vol. i. p. 23-25.
The Bordi or Zanzibar rafters are felled by slaves on the Mainland, and
are brought over by Arabs and other vessels. The material is the useful
mangrove, of which we here find the normal two species; the Arabs call
both ‘Gurum,’ and prefer the Makanda, or red kind. At Zanzibar the posts
which become worm-eaten, and are reduced to powder by white ants, must
be changed every five years. In arid Maskat they will last out the
century, and they find their way to Aden, to Jeddah, and even to Meccah.
The usual price in the Island is $2 to $3 per ‘Korjah,’ or score.
The Mti wa Muytu (wild wood), or white mangrove, is found growing not in
brackish water, and upon the mud, like the red variety, but chiefly upon
the higher sandy levels. The wood is small, it shrinks when dried, it
splits easily, and snaps; it is worm-eaten at once, and its porous
nature causes it easily to absorb water. In Zanzibar it is used for fuel
in lime-burning, and it makes a hot and lasting fire; the people also
turn it into caulking mallets, which do not crack or spread out. The
usual price (1857) is half a German crown per Korjah.
Vegetables are little prized at Zanzibar: the list is rather of what
might be than of what exists. A local difficulty is the half-starved
slave who plunders every garden; nothing less than a guard of Baloch
would preserve edible property from his necessities and from his truly
African wantonness of destruction.
Almost all European vegetables will grow in the Island; they require,
however, shade, and they should be planted, as at Bourbon and the
Mauritius, between rows of cool bananas. The best soil is the dark
vegetable mould near the streams. Here lettuces, beet-root, carrots,
potatoes, and yams would flourish—cabbages and cauliflowers have never,
I believe, been tried. The ‘Jezár,’ an excellent sweet potato from
Comoro and Madagascar, has been neglected almost to extinction. Thirty
barrels of many sorted beans were sent from the Cape and grew well: they
are good and abundant in the African interior, but the Island has
allowed them to die out. The ‘egg-plant’ is remarkably fine, and the
wild species thrives everywhere on the sea-board between Somali land and
Zanzibar. The Continent sends sundry kinds of pumpkins and gourds.
Cucumbers of many varieties grow almost without sowing,—the people
declare that they become bitter if touched by the hand whilst being
peeled. The Arabs make from the seed an oil of most delicate flavour,
far superior for salads than the best Lucchese olive. In London I have
vainly asked for ‘cucumber-oil:’ the vegetable is probably too
expensive, and the seeds are too small to be thus used at home. About
Lagos on the Slave Coast, however, there is a cucumber nearly a foot
long, with large pips, which might be sent northwards, and I commend the
experiment to the civilized lover of oil. All kinds of ‘Chilis,’ from
the small wild ‘bird-pepper’ to the large variety of which the Spaniards
are so fond, thrive in Zanzibar, which appears to be their home. There
are extensive plantations of betel-pepper on the Eastern coast of the
Island.
Wheat, barley, and oats here run to straw. Rice is the favourite cereal.
The humid low-lands are cleared of weeds by burning, and the seed is
sown when the first showers fall. To judge from the bazar-price, the
home-grown article is of a superior quality; but nowhere in East Africa
did I find the grain so nutritious as that of the Western Coast. The
hardest working of all African tribes, the Kru-men, live almost entirely
upon red rice and palm-oil. The clove mania has caused the cereal to be
neglected; formerly an export, it is now imported, and in 1860 it cost
the Island £38,000. Jowari (Holcus Sorghum), here called by the Arabs
Ta’am (food), and by the Wasawahili Mtama,—an evident corruption,—is
sown in January and February, and ripens 6 months afterwards. The wheat
of the poorer Arabs, and the oats of horses, it grows 18 feet high, but
the islanders have little leisure, except in the poorest parts, to
cultivate. Banyans, Arabs, and Wasawahili buy it in the Brava country,
the granary of Southern Arabia, on the sea-board from Tanga to Mangao,
and in some districts of the near interior; they retail it in Zanzibar
at large profits. Sesamum (the Hindustani Til or Gingil, the Arabic
Simsim), the commonest of the oleaginous grains, of late demanded by the
French market, where the oil becomes huile d’olives, is also brought
from the Mainland, especially from the northern ports, Lamu and its
neighbours, the Banádir or Haven-land. In 1859 the Island of Zanzibar
exported 8,388,360 lbs, = £20,000. Besides this, the coast ports shipped
several cargos direct: formerly, East Africa used to supply the Red Sea
with this article.
Maize (Muhindi) is a favourite article of consumption, and a little is
grown on the Island. Bájrí (Máwélé, Panicum spicatum, Roxb.), the small
millet, a thin grain, inferior to that of Cutch and Western India, is
little cultivated. The gram[63] of Hindustan (in Arabic, Hummus; in
Persian, Nukhud; and in Kisawahili, Dengu, Cicer Arietinum) is of
several varieties, white and red. The Lúbiyá pulse is also of many sizes
and colours; the black flourishes everywhere, the red is common, and the
white, which the Portuguese of Goa import from the Mozambique regions,
is rare. The best and largest comes from Pemba Island; it is also grown
on the Continent. The leguminous T’hur (the Arabic Turiyan, and the
Kisawahili Barádí, Cajanus Indicus) is almost wild: the Banyans mix it
with rice, and make with it the well-known ‘Dáll’ and ‘Kichri.’ The
small green pea, known in India as Mung (the Persian Másh, and the
Kisawahili Chíroko, or Toka, Phaseolus Mungo, Roxb.), is boiled and
eaten with clarified butter (Ghi) like T’hur. The people also use the
little black grain resembling poppy-seed, known in India as Urat; in
Cutch, Páprí; and here, P’híwí (Phaseolus radiatus). The Muhogo, in the
plural ‘Mihogo,’ or White Cassava (Manihot Aypim), resembles in
appearance the sweet Manioc of the Brazil (Aypim or Macaxeira). The
knotted stem, about six feet long, is crowned with broad digitated
leaves; the conical root, however, has a distinct longitudinal fibre the
size of small whipcord, which is not found in the ‘black, or poisonous,
Manioc’ (Jatropha Manihot, or Manihot utilissima). The people have not
attempted to masticate it into a means of intoxication, the Caysúma of
the Brazilian Tupy.[64] The Muhogo grows everywhere in Zanzibar Island:
it is planted in cuttings during the rains, and it ripens six or eight
months afterwards. In the Consular reports for 1860 we are told that
‘the Manioc or Cassava, which forms the chief food of the slaves and
poorer classes, yields _four_ crops a year.’ This is not probable: the
longer all Jatropha is kept in the ground, within certain limits, the
larger and better is the root. Manioc is carried as an acceptable
present by travellers going into the interior.
At Zanzibar the traveller should train his stomach to this food, and
take care not to call it ‘Manioc.’ When raw it resembles a poor
chestnut, but in this state none save a servile stomach can eat it
without injury. Europeans compare it with parsnips and wet potatoes: the
Hindus declare it to be heavy as lead, and so ‘cold’ that it always
generates rheumatism. The Wasawahili have some fifty different ways of
preparing it. Boiled, and served up with a sauce of ground-nut cream, it
is palatable: in every bazar sun-dried lengths, split by the women, and
looking like pipe-clay and flour, are to be bought: a paste, kneaded
with cold water, is cooked to scones over the fire: others wrap the raw
root in a plantain-leaf and bake it, like greeshen, in the hot ashes.
The poorer classes pound, boil, stir, and swallow the thick gruel till
their stomachs stand out in bold relief. Full of gluten, this food is by
no means nutritious; and after a short time it produces that inordinate
craving for meat, even the meat of white ants, which has a name in most
African languages.
The Bhang (Cannabis Sativa), which grows plentifully, though not wild,
in the interior of the Continent, is mostly brought to Zanzibar from
India. In Mozambique the Portuguese call it Bange or Canhamo de Portugal
(Portugal hemp), and in the Brazil it is also known as Bange, evidently
the Hindustani ‘Bhang.’ The negroes smoke it for intoxication, but
ignore the other luxurious preparations familiar to Hindustan, Egypt,
and Turkey.
Wanga or arrow-root, globular like a variety found in the Concan, is
much less nutritious than the long kind. Here the best is brought from
Mombasah, and after the rains the southern coast could supply large
quantities. The people levigate the root, wash, and sun-dry it: the
white powder is then kneaded with Tembú (palm-wine) into small balls,
which are boiled in the same liquid. It is ‘cold’ and astringent: the
Arabs use it as a remedy for dysentery, and the Hindus declare that it
produces nothing but costiveness. Ginger thrives in the similar
formation of Pemba, and yet it will not, I am assured, grow at Zanzibar,
where it is imported from Western India, the tea being in this climate a
good stomachic. The Calumba or Colombo root is largely exported to
adulterate beers and bitters. Curious to say, the ground-nut, which
extends from Unyamwezi to the Gambia, is rare at Zanzibar.
The corallines of the coast are of course destitute of metals. A story
is told of an ingenious Frenchman who, wishing to become Director of
Mines in the service of H. H. the Sayyid, melted down a few dollars, and
ran a. vein of silver, most unfortunately, into a mass of madrepore: the
curious ‘gangue’ was shown to Lieutenant-Colonel Hamerton, and thus the
’cute experiment failed. The African interior beyond the mountains is
rich in copper and iron. I have described the copper of the Taganyika
Lake Region: it is said to be collected in small nuggets from torrent-
beds, and the bars have evidently been cast in sand. The iron of the
Umasai country makes the finest steel.
Gold has undoubtedly been brought from the mountains of Chaga; and the
eastern plateau promises to rival in auriferous wealth the Gold Coast.
The great fields north of and near the Zambeze, and N. West of Natal,
beyond the Transvaal Republic, discovered in 1866-7 by the German
explorer, M. Mauch, a country consisting of metamorphic rocks and
auriferous quartz, will probably be found extending high up in East
Africa throughout the rocks lying inland of the maritime and sub-
maritime corallines. It is also likely that the vast coal-beds, explored
by the Portuguese, and visited by Dr Livingstone, in the vicinity of
Tete on the Zambeze, and afterwards prolonged by him to the Rufuma
river, a formation quite unknown to our popular works, will be extended
to the Zanzibar coast. The valleys of rivers falling into the Indian
Ocean should be carefully examined. The similarity of climate and
geographical position which the province of São Paulo, and indeed the
maritime regions of the Brazil generally, present with Eastern Africa,
first drew my attention to its vast and various carboniferous deposits,
and they are found to correspond with those of the Dark Continent.
Messrs Rebmann and Pollock visited a spot near the ‘Water of Doruma,’ in
the Rabai Range, near Mombasah, where antimony[65] is dug. They found no
excavations, but the people told them to return after the rains, when
the ground would be soft. The holes, they say, were rarely deeper than a
foot and a half. Captain Guillain (iii. 277) was told that near the
village ‘M’tchiokara’ ‘il existe, presque à fleur de terre, des amas
d’une substance métallifère, qui semblerait être un antimoniure
d’argent, autant qu’il a été permis d’en juger par les échantillons
donnés à nos voyageurs.’
The valuable corals are not found at Zanzibar, but the people sell a
thin and white-stemmed madrepore, with brocoli-shaped heads of the
liveliest red (Tubipora Musica?). Gypsum abounds at Pemba and other
places. Ships bring from Maskat a fine hydraulic mortar called Sáraj,
the result of burning shells in small kilns (Tandúr for Tannúr). The
material is then stored in bags, pounded, and made into paste when
required: it sets to stony consistency like the Pozzolana used by the
Romans for under-water buildings. I presume that they mix with this
calcaire a certain proportion of sand. The natives do not use shell-lime
when chewing betel-nut and leaf: they spoil their teeth with the common
stuff.
The disadvantage of coralline as building material is that it retains
for a long time its ‘quarry-water.’ The Arabs dry it involuntarily, and
humour their indolence by expending a dozen years in constructing a
house—the home, as at Damascus, being rarely finished during the owner’s
life. The remedy is to expel the salts of lime and the animal gelatine
by baking the stone, as is practised in the South Sea Islands. Kilns
would make good lime at Zanzibar: on the island and coast the people now
burn the gypsum and polypidoms in heaps piled upon a circle of billets,
and the smoke, which fills half the town, is considered wholesome.
Instead of being kept unslaked in sacks, it is wetted with sea-water,
which prevents it drying, and it is then heaped up in the moist open
air. Moreover, it is mixed with sea-sand, which is washed in fresh
water, but its salt ‘sweats out’ for many a long year. Thus the best
houses are liable to cuticular eruptions during the wet season: the
mortar cracks, and is patched with a leprosy of blue, yellow, and green
mould. The flat roofs are protected from the rain with thick coatings of
this material, pounded to the desired consistency by rows of slave-women
and boys, armed with long flat tamps and rude mallets. During the last
15 years the price of lime at Zanzibar has increased five-fold, $11
being now (1857) paid for a small heap; and, as usual, when Europeans
are the purchasers, it rises 50 per cent.
SECTION 6.
The Industry of Zanzibar.
The industry of Zanzibar is closely akin to nil; the same may be said of
the coast—both are essentially exporting, and cannot become
manufacturing centres, at least as long as the present race endures.
The principal supply is of matting and bags for merchandise: the
labourers are mostly women, who thus spend the time not occupied in
domestic toil. The best mats are those sent by Madagascar: the ‘native’
Simím (in Kisawahili termed Mkeka), an article upon which none but
Diwans may sit, is neatly made of rush and palm-fronds from the river-
side and from the low grounds of the coast; it is dyed in red patterns
with madder, and the root of the Mudaa-tree boiled in water gives it a
dark purple variegation. The housewives also make a rude fan, imitating
that of Maskat. Materials for common mats and grain-bags are found in
strips of palmated and fan-shaped leaves, cut in the jungles of the
mainland, sun-dried, carefully scraped with knives, and plaited by men,
women, and children. The Maskat traders buy these lengths, and sew them
together with Khus, or thread made from the cocoa-leaf. The large Jámbi
(mat), varying from 8 to 10 cubits long, costs about a quarter of a
dollar: this is employed in bagging (in Arabic, Kafa’at, and in
Kisawahili, Makándá) to defend from rain the cottons, beads, and other
articles which are carried by traders into the far interior.
Cloth is fringed by Wasawahili and slaves. Many tribes, those of Chaga
for instance, will not take a ‘Tobe’ without its ‘Tarázá,’ and generally
when a piece of stuff is given to a wild man, he sits down and first
unravels the edge. The selvage also constitutes a highly-prized
ornament.
Bill-hooks (munda), coarse sword-blades (upanga), and knives (kesu);
hatchets (skoka), and hoes (jembe)—the latter two diminutive, and more
like playthings than working-tools—are made of imported iron, and form a
staple of trade with the mainland. The European spade and the American
broad axe still await introduction. Those who would explore E. Africa
should supply themselves with a large stock of such hardware, and be
careful not to waste them—to savages and semi-barbarians they are
everywhere more precious than gold.
[Illustration: ZANZIBAR, FROM THE TERRACE OF H. B. M.’s CONSULATE.]
Split bamboo forms the brooms, and the hard material tears the plaster
from the walls. A coarse pottery, which the saltness of the clay renders
peculiarly brittle, is fabricated by the Wasawahili at Changani Point,
and supplants the original lagenarias. Some Kumárs, or Hindustani
potters, came to Zanzibar a few years ago; they suffered so severely
from fever that, fancying themselves bewitched, all ran away.
-----
Footnote 26:
Dr Livingstone (Zambezi Expedition, x. 213) confounds these African
‘smokes’ with the blue hazy atmosphere of the ‘Indian summers’ in
America, often the result of grass-burning and prairie fires. During
an August on the Syrian coast and a December in the Brazil, I have
seen the African ‘smokes’ as well developed as at Fernando Po.
Footnote 27:
Dr Krapf (112, Missionary Travels) tells us ‘the Somali coast, from
Cape Guardafui southwards, is designated by the Arabs “Dar Ajam,” not
“Ajan” or “Azan,” as the maps wrongly have it, because no Arabic is
spoken in it.’ Dar Ajam is, I believe, a modern and incorrect phrase.
Footnote 28:
My learned and accomplished friend, Dr R. S. Charnoch (The Peoples of
Transylvania: London, Trübner, 1870, p. 28), agrees with D’Herbelot,
and from Zangi derives the racial gipsy names Czigány, It. Zingari,
Var. Cingani, Zingara, Cingari, Port. Ciganos, G. Zigeuner. But the
Zangi were and are negroes, Wasawahíli, whereas the gypsies never
were.
Footnote 29:
Foreigners—Arab, Persian, and Indian,—call them Sawáhili. They call
themselves Msawahíli in the singular, and Wasawahíli in the plural,
always accenting the penultimate syllable. In the Zangian tongues a
prefixed M is evidently an abbreviation of Mti, a tree, e. g. Názi, a
cocoa-nut, Mnázi, a cocoa-nut tree, or of Mtu, a man. Before a vowel
it is euphoniously exchanged to Mu, e. g. Muarábu, an Arab. The plural
form is Wa, a contraction of Watu, men. ‘Wá’ also is the sign of the
personal, or rather of the rational animate plural opposed to ‘Má,’
and must not be confounded with the possessive pronoun ‘Wá,’ of. Mr
Cooley (Memoir of the Lake Regions, &c., Reviewed, Stanford, 1864),
asserts that ‘Wa mtu,’ ‘of a man,’ becomes by rejection of the
singular prefix, ‘Watu,’ ‘men (des hommes):’ consequently it is an
error to call the coast people Wamrima and the mountaineers Wakilima.
If so, it is an error made by every Kisawahili-speaking man. There
are, however, tribes, for instance the Rabai and the Doruma, that do
not prefix the normal ‘Wá,’ to form a plural. A prefixed ‘Ki,’
possibly contracted from ‘kitu,’ a thing, denotes the language, e. g.
Kisawahili: it also acts diminutive, e. g. Kigito, a little mto, or
river; and it appears to have at times an adjectival sense. Opposed to
it is ‘Ji,’ an augmentative form, e. g. Jito, a big mto. U, possibly
derived from an obsolete root which survives in the Kinyika ‘Uatu’ (a
place), denotes the country, e. g. Uzaramo, Usagara, and Uzungu—Europe
the land of the Wazungu. Some names arbitrarily refuse this locative,
for instance, Khutu, Karagwah, Sanga, Bondei, and others: we never
hear Ukhutu, and so forth. ‘U’ is also a sign of abstract words, e. g.
Mzuri, a handsome man; Uzuri, beauty; Mtajíri, a merchant; Utajíri,
merchandise; Refu, long; Urefu, length. I may here remark that Captain
Speke’s analysis of Uzaramo and Usagara into U-za-ramo and U-sagara,
the country of Ramo and Gara, making them ‘obviously triple words,’ is
wholly inadmissible. The root of national and tribal names, whatever
it may be, is used only exceptionally amongst the Zangian races. Upon
this point I shall presently offer a few observations.
Footnote 30:
Captain Guillain (vol. iii. p. 107, et passim) is correct upon the
subject of the word ‘Mrima.’ Mr Cooley (Memoir on the Lake Regions,
&c., p. 8) informs us that ‘Wamrima’ (the mainland people) signifies
‘of the mainland; for it is a mistake to suppose that Mrima is but a
dialectic variation of Mlimá (read, Mlíma) hill, in its primary sense,
cultivable ground; it is, in truth, a corruption of the Arabic word
Marâ’im, signifying the land to the west, or under the setting sun.
When the early Portuguese navigators told us that the Querimba Islands
were peopled by the Morimos, we must understand by this name the
people of the mainland.’
This is an excellent illustration of how dangerous a thing is a
smattering of philology. The ‘Arabic word Marâ’im’ is absolutely
unknown to the Arabs of Zanzibar. It is evidently coined out of the
dictionary from ‘رَعَمَ observavit occidentem solem.’ I would also ask
how ‘Comazinghi is Arabic?’ (Geography, art. 15). Similarly, we find
(Journal Royal Geographical Society, xix. 190) the Somali ‘Aber’
(error for Habr) derived from the Arabic (Hebrew?) Bar, and explained
by Benú (sons), when it really signifies mother or old woman.
It may be noted that in the Kisawahili of Zanzibar, Mríma is applied
to the coast generally, especially between Mtangata and the Rufiji
River, and it is mostly synonymous with the Arabs’ ‘Bar el Moli,’
whereas Mlíma means a mountain. From the latter comes the diminutive
Kilima, a hillock, also synonymous in composition with the French
mont. It enters into many East African proper names, e. g. Kilima-
njaro, Kilima-ni, &c.
I cannot agree with Messrs Norris and Beke, despite their authority as
linguists, in stripping the national and racial names of their
inflections, e. g. Sagara for Usagara, Zaramo for Uzaramo. Mr Cooley
is equally wrong in stating that the ‘Sawáhily and the Arabs write
Nika, Zeramu, and Gogo.’ The Arabs may, the Wasawahíli do not, thus
blunder. Captain Guillain, I have remarked, is no authority. He
confounds (vol. i. p. 231) the land of Wak-wak (the Semitic Gallas)
with the South African Wamakua; and, worse still, with the ‘Vatouahs.’
And (vol. i. p. 281) he writes the well-known ‘Abban’ of the Somal,
‘Hebban.’ He also unduly neglects the peculiar initial quiescent
consonant M, e. g. (i. p. 456) ‘Foumo’ for ‘Mfumo.’ The bare root-
word, I repeat, is never used by the people, who always qualify it by
a prepositive. This, in our language Brit or Brut may be the
monosyllable upon which Briton and British are built, but it is
evidently barbarous to employ it without suffix. In the Zangian
tongues the prefixes are clearly primitive words; nouns, not as the
Rev. J. L. Doehne explains them in his Zulu-Kafir Dictionary (Cape
Town, 1857), ‘pronouns, in the present state of the language, used as
nominal forms compounded with other words.’
Footnote 31:
‘What Booken (Bukini) means I do not know.’ Wake on the Madecasses.
Journal, Anthrop. Soc. No. 28, xxxi., Dr Krapf (Kisuáheli Grammar, p.
106) uses Bukini as Madagascar generally.
Footnote 32:
Captain Guillain (vol. i. 121—139, et passim) contends, and with much
show of reason, that the Periplus was written after the days of
Ptolemy (A.D. 139 and A.D. 161). ‘Tant de lacunes dans l’œuvre du
grand géographe grec, ne semblent-elles pas assigner à son travail une
place toute naturelle entre les écrits de Marin de Tyr et le Périple?’
Footnote 33:
The daily run (مَجرا) native craft varies from 40 to 50 knots per
diem, and 50 may be assumed as an average. Captain Guillain estimates
it higher, from 48 to 60. Abulfeda gives the Majrá or δρόμος
νυχθημέρος, 100 Hashemi miles = 170 of our geographical miles, here
too high a rate unless aided by currents. Other Arab authors propose
100,000 paces = 100 Roman or Arab miles = 80 geographical miles. The
pilot Theophilus (Ptol. i. 9) rated the day and night run in these
seas at 1000 stadia = 100 miles, or two Ptolemeian degrees; the
Pelusian geographer having, I have said, reduced the degree to 500
instead of 600 stadia.
Footnote 34:
See Part II. chap. 11.
Footnote 35:
Dr Ruschenberger, I know not on what authority, says that the island
is undulated and _crossed_ by three principal ridges, whose most
elevated points are 500 feet high. My information, derived from
hearsay, however, not from actual inspection, assures me that the
waves of ground are disposed north and south.
Footnote 36:
The Bahr el Kharab, or Bad Sea, the mountains El Mulattam (the lashed
or beaten), El Nidameh (of repentance), and El Ajrad (the noisy); the
Mountains of Magnet, and the ‘Blind Billows’ and ‘Enchanted Breakers’
which, says El Masudi, make the Omani sailor of the tribe of Azd sing—
‘O Berberah and Jafuni (Ra’as Hafun), and thy warlock waves!
Jafuni and Berberah and their waves are these which thou seest!’
Footnote 37:
At Latham’s Isle was found guano, which Captain Cogan, I.N., obtained
permission to export. In 1847, however, it was washed away by a ‘Ras
de Marée.’
Footnote 38:
The temperature of the island as observed by French travellers is—
Max. (April 6 A.M. 2 morn.) 89° (F.)—Colonel 88° (F. in shade)
Sykes—
Min. (October, midnight and 6 A.M.) 73° ditto 73°
Mean temperature of the year 79° 15 ditto 79·90 (extreme range
18°-19°)
The following are the results of the evaporating dish:—
Total of month Greatest in one Least in one
day of month. day.
inches. inches. inches.
January, 1857 2·36 0·09 0·04
February ” 2·19 0·10 0·05
March ” 2·49 0·09 0·06
April ” 1·76 0·10 0·03
Footnote 39:
The Consular report of 1859 gives Captain Owen’s variation.
Footnote 40:
Azyab is the classical Arab term for Cæcias (Kaikias) the N.E. wind—
according to Firuzabadi it is the S.E.; Sciron, the N.W., is the Arab
‘Shúrsh’; Lips, the S.W., is ‘Labash’; and Euros, the S.E., ‘Sh’luk’
(scirocco, which is in many places a due east wind). The N.E. is still
commonly called ‘Barráni’; in vulgar Arabic, however, men would say,
Bayn el Shimal w’el Gharb. At Zanzibar the east wind is called by the
Washawahili Zá jú—of above, and the west Phepo Mánde or Umánde—of dew
or mist.
Footnote 41:
I can only suggest that this term is borrowed from the zodiacal sign
Sagittarius.
Footnote 42:
V and F are often interchanged, as Mpumbafu (a fool), and Mfulana (a
youth), for Mpumbavu and Mvulana. Generally the Arabs of Oman and
other incorrect speakers prefer the latter, and the Wasawahili the
former, a sound which does not exist in Arabic.
Footnote 43:
Or Mbua, the B and V being confounded, like F and V. Similarly, in the
Prakrit dialects of Indra, vikh becomes bikh (poison).
Footnote 44:
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.
CHAPTER VI.
VISIT TO THE PRINCE SAYYID MAJID.—THE GOVERNMENT OF ZANZIBAR.
‘Zanzibar is an island of Africa, on the coast of Zanzibar, governed by
a king who is a tributary to the Portuguese.’ REECE’S CYCLOPÆDIA.
We now proceed to wait upon H. H. the ‘Sayyid of Zanzibar and the
Sawahil,’ who would be somewhat surprised to hear that he is ‘tributary
to the Portuguese.’
The palace lies east of, and close to, the fort. It is fronted by a
wharf, and defended by a stuccoed platform mounting eight or nine brass
guns en barbette, intended more for show than use. The building is a
kind of double-storied, white-washed barrack, about 140 feet long,
roofed with dingy green-red tiles, and pierced with a few windows
jealously raised high from the ground; shutters painted tender-green
temper the sun-glare, and a few stunted, wind-wrung trees beautify the
base. Seaward there is a verandah, in which levees are held, and behind
it are stables and sundry outhouses, an oratory and a graveyard, where
runaway slaves, chained together by the neck, lie in the shade. In this
oratory, as in other mosques, are performed the prayers of the two Great
Festivals which, during the late prince’s life, were recited at the Mto-
ni ‘Cascine.’ Here, too, is the large, gable-ended house commenced in
his elder age by the enterprising Sayyid Said, and built, it is said,
after the model of the Dutch factory at Bander Abbas. It was intended
for levees, and for a hall of pleasure. Unhappily, a large chandelier
dropped from the ceiling, seventy masons were crushed by a falling wall;
and other inauspicious omens made men predict that the prince would
never enter the ‘Akhir el Zaman’ (End of Time). It has since been shut
up, like one of our ghost-haunted houses, which it not a little
resembles.
In the centre of the square, opposite the palace, stands the Sayyid’s
flag-staff, where the ‘Bákúr’ is administered, where executions take
place, and where, according to an American traveller,[66] distinguished
criminals are fastened to a pole, and are tied from the ankles to the
throat, ‘till the soul of the dying man is literally squeezed out of its
earthly tenement.’ The author, who visited Zanzibar in ‘the mercanteel,’
was grievously hoaxed by some kind friend. Under Sayyid Said torture was
unknown, death was inflicted according to Koranic law, and only one
mutilation is recorded. I may remark, en passant, that in this part of
the world the two master romancers, Ignorance and Interest, have been
busily at work; and that many a slander rests upon the slenderest
foundation of fact. Adventurers have circulated the most ridiculous
tales. We hear, or rather we have heard, of 300,000 Arab cavalry, and
hordes of steel-clad negroes, possibly a tradition of the ‘Zeng’
(Zanzibarians), who, in the days of the Caliphs, plundered Basrah. We
read of brilliant troops of horse artillery, whose only existence was in
the brain of some unprincipled speculator; and yet this report sent a
battery from Woolwich as a present for the late Sayyid. To the same
category belong the Amazons bestriding war-bul locks, doubtless a
revival of El Masudi, who in our tenth century reported that the ‘King
of Zeng’ commanded, Dahoman-like, an army of soldieresses, mounted, as
are the Kafirs, upon oxen—the Portuguese ‘boi-cavallos.’ Some travellers
have asserted that the Cape tribes learned cattle-riding from Europeans:
but Camoens, making his hero land at the Aguada de S. Braz, after
sailing from the Angra de Santa Elena, expressly states—
‘Embrown’d the women by the burning clime,
On slow-paced oxen riding came along.’—Canto V. 63.
Durbars, or levees, are held three times a day, after dawn-prayers, in
the afternoon, and at night. The ceremonial is simple. The lieges,
passing the two Sepoys on guard at the gate, enter with the usual Moslem
salutation, and after kissing hands take their appointed places. There
is no lord of the basin, lord of the towel, or lord of the pelisse,
deemed indispensable by every petty Persian governor. The ruler is
addressed, Yá Sídí, my lord, and is spoken of by his subjects as
Sayyidna, our prince. Coffee is served, but only at night; and all forms
of intoxicants are jealously banished. The long, bare reception-hall,
ceilinged with heavy polished beams, and paved with alternate slabs of
white and black marble brought from Marseille, boasts only a few dingy
chandeliers, and three rows of common wooden-bottomed chairs. It is,
however, unencumbered with the usual mean knicknacks, French clocks and
bureaux, cheap prints, gaudy china, and pots of neglected artificial
flowers, supposed to adorn the window-sills; nor, after the fashion of
Zanzibarian grandees, are the sides lined with seamen’s chests, stuffed
full of arms, watches, trinkets, cashmere shawls, medicines, and other
such ‘chow chow.’
The Prince received us at the Sadr, or top of the room, with the usual
courtesy. He was then a young man, whose pleasing features and very
light complexion generally resembled those of his father. This is said
to have been the case with the whole family. We found the ‘divan’ of
Egypt and Turkey unaccountably absent, banished by the comfortless
black-wood ‘Kursi’ of Bombay. After a few minutes’ conversation two
chairs were placed before us, bearing a tray of sweetmeats, biscuits,
and glasses of sherbet; of these we ate and drank a mouthful in
acceptance of hospitality, and we were duly pressed to eat. Lemonade and
confitures take the place of strong waters amongst Europeans, and of the
cocoa-nut milk, the mangoes, and the oranges of humbler establishments.
Pipes, however, though offered by the late Sayyid to distinguished
European guests, are never introduced, in deference to Wahhabi
prejudice; nor did we suffer from the rose-water ablutions of which M.
Guillain complains. Feminine eyes did not peep at us from the inner
apartments; but we were fronted by well-dressed slaves who, as we pass
through the crowded outer hall, will steal, if they can, the gilt
tassels from our sword-knots, and who have picked the pockets of guests,
even when dining with their Prince. H. H. the Sayyid Majid took
considerable interest in our projected journey, and suggested that a
field-piece might be useful to frighten the Washenzi (wild men). We left
the palace much pleased with the kindness and cordiality of its owner,
into whose ear, moreover, evil tongues had whispered the very worst
reports.
The Government of Zanzibar is a royal magistracy, the only form of rule
to which the primitive and undisciplinable Eastern Arab will submit.
Whenever a new measure is brought forward by the Sayyid it is invariably
opposed by the chiefs of clans, who assemble and address him more like
an equal than a superior. One of the princes of Maskat corrected this
turbulent feudality after the fashion of Mohammed Ali Pasha and his
Mamlúk Beys; even now a few summary examples might be made to good
purpose. In the days of the late Sayyid’s highest fortunes the most
tattered of Súris would address him, ‘O Saíd!’ and proceed to sit
unbidden in his presence. Similarly, Ibn Batutah, when describing the
Sultan of Oman, Abu Mohammed bin Nebhan, tells us, ‘he has the habit of
sitting, when he would give audience, in a place outside his palace; he
has neither chamberlain nor wazir, and every man, stranger or subject,
is free to approach him.’ Sometimes a noble, when ordered into arrest at
Zanzibar, has collected his friends, armed his slaves, and fortified his
house. One Salim bin Abdallah, who had a gang of 2000 musketeer negroes,
used to wage a petty war with the Sayyid’s servile hosts. It is,
perhaps, the result of climate that these disturbances have never
developed into revolutions.
The ‘ministers’ spoken of by strangers are the Nakhodás of the fleet: by
virtue of a few French or English sentences, they are summoned when
business is to be transacted with Europeans who are not linguists. The
late Sayyid’s only secretary and chief interpreter was Ahmad bin Aman of
Basrah (Bussorah), a half-cast Arab, popularly called by the lieges
‘Wajhayn’ or ‘two faces.’ According to some he was a Sabi or Sabæan,
commonly known as a Christian of Saint John; and men declare that he
began life as a cabin-boy and rose by his unusual astuteness. When any
question of unusual gravity occurs the Sayyid summons the Ulema, the
Shaykhs, and especially the two Kazis, Shaykh Muhiyy el Din, a Lamu
doctor of the Sunni school, and Shaykh Mohammed, an Abázi. Causes tried
by ecclesiastics generally depend upon the extent of bribery; but there
is always an appeal to the Prince, or in his absence to the Governor.
The Kazis punish by imprisonment more or less severe. The stocks are set
up in every plantation; the fetters are heavy, and there is, if wanted,
a ponderous iron ring with long spikes, significantly termed in Persian
the ‘Tauk i Ta’at,’ collar of obedience. Instant justice is the order of
the day, and the crooked stick (bákúr) plays a goodly and necessary
part; how necessary we see in the present state of Syria, whence the
‘Tanzimat’ constitution has banished the only penalty that ruffians
fear. From ten to fifty blows are usually inflicted: in the Gulf, when
the bastinado is to be administered with the Niháyet el Azáb (extreme
rigour), half-a-dozen men work upon the culprit’s back, belly, and
sides, and a hundred strokes suffice to kill him. Severe examples are
sometimes necessary, though chastisement is on the whole wild and
unfrequent. Zanzibar town is subject to fires, originating with the
slaves, often in drunkenness, more often for plunder; and this induced
the late Sayyid to forbid the building of cajan ‘tabernacles’ (Makuti or
Banda-ni) upon the house-tops. His orders were obeyed for four months,
an unusually long time; and at last Europeans, in consequence of the
danger which threatened them, were compelled personally to interfere
with the severest preventive treatment. The Prince alone has the power
of pronouncing a capital sentence; and, as usual in Moslem countries,
where murder is a private, not a public, offence, the criminal is
despatched by the relatives of the slain. Death may be inflicted by the
master of the house upon a violator of domicile, gallant, or thief; the
sword is drawn, and the intruder is at once cut down. Fines and
confiscations, which have taken the place of the Koranic mutilation, are
somewhat common, especially when impudent frauds are practised upon the
Prince’s property. Confinement in the fort, I have said, is severe, but
not so much feared as at Maskat, whose rock dungeon is an Aceldama; I
saw something of the kind at Fernando Po. Criminals have a wholesome
horror of being the ruler’s guest, yet they sometimes escape by the
silver key, and, once upon the mainland, they may laugh at justice. I
heard of a Banyan who, despite being double-ironed, managed to ‘make
tracks.’
The military force of Zanzibar is not imposing. In 1846, throughout the
African possessions of the Sayyid, the permanent force was only 400 men,
namely, about 80 at Zanzibar, 250 at Mombasah, 30 at Lamu, 25 at Patta,
6 to 10 at Kilwa, and sundry pairs at Makdishu and other places; after
that time they were doubled and even trebled. The ‘regulars’ consist of
a guard of honour, a ‘guardia nobile’ of a dozen serviles habited in
cast-off Sepoy uniforms, collected from different corps of the Bombay
army: one musket carries a bayonet, the other a stick. The cost of new
equipments was once asked by the late Sayyid; after glancing at the
total, he exclaimed that the guard itself would not fetch half that sum.
The irregular force is more considerable, and represents the Hayduques
of old Eastern Turkey, the Arnauts or Albanians of Egypt, the Bashi-
Buzuks of El Hejaz, and the Sayyáreh and Zabtiyyeh of modern Syria. The
so-called Baloch are vagrants and freebooters collected from Northern
Arabia and from the southern seaboard of Persia, Mekran, and Kilat: when
the Prince required extra levies he rigged out a vessel and recruited at
Guadel or at Makallah. He preferred the Aryan,[67] as being more
amenable to discipline than the Semite: moreover, the Arab clansman,
like the Highlander of old, though feudally bound to follow his
suzerain, requires the order of his immediate chief, and the latter,
when most wanted, is uncommonly likely to rat or to revolt. The
mercenaries of Zanzibar nominally receive $2 to $3 per mensem, with
rations: practically, the money finds its way more or less into the
pocket of the Jemadar or C. O. The fort is here garrisoned by some 80 of
these men and their negro slaves: the former are equal to double the
number of Arabs in the field, and behind walls they are a match for a
nation of savages. Police by day and night patrols are much wanted at
Zanzibar, where every man must be his own ‘Robert.’ The slaves are
unruly subjects; even those of the fort will commit an occasional
murder, and the suburbs are still far from safe during the dark hours.
The garrison is securely locked up, and in case of most urgent need no
aid is procurable before morning.
[Illustration: WASIN TOWN.]
I may now offer a catalogue raisonné of the late Sayyid’s fleet, which
was intended to keep up the maritime prestige of his predecessors, the
Yu’rabi Imams. The Shah Alam, a double-banked frigate of 1100 tons,
carrying 50 guns (45, says M. Guillain, i. 584), was built at Mazagon in
1820, and now acts guardship, moored off Mto-ni. The ‘Caroline’ (40
guns), the best of the squadron, and built at Bombay, was degraded to be
a merchantman, in which category she visited Marseille (1849): she has,
however, again opened her ports after returning from Maskat. The strong
and handsome ‘Sultana’ was wrecked near Wasin when returning from India.
The ‘Salihi’ was lost in the Persian Gulf; the ‘Sulayman Shah’ and the
‘Humayun Shah,’ in the Gulf of Bengal. The ‘Piedmontese,’ 36 guns, built
at Cochin in 1836, might be repaired at an expense of £10,000. The
‘Victoria’ frigate (40), teak-built in the Mazagon dockyard, is still
sea-worthy. The ‘Rahmani’ corvette (24 guns), is a fast-sailing craft
with great breadth of beam, hailing from Cochin: she was lately fitted
out for a recruiting vessel to Hazramaut. The ‘Artemise’ corvette,
formerly of 18 guns, now a jackass frigate with 10 guns _en barbette_,
was built at Bombay of fine Daman teak, and was lately repaired there,
at an expense of 22,000 Co.’s Rs. Called Colonel Hamerton’s yacht,
because always placed at his disposal by the late Sayyid, she will carry
him on his last voyage, accompanying us to Bagamoyo upon the mainland.
She is commanded by the sailing-master of the fleet, Mohammed bin
Khamis, who has studied navigation and modern languages in London—of him
more anon. The lighter craft are the ‘Salihi’ barque (300 tons), built
in America about 1840, condemned and repaired in Bombay; and the ‘Taj’
brig (125 tons), launched at Cochin in 1829, and originally intended for
a yacht. Besides there is a mosquito squadron composed of some 20
‘batelas,’ each armed with 2 to 6 guns, which serve equally for cabotage
and for campaigning.
The useless, tawdry ‘Prince Regent,’ presented by H. B. Majesty’s
Government to the late Sayyid, was by him passed over in 1840 to the
Governor-General of India. It was sold at Calcutta, and for many years
it was, as a transport, the terror of the eastern soldier. The Sayyid
could not pray amongst the ‘idols’ of gilding and carving; he saw
pollution in every picture, and his Arabs supposed the royal berth to be
the Tábút Hazrat Isa—Our Lord’s coffin. Instead of this article he
wished to receive the present of a steamer, but political and other
objections prevented.[68] Eastern rulers also will not pay high and
regular salaries; and without European engineers every trip would have
cost a boiler. Repairs were impossible at Zanzibar; and, as actually
happened to Mohammed Ali’s expensive machinery in Egypt, the finest work
would have been destroyed by mere neglect. A beautiful model of a steam-
engine was once sent out from England: it was allowed to rust unopened
in the Sayyid’s ‘godowns.’ Still the main want of the Island was rapid
communication. Sometimes nine months elapsed before an answer came from
Bombay: letters and parcels—including my manuscript—were often lost; and
occasionally, after a long cruise, they returned to their starting-
point, much damaged by time and hard usage. The Bombay Post-office
clerks thinking, I presume, that Zanzibar is in Arabia, shipped their
bags to Bushire and Maskat, some thousand miles N. West instead of S.
West of Bombay, and viâ Halifax—half round the world—was often the
speediest way of communication with London. No wonder that letters were
delayed from 7 to 9 months, causing great loss to the trade, and
inconvenience to the authorities. Her Majesty’s proclamation was
published in India on November 1, 1858; the Prince of Zanzibar was
obliged with a copy only in March, 1859. A line of steamers from the
Cape and other places was much talked of; it would certainly obviate
many difficulties, but the Zanzibar merchants who had a snug monopoly
were dead against free-trade and similar appliances of modern
civilization. The French Company then running vessels from Mauritius to
Aden, proposed to touch at Zanzibar if permitted to engage on their own
terms ‘ouvriers libres.’ The liberal offer was declined with thanks.
The Royal Treasury is managed with an extreme simplicity. When the
Prince wants goods or cash he writes an order upon his collector of
customs; the draft is kept as an authority, and the paper is produced at
the general balancing of accounts, which takes place every third or
fourth year. I found it impossible to obtain certain information
concerning the gross amount of customs, and inquiry seemed only to lead
further from the truth. The ruler, the officers under him, and the
traders all have several interests in keeping the secret.
The Custom House is in an inchoate condition; it makes no returns, and
exports being free, it requires neither manifest nor port clearings from
ships about to sail. The customs are farmed out by the Sayyid, and 10
years ago their value was $142,000, or 38 per cent. less than is now
paid. The last contractor was a Cutch Banyan named Jayaram Sewji. The
‘ijáreh’ or lease was generally for five years, and the annual amount
was variously stated at $70,000 to $150,000, in 1859 it had risen to
$196,000 to $220,000.[69] He had left the Island before Sayyid Said’s
death, and though summoned by the Prince Majid, there was little chance
of his committing the folly of obedience. His successor was one Ladha
Damha, also a Bhattia Hindu, and a man of the highest respectability.
These renters declared that they did not collect the amount which they
paid for the privilege: on the other hand, they could privately direct
their caste fellows, do what they pleased with all unprotected by
treaty, and having a monopoly as tradesmen between the wholesale white
merchants and the petty dealers of the coast, they soon became wealthy.
Land cess and port dues were unknown at Zanzibar. The principal source
of revenue was the Custom House, where American and European goods,
bullion excepted, paid the 5 per cent. ad valorem provided by commercial
treaties. Cargo from India paid 5·25, the fractions serving to salary
Custom House officials. The import was levied on all articles
transshipped in any ports of the Zanzibar dominions, unless the cargo
was landed only till the vessel could be repaired. Of course the tariff
was complicated in the extreme, ‘custom’ amongst orientals being the
‘rule of thumb’ further west. The farmers appointed all subordinate
officials, and as these received insufficient salaries, smuggling,
especially in the matters of ivory and slaves, came to their assistance.
The Wasawahili Makhadim, or serviles, contributed an annual poll-tax of
$1 per head, and this may have amounted to 10,000 to 14,000 crowns per
annum. The maximum total of the late Sayyid’s revenue was generally
stated as follows—
Maskat (customs) German crowns $180,000
Mattra (Matrah) 60,000
Maskat and Mattra (octroi from the interior) 20,000
Average receipts from other parts of Africa 20,000
and Arabia
Zanzibar (customs and poll-tax) 160,000
—-—-—
Total in German crowns $440,000
In 1811 Captain Smee computes the revenue of Zanzibar at $60,000 per
annum, adding, however, that he considers it to be much more. In 1846 M.
Guillain gives the revenue arising from customs on coffee and cloves,
Indian rice and melted butter, and divers taxes on shops, indigo, dyes,
thread-makers, silk-spinners, and so forth, as follows—
Total of Oman $136,600
” African dominions 349,000
—-——
Grand total $485,600 = 2,500,000 francs.
The author, who appears to have been ably assisted in his inquiries by
M. Loarer, also states that in the days of Sayyid Said’s father the
farming of the customs at Zanzibar represented $25,000, from which it
gradually rose to $50,000; $60,000; $80,000; $100,000; $105,000;
$120,000; $147,000; $157,000; and $175,000 in 1846. We may safely fix
the revenue in 1857 at a maximum of £90,000 per annum. The expenses of
navy, army, and ‘civil service,’ and the personal expenditure of the
Prince were easily defrayed out of this sum, whilst the surplus must
have been considerable. The income might easily have been increased, and
the outlay have been diminished by improving the administration; but the
Sayyid had ‘some time before his death reached that epoch of life when
age and weariness determine men to consider the status quo as the
supreme wisdom.’
Under the new régime affairs did not improve. An Indian firm farmed the
customs throughout the Zanzibar dominions for the annual sum of
$190,000, and the following is the official statement of the revenues
derived by ‘His Highness the Sultan,’[70] in 1863-4.
Customs dues $190,000
Pemba dues 6,000
Poll-tax of Makhádim 10,000
Private clove plantations 15,000
—-—-—
Total $221,000
Deduct subsidy paid to Maskat 40,000
—-—-—
Balance $181,000
The income, thus sadly fallen off, was hardly enough for the necessaries
of the ruler, and left no margin available for improvements or public
works. At last the government, which by treaty is unjustly debarred from
imposing export or harbour dues, or even from increasing the import
duties, devised a modified system of land-tax, charging 5 per cent. per
annum on cloves, and 2 pice (= 3/4_d._) on mature cocoa-trees whose
estimated average value is $1. This, if levied, would produce about
$40,000 per annum.
Since that time prosperity has returned to the Island. The return of
imports by the Custom House rose from £245,981 in 1861-2 to £433,693 in
1867-8.[71] One half of the trade was in the hands of English subjects,
and the Committee remarks that Zanzibar is the chief market of the world
for ivory and copal; that the trade in hides, oils, seeds, and dyes is
on the increase, whilst cotton, sugar, and indigo, to which may be added
cocoa, loom in the distance.
-----
Footnote 66:
Recollections of Majunga, Zanzibar, Muscat, Aden, Mokha, Aden, and
other Eastern Ports. Salem: George Creamer, 1854.
Footnote 67:
It is hardly necessary to correct in these days the error of Carsten
Niebuhr, who made the ‘Belludges’ (Baloch) a tribe of Arabs. The
Baloch mercenaries will be found further noticed in Part II. chap. vi.
Footnote 68:
Wellsted’s Travels in Arabia, vol. ii. p. 403. This author exposes,
without seeming to know that he was doing so, the selfish and short-
sighted policy of the H. E. I. Company which wanted a squadron
subsidiary to its own.
Footnote 69:
The consular report of 1860 gives an aggregate value of the port trade
at £1,667,577, viz.: imports £908,911, and exports (information
furnished by the mercantile community, and evidently much understated)
£758,666.
Footnote 70:
Commercial Reports, received at the Foreign Office from H. M.’s
Consuls, between July 1, 1863, and June 30, 1864. London, Harrison and
Co. In 1862 the revenue of Maskat was computed to reach the very
respectable cipher of £1,065,640 per annum.
Footnote 71:
Report of Select Committee appointed to inquire into the whole
question of the slave trade on the East coast of Africa.
CHAPTER VII.
A CHRONICLE OF ZANZIBAR.—THE CAREER OF THE LATE ‘IMAM,’ SAYYID SAID.
‘Mais, comme le livre n’est point une œuvre de fantaisie, comme il
traite de questions sérieuses, et qu’il s’addresse à des intérêts
durables, je me résigne, pour lui, à l’inattention du moment, et
j’attendrai patiemment pour que l’avenir lui ramène son heure, lui
refasse, pour ainsi dire, une nouvelle opportunité.’—M. GUILLAIN.
There is little of interest in the annals of Oman and of her colonies.
Fond of genealogy, the modern Arabs are perhaps the most incurious of
Orientals in the matter of history: they ignore the past, they disregard
the present, and they have a superstitious aversion to speak of the
future. Lawless and fanatical, treacherous, blood-thirsty and eternally
restless, the Omani races, whose hand is still against every man, have
converted their chronicles into a kind of Newgate Calendar, whilst the
multitude of personages that appear upon the scene, and the perpetual
rising and falling of Imams, princes, and grandees, offer to the reader
a mere string of proper names. Ample details concerning Maskat will be
found in the pages of Capt. Hamilton, Carsten Niebuhr, Wellsted, and
Salíl ibn Razík,[72] to mention no others. Zanzibar has ever been, since
historic times, connected with Oman, whose fortunes she has reflected;
the account of the distant dependency given by travellers is, therefore,
as might be expected, scanty and obscure.
At an early period the merchants and traders of Yemen frequented the
Island, and exchanged, as we read in the Periplus and Ptolemy, their
homes of barren rock and sand for the luxuriant wastes of Eastern
Africa. If tradition be credible, their primitive settlements were Patta
(Bette), Lamu, and the Mrima fronting these islets; and here to the
present day the dialect of their descendants has remained the purest.
Themselves pagans, they lived amongst the heathenry, borrowed their
language, as the Arabs and the Baloch still do, intermarried with them,
and begot the half-caste Wasawahili, or coast population. In proof that
these were the lords of the land, the late Sultan Ahmad, chief of the
Shirazi, or free tribe of the mulattoes, received annual presents from
the Arab Sayyid of Zanzibar. When the former died Muigni Mku, his wazir,
or brother—here all fellow-countrymen are brothers—succeeded, in default
of other heirs, to the position of monarch retired from business. He is
a common-looking negroid, who lives upon the proceeds of a plantation
and periodical presents: he is not permitted to appear as an equal at
the Sayyid’s Darbar, and it is highly improbable that he will ever come
to his own again.
The Sawáhil or Azania continued to acknowledge Arab and Persian
supremacy till the appearance of the Portuguese upon the coast. D. Vasco
da Gama passed Zanzibar Island without sighting it when first bound
Indiawards, and authors differ upon the subject of his return voyage.
The historian Toão de Barros (i. 4, 11) relates that the expedition made
its land-fall from India below Magadoxo (Makdishu or Maka’ad el Shaat,
‘the sitting-place of the sheep’),[73] beat off a boat attack from
‘Pató’ (Patta), visited Melinde, Mozambique, and the Aguada de S. Braz,
and doubled the Cape of Storms on March 20, 1499. Goes[74] declares that
da Gama, after touching at Makdishu and Melinde, arrived at Zanzibar on
February 28, and was supplied by its ruler with provisions, presents,
and specimens of country produce. The island is described as large and
fertile, with groves of fine trees, producing good fruit, two others,
‘Pomba’ (Pemba) and ‘Mofia’ (our Monfia and the Arab Mafiyah), lying in
its vicinity. These settlements were governed by Moorish princes ‘of the
same caste as the King of Melinde’—doubtless hereditary Moslem Shaykhs
and Sayyids. The population is represented as being in ‘no great force,
but carrying on a good trade with Mombassa for Guzerat calicoes and with
Sofala for gold.’ The ‘King of Melinde’ made a name in Europe. Rabelais
commemorates Hans Carvel, the King of Melinda’s jeweller, and (in Book
I. chap. v.) we read, ‘thus did Bacchus conquer Ind; thus philosophy,
Melinde,’—meaning that the Portuguese taught their African friends more
drinking than wisdom. João de Barros (ii. 4. 2) informs us that the
Chief of Zanzibar was ‘da linhagem dos Reys de Mombaça, nossos imigos.’
The inhabitants were ‘white Moors’ (Arabs from Arabia) and black Moors
or Wasawahili; the former are portrayed as a slight people, scantily
armed, but clothed in fine cottons bought at Mombasah from merchants of
Cambaya. Their women were adorned with jewels, with Sofalan gold, and
with silver obtained in exchange for provisions, from the people of St
Lawrence’s Island (Madagascar). And here we may remark that the Arab
settlements in East Africa, visited by the Portuguese at the end of the
15th century, showed generally a civilization and a refinement fully
equal to, if not higher than, the social state of the European voyagers.
The latter, expecting to find savages like the naked Kafirs of the
South, must not have been a little surprised to receive visits from the
chiefs of Mozambique and Melinde, men clad in gold, embroidered silks,
velvets, and ‘crimson damask, lined with green satin;’ armed with rich
daggers and swords sheathed in silver scabbards, seated on arm-chairs,
and attended by a suite of some 20 richly-dressed Arabs. The modest
presents offered by the Europeans to these wealthy princelets, whose
women adorned themselves with pearls and other precious stones, must
have given a mean idea of Portuguese civilization. And even in the
present day the dominions of the ‘barbarous Arab’ are superior in every
way to the miserable colonies on the West African coast, which represent
Christian and civilized Europe.
Four years afterwards (1503) Ruy Lourenço Ravasco, a Cavalleiro da Casa
d’ El Rey, sailing with D. Antonio de Saldanha, cruized off ‘Zemzibar,’
as his countrymen called Zanzibar, and in two months captured twenty
rich ships, laden with ambergris, ivory, tortoiseshell, wax, honey,
rice, coir, and silk and cotton stuffs. This captain appears, like most
of his fellows, to have been a manner of pirate: he did not restore them
till ransom was paid. ‘El Rey,’ still friendly to the Portuguese, sent a
spirited remonstrance, when the insolence of the reply forced him to
take hostile measures. The Arabs manned their canoes with some 4000 men;
but two launches, well-armed with cannon, killed at the first discharge
34 men and put the rest to flight. Thus the Malik or Regulus was
compelled by Ravasco to pay an annual tribute of 100 gold miskals in
token of submission to the greedy and unprincipled Dom Manuel. ‘The
conquered pays the conquest!’ exclaims with Christian emphasis the
venerable Osorio. Portugal now began to gather gold from Sofala to
Makdishu; ‘Wagerage,’ the chief of Melinde, contributed every year 1500
wedges (ingots) of the precious metal, and the insolence of the victors
must have made the good old man deeply regret the welcome and the
Godspeed which he had bestowed upon the exploratory expedition.
The Portuguese having wrested Kilwa and Mombasah from its Arab chiefs,
D. Duarte de Lemos, appointed (A.D. 1508) by the King Governor of the
‘Provinces of Æthiopia and Arabia,’ attacked successively Mafiyah,
Zanzibar, and Pemba, for failing in the paramount duty of paying
tribute. Mafiyah submitted, the people of Pemba escaped to Mombasah,
leaving nothing in their houses, and Zanzibar resisted, but the town was
taken and plundered. The Shaykh retired northwards, and his subjects
fled to the bush, ‘depois de bem esfarrapados na carne con a ponta da
lança, e espada dos nossos’—after being well pierced in the flesh by the
lance-points and the sword-blades of our men—says the chronicler. From
this time probably we may date the pointed arches that still remain upon
the Island, and the foundation of the fort, which is popularly
attributed to the ‘Faranj.’ Mombasah and Pemba were presently occupied
by the Portuguese; and the ruins of their extensive barracoons,
citadels, and churches still argue ancient splendour. In other places
upon the seaboard I found deep and carefully sunk wells, stone
enclosures, and coralline temples, whilst vestiges of European buildings
may be traced, it is said, contrary to popular opinion, many days’
journey inland.
We read little about Lusitanianized Zanzibar, where the insalubrity of
the climate must have defended the interior, and even parts of the
coast, from the spoiler. In _A.D._ 1519 the Moors massacred certain
shipwrecked sailors belonging to the expedition of D. Jorje de
Albuquerque. Three years afterwards the Shaykh, or, as he styled
himself, the Sultan[75] of Zanzibar, who, after submitting to Ravasco,
had acknowledged himself a vassal of D. Manuel, fitted out, with the aid
of the factors João de Mata and Pedro de Castro, a small expedition
against the Quirimba islandry, who had allied themselves with the
hostile tribes about Mombasah. The attack was successful, the chief town
was pillaged and burnt, and terror of the invader brought all the
neighbouring islets to terms. In 1528-9 the Viceroy of India, Nuno da
Cunha, being about to attack Mombasah, was supplied with provisions by
the Chief, and the Portuguese presently reduced the coast to a single
rule whose centres were successively Kilwa, Sofala, and Mozambique. East
Africa then became one of the four great governments depending upon the
vice-royalty of India; the three others being Malacca, Hormuz, and
Ceylon.
In this state Zanzibar remained till the close of the next century.
When, however, Pedro Barrato de Rezende, Secretary to the Viceroy, Count
of Linhares, wrote his ‘Breve Tratado’ on the Portuguese colonies of
India and East Africa (1635), the Island had ceased to be vassal and
tributary, but the Sultan remained friendly to Europeans. Many of the
latter occupied with their families rich plantations; Catholic worship
was protected, and there was a church in which officiated a brother of
the order of St Austin. There was the usual massacre of the Portuguese,
and expulsion of the survivors in imitation of Mombasah, about 1660; and
the Islanders, doubting their power to procure independence, applied for
assistance to the Arabs.
The reign of the Yu’rabi of Oman, a clan of the great Ghafiri tribe,
began as follows. The Imam, Sultan bin Sayf bin Malik el Yu’rabi, the
second of the family, having recovered Maskat (April 23, 1659), and
Matrah, created a navy which added Kang, Khishm, Hormuz, Bahrayn, and
Mombasah (1660) to the Arabian possessions left by his ancestors. After
investing Bombay this doughty chief died in A.D. 1668 or in 1669. His
son, Sayf bin Sultan, after defeating an elder brother, Belárab, became
the third Imam of the house of Yu’rabi, and summoned to submission the
petty chiefs on the eastern mainland of Africa. Between A.D. 1680 and
1698, the powerful squadron of the warlike Moor drove the Portuguese
from Zanzibar, Kilwa, Pemba, and Mombasah, where he established as
Governor Nasir bin Abdillah el Mazru’i, the first of the great family of
that name. He failed only at Mozambique. Arabs still relate the legend
how having closely invested the fort they were undermining the wall,
when a Banyan gave traitorous warning to the besieged. Pans of water
ranged upon the ground showed by the trembling fluid the direction of
the tunnel; a countermine was sprung with fatal effect, and the
assailants, retreating in confusion to their shipping, raised the
siege.[76] The squadron, however, pursued its course as far south as the
Comoros and Bukini (Madagascar, or rather the northern portion of the
Island), whence, hearing of the ruler’s death, it returned home. When
the Island became Arab property the Wasawahili fled to the ‘bush’: they
presently consented to render personal service, or to purchase exemption
by annually paying $2 per head.
Sayf bin Sultan was succeeded, in A.D. 1711, by his eldest son, Sultan
bin Sayf, who defeated with his fleet of 24 to 28 ships, carrying 80
guns, the soldiers of Abbas III. and of Nadir Shah. After his decease
the chieftainship of Oman was seized by a distant relative, Mohammed bin
Nasir, Lord of Jabrin, who according to some, first assumed, according
to others, resumed, the title of ‘Imam,’ making himself priest as well
as prince, like him of Sana’a in Yemen. It has ever been a Kháriji, and
especially a Bayází tenet, that any pious man, not only those belonging
to the Kuraysh or the Prophet’s tribe, might rise to the rank of
Pontiff. In A.D. 751 they were powerful enough to elect Julandah ben
Mas’úd, but the succeeding dynasty rejected the term. The usurped rule
was recovered after his decease (A.D. 1728) by Sayf el Asdi, a younger
son of Sultan bin Sayf: this indolent debauchee being shut up in Maskat
by a cousin, Sultan bin Murshid—some corrupt his father’s name to
Khurshid—applied for assistance to that Nadir Shah, whom his more
patriotic father had successfully resisted. In 1746 the Persians, aided
by intestine Arab divisions, soon conquered Oman: Sultan bin Murshid
slew himself in despair, and Sayf el Asdi, duped by his allies, died of
grief in his dungeon at Rustak. The latter city was in those days the
ordinary residence of the Imams; in fact, a kind of cathedral town as
well as capital.
The power now fell from the hands of the Yu’rabis (Ghafiris) into the
grasp of their rivals, the Bu Saidi (Hinawis). These ancient lords of
Oman claim direct descent from Kahtan (Joetan), great-grandfather of
Himyar, founder of the Southern Arabs, and brother to Saba, who built in
Yemen the city that bore his name: the stock is held to be noble as any
in the Peninsula. Oman remained under foreign dominion, paying tribute
to, and owning the rule of, Nadir Shah, till the Chief of Sohar, Said
bin Ahmad el Bu Saídí, struck the blow for freedom. Five years
afterwards (A.D. 1744) his son, Ahmad bin Saíd, artfully recovering
Maskat from Mirza Taky Khan, the Governor of Fars, who had revolted
against Nadir Shah, expelled the Persians from Oman. When laying the
foundation of the present dynasty he assumed the title of ‘Sayyid’
(temporal ruler); persuaded the Mufti to elect him ‘Imam’ (prince-
priest), and was confirmed in his dignities by the Sherif of Meccah.
Colonel Pelly (p. 184, Journal Royal Geographical Society, 1865) gives a
somewhat different account—‘It appears that the family of the Imams of
Muskat were originally Sayeds of a village, named Rowtheh, in the Sedair
immediately below the Towaij hills. The founder of the family was Saeed.
His son’s name was Ahmed. They came to Oman, and took service under the
dominant tribe called Yarebeh. Subsequently they obtained possession of
the strong hill-fort called Ilazm, in the neighbourhood of Rostak.
Eventually they became the rulers of Oman, and changed their sect from
that of Sunnee to Beyãthee.’ Ahmad allied himself with the ex-royal
Yu’rabis, by marrying a daughter of Sayf el Asdi. After crushing sundry
rebellions, he plundered Diu (A.D. 1760), and massacred the population,
a disaster from which the great port and fort never recovered. He then
sent an army of 12,000 men against the Ghafiri of Ra’as el Khaymah, who
had assisted the Persians to attack the Kawasim, and against the Nuaymi,
a powerful clan dwelling south of Sharjah on the Pirate Coast. His
success was complete; Khurfakan, Khasab, Ramsah, Ra’as el Khaymah,
Jezirat el Hamrah, Sharjah, and Fasht, all in turn submitted to him. In
A.D. 1785 he personally visited Mombasah, and by his lion-like demeanour
he secured its submission.
Dying shortly afterwards, Ahmad bin Said left the government to his son,
Said bin Ahmad, who was declared Imam, but was confined till the date of
his death, in 1802, to Rustak and its territory by his younger brother,
the ambitious and warlike Sultan bin Ahmad. This prince occupied the
islands of Khishm, Hormuz, and Bahrayn; he attempted to protect his
commerce from the pirates of Julfar and Ra’as el Khaymah, especially the
Kawasim, in our hooks called Jowasmee:[77] these Algerines of the East
had now become Wahhabis, and were hacked by all the influence of Saúd,
Lord of Daraiyyah. After vainly attempting to obtain aid from the Pasha
of Baghdad, Sultan bin Ahmad was attacked whilst sailing to Bandar Abbas
by five ships of the Kawasim, and was shot in the mêlée on Nov. 18,
1804.
This decease brought to power the late Sayyid Said,[78] the second son
born to Sayyid Sultan bin Ahmad in A.D. 1790. His maternal uncle, Sayyid
Bedr bin Sayf, and the Wahhabi Chief, Saúd, enabled him to defeat Sultan
Kays bin Ahmad of Sohar, another uncle who aimed at usurpation; but the
danger was shifted, not destroyed. At length, in A.D. 1806, Sayyid
Said’s aunt, the Bihi Mauza, daughter of the Imam Ahmad, and popularly
known as the Bint el Imam, determined that Sayyid Bedr must be slain at
a Darbar. Sayyid Said, a youth of 16, was unwilling, but the strong-
minded woman—in every noble Arab family there is at least one—prevailed,
and on July 31 the dangerous protector whilst descending the stairs, was
struck in the back by his nephew’s dagger. Sayyid Bedr sprang from the
window, and mounted a stirrupless horse which stood below, when he was
wounded with a spear; the ‘Imam’s daughter,’ with a blood-thirstiness
truly feminine, cheering on the assassins, till after riding half a mile
on the highway from Birkat to Sohar, he fell from his animal and was
speedily despatched. The young prince was, they say, so strongly
affected by the scene, that through life he could hardly be persuaded to
order a death.[79]
Thus Saíd became, with the consent of his elder brother, Sayyid Salim,
an independent ruler, and the fourth of his dynasty, the Bú Saídí. His
proper title was ‘Sayyid,’ which in Oman and amongst the Eastern Arabs
means a chief or temporal ruler, whereas ‘Sherif’ is a descendant of the
Prophet. Many Anglo-Indian writers ignore this distinction. ‘Imam’ is an
ecclesiastical title, signifying properly the man who takes the lead in
public prayer, and it demands both study and confirmation: in sectarian
theology it is the hereditary head of El Islam. The ‘Imam of
Mascat,’[80] therefore, never followed the practice of his predecessors.
His acclamation took place on Sept. 14, 1806. He was immediately
involved in troubles with Mombasah, Makdishu, and the unruly Arab
settlements of the East African Coast. His possessions in Oman also were
invaded and overrun by the Wahhabis, under Saúd who died in 1814, and
afterwards under his son Abdullah: these energetic Puritans converted,
by much fighting and more intrigue, several tribes to ‘Unitarianism’;
the land was at once fettered with a five per cent. Zakát (annual
tribute), of which Maskat paid 12,000 German crowns, and Sohar $8000.
Yet his valour and conduct gradually raised Sayyid Saíd to wealth and
importance, and the warlike operations of Mohammed Ali Pasha against the
Wahhabis gave him power to throw off the yoke. His personal gallantry in
the disastrous affair with the Benu Bú ’Ali (1820-21), won him the
praise of India, and the gift of a sword of honour from the Governor-
General. His tolerance, so unusual in Arabia, the patriarchal character
of his rule, and his love of progress, as shown by his concessions to
European and Hindu traders, and by a squadron of three frigates, four
corvettes, two sloops, seven brigs, and twenty armed merchant vessels,
entitled him to a place amongst civilized powers. With England he became
an especial favourite, after he had entered into the Palmerstonian views
upon the subject of slave exportation. He began by sacrificing, it is
said, 100,000 crowns annually, and he declined the various equivalents,
£2000 for three years, and other paltry sums offered in A.D. 1822, as a
compensation by Captain Moresby, R.N. His friendship with us, indeed,
cost him dear: more than once he threatened that if other concessions
were demanded by the unconscionable abolitionist he would escape the
incessant worry by abdicating and retiring to Meccah.
Sayyid Saíd first left Maskat for Zanzibar in 1828, and finally in 1832,
justly offended by our refusing to assist him, according to treaty,
against Sayyid Hamud bin Azran bin Kays, the rebel chief of Sohar. Our
policy on this occasion is generally supposed to have been prompted by
Captain, afterwards Colonel, Sam. Hennell, British Resident at Bushire.
This official, acting doubtless under orders, and living in constant
dread of ‘breaking the peace of the Gulf,’ preserved it by yielding
every point to every man; and the ignoble attitude which, amongst a
warlike race, provoked only contempt, laid the foundation of the last
Persian war. It was on a par with the orders which, under pain of
dismissal, bound the officers commanding the Honourable East India
Company’s cruisers in the Persian Gulf not to open fire upon a squadron
of pirates unless they began the cannonade; and which caused the capture
by boarding of more than one man-of-war.
Zanzibar had, since its conquest by Oman, been governed by an officer
appointed from Arabia. Sayyid Saíd found the town a line of cajan huts,
with the fort commanding the harbour, which served only for an
occasional pirate or slaver. Till A. D. 1822 some 15 or 16 Spaniards and
Portuguese ranged these seas, committing every kind of atrocity: they
were dangerous outside the port, and when at anchor they were guilty of
every crime; as many as three and four have been killed in a single
night, and a priest was kept for the purpose of shriving the stabbed and
burying the slain. These, however, were the days of large profits. The
share of one Arab merchant in a single adventure was worth $218,000—he
now (1857) begs his bread.
Sayyid Saíd at Once began to encourage foreign residents. With a
remarkable liberality he at once broke up the monopoly of trade which
the Wasawahili had preserved for eight centuries, including the 200
years when it was perpetuated by the avidity and the fanaticism of the
Portuguese. The United States, who being first in the market for ivory,
copal, and hides, had dispersed their cottons and hardwares throughout
Eastern Africa, concluded with him, in Sept. 1835, an advantageous
treaty, and established, about the end of 1837, a trading consulate at
his court. Four years afterwards (December, 1841) Lieut.-Colonel
Hamerton was directed to make Zanzibar his head-quarters as ‘H. B.
Majesty’s Consul, and H. E. I. Company’s Agent in the dominions of H. H.
the Imaum.’ Captain Romain Desfossés, the Mentor of the Prince de
Joinville, and commanding the naval division of Bourbon and Madagascar,
escorted by a squadron, signed a treaty on November, 1844. He was
accompanied by a consul without a chancellier, and the former at once
receiving his exequatur, began residence.
The Sayyid was unfortunate in sundry attempts to subjugate the Zanzibar
Coast: his conduct of war argued scant skill as a general, but he never
forfeited his well-earned favour for personal gallantry. With the true
Arab mania for territorial conquest, he eventually succeeded in flying
his flag at all the ports that belonged to the Yu’rabi Imams, and which
had descended, by the irregular right of succession, to his ancestor,
Ahmad bin Saíd the Hinawi. The Mazara’ (Mazrui) clan, alias the Arabo-
Mombasah princes, a turbulent and hot-tempered feudality, who, after the
massacre of the Portuguese, had been allowed, by Sayf bin Sultan, to
retain the city on condition of sending occasional presents and of doing
certain baronial services, refused (A.D. 1822) allegiance to the Ayyal
Bú Saíd. Captain Vidal, R.N., finding this important place threatened by
Zanzibar, accepted an application from the citizens, who had hoisted the
British flag; advised that they should be received as protégés, and
persuaded the claimant to withdraw. The Sayyid remonstrated against
these measures with the Bombay Government; and the ministers of the
Crown to whom the question was referred, eventually removed our
establishment.
Sayyid Saíd, early in 1828, sailed with a squadron carrying 1200 men, to
attack the town, but after taking and garrisoning the fort, he was
compelled to make Zanzibar, and eventually Maskat. The retreat was in
consequence of the troubles excited by Saúd bin Ali bin Sayf, the nephew
of Sayyid Bedr, supported by the sister of Sayyid Hilal, chief of
Suwayk, who had been treacherously imprisoned. He was enabled, by the
aid of Isá bin Tarif and his dependents, to invest, with a squadron
carrying a force of 4000 to 5000 men, about the end of December, 1829,
Mombasah Fort, from which his garrison had been repulsed. The Mazru’is,
numbering a total of some 1500, gallantly held their ground: the
Sayyid’s soldiers, suffering severely from fever, refused to fight:
briefly two campaigns had little effect upon the besieged, and the
Sayyid was obliged to accept the semblance of submission, in order to
return triumphant to Zanzibar. After visiting Maskat, and putting down
Hamud bin Azran, who had taken Rustak, and was threatening the capital,
he broke the treaty with Mombasah, and blockaded it throughout the N.
East monsoon from November, 1831, to April, 1832. During the next year
he attacked the place for the third time; but, after a week’s campaign,
he returned once more with Oriental triumph to Zanzibar in February,
1833. Then treachery was called in to do the perfect work. Ráshid bin
Salim bin Ahmad, the Mazru’i Wali or governor, and twenty-six of his
kinsmen, enticed by the most solemn oaths, which were accompanied by a
sealed Koran—it is wonderful how liar trusts liar!—embarked on one of
the Sayyid’s ships, which carried his son Sayyid Khalid and Sulayman bin
Ahmad. The vessel instantly weighed anchor, stood for Zanzibar, and
consigned its cargo to life-long banishment and prison, at Mina and
Bandar Abbas. The Mazara’ at once sank into utter obscurity.
Sayyid Saíd was persuaded (Jan. 6, 1843) to attack that notorious
plunderer, Bana M’takha, chief of Sewi, a small territory near Lamu, who
had persuaded one Mfumo Bakkari, and afterwards his brother Mohammed bin
Shaykh, to declare himself Lord of Patta, and independent of the Arab
prince. The ruler of Zanzibar here failed to repeat his success at
Mombasah, the wily African shutting his ear to the charmer’s voice. The
second son, Sayyid Khalid, then disembarked his 1200 to 1300 troops,
Maskatis and Wasawahili, ‘cowardly as Maskatis,’ who with the Súri are
the proverbial dastards of the race. He served out with Semitic economy
five cartridges per head, and he marched them inland without a day’s
rest, after a ‘buggalow’-voyage from Arabia. Short of ammunition, and
worn out by fatigue, they soon yielded to the violent onslaught of the
enemy. The Wágunya, or as some write the word Bajúní, warriors,
described to be a fierce race of savages, descended from the Wasawahili,
the Somal, and the Arab colonists, charged in firm line, brandishing
spear-heads like those of the Wamasai, a cubit long, and shouting as
they waved their standards, wooden hoops hung round with the dried and
stuffed spoils of men.[81] The Arabs fled with such precipitation, that
some 300 were drowned, an indiscriminate massacre and mutilation took
place, the ‘England’ and the ‘Prince of Wales’ opened an effectual fire
upon their own boats and friends; the guns which had been landed were
all captured, and the Sayyid Khalid saved himself only by the speed of
his horse. The operation was repeated with equal unsuccess next year,
Sayyid Said himself embarking on board the ‘Victoria:’ the general,
Hammad bin Ahmad, fell into an ambuscade, and again the artillery was
lost. After a blockade of the Coast, which lasted till the end of 1866,
the Kazi of Zanzibar, Muhiyy el Din of Lamu, landing upon his native
island, talked over the insurgents. Bana M’takha afterwards sent back
the Arab cannon, saying that he could not afford to keep weapons which
ate such vast meals of powder, and acknowledged for a consideration the
supremacy of Zanzibar, retaining his power, and promising but never
intending to pay an annual tribute of $5000. Hence the Baloch
mercenaries speak of their late employer as a king who bought and sold,
and who was more distinguished for the arts of peace than for the nice
conduct of war. Even his own subjects complained on this occasion of his
folly in commencing, and of his want of energy in carrying on, the
campaign.
The Sayyid’s matrimonial engagements were numerous. In 1827 he married
the daughter of the Farmán-farmá (Governor) of Fars, and a grand-
daughter of Fath ’Ali Shah, under an agreement in the marriage contract
that the bride might spend every summer with her own family at Bandar
Abbas or Shiraz. Disgusted with Arab homeliness, and with six years of
monotonously hot life at Maskat, she obtained leave, and once in a place
of safety she wrote back a strong epistle. It began, ‘Yá Dayyus! yá
Mal’ún’, alluding to the report that Sayyid Khalid had violated the
harem of his father, as the latter was also said to have done in his
younger days. The Arab prince had lowered himself in the eyes of his
subjects by representing himself to be a Shiah. She called him a dog-
Sunni, and upon this ground she demanded instant divorce. The Sayyid
despatched two confidential elders with orders to represent that his
spouse could not legally claim such indulgence: a singular bastinado
upon the soles of their feet soon made the venerable learned discover
that divine right was upon the lady’s side. Her next exploit was to
bowstring, in jealousy, a Katirchi (muleteer) with whom she had
intrigued; and, driven from Shiraz by the fame of this exploit, she died
at Kazimayn, in child-bed, her lover being this time a Hammamchi, or
bath-servant.
In A.D. 1833, four years after the death of Radama I., the Sayyid formed
matrimonial designs upon the person of Ranavola Manjaka, Queen of the
Hovas, and a personage somewhat more redoubtable than our good Queen
Bess. Amongst his envoys on this occasion was one Khamisi wa Tání, who,
under the Arabized name Khamis bin Osman, presently played some notable
tricks upon the credulous ‘comparative geographer,’ Mr W. D. Cooley. The
envoys were kept upon the frontier till the ‘Tangi-man’ arrived,
bringing the Tangina. This nut, scraped in water, is administered as an
ordeal, like the bitter water of the ancient Israelites and the poison
nut of modern Calabar. The patient is ordered to walk about; after some
20 minutes he feels atrocious bowel-pains, prolapsus takes place, and he
dies; if wealthy enough to pay the priest, another kind of nut is at
once administered, and it may cure by emesis. As soon as this potion,
which always destroys traitors with frightful torments, in fact, with
the worst symptoms of Asiatic cholera, was proposed to the ambassadors,
in order to prove the purity of their intentions, and their affection
for the royal family, all fled precipitately, as may be imagined, from
the ‘Great Britain’ of Africa. Sayyid Said was also unlucky in the
choice of another Persian bride, the daughter of Irich Mirza, a
supposititious son of Mohammed Shah, and hardly a second-class noble.
She came to Zanzibar in A.D. 1849, accompanied by a train of attendants,
including her Farráshas (carpet-spreaders), her Jilaudár (groom), and
her private Jellád (executioner). She astonished the Arabs by her free
use of the dagger, whilst her intense relish of seeing her people ride
men down in the bazar, and of superintending bastinadoes administered
with Persian apparatus, made the Banyans crouch in their shops with
veiled faces, and the Arabs thank Allah that their women were not like
those of the A’ajám. In a short time the lady made herself so
disagreeable, that her husband sent her back divorced to her own
country.
The Sayyid kept a company of 60 or 70 concubines, and he always avoided
those that bore him children. Though a man of strong frame and vigorous
constitution, he exhausted his powers by excesses in the harem, he
suffered from Sarcocele (sinistral) during later life, and an alarming
emaciation argued consumption. The heat of Maskat, which he last visited
when hostilities between England and Persia were reported, brought him
to his grave. In October, 1856, he died at sea off the Seychelles
Islands, on board his own frigate, the ‘Victoria.’ Aged 67, the ‘Second
Omar,’ as his subjects were fond of calling him before his face, seems
to have had a presentiment of death; before embarking he prepared,
contrary to Arab custom, a ‘Sandúk el Mayyit,’ or coffin, and when dying
he gave orders that his remains should be thrown overboard. The corpse,
however, was carried to Zanzibar and interred in the city.
Sayyid Said was probably as shrewd, liberal, and enlightened a prince as
Arabia ever produced, yet Europe overrated his powers. Like Orientals
generally, he was ever surrounded by an odious entourage, whom he
consulted, trusted, and apparently preferred to his friends and well-
wishers. He firmly believed in the African Fetish and in the Arab
Sahir’s power of metamorphosis;[82] he would never flog a Mganga
(medicine-man), nor cut down a ‘devil’s tree.’ He sent for a Shaykh
whose characts were famous, and with a silver nail he attached the paper
to the doorway of Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton’s sick-room, thereby excluding
evil spirits and the ghost of Mr Napier, who had died at the Consulate.
He refused to sit for his portrait—even Colonel Smyth’s History of
Knight-errantry and Chivalrous Characters failed to tempt him, for the
European peasants’ reason,—it would take away part of his life. When
‘chivalry’ was explained to him, he pithily remarked that only the
‘Siflah’ (low fellows) interfere between man and wife, master and man.
His pet axiom—a fair test of mental bias—was ‘Mullahs, women, and horses
never can be called good till death,’ in this resembling Pulci—
Cascan le rose, e restan poi le spine;
Non giudicate nulla innanzi al fine.
The Société Royale des Antiquaires du Nord sent him their diploma: he
declared that he would not belong to a body of grave-robbers and corpse-
snatchers. The census of Zanzibar having been proposed to him, unlike
King David, he took refuge with Allah from the sin of numbering his
people. When tide-gauges were supplied by the Geographical Society of
Bombay, he observed that the Creator had bidden the ocean to ebb and to
flow—‘what else did man want to know about it?’ Such was his incapacity
for understanding European affairs, that until death’s-day he believed
Louis Philippe to have carried into exile, as he himself would have
done, all the fleet and the public treasure of the realm. And he never
could comprehend a Republic—‘who administers the stick?’
Of this enterprising man, the Mohammed Ali Pasha of the further East, I
may say, Extinctus amabitur idem. Shrewd and sensible, highly religious
though untainted by fanaticism; affable and courteous, he was as
dignified in sentiments as distinguished in presence and demeanour. He
is accused of grasping covetousness and treachery—but what Arab ruler is
not covetous and treacherous? He was a prince after the heart of his
subjects; prouder of his lineage than fond of ostentation or display, an
amateur conqueror on a small scale, mild in punishment, and principally
remarkable as the chief merchant, cultivator, and ship-builder in his
dominions. An epitaph may be borrowed for him from a man of very
different character—first in war, first in peace, and first in the
hearts of his fellow-countrymen. Peace be to his manes!
Sayyid Said’s territory at the time of his death extended in Oman from
the Ra’as el Jebel (Cape Musseldom) to Sohar. In Mekran the seaboard
between Ra’as Jask and Guadel belonged to him: in the Persian Gulf he
had Khishm, Larak, and Hormuz, and he farmed from the Shah, Bandar Abbas
and its dependency, Mina. His African possessions were far the most
extensive and important. He ruled, to speak roughly, the whole Eastern
Coast from N. lat. 5°, and even from Cape Guardafui, where the maritime
Somal were to a certain extent his dependents, to Cape Delgado (S. lat.
11°), where the Arab met the Portuguese rule—an extent of 16° = 960
geographical miles. The small republics of Makdishu (Magadoxo, in N.
lat. 2° 1′ 4″), of Brava (N. lat. 1° 6′ 48″), of Patta or Bette (S. lat.
2° 9′ 12″), and of Lamu (S. lat. 2° 15′ 42″), owned his protectorate,
and in April, 1865, Marka received from him a garrison. The whole
Zanzibarian Archipelago was his, and he claimed Bahrayn, Zayla, Aden,
and Berberah, the first-mentioned with, the last three without, a shadow
of right. His Arab subjects declared that they, and not the Portuguese,
ceded Bombay to the British: the foundation of the story is a mosque
built in ancient times by the Omanis, somewhat near the present Boree
Bandar.
Sayyid Said left a single widow, the lady Azzá bint Musa, of the Bú
Kharibán, a grand-daughter of the Imam Ahmad, and consequently a cousin.
She is now (1857) in years, but her ancient lineage and her noble
manners retain for her the public respect. She had but one child, which
died young: all the male issue of the Prince are by slave-girls, a
degradation in the eyes of free-born Omani Arabs. As usual amongst the
wealthy and noble of the polygamous East, the daughters are the more
numerous,[83] and many are old maids, the pride of birth not allowing
them, like the Sherifehs of the Hejaz, to wed with any but equals. The
eldest of the fourteen sons, Sayyid Hilal, who, in 1845, had visited
England, it is said, after an escapade, died at Aden en route to Meccah
in 1851. He was followed, after an interval of a few months, by his next
brother, Sayyid Khalid, called the Banyan. The eldest surviving heir
(Sayyid Suwayni), the son of a Georgian or Circassian slave, born about
1822, became by his father’s will, successor to and lord of the northern
provinces. To Sayyid Majid, the fourth son, now (1857) aged 22, a prince
of mild disposition and amiable manners, contrasting strongly with the
vigorous ruffianism of his elder brother, was left the Government of
Zanzibar and of the East African Coast. There is, as usual amongst
Arabs, a turbulent tribe of cousins: of these the most influential is
Sayyid Mohammed, a son of Sayyid Salim bin Sultan, younger brother to
the late Prince, who some years ago died of consumption. Hitherto he has
used his powers loyally—ruling, but not openly ruling. Sayyid Said’s
valuable property, including his plantations, was sold, as his will
directed, and the money was divided according to a fixed scale, even the
youngest princes claiming shares. No better inducement to permanent
dissension could have been devised. But Eastern monarchs apparently
desire that their dynasties should die with them. Fath Ali Shah of
Persia, when asked upon his death-bed to name a successor, drew a sword
and showed what made and unmade monarchs: scarcely had the breath left
his body than the chamber was dyed with the blood of his sons, each
hastening to stab some hated rival brother.
These lines were penned in 1857. Since 1859 the hapless and turbulent
family has been in a state of fratricidal strife, and the province of
Oman has reverted to its normal state of intrigue, treachery, and
assassination. Sayyid Suwayni, a negligent and wasteful though not an
unpopular man, to whom the English were especially obnoxious, threatened
in 1859 an attack upon Sayyid Majid, and was prevented by British
cruisers; in due time he was murdered by his son, Sayyid Salim, who
usurped the Government. This Sayyid Salim was dethroned by his uncle,
Sayyid Turki, who surprised Maskat, and made himself master of the
situation. The European would imagine that the stakes were hardly worth
such reckless play: Arabs, however, judge otherwise.
-----
Footnote 72:
History of the Imams and Sayyids of Oman, from A.D. 661 to 1856, by
Salil ibn Razík. Translated, &c., by the Rev. G. P. Badger. Printed
for the Hakluyt Society.
Footnote 73:
So called from some silly vision of an illuminated sheep appearing to
one of the Shaykhs. The city is supposed to have been founded in A.D.
295, about 70 years before Kilwa.
Footnote 74:
The three voyages of Vasco da Gama, &c., as from the Lendas da India
of Gaspar Correa, translated by the Hon. Henry C. J. Stanley, London,
Hakluyt Society, 1869, chap. xxi., note to page 261. M. Guillain (i.
319) makes the expedition reach Zanzibar on April 29, 1499.
Footnote 75:
The only Shaykhs who took the name of Sultan were those of Kilwa and
Zanzibar: he of Mombasah was tributary to the latter.
Footnote 76:
M. Guillain (i. 522) had vaguely heard of this tradition.
Footnote 77:
The Western as well as the Eastern Arabs turn the hard Káf into a Jím,
e. g. Jibleh for Kibleh. The Kawásim derive their name from a local
Wali, or Santon, the Shaykh Kásim.
Footnote 78:
A detailed account of this Prince’s early life is given in the
‘History of Syed Said, Sultan of Muscat’ ... translated from the
Italian. London, 1819 (written by his physician, Shaykh Mansur, alias
Vincenzo). Buckingham, Fraser, and Sir John Malcolm have also supplied
notices of his eventful career.
Footnote 79:
I give this account as it was told to me by Lieut.-Col. Hamerton. M.
Guillain (part II. chap. iii.) may be consulted for another and a more
diplomatic version.
Footnote 80:
I cannot but express my astonishment to see a geographer like Ritter,
and a veteran from the East like Colonel Sykes (loco cit.), confound
‘Imam’ with ‘Imaun’ (Imán), which signifies faith or creed.
Footnote 81:
The trophies are drawn out with a lanyard, and cut off when the
patient is still alive—after death they are not so much valued;
finally they are dried so as to resemble isinglass.
Footnote 82:
I have alluded to this subject in my exploration of Harar (chap. ii.),
and a few more details may not be uninteresting. Strong-headed Pliny
(viii. 32) believes metamorphosis to be a ‘fabulous opinion,’ and
remarks, ‘there is no falsehood, however impudent, that wants its
testimony among them’ (the Greeks), yet at Tusdrita he saw L.
Coisilius, who had been changed from a woman into a man. Curious to
say, the learned Anatomist of Melancholy (Part I. sect. 1) charges him
with believing in the versipellis, and explains the belief by
lycanthropy, cucubuth or Lupina Insania. Petronius gives an account of
the ‘fact.’ Pomponius Mela accuses the Druidesses of assuming bestial
shapes. Suidas mentions a city where men changed their forms. Simon
Magus could produce a double of himself. Saxo Grammaticus declared
that the priests of Odin took various appearances. John of Salisbury
asserts that Mercury taught mankind the damnable art of fascinating
the eyes. Joseph Acosta instances fellow-country men in the West
Indies who were shot during transformation. Our ancestry had their
were-wolf (homo-lupus), and the Britons their Bisclavaret. Coffin, the
Abyssinian traveller, all but saw his Buda change himself into a
hyena. Mr Mansfield Parkyns heard of a human horse. In Shoa and Bornou
men become leopards; in Persia, bears; in Somali-land Cyn-hyenas; in
West African Kru-land elephants and sharks; in Namaqua-land, according
to the late Mr Andersson, lions. At Maskat transformation is fearfully
frequent; and illiterate Shiahs believe the good Caliph Abubekr, whom
they call Pir i Kaftar (old hyena), to be trotting about the deserts
of Oman in the semblance of a she-hyena, pursued by many amorous
males. At Bushire the strange tale of Haji Ismail, popularly called
‘Shuturi,’ the ‘Camel’d,’ is believed by every one, and was attested
with oaths by his friends and relations: this respectable merchant
whilst engaged in pilgrimage was transformed by an Arab into a she-
camel, and became the mother of several foals, till restored to human
shape by another enchanter. Even in Europe, after an age of
scepticism, the old natural superstition is returning, despite the
pitch-fork, under another shape. The learned authoress of the Night-
side of Nature objects to ‘illusionists,’ argues lycanthropy to be the
effect of magico-magnetic influence, and instances certain hysterical
and nervous phenomena of eyes paralyzed by their own weakness.
For many years I have carefully sifted every case reported to me in
Asia and Africa, and I have come to the conclusion with which most men
commence. No amount of evidence can justify belief in impossibilities,
in bonâ fide miracles. Moreover, such evidence mostly comes from the
duper and the dupe. Finally, all objective marvels diminish in inverse
ratio to the increase of knowledge, whilst preternaturalisms and
supernaturalisms gradually dwindle down to the natural badly
understood.
Of course this disclaimer of belief in the vulgar miracle does not
imply that human nature has no mysterious powers which, if highly
developed and displayed in a dark age, would be treated as a miracle
or as an act of magic. It has lately been proved that the will
exercises positive and measurable force upon inert matter; such
‘glimpses of natural actions, not yet reduced to law,’—as Mr Faraday
said—open up a wonderful vista in the days to come.
Footnote 83:
In the Journal of Anthropology (No. ii. Oct. 1870, Art. ix.), James
Campbell, Surgeon, R.N., produces a paper upon ‘Polygamy; its
influence on Sex and Population,’ showing, by 17 cases drawn from
Siam, exceptions to the common theory that in the patriarchal family
more female than male children are born. But the evidence is too
superficial to shake the belief of men who have passed their lives in
polygamous countries; moreover, in the families cited the male-
producing powers may either have been unusual, or they may have been
peculiarly stimulated.
CHAPTER VIII.
ETHNOLOGY OF ZANZIBAR. THE FOREIGN RESIDENTS.
‘Quiconque ne voit guère
N’a guère à dire aussi. Mon voyage depeint
Vous sera d’un plaisir extrême.
Je dirai; j’étais là; telle chose m’avint,
Vous y croirez être vous-même.’—_La Fontaine._
The 300,000 souls[84] now (1857-9) composing the residents on, and the
population of, the Zanzibar Island, are a heterogeneous body. The former
consist of Americans and Europeans, about 14,000 Banyans (including
those of the Coast), a few Parsees and Portuguese from Goa, and sundry
castes of Hindustani Moslems, Khojahs, Mehmans, and Borahs, numbering
some 1200. There are also trifling numbers of free blacks from the
Comoro Islands, Madagascar, Unyamwezi, and the Somali country. To this
accidental division I will devote the present chapter.
The Consular corps is represented by three members, who, as usual in
these remote Oriental spots, assume, and are allowed to assume, the
position of plenipos. The first American official was Mr Richard Palmer,
who was succeeded by sundry acting men: the second was Mr Waters, who
left in 1844: then came Mr C. Ward, Mr Webb, and Mr Macmullan. Captain
Mansfield now (1859) holding office, is agent to Messrs John Bertram and
Co. of Salem. This gentleman, who took a great interest in the East
African Expedition, has had a more extensive experience of the East than
his predecessors; he has also the advantage of being respectable and
respected.
On the part of the French Government the first Consul was M. Broquant:
he died of fever and dysentery at Zanzibar, and was succeeded by M. de
Beligny, a French Creole from Santo Domingo, afterwards transferred to
Manilla and to Charleston, South Carolina. M. Vignard, a young man of
amiable manners, and distinguished in Algeria as an Arabic scholar, fell
victim to a sunstroke when voyaging from Aden, where I met him en route
for his post. The present Consul is M. Ladislas Cochet: the Chancellier
and Dragoman is M. Jablonski, Pole and poet.
Lieut.-Colonel Atkins Hamerton is, and has been, I have said, H. B.
Majesty’s Consul, and H. E. I. Company’s Agent at the Court of H. H.
Sayyid Said, since December, 1841, when we first established relations
with Zanzibar. Attached to his establishment is a passed apothecary, an
Eurasian, the only attempt at a medico on the Island. Lieut.-Colonel
Hamerton had been on terms of intimacy with Sayyid Said during a quarter
of a century; and their friendship, as happens, began with a ‘little
aversion.’ The Britisher proposed to travel in the interior from Maskat,
in those days a favourite exploration with the more adventurous; and the
Arab, suspicious as all Arabs, thinking it safest to put the intruder
out of the way, imprudently wrote a letter to that effect. This missive
fell into the hands of the person whom it most concerned: he boldly
carried it to the Prince, and reproached him in no measured terms with
his perfidy. Sayyid Said found himself overmatched, submitted to Kismat,
and, admiring the traveller’s spirit and openness, determined to win his
attachment. The two became firm friends; the Consul was the influential
adviser of the ruler, and the latter intrusted him with secrets
jealously hidden from his own. The reason why the trade of Zanzibar was
surprisingly developed under the primitive rule of an Arab Prince is not
only the immense wealth of Eastern Africa, it results mainly from the
wise measures of a man who for the greater part of his life devoted
himself to the task. It was an unworthy feeling which made M. Guillain
write of my late friend (ii. 23), ‘Bref, sa réputation est de placer
fort bien, et à beaux bénéfices, l’argent que lui donnent la reine et le
gouvernment de la compagnie’—his generosity to his family left little
after his decease. Not the least of Sayyid Said’s anxieties upon his
death-bed was to reach Zanzibar alive, and even when half-unconscious he
continually called for Colonel Hamerton. It is suspected that he wished
to communicate the place of his concealed treasures, which, despite the
most careful search, were never found. When hiding their hoards it is
not unusual for Arabs to put to death the slaves who assist in the
labour, and thus to prevent negro indiscretion. The family, I may here
say, firmly believes that Colonel Hamerton knows where the hoards lay,
and yet refuses to divulge the secret.
It will not be easy properly to fill this appointment. Without taking
into consideration the climate, it is evident that few Englishmen are
prepared to settle for long years at remote Zanzibar, and Arabs do not
care to trust new men. Yet it would be the acme of short-sightedness to
neglect this part of East Africa. Our Anglo-Indian subjects, numbering
about 4000[85] in the dominions of Zanzibar, some of them wealthy men,
are entitled to protection from the Arab, and more especially from the
Christian merchants. Almost the whole foreign trade, or at least four-
fifths of it, passes through their hands; they are the principal
shopkeepers and artisans, and they extend as far South as Mozambique,
Madagascar, and the Comoro Islands. During the last few years the number
of Indian settlers has greatly increased, and they have obtained
possession from the Arabs, by purchase or mortgage, of many landed
estates in the Sayyid’s dominions. The country can look forward only to
a moderate development whilst it continue in the present hands, but the
capabilities of the coast are great. Labour only is wanted; and a
European power establishing itself upon the mainland—this object has
frequently been proposed, and is steadily kept in view—could in a few
years command a territory and a commerce which would rival Western
India.
The other white residents are commercial, and it is with no little
astonishment that the Englishman finds no direct trade with Great
Britain, and meets none of his fellow-countrymen at Zanzibar.[86] Their
absence results not from want of venture or dearth of business, but from
supineness on the part of the authorities. No merchant can profitably
settle where he cannot freely correspond, receive advices that ships
have been despatched, and obtain orders for cargoes and consignments.
Moreover, large sums have been wasted by respectable houses in settling
here trustworthy agents and sober men. The few favourable exceptions
found the climate either unendurable or fatal. Hitherto, however,
Englishmen have done little, and, I write it unwillingly, Englishwomen
have done less, for the honour of the national name at Zanzibar than in
most parts of the East. Two girls came out to the Island, married to the
usual ‘black princes,’ who mostly turn out to be barbers or domestic
servants; this proceeding greatly scandalized the white residents, and
the Desdemonas gave more trouble to the officials than the whole colony.
The principal American houses are those of Messrs Bertram & Co.,
represented by Captain Mansfield, Mr Ropes, and Mr Webb: Messrs Rufus
Green & Co., also of Salem, have three agents, Messrs Winn, Spalding,
and Wilkins. Lastly, there is Mr Samuel Masury, of Salem, a ‘general
merchant,’ distinguished for probity and commercial sagacity: he left
Zanzibar during our exploration of the interior, and he presently came
to an untimely end.
The French houses began with a misconception, a certain chancellier
having reported officially to his Government, that 232 ships annually
visited and loaded at Zanzibar. The intelligence caused considerable
excitement: it was believed that every vessel left these shores crammed
with copal, ivory, and gold dust, and the French merchants resolved by
concurrence to drive the Americans out of the field. Messrs Vidal frères
of Marseille despatched accordingly to Zanzibar Messrs Bauzan,
Wellesley, and Peronnet, and appointed M. Mass their second agent at
Lamu. They were opposed by Messrs Rabaud frères, also of Marseilles, a
house from whom we received especial kindness: their Zanzibar manager
was M. Hannibal Bérard, and M. Terassin was sent to the ‘bone of
contention,’ Lamu. These firms choose their employés amongst their
captains, who act supercargoes as well as commanders; they are estimable
men, sober and skilful, but painfully lax in dealing with ‘les nègres.’
Their Consul publicly declared that it was his duty to curb the
merchants, as well as to protect the commerce of France.
The specialty of the French houses is oil. They export the cocoa-nut in
various forms, sesamum and other oleaginous grains, which Provence
converts with such energy and success into huile d’olives. The sesamum
is a comparatively new article of commerce, yet the Periplus (chap.
xiv.) numbers Elæon Sesáminon (oil of sesamum) amongst the imports from
India. Now it is supplied chiefly by Lamu. Vast quantities could be
grown there, but the natives, though large advances have been offered to
them, will not extend their cultivation for fear of lowering the price,
which has lately doubled. French ships now visit the West Coast of India
as far North as Kurrachee, in search of sesamum, and last year (1856) 27
vessels took cargo from Bombay.
At length the Marseille houses found out that Zanzibar is overstocked
with buyers; that demand in these regions does not readily, at least,
create supply; that it is far easier to dispose of than to collect a
cargo; that the African man will not work as long as he can remain idle,
and that sure profits are commanded only by the Banyan system; briefly,
the two French houses are eating up each other. The Messrs Vidal are
named for a loss of $400,000, which it will be impossible to recoup. It
is also reported that too sanguine M. le Chancellier was threatened with
a procès-verbal; of his 232 ships 70 were whalers, many names had been
twice registered, and only 32 (232 minus 200) took in cargo.
The houses from Hamburg, that ‘Carthage of the Northern Seas,’ conclude
the list of Europeans. The brothers Horn and M. Quas, agents for Messrs
Herz and Co., are the most successful copal cleaners; they find it more
economical to keep a European cooper than to depend upon the bazar.
Messrs William and Albert Oswald, British protégés, represent their
father; they are assisted by M. Witt, an intelligent young man, who
having graduated in Californian gold-fields, proposes to prospect the
Coast. M. Koll acts for Messrs Hansing and Co., and, lastly, M. Reich,
lately returned to the Island, is the representative of Messrs Müller
and Co.
Europeans are, as a rule, courteously treated by the upper classes, and
civilly by the Arabs at Zanzibar; this, however, is not always the case
on the Coast. They are allowed to fly flags; every merchant has his
staff upon his roof, and there is a display of bunting motley as in the
Brazil. Even a Cutch boat will carry the Sayyid’s plain red colours,
with the Union Jack in the corner, and the Turkish crescent and star in
the centre.
Composed of patch-work material, the Europeans do not unite, and their
disputes, especially between compatriots, are exasperated by commercial
rivalries, which have led to serious violations of faith. All is
wearisome monotony: there is no society, no pleasure, no excitement;
sporting is forbidden by the treacherous climate, and, as in West Africa
and the Brazil, strangers soon lose the habit of riding and walking.
Moreover, the merchants, instead of establishing the business hours of
Bombay, make themselves at home to their work throughout the day; this
is the custom of the Bonny River, where supercargoes are treated like
shopkeepers by the negroes. European women, I repeat, seldom survive the
isolation and the solitary confinement to which not only the place but
also the foul customs of the people condemn them.
The necessaries of life at Zanzibar are plentiful, if not good. Bread of
imported wheat is usually ‘cooked’ in the house, and the yeast of sour
toddy renders it nauseous and unwholesome. There have been two bakers
upon the Island: one served at the Consulate, the other, a Persian, was
in the employment of the Prince. Meat is poor; a good preserved article
would here make cent. per cent. Poultry is abundant, tasteless and
unnutritious; fish is also common, but it is hardly eatable, except at
certain seasons. Cows’ milk is generally to be had, but the butter is
white, and resembles grease; fruit must be bought at the different
bazars early in the morning. All such articles as tea, wine, and
spirits, cigars, tobacco, and sweetmeats, are imported from America or
from Europe,—the town supplies nothing so civilized. Retail dealing is
wanted, and the nearest approach to a shop is the store of a Khojah, who
will buy and sell everything, from a bead to a bale of cloth.
All articles but money are expensive at Zanzibar, where the dollar
represents our shilling.[87] This is the result of the large sums
accumulated by trade and of the necessity of importing provisions; we
see the same process at work throughout the tropical Brazil. Moreover,
in all semi-barbarous lands a stranger living like a native, may live
upon ‘half-nothing;’ if he would, however, preserve the comforts of
home, and especially if he would see society, he must consent to an
immoderate expenditure. Finally, where the extremes of wealth and
poverty meet, and where semi-civilization has not discovered that
prudence is a virtue and improvidence a blunder, the more man spends the
more he is honoured.
The humblest dwelling at Zanzibar lets unfurnished for £80 to £100 per
annum. Furniture of all kinds, porcelain, china, plate, and linen, no
matter how old, fetch more than prime cost, and $1 will be paid for a
patched and rickety chair worth in London a shilling. Clothing must be
brought from Europe: broad cloth is soon spoiled by sun and damp, and
shoes must not be exposed to the air—it is well to have the latter one
or two sizes larger than at home. The luxuries of life are of course
enormously dear, when they are to be purchased. During the Sayyid’s
absence the women of his harem have, through the eunuchs, sold for a
song the valuable presents sent from Europe; and after the return of the
royal vessels from Bourbon and the Mauritius, watches and chronometers,
sextants and spy-glasses, have been exceedingly cheap. In both cases the
stranger-purchaser would have done well to remember that he was buying
stolen goods.
Another cause of expense at Zanzibar is the present state of the
currency. The rouble of Russia is the franc of France, and here the
standard of value is the Maria Theresa or German crown, averaging 4_s._
2_d._ Bearing the die of 1780, and still coined at the mint of Vienna
for the Arab and the E. African trade, it is perferred by the people
simply because they know it. The popular names are Riyál (i.e. real,
royal) or Girsh (groschen, ‘broad’ pieces). Spanish dollars (bú tákeh,
‘father of window,’ whence our ‘patak’), elsewhere 8 per cent. more
valuable, are here only equal to Maria Theresas. In 1846 a French
Mission failed to fix the agio of the 5 franc piece at 10 per cent.
below the Spanish dollar, which still remained 12.50 to 14 per cent.
more valuable. The Company’s rupee, better metal than both the above,
being still a comparative stranger, loses nearly a quarter of its value.
Other silver pieces are the ‘Robo’ (Spanish quarter dollar) of 25 cents,
and the pistoline (20 cents); these, however, are subject to heavy agio.
Small change is always rare, another sure sign of thriftlessness, and it
is strange how scarce is bullion in a land so wealthy: I can only
account for the fact by the Oriental practice of burying treasure.[88]
Where men reside solely for gain and sorely against the grain, little
can be expected from society. Every merchant hopes and expects to leave
Zanzibar for ever, as soon as he can realize a certain sum; every agent
would persuade his employer to recall him. Of late years, also,
foreigners complain of a falling off in ivory, copal, cloves, and other
articles which the natives, it might be supposed, could most easily
supply; thus profits are curtailed, and a penny saved is a penny gained.
Most residents are contented with an Abyssinian or Somali girl, or
perhaps an Msawahili; with a Portuguese cook, who consents to serve till
he also can get away; and with a few hired slaves or free blacks, the
dirtiest, the least honest, and the most disorderly of domestics. The
British Consulate is the only establishment which employs Indian
Moslems, perhaps the best of Eastern attendants. This luxury costs,
however, at least £25 per mens., each man receiving from $10 to $12,
about double the wages paid in India, and all are ever anxious to return
home, the mal de pays making them discontented and unhappy. The bumboat-
men and the beach-combers are Comoro rascals, who sometimes gain
considerable sums; there are also some half-a-dozen negroes, speaking a
little bad French, and worse English, who offer themselves to every
stranger, and who fleece him till turned away for making the quail
squeak. Workmen are hired by the day. Carpenters demand $0.50, three
times the Indian wage, and the day’s work is at most 5 hours; of these
men 4 barely did in 43 what 2 ship-carpenters managed in 5 days. The
blacksmith and tin-man receive from $0.50 to $1 per diem; the goldsmith
is paid according to the value of what he takes in hand—so much per
dollar-weight.
The merchants, par excellence of Zanzibar, are the enterprising Bhattias
or Cutch Banyans. The Periplus (chap. xiv.) mentions an extensive import
trade for Ariáke and Barugaze, the latter generally identified with
Baroch.[89] Vasco da Gama found ‘Indians,’ especially Calicut men, at
Mozambique, Kilwa, Mombasah, and Melinde, and by their information he
reached their native city. From the beginning of the present century the
monopoly fell into the hands of the Bhattia caste. At first they were
obliged to make Zanzibar, viâ Maskat, in a certain ship which sailed
once a year: they were exposed to many hardships and perils: several of
them were murdered, and when a Hindu died the Arabs, like the Turks of
Masawah, claimed the droit d’aubaine. They rose in mercantile repute by
commercial integrity, frugality, and perseverance, whilst the inability
of the Moslem Sarráf to manage accounts or banking put great power into
their hands. At Maskat and the neighbourhood they number nearly 500, and
here about 400.[90] They extend southwards to Angosh (Angoxa) and
Mozambique, where they make fortunes by the sale of Casimir noir, and
where they are now as well treated as they were formerly tyrannized over
by the Portuguese. Thus, though never leaving the seaboard, they command
the inland trade, sending, where they themselves do not care to travel,
Arabs and Wasawahili to conduct their caravans of savages and slaves.
For this reason they have ever been hostile to European exploration, and
report affirms that they have shown no scruples in compassing their
ends. They are equally powerful to forward the discoverer; they can cash
drafts upon Zanzibar, Mandavi, and Bombay; provide outfits, supply
guards and procure the Págázi, or porters, who are mostly their
employés. Ladha Damha farms the customs at Zanzibar, at Pemba Island his
nephew Pisú has the same charge: Mombasah is in the hands of Lakhmidas,
and some 40 of his co-religionists; Pangani is directed by Trikandas and
contains 20 Bhattias, including those of Mbweni; even the pauper
Sa’adani has its Banyan; Ramji, an active and intelligent trader,
presides at Bagamoyo, and the customs of Kilwa are collected by
Kishindas. I need hardly say that almost all of them are connected by
blood as well as by trade.
The Bhattia at Zanzibar is a visitor, not a colonist; he begins life
before his teens, and, after an expatriation of 9 to 12 years, he goes
home to become a householder. The great change of life effected, he
curtails the time of residence to half, and furloughs become more
frequent as transport waxes easier. Not a Hindu woman is found upon the
Island; all the Banyans leave their wives at home, and the consequences
are certain peccadilloes, for which they must pay liberally. Arab women
prefer them because they have light complexions; they are generous in
giving jewels, and they do not indulge in four wives. Most of them,
however, especially those settled on the Coast, keep handsome slave-
girls, and, as might be expected where illegitimates cannot be
acknowledged, they labour under the imputation of habitual infanticide.
On the other hand, their widows may not remarry, and they inherit the
husband’s property if not embezzled by relatives and caste-fellows.
The Bhattias are forbidden, by their Dharma (‘caste-duty’) to sell
animals, yet, with the usual contradiction of their creed, all are
inveterate slave-dealers. They may not traffic in cowries, that cause
the death of a mollusc; local usage, however, permits them to buy
hippopotamus-tusks, rhinoceros-horn, and ivory, their staple of
commerce. We cannot wonder if, through their longing to shorten a weary
expatriation, they have sinned in the matter of hides. This, together
with servile cohabitation, caused a scandal some years ago, when the
Maháráj, their high priest, sent from Malwa a Chela, or disciple, to
investigate their conduct. Covered with ashes and carrying an English
umbrella, the holy man arrived in a severe mood; he rejected all
civilities, and he acknowledged every address with a peculiar bellowing
grunt, made when ‘Arti’ is offered to the Dewta or deity. The result was
a fine of $20,000 imposed upon the rich and wretched Jayaram. The sum
was raised amidst the fiercest and most tumultuous of general
subscriptions, and since that day the spoils of the cow have been farmed
to a Khojah employé. All oppose with might and main the slaughter of
cattle, especially in public, and they attempt to quit the town during
the Moslem sacrificial days.
The long limp black hair, the smooth yellow skin, and the regular
features of the Bhattia, are conspicuous near the woolly mops, the
grinning complexions, and the flat faces of the Wasawahili. His large-
peaked Cutch turban, white cotton coat or shoulder cloth, and showy
Indian dhoti around the loins, contrasts favourably with the Arabs’
unclean garb. The Janeo, or thread of the twice-born, passes over his
shoulder, and, in memory of home, he encircles his neck with a string of
dry Tulsi stalks (Ocimum canum, a species of herb Basil), which he now
grows at Zanzibar. His manners as well as his outer man are rendered
pleasant and courteous by comparison with the rest of the population,
and he is a kind master to his serviles, who would love him if they
possibly could love anything but themselves.
These Hindus lead a simple life, active only in pursuit of gain. On the
Coast, where profits are immense—Trikandas of Pangani, for instance,
claims $26,000 of debt—they have substantial stone houses, large
plantations, and goodly gangs of male and female slaves. Those resident
at Zanzibar are less anxious to display their wealth: all, however, are
now entitled by treaty to manage their own affairs without the
interference of the local Government. These Banyans will buy up the
entire cargoes of American and Hamburg ships: the ivory from the
interior is consigned to them, and they purchase the copal from the
native diggers. They rise at dawn to perform the semi-religious rite
‘Snán’ (bathing), apply to business during the cool of the day, and dine
at noon. Avoiding Jowari, the Arabs’ staff of life, they eat boiled
rice, vegetables, and ghee, or wheaten bread and Mung, or other pulse,
flavoured with assafœtida, turmeric, and ‘warm spices.’ They chew
tobacco, though forbidden by caste rule to smoke it, and every meal
concludes with betel-nut and pepper-leaf, whose heating qualities alone
enable them, they say, to exist at Zanzibar. They work all day, rarely
enjoying the siesta unless rich enough to afford such luxury: they bathe
in the evening, sup at 9 P.M., chew betel once more, and retire to rest.
As the Island contains no local Dewta, the Bhattias are careful to keep
a Vishnu in the house, and to travel about, if possible, with a cow: in
places like Pangani, where the horned god cannot live, they supply its
place by a Hanuman (a small monkey, like the Presbyter Entellus of
India) trapped in the jungle. Pagodas not being permitted, they meet for
public devotions at a house in the southern quarter of the city, where
most of them live, and lately they have been allowed to build a kind of
fane at Mnazi Moyya. As usual with Banyans, the Bhattias have no daily
prayers: on such festivals as the Pitri-paksha—the ‘Manes-Fortnight,’
from the 13th to the 18th of the month Bhadrapad—they call in, and fee a
Brahman to assist them. Their proper priests are the Pokarna, who, more
scrupulous than others, refuse to cross the sea: the Sársat Brahmans, so
common in Sind and Cutch, are the only high-caste drones who to collect
money will visit Zanzibar and Maskat. With a characteristic tenderness,
these Banyans cook grain at the landing-places for the wild slaves,
half-starved by the ‘middle-passage,’ and inclination as well as policy
everywhere induces them to give alms largely. Apostasy is exceedingly
rare: none Islamize, except those who have been perverted by Moslems in
their youth, or who form connections with strange women. The Comoro men,
here the only energetic proselytizers, have, however, sometimes
succeeded: a short time ago two Bhattias became Mohammedans, and their
fellow caste-men declared that the Great Destruction was drawing nigh.
Yet Vishnu slept, and still sleeps the sleep of the just.
When a Bhattia’s affairs become hopelessly involved he generally
‘levants’: sometimes, however, he will go through the Diwali or
bankruptcy, a far more troublesome process than the ‘Gazette.’ The
unfortunate places in his store-front a lighted lamp, whence the name of
the ceremony, and with head enveloped in a sheet, he silently occupies
the furthest corner. Presently a crowd of jeering Moslems collects to
see the furious creditors ranting, scolding, and beating the bankrupt,
who weeps, wails, calls upon his god, and swears to be good for all
future time. These degrading scenes, however, are now becoming rare.
They remind us of the Tuscans and the Boeotians of old, ‘who brought
their bankrupts into the market-place in a bier, with an empty purse
carried before them, all the boys following, where they sat all day,
_circumstante plebe_, to be infamous and ridiculous.’
All Hindus are careful when returning home from foreign travel to purge
away its pollution by performing a Tirth or Yatra to some holy spring,
and by large payments to Brahmans. Moslems declare that when the death-
rattle is heard, one of those present ‘eases off’ the moribund by
squeezing his throat. Banyan corpses are burnt at a place about two
miles behind the town, and the procession is accompanied by a guard to
keep off naughty boys. When a Bhattia dies without relatives on the
Island, a committee of his fellow caste-men meets by the order of H. B.
Majesty’s Consul; takes cognizance of his capital, active and passive;
and, after settling his liabilities, remits by bill the surplus to his
relatives in India.
The following is a list of the other Hindu castes to be found at
Zanzibar:—
Brahman, of whom there are now six individuals, two Gujrati, and four
Rajgarh, both sub-castes of the Sársat. One of them, Pradhán Joshí, is a
Shastri—learned in the Veda.
Khattri, four in number: of these one is a trader, and the rest are
carpenters capable of doing a very little very rough work.
Wáni (pure Banyan) one. There are also three or four of the Lohana sub-
caste from Sind and Cutch.
Lohár, or blacksmith: of this Shudra sub-caste there are five; one acts
Sutár (carpenter), and a second is a Sonár, or goldsmith—in Cutch the
occupations are not separated by ‘Dharma.’
A few Parsees from Bombay visited Zanzibar; two were carpenters, and the
third was a watchmaker, dishonest as his craft usually is. To the
general consternation of Europeans, two Parsee agents lately landed on
the Island, sent by some Bombay house whose name they concealed. These
will probably be followed by others, and if that most energetic of
commercial races once makes good a footing at Zanzibar, it will
presently change the condition of trade. They are viewed without
prejudice by the Arabs and the Wasawahili. The late Sayyid was so
anxious to attract Parsees, who might free him from the arrogance and
the annoyance of ‘white merchants,’ that he would willingly have allowed
them to build a ‘Tower of Silence,’ and to perform, uninterrupted, all
the rites of their religion.
The Indian Moslems on the Island and the Coast were numbered in 1844 at
600 to 700. Besides a few Borahs and Mehmans, Zanzibar contains about
100 Khojahs, who are held to be a ‘generation of vipers, even of Satan’s
own brood.’ Here, as in Bombay, they are called Ismailiyyahs, heterodox
Shiahs, who take a name from their seventh Imam Ismail, son of Ja’afar
el Sádik, while orthodox Shiahs believe the seventh revealed Imam to
have been Musa el Kazim, another son of Ja’afar el Sádik; and the
founder of the Sophy (Safawi) dynasty, in the tenth century of the
Hijrah (A.D. 1501). They have derived from the Batinis and Karmatis
certain mystic and subversive tenets; and they are connected in history
with Hasan Sabah (or Sayyáh, the travelling Darwaysh), our Vetulus de
montanis, or Old Man (Shaykh, i.e. chief) of the Mountains, and with
modern Freemasonry, which begins to appear when the Crusaders had
settled in that home of heresies, Syria and Palestine. Hence the
tradition that the First Grand Lodge was transferred to Lake Tiberias,
after the destruction of Jerusalem. They practise the usual profound
Takiyyah (concealment of tenets), call themselves Sunnis, or Shiahs, as
the case may require, and assume Hindu as well as Moslem names. The Imam
to whom they now pay annual tribute is one Agha Khan Mahallati, a
Persian rebel, formerly Governor of Kirmán, and afterwards notorious
upon the Bombay turf. This incarnation of the Deity is not intrusted
with any of the secrets of his sect. The Khojahs have at Matrah, near
Maskat, an enclosed house, which the Arabs call Bayt el Lúti. They
declare that both sexes meet in it, and that when on a certain occasion
it was broken open, a large calf of gilt silver was found to be the
object of worship. Other incredible tales are also told about the sect:
they remind us of the legends of the Libanus, which make the Druzes,
apparently another offshoot of the Batini, worship El Ijl (the calf)
when the figure is placed in their Khilwahs, or lodges, in memory of the
detested Nishtakin Darazi, and in contra-distinction to El Akl, Hamzeh,
their greater ‘prophet.’[91] No Agapomenical establishments exist at
Zanzibar: the chief of the heretic sect is one Haymah, who has, however,
but little authority, and who commands even less respect. The Khojahs at
times repair to a tumbledown mosque on the sea-shore south of the city,
in the quarter called Mnazi Moyya.
By no means deficient in intelligence, though unscrupulous and one-
idea’d in pursuit of gain, the Khojahs are the principal shop-keepers in
Zanzibar. They are popularly accused of using false weights and
measures; they opposed the introduction of a metallic currency, and they
have ever advocated, with the Prince, a return to the bad old state of
barbarism. Many have applied themselves to slave-dealing, and lately one
was deported for selling poison to negroes; they are receivers of stolen
goods, and by the readiness with which they buy whatever is brought for
sale, they encourage the pilfering propensities of the slaves. They
travel far and wide; several of them have visited the Lake Regions, and
we afterwards met, at Kazeh of Unyanyembe,[92] one of their best men,
Musa Mzuri. At Zanzibar all not in trade are rude artisans, who can
patch a lantern and tin a pot; one of them, who had learned to mend a
watch, repaired the broken wheel of my pocket pedometer.
Of the free blacks who visit and who sometimes reside in Zanzibar, I
have mentioned the Malagash: these Madagascar Islanders occupy the
easternmost suburb of the town. In early ages the Arab and Wasawahili
settlers on the western coast of the Great Island traded with the
Mozambique, the Sawahil, and even Arabia, and since 1829 the
persecutions of the Queen Ranavola-Manjaka, and the heavy yoke of the
Hova conquerors, caused many to leave their homes. The rare Somal need
hardly be noticed. During the season a few run down from Makdishu and
Brava, to trade and barter hides and cattle. There are almost 2000 men
from Angazijeh (Great Comoro), Mayotta, Hinzuwan or Anjuan (Johanna),
and Muhayli. The word Comoro is evidently corrupted Arabic, meaning
Moon-Island. The natives of the Archipelago here preserve their own
language, which seems to be a superstruction of Javanese and Bali,
Arabic, and Sanskrit erected upon a primitive insular dialect, meagre
and un-Aryan. Others have detected in it a resemblance to that of the
Philippine Islands,[93] and hold the people to be of Malay origin. The
blood was Persianized and Arabized in the 12th century, and the Sultan
and chiefs have ever since retained the Semitic physiognomy; but the
extensive negro innervation has so tainted the blood that no difference
can be perceived in the characteristic effluvium between them and the
Wasawahili. It is curious to hear them, withal, boast of their Koraysh
descent, and pride themselves upon the glories of the ancient race that
produced the ‘Rasúl Ullah.’ In A.D. 1774 they hospitably entertained the
crew of an East Indiaman wrecked whilst en route to Bombay. The Sultan
of Johanna received in return a magnificent present from the H. E. I.
Company, and the Comoro Islanders gained for themselves a permanent good
name. A considerable emigration was caused in the early part of the
present century by intestine divisions and by piratical attacks from
Madagascar, whilst the slave emancipation by the French in 1847 set a
large class free to travel. Of late they have displayed a savage and
mutinous spirit, and two men were put to death for attempting with
peculiar audacity the life of the young chief, Abdullah.
Amongst Eastern impostors the Comoro, especially the Johanna men, are
facilè principes: the singular scoundrels have completely mastered the
knack of cajoling Europeans—no Syrian Dragoman can do it better. Once or
twice a year they tell-off begging-parties, who visit Mauritius and
Aden, Bombay and Calcutta, and who invariably represent themselves as
being on ‘Church-bijness,’ i.e. pilgrimage. Linguists, after the fashion
of Egyptian donkey-boys, they also have the habit, like the petty
Shaykhs and Emirs in the Libanus, of calling themselves ‘princes.’ More
than one scion of Comoro loyalty, after obtaining a passage on board our
cruisers, insisting upon the guard being turned out, and claiming from
our gullible countrymen all the honours of kinghood, has proved to be a
cook or a bumboat-man. Unscrupulous as bigoted, they have induced half-
starved Europeans to apostatize by promises of making them chiefs and of
marrying them to princesses; after circumcision, the wretches were left
to starve. The Comoro men settled at Zanzibar are mostly servants in
European houses, where they recommend themselves by exceeding impudence
and by being handy at any fraud. Others are rude artisans, and the rest
are Mercuries, beach-combers, and bumboat-men, who supply sailors with
Venus and Bacchus, both execrably bad. When expecting invasion, Sayyid
Majid equipped about 130 of these fellows as a garde de corps: they had
flint muskets, two spears apiece, and lozenge-shaped hats, whereas the
common troops wore woollen night-caps. Finally, they are cowardly as
they are dishonest: it was not without astonishment that I heard of Dr
Livingstone engaging a party of them for exploration in the African
interior, and the trick which they played him is now a matter of
history.
The Diwans or chiefs of the mainland ports and towns occasionally visit
the Island on public and private business. Twice a year, in our
midsummer and midwinter, a crowd of the Wanyam-wezi and other races of
the inner intertropical regions flock, viâ the Coast, into Zanzibar,
where they engage themselves as porters, and undertake carrying packs
for the native traders to the Lake Regions and other meeting-places of
commerce. They are so wild, that they cannot be induced to enter a
house; and the terror of one who was brought to the consular residence
was described as grotesquely comical: even the more civilized look upon
a stone abode as a cavern or a dungeon. These half-naked miserables may
be seen devouring, like birds of prey, carrion and putrid fish in the
outskirts of the city; they have also a ‘Devil’s tree,’ whose trunk
bristles with nails, and whose branches are robed in foul rags.
Some years ago one of the chiefs of the interior, I was told, was
brought to Zanzibar a prisoner of war. He is described as a man of
kingly presence, 6 feet 2 inches tall, handsome in face, and well-formed
in head; his skin was covered with scar and tattoo in patterns, amongst
which the crescent shape predominated.[94] When struck by his Arab owner
he spat upon him, and declared that if burnt alive he would not cry out.
Being carried before the late Sayyid, he boldly told him that ‘God
exalts men and brings them low, that both were kings, and that the same
misfortune which had made one a captive might also happen to the other.’
As he walked through the streets all the slaves, wild and domestic,
prostrated themselves, to be touched by the point of his staff; they
served him with food upon their knees; they remained in that position
while he ate, and all wailed when he was placed in the Fort. The same
story is told of an old ‘Congo king,’ who is still remembered at Rio de
Janeiro. The prisoner of Zanzibar invariably placed his foot upon
presents, and when the Sayyid restored him to liberty he departed empty-
handed. M. Broquin, the French Consul, and other Europeans made
inquiries about this black Jugurtha: all they could discover was that
his country lay somewhere about the great Central Lakes.
A few Wazegura, Wasegejo, and Wadigo, heathen from the mainland, visit
Zanzibar to buy and sell, or to fly from foes and famine. The greater
portion settle permanently upon the Island, the savage for the most part
unwillingly exchanges the comforts and pleasures of semi-civilization
for the wildness and freedom of ‘Nature,’ so dear to the man of
refinement. These Africans live by fishing and work in the plantations:
they easily obtain from the large landed proprietors bits of ground,
paying as a yearly quit-rent half a dollar and upwards according to
crop, manioc, bananas, and sweet potatoes.
-----
Footnote 84:
The extremes mentioned to me were 100,000 and 1,000,000. Captain Smee
(1811) gave 200,000. Dr Ruschenberger (1835) made the population of
the Island 150,000 souls, of whom 17,000 were free negroes. M.
Guillain (1846) places the extremes mentioned to him at 60,000 to
200,000: when he asked the Sayyid, the latter replied like a veritable
Arab, ‘How can I know when I cannot tell you how many there are in my
own house?’
Footnote 85:
The extremes of the guess-work census are 2600 and 5000.
Footnote 86:
In 1862-3 a Bombay firm established a branch on the Island, but I have
not heard of the results.
Footnote 87:
I have been much amused by the comments of the press upon the expenses
of minor officials living abroad, as elicited from Ministers and
Chargés d’Affaires by the Diplomatic Committee of 1870. There seems to
be a deeply-rooted idea in the British brain that, because heavily
taxed, our native island is the most expensive of residences. On the
contrary, I have even found England the cheapest country, and London
the cheapest capital in Europe. At Fernando Po my outlay was never
less than £1800; at Santos (Brazil) it was £1500; at Damascus, from
£1200 to £2000, and so forth.
Footnote 88:
For other details concerning the currency see the Appendix.
Footnote 89:
Pliny, however (vi. 35), calls Baricazu a ‘town of Æthiopia.’
Footnote 90:
In 1844 there were 500 Banyans on the Coast and Island,—the number has
now nearly trebled.
Footnote 91:
Such is the general view. There may, however, be a section of the
Druze creed that retains the calf-image in honour.
Footnote 92:
‘Handsome Moses’ is mentioned in ‘The Lake Regions of Central Africa’
(i. 323, et passim). He and his ‘brother,’ Sayyán, entered the country
about 1830.
Footnote 93:
I state this upon the authority of Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton. Capt.
Guillain (iii. 414) appears to think the language Zangian much mixed
with Arabic.
Footnote 94:
One of my informants suggested that from this peculiar tattoo,
‘Unyamwezi,’ the Land of the Moon, might have taken the name which the
Greeks after their fashion literally translated ‘Mountain-range of the
Moon.’
CHAPTER IX.
HORSEFLESH AT ZANZIBAR.—THE OUTSKIRTS OF THE CITY, AND THE CLOVE
PLANTATIONS.
‘Peregrination charms our senses with such unspeakable and sweet
variety, that some count him unhappy that never travelled, and pity his
case, that from his cradle to his old age beholds the same still; still,
still the same, the same.’—‘ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY,’ Part II. sect. ii.
mem. 3.
Most Europeans at Zanzibar keep horses which they seldom ride. The
Sayyid, however, had, after hospitable Arab custom, placed a large stud
at the disposal of Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton and his guests. I had heard
much of the Oman blood, so before excursioning to the outskirts of
Zanzibar City we proceeded to the Prince’s stables.
The late ruler had rarely less than 200 mares, whose value ranged
between $1500 and $2000: at present, however, the number is greatly
reduced. They require as much nursing as European dogs: in the morning
they must be picketed in the courtyard to ‘smell the air’; during the
day they must take shelter from the sun under a long cajan-roofed shed;
they must at all times he defended from rain and dew; and they must be
fed with dry fodder—here, as in Paraguay, the belief is that the
indigenous green meat becomes fatal to imported beasts. We found the
treatment very rough. The animals were ungroomed, and mostly they had
puffed legs, the result of being kept standing night and day upon a
slope of hard boarding. Amongst them I was shown a curious Nejdi, which
reminded me of Lady Hester Stanhope’s pampered beasts; the coat was
silver-white, the shoulders were pinkish, and the saddle-back amounted
almost to a deformity. The favourite charger of the late Sayyid is a
little bay with black points, standing about 14 hands 2 inches: its
straight fetlocks are well fitted for stony ground, it wears the mane
almost upon the withers, and the shoulder is well thrown back, barely
leaving room for the saddle. The hind-quarter, that weak point in the
Arab, is firmly and strongly made, and the tail is thin, switchlike,
carried nearly straight, as usual with the best blood, and remarkably
high. The beau-ideal of a Nejdi is an animal all shoulder and quarter,
connected by a bit of barrel; and to this pitch of excellence we are
gradually breeding up our English horses. The charger in question is of
the ancient Oman race, once celebrated for endurance: the late Sayyid,
however, injured his stud by crossing foal and dam, brother and sister,
till the animals fined down and dwindled to mere dwarfs. I remarked
that, here as elsewhere, the Arabs have learned from Europeans to trace
the genealogy of their horses through the sire, a practice unknown to
the sons of the desert.
All the best horses in Zanzibar come from Oman: an inferior strain is
exported by Brava (Barawa), and the Somali country. The latter sends
good little beasts somewhat like those of the Pernambucan Province; but
worn out by long marches and scant feeding, they usually die during the
first rains. Upon the mainland they will live for years. Here, however,
the new importations at first fatten; then they get foul; the sweat
becomes fetid; they lose breath and become unfit for work, till fatal
disease manifests itself by foam from the mouth. As in Malabar and
Mauritius, where the field-officers have often been dismounted, it is
next to impossible to keep horses in health and condition: they are also
costly, $150 to $200, German crowns, being asked for Kadishs or garrons.
The Government stables at Zanzibar also contain a few mules brought from
the Persian Gulf. They become liable to inveterate drowsiness; they
start when approached, refuse food and drink, and soon succumb to the
climate. The ass, on the contrary, here as in the East African interior,
thrives even upon hard food, and consequently it is prized by the Arabs.
There are many breeds. During the season fine animals are brought from
Oman; iron-grey mares with white legs being preferred; Bahrayn and the
Persian Gulf send a large light-coloured beast, resembling that of
Baghdad; it is not, however, considered lasting. Asses imported from
Brava and the Somali country are held fit only for carrying burdens, and
the Unyamwezi breed, known by its lopped ears, though strong and
serviceable, is always but half tamed, and is often vicious. The most
useful and lasting are the Mutawallid or Muwallid, the progeny of Maskat
beasts, Creoles born upon the Island—these we were advised to buy before
leaving for the interior. I subsequently purchased thirty, and the last
died within six months of landing: we then mounted Unyamwezi animals,
and had nothing to complain of. Asses are ridden, as they always should
he, upon the crupper; the ‘hulús’ are rather pads than saddles, covered
with thick cloths and black sheepskins; no one uses stirrups, and the
bridle is the rudest of contrivances. The price of donkeys ranges from
$15 to $100: I bought a tolerable riding animal for $60, and I heard of
one costing $350. Finally, the Sayyid keeps for the use of his
plantation-mills a few miserable mangy camels from Brava and Makdishu:
they may be worth $10 to $12 a-head.
Mounted on the Prince’s best we passed through the town, where the long
sharp poles projecting from the low house-eaves are not pleasant to
those riding spirited nags. This is the labour hour, and all are not
inactive. The weaver on his raised clay bench, and shaded by his dwarf
verandah, is engaged upon a turban, whilst his neighbour converts copal,
reddened by cinnabar, into ear-rings and other ornaments. The tinsmith
and the Comoro blacksmith, with the usual African bellows, are also at
work hammering at pots and pans, fashioning the normal weapons, arrow
and spear heads, and repairing old guns. The leather-worker is moulding
a targe of rhinoceros-hide, apparently all umbo, and the vendors of oil
and grain, spices and drugs, glass and ‘potions,’ are on the alert. By
the way we walked into the partially-walled compound or court
representing the slave-market, a bonâ fide affair, not like the
caravanserai which used to be fitted up and furnished by the Cairene
Dragoman for the inspection of curious tourists. In 1835 a wooden cage
some 20 feet square often contained some 150 men, women, and children,
who every day were ‘knocked down’ to the highest bidder in the public
‘place.’ In those times the yearly importation was 6000 to 7000. The
bazar was subsequently held in the Changani Quarter, near the Western
Point; the late Sayyid, however, having forbidden, by way of sop to the
British Cerberus, the sale of men in the streets of Zanzibar as of
Maskat, it was shifted to a plantation called Kirungani. As this was
found inconveniently distant, it migrated to its present site. Lines of
negroes stood like beasts, the broker calling out ‘bazar khush!’—the
least hideous of the black faces, some of which appeared hardly human,
were surmounted by scarlet night-caps. All were horridly thin, with ribs
protruding like the circles of a cask, and not a few squatted sick on
the ground. The most interesting were the small boys, who grinned as if
somewhat pleased by the degrading and hardly decent inspection to which
both sexes and all ages were subjected. The woman-show appeared poor and
miserable; there was only one decent-looking girl, with carefully
blacked eye-brows. She seemed modest, and had probably been exposed for
sale in consequence of some inexcusable offence against decorum. As a
rule, no one buys adult domestic slaves, male or female, for the
sufficient reason that the masters never part with them till they are
found incorrigible. These, however, are mostly Bozals, or wild serviles
newly driven from the interior, and they are not numerous, the
transactions of the year being now concluded. The dealers smiled at us,
and were in good humour.
It would be easy to adorn this subject with many a flower of
description; the atrocities of the capture, the brutalities of the
purchase, the terrors of the middle-passage, and the horrors to which
the wretches are exposed when entering half-civilized lands. It was
usual to throw the slaves overboard when the fatal symptom,
coprophagism, appeared amongst them. A single Dau (Dow) belonging to the
late Prince Khalid lost when running a course 500 slaves by sickness,
and by the falling of the pont-flottant or flying-deck—many a desperate
naval action could not show such a butcher’s bill. A certain Charles L——
—, a kiln-dried Mauritius man, crucified seven negroes in terrorem: two
were fastened outside the ship, the others were nailed by the feet to
the deck, and by the hands to capstan bars, lashed across the masts.
With a lighted tar-barrel in an empty boat he nearly caused the loss of
an English cruiser, and when she was well on the reef he let off rockets
and saluted her. Another man, a Spaniard, finding his ventures likely to
die of dysentery, sewed them up before he sent them to the bazar; this
slaver made an act of contrition before he died, and severely blamed his
bowie-knife. Sensational paragraphs, however, are not wanted by those to
whom the subject is familiar, and they are likely to mislead the many
who are not. I shall return to the subject of slavery in another
chapter.
Thence we entered the Malagash Quarter, where the land belongs chiefly
to Sayyid Sulayman bin Hamed, a former Governor of Zanzibar; he is said
to be so wealthy that he ignores the extent of his means. Here is the
Lal Bazar, the very centre of prostitution, an Agapemone of some twenty
Cyprians: all are Wasawahili—the Indian women, who appear almost
European in complexion and features, having now left. Their faces like
skinned apes, and lean legs encased in red silk tights, make their
appearance revolting as their society is dangerous. Some of them cool
the orbits of the eyes by a kind of loup of perfumed turmeric, whose
golden tint causes the outer darkness to gloom extra sooty; others apply
curry-coloured dabs to the woolly hair. Sundry of these patches are
frontlets or medicines applied to the temples. In former days we used,
for instance, ‘rose-water and vinegar, with a little woman’s milk, and
nutmegs grated upon a rose cake,’ and the Jews are said to have smeared
themselves with Christian blood.
The Malagash Quarter is at the far east of the city, leading to two
tumble-down bridges which span a lagoon more deadly than that of British
Accra. These ruins might easily be converted into dykes, and in process
of time the mouth would be sanded or silted up; they are however, fated
to make way for iron improvements. In my day the lagoon was connected by
fresh water with the sea, and became now a muddy pool at the ebb tides
of the Syzygies, then a sheet of festering mud which nearly encircled
the settlement, and which converted the site of Zanzibar city into a
quasi-island. Every evening a pestilent sepulchral miasma arose from it,
covering the skin with a clammy sweat, and exhaling a fetor which caused
candles to burn dim, and which changed the sound of the human voice.
Lazy skippers anchoring here for facility of watering, thus exposing
their men to the breath of the fetid lagoon, have lost in a few days
half the crew; and although the water appeared to be of the purest, it
became so offensive that often the casks had to be started.
We then passed over a sandy flat, thinly powdered with black vegetable
humus. To the left was a creek upon whose sandy beach vessels are hauled
up, and where ships of 300 to 400 tons can be safely careened: in a few
years there will here be a dock. A mile of neat footpath placed us at
the late Sayyid’s Summer Palace, Mto-ni, which is distant about three
direct miles from the Consulate. After escaping the unpleasant
attentions bestowed upon us by the tame ostriches, who are apt to use
beak and wing, we dismounted for inspection. The building is of coral
rag, pierced with square windows, and the wings are united by a
verandah-terrace, supported by wooden pillars, and facing Meccah, for
convenience of prayer. A few feet above the centre is the peaked roof of
the Kiosk, which makes the place remarkable to crews entering the
harbour. In front floats from sunrise to sunset the red flag of the
Sayyid: the rear is brought up by a small cemetery, sundry offices, and
lowly cajan-thatched hovels tenanted by slaves. The work of man is mean
enough, but it is surrounded by the noblest handiwork of Nature, cocoas
and mangoes, whilst the borders of the little stream could be
beautifully laid out.
Gum Copal, formerly called in the trade Gum Anime, now Gum Elemi, is
washed down by the rains, and is picked up by the slaves about the
debouchure of this fiumara. On the Mto-ni road also we passed sundry
places where pits, never exceeding five feet deep, had been sunk in the
sandy plain, thinly clothed with sedgy grass. Upon the higher grounds,
also, to judge by the eye, about 100 feet above sea-level, we found many
deserted diggings. The soil is a dark vegetable mould, varying in
thickness from a foot to 18 inches, and based upon the raised sea-beach
of blue clay. This becomes fat and adhesive, clogging the hoe as it
descends: the half-decayed blood-red fibre with which it is mixed
throughout was recognized by the negroes as cocoa-roots. Bits of
scarlet-coloured earth also variegated the faint blue marl, and at a
depth of 2-1/2 feet water began to exude from the greasy walls of the
pit. These places supply only the raw or unripe copal, locally called
Chakazi,[95] and by us corrupted to Jackass: the true vegetable fossil
must be brought from the coast. The tree was probably once common on the
Island, but it has been cut down for masts and similar uses. Copal does
not appear under that name in the list of exports from Zanzibar given by
Captain Smee in 1811: possibly that officer alludes to it when speaking
of ‘Dammer.’ In early days ‘gum-anime’ was held a precious medicine for
rheums and heaviness of the head. It was imported viâ the Levant ‘from
the place where incense is found, and that lande or soyle is called
_Animitim_, and therefore the thing is called, Anime,’ says Dr Monardes,
treating of the objects that are brought from the West Indies. He adds
that American Anime was whiter, brighter, and said to be a ‘spice of
_Charabe_ or _Succino_, which is called amber congealed.’ In 1769
Portugal forbade the importation of true copal, in order to protect the
Jataycica or gum of the Jatoba (hymenæa), of which 14 Arrobas had been
sent from Turiassu in the Brazil.
Leaving Mto-ni, after half a mile of beach, we turned towards the
interior, and ascended the gently rising ground, beautifully undulated,
which leads to the royal estates called Rauzah and Taif, formerly
Kizimba-ni or Sebbe. For two or three miles a narrow path, which
compelled us to ride in Indian file, wound through cocoa-groves and
patches of highly-cultivated ground, with here and there a hut buried
under fruit-laden mangos. The track, then 254 feet above sea-level,
widened into a broad avenue of dark conical clove-trees, varying in
height from 6 to 16 feet according to age; feathered almost to the
ground, and extending, like the well-berried coffee-shrub, its branches
at right angles to the trunk. All, however, bore the impress of neglect,
where Dr Ruschenberger found a ‘picture of industry and of admirable
neatness and beauty’ that employed from 500 to 700 slaves.
We saw little to admire in the ‘palace,’ a single-storied lodge of coral
rag, and ample porches looking upon sundry courts and yards, negro
quarters and drying-grounds. There is here a well said to be 100 fathoms
deep, which gives water only in the rainy seasons; most of the upland
plantations must draw the element from the little streams. The Arab
care-takers, after refreshing us with cocoa-nut milk, led us out to
inspect the grounds. These Semites, satiated with verdure, despise the
idea of assisting nature, and yet at Maskat they will gaze delighted
upon a dusty, ragged plot of sand-veiled rock, dotted with consumptive
trees, and dignified by the name of a garden. Some years ago Lieut.-
Colonel Hamerton taught the late Sayyid to plant rose-trees, which gave
a crop as abundant as those of ancient Syria: during their owners’
absence the slaves uprooted the young growth in very wantonness. The
nutmeg fared as badly. The Consul also succeeded in producing wall-
flowers, lavender, and the apple-scented as well as the common geranium:
imported from Europe with abundant trouble, they met the fate of all the
roses. The Ravenala, or Travellers’ tree, was brought from the
Seychelles by the Sayyid with the same unsuccess. Several kinds of
jasmines were transported from Cutch to Zanzibar: the Arabs objected to
them, that the scent depresses the male sex and unduly excites the
feminine. Many flowers—for instance, the Narcissus and certain Acacias—
labour under the same ill-fame.
Here, after admiring the delicious view of the tree-crowned uplands, the
low grounds buried in the richest forest, the cocoa-fringed shore of
purest white, and the sea blue as a slab of lapis lazuli, we had an
opportunity of inspecting the celebrated clove plantations of Zanzibar.
According to Castanheda, when Vasco da Gama first touched at Mombasah
and Melinde, their Reguli sent him, amongst other presents, cloves, and
declared that their countries grew the spice. Other travellers mention
the clove being found at various parts of East Africa, and Andrea
Corsali in Ramusio describes the produce as ‘not like those of India,
but shaped more like our acorns.’ The Dutch, however, since their
conquest of the Moluccas or Spice Islands in 1607, monopolized the clove
like the nutmeg; and by destroying the former and enslaving the
cultivators, they confined it, lest the price should fall, to the single
Island of Amboyna. The naturalist traveller, M. Poivre, when governor of
the Isle of France, brought from the least frequented of the Moluccas,
in June 27, 1770, some 450 nutmeg stalks and 10,000 nutmegs in blossom
or about to blossom, together with 70 clove trees and a box of plants,
many of them well above the earth. In 1772 a further supply was
procured; the greater part was kept in the Isle of France, the rest were
dispersed amongst the Seychelles, Bourbon, and Cayenne. All the
specimens given to private individuals died: skilful botanists, however,
succeeded in preserving 58 nutmegs and 38 clove trees. Of the latter two
bore blossoms in 1775, and the fruit was gathered in the following year;
the produce, however, was small, light, and dry, and all deemed that the
Dutch had been unnecessarily alarmed.[96] The project, however, proved
completely successful.
In 1818 the clove-tree (Caryophyllus aromaticus) was introduced from
Mauritius and Bourbon into Zanzibar; requiring little care, it speedily
became a favourite, and in 1835 the aristocratic foreigner almost
supplanted the vulgar valuable cocoa-nut, and the homely rice necessary
for local consumption. The Banyans, Americans, and Europeans shared
amongst them the principal profits of other commerce, and the cloves
enriched the squirearchy, the landed proprietors. Yet it was early
predicted that this prosperity would end in ruin; and presently the man
who first introduced the spice became a beggar. After a few years
extensive plantations, some containing 15,000 to 20,000 feet, were laid
out in the richest parts of the Island. The trees, however, set at
intervals of 14 to 40, and now 20 feet, occupied large tracts of ground,
and they were so rarely trimmed, that degeneracy soon ensued. Similarly
the Brazilian planter, though well aware of his loss, cannot prune his
coffee shrub: his hands are all negroes, and if allowed to use cutting
instruments, they would hack even the stem. Now the Zanzibar article
cannot compete with the produce of Bourbon; and the Dutch having thrown
into the market the valuable and long-withheld produce of the Moluccas,
it threatens to become a drug. The people would do well to follow the
example of Mauritius, whence the clove has long departed in favour of
sugar. For the latter Zanzibar is admirably adapted: when factories
shall everywhere be established, the Island will have then found her
proper profession, and will soon attain the height of her prosperity.
The clove (Karanful), planted in picturesque bands, streaking the red
argillaceous hills, is allowed to run to wood, and to die, withered at
the top, in the shape of a bushy thick-foliaged tree 35 feet tall, and
somewhat resembling a laurel. Grown from seed, it bears in the fifth
year, and the fruit, the unexpanded flower-bud, is usually ripe in
October. In rainy years the harvest beginning with early September is
continued uninterruptedly: when the season, however, is dry the picking
ceases in November and December, to be resumed in January. Hence the
tales of two yields per annum. The crop, which lasts even till March,
and which appears to be very uncertain, is hand-picked by Wasawahili and
slaves—gathered, in fact, like coffee, except that, requiring ladders
and more labour, it is a very slow process. Under favourable
circumstances the tree should produce a maximum of 6 lbs; here, however,
the ground is neither cleared nor manured, and the consequence is, that
30 trees rarely yield more than 35 lbs per annum. The fruit is sun-dried
upon matting for three days: the workmen forget to turn it, and allow it
to be broken and injured; moreover, they will not smoke it, and thus
prevent over-shrinking and wrinkling. Some years ago Mr Wilson, an
English engineer who died at Zanzibar, produced, by attending to the
tree, and by properly desiccating his cloves upon iron hurdles, a
superior article, with red shanks and large full heads. M. Sausse, a
Creole from Bourbon or Mauritius, also succeeded in extracting an
excellent oil, the clove oil of commerce being generally made by
distilling cinnamon leaves. This novelty became a universal favourite
with the Zanzibar public, who held it to be highly medicinal, and used
it especially for _inflammations_. Locally the spice is employed as a
condiment and infused as a medicine and a tonic: women of the poorer
classes make necklaces and ear-rings of the corns; they also pound them
to a paste, and mould them into different shapes.
The Asákif, or stalks pulled off when the fruit is dry, are exported to
Europe under the name of ‘clove stems,’ and are used as a mordant for
dyeing silks. An English house once provided tin canisters to preserve
its purchases, whereas they are mostly sent home in bulk. Certain other
merchants, ‘born with the pencil behind their ears,’ open the hatches,
and to make the cargo ‘weigh out’ heave in sea-water, which, they say,
does not much affect the flavour of pepper and cloves. The stems fetch
from one-eighth to half of a German crown per Farsilah, or frail of 35
lbs. The price of cloves, originally $5 to $6 per Farsilah, has now
fallen to $2 and even to $1. In 1856, the Island exported five millions
of lbs; the next year, however, was unfavourable—the trees had been
injured by drought; the over-supply had sunk the price 70 per cent., and
many Arab proprietors talked of returning to rice and cocoa-nuts. Yet,
in 1859, the crop rose to some 200,000 Farásilah = 7,000,000 lbs, valued
at about £85,000; whereas 10 years before the total produce of Zanzibar,
including Pemba, was 120,000 to 150,000 Farásilah, and in 1839-40 it
barely numbered 9000.
We returned viâ the bush to the south of the city, passing through a
luxuriant growth of the hardest woods. After a stiff ride over the worst
of paths, a mere ‘picada,’ as the Brazilians say, we skirted the fetid
lagoon which subtends the eastern city from north to south, and reached
Mnazi Moyya, ‘One Cocoa-nut Tree.’ This bit of open ground is the Bois
de Boulogne of Zanzibar, the single place for exercise, and we did not
wonder that so many prefer to stay at home.
During the ’Id Saghir or Kuchuk Bayram, here called Siku-khu za Ídí,
‘One Cocoa-nut Tree’ is a lively place. Whilst the boys sing and dance
about the streets, and the garrison blacks, armed with sabres, engage
near the fort in a Zumo or Pyrrhic, wildly waving their tremulous
blades, and the Wahiao or Bozals from about Kilwa execute their
saltations near the bridge, and the other slaves carouse and junket in
their own quarter of the town, each clan from the mainland keeping
itself distinct, the grandees, fingering their rosaries and supported by
long staves, proceed to Mnazi Moyya, where gallops, called races, form
the attraction. About half-a-dozen garrons, rushing wildly about,
represent the performers, and the performance is nothing new to the
Anglo-Indian. The groups are motley if not picturesque. Here and there,
surrounded by rings of sable admirers, are women boisterously singing
and clapping hands, dancing and acting lionnes with all their might.
Tremendous are the Vijelejele, the Kil, Zaghárit, or trilling of the
spectatresses. Men also stamp and wriggle in a rude ‘improper’ style to
the succedaneum for a drum, a hollow wooden cylinder one foot in
diameter, with the open end applied to the breast, and the dried and
stretched snake-skin patted upon with finger and palm. Most of these
people, regardless of fever or cholera, are primed with fermented cocoa
juice. The heavily-clad Shaykhs, bestriding their asses, are preceded by
outrunners, who mercilessly push aside and ‘bakur’ the crowd; and the
latter turn viciously as bull-terriers. There is not much striking, but
jostling and thrusting away are the rules. At Lamu and the wilder places
swords and daggers are often bared on these occasions, and the Shaykhs
have no little trouble to preserve the peace. Contrasting with the full-
dressed crowd are the naked children, who seem all afflicted with
umbilical hernia. This is the result of careless cutting, but the
unsightly protuberance will wear away in after life, and a pot-belly is
here, as elsewhere in Africa, looked upon as a good sign. The negro
faces and bodies are marked with the tattoo in almost every possible
fashion; some wear straight black lines, others curved; these have
perpendicular, those horizontal marks, and not a few wear painted
squares with central spots, like the wafers upon the garment of the old
country clown. At length the princes make their appearance, and are
received with a file-firing of guns and pistols, whilst shouts and drums
disturb the air; the races are formally run, and the crowd disperses
through the unclean streets of the city.
There is still some exploration to be done on the west or landward front
of Zanzibar Island. Colonel Hamerton, however, strongly advises us not
to risk fever, and to reserve every atom of strength and energy for the
Continent.
-----
Footnote 95:
Tchakazi, espèce de gomme-résine, dont j’ignore l’origine (M.
Guillain, Part II. p. 87).
Footnote 96:
Establicimientos Ultramarinos, vol. iii. Madrid, 1768.
CHAPTER X.
COMPARATIVE ANTHROPOLOGY (ETHNOLOGY) OF ZANZIBAR. THE ARABS.
‘Les Arabes ne sont maintenant, dans l’Afrique Orientale, que des
parasites, comme l’est tout peuple exclusivement commerçant.’—M.
GUILLAIN, vol. ii. part ii. chap. ii. p. 151.
The Arabs upon the Island may amount to a total of 5000,[97] all Omans;
and they are divided, as in their fatherland, into two great Kabilah or
tribes, the Hináwi and the Gháfiri.
When Malik bin Fakhm, of the Benu Hunayfah tribe, marched from his own
country, Nejd, to recover Oman from the Persians under Dara, son of
Bahman, son of Isfandiyar, an event popularly dated about the end of our
1st century, he was joined by some 100 Yemeni warriors who were called
Benu Yemin, sons of the right hand, because they dwelt to the south or
on the right hand of the Ka’abah. Their migration is attributed to the
bursting of the dyke of Arim, near Mareb, the Mariaba of Ptolemy, which
is the Babel-tower of Arabian history in the Days of Ignorance. The
learned Dr Wetzstein (p. 104, Reisebericht über Hauran, &c. Berlin,
1860) believes this event to have taken place about the beginning of our
era; most authors, however, place it at the end of the 1st or the
beginning of our 2nd century. It was probably the over-populating of the
land which sent forth the two great Sabæan tribes of Azud and Himyar to
Bahrayn and N. Eastern Arabia; they united, and were known as the Tanukh
or Confederates. The former, also called from a chief ‘Nasri,’ settled
upon the Euphrates, and founded the East Tanukh kingdom, whose capital
was afterwards Hira. The Himyar or Kudai originated, in the Hauran and
the Belka, the West Tanukh kingdom, also termed from a chief ‘Salih.’
These men, converted to Christianity, were probably the builders of the
‘Giant cities’ of Bashan, mere provincial towns of the Greco-Roman
Empire. Ta’alab (Thalaba), one of the sons of Malik bin Fakhm, is
mentioned as the first ruler of East Tanukh. The extinct family of the
Druze Tanukhs claimed descent from the western kingdom.
The Ya’rubah considered themselves to be of the Arab el Aribah
(Joctanites), through their ancestor Yarub el Azud (يعرب الازد) bin
Faligh (Peleg, the brother of Kahtán or Joctan), bin Abir (Eber), bin
Salih, bin Arfakhshad, bin Sham (Shem), and to the present day their
descendants boast of this ancient lineage. Malik bin Fakhm routed 40,000
horsemen supported by elephants, slew Mirzban (the Marz-ban or warden of
the Marches) the Satrap-lieutenant of the King of Kings, whose head-
quarters were at Sohar, and conquered the country from Sharjah to the
Ra’as el Hadd (Rasalgat), the eastern Land’s-end of the Arabian shore.
Reinforced by fresh drafts of the Benu Yemin, he showed his gratitude by
incorporating them with his own tribe. The word Hináwi, meaning a
patrician or ‘one having a founder,’ arose from Malik bin Fakhm,
proposing himself as the Hanu (هنو) or originator of the emigrants:
certain Arabs derive it from Hiná, a fanciful ancestor, and even call
themselves Benu Hiná. According to some authorities, Oman took its name
from a place in the neighbourhood of the dyke of Mareb; others derive it
from a valley which, like the Wady el Arab, gave its name to the whole
country; the Arab geographers make it the ancient term for Sohar, and
the classical geographer holds that the Ommanum Emporium of Ptolemy was
applied to Maskat.
When Malik bin Fakhm had been slain by his son Selima, and another son,
Zayd, ruled Oman in his stead, a thousand of the Benu Nezar came to him
from the town of Ubar, and were settled upon a tract of low open ground
(غفير), whence they took the name of Gháfiri. These immigrants were Arab
el Musta’arabah, which, in Omanic usage, denotes the insititious or
Ismailitic clans derived from Adnan, son of Ishmael; and the gift of
land had made them clients of Zayd and of his tribe, the Hináwi.
Intermarriage, however, soon amalgamated the races. When El Islam
brought the sword to mankind, and when the rival prophet Musaylimah,
generally known as the Liar, paved the way for the Karmati (Carmathians)
and for a copious crop of heresies, the Gháfiri, cleaving to the faith
of Meccah, were preferred by the Caliph Abubekr to their former patrons,
for the chieftainship of Oman. In his turn, the Caliph Ali restored
precedence to the Hináwi who had espoused his cause. Hence an inveterate
feud, a flame of wrath, which rivers of blood have not quenched.
Throughout Oman the rival tribes still occupy separate quarters; they
will not connect themselves by marriage, and they seldom meet without a
‘faction fight.’ Even at Zanzibar, where the climate has softened them,
they rarely preserve that decency of hate which is due by Arabs of noble
strain to hereditary and natural enemies.
Here the principal clan of the Hináwi tribe is the Hárisí (plural Hurs),
under Abdullah bin Salím and Husayn bin Mahommed: once flourishing in
Oman, it now barely numbers 15,000 sabres, and in the Island it may
amount to 300, mostly merchants and wealthy planters. The other
divisions are the Bú (or Ayyál) Sa’íd; the ruling race which forms one
large family—that of the Sayyid. There are also about a dozen of the
Benu Lamk, whose preponderance in Oman was broken down by the Yu’rabi
Imams. The minor sections of the Hináwi are the Benu Yas of Sur; the
Benu Menasir near Sharjah; the Benu Ali; the Benu Baktashi; the Benu
Uhaybi; the Benu el Hijri; the Benu Kalban; the Benu el Abri; and the
Benu bu Hasan, generally pronounced Bohsan. A few of the Benu Dafri or
Dafil at times visit the Island: they are professional carriers, and
therefore they have no blood feuds with other tribes. Besides, these are
Ammari, Adwani, Kuruni, Khuzuri, Saláhameh, and Nayyáyareh; most of them
frequent Zanzibar during the trading season.
The pure Gháfiri stock is still, they say, to be found in Nejd.
Throughout Oman they are a wild unruly race, hostile to strangers, and
inclined to Wahhabi-ism. They possess at several places little castles
armed with guns which are mere robbers’ dens; near Mina the Chief
Musalim refused allegiance to Sayyid Saíd, and south of the Jebel el
Akhzar, or ‘Green Mountain,’ they made themselves the terror of the
country-side about Buraymah. The worst of the Gháfiri are the Kawásim
pirates (the Anglo-Arabic ‘Jowasmees’) of Ras el Khaymah and our old
enemies the Benu bu Ali of Ra’as el Hadd. To them also belong the Shaksi
or Benu Ruwayhah, popularly called Ahl Rustak, from the settlement
founded by the Persian Anushirawán on the eastern slope of Jebel el
Akhzar, the mountainous district of Oman. It is about 70 miles west of
Maskat, which, now the capital, began life as its harbour. The present
representative of the Rustak chiefs, Sayyid Kays bin Azan, receives an
annual indemnification of $3000 from Sayyid Saíd, who had dispossessed
him of Sohar and its dependencies. Súr also belongs to the Gháfiri, of
whom, in these places, little good is spoken; they are said to be at
once cruel and cowardly, to fear no shame, and to respect no oath. We
shall soon be compelled to chastise these petty sea-thieves and
kidnappers.
At Zanzibar the Gháfiri is represented chiefly by the Masakirah or
Maskari clan, which under its chief, Sayf bin Khalfan, may number 2000
sabres. The Mazru’i of Mombasah, so well known in Sawahil history, were
also Gháfiri: they are now scattered about Gasi and other small Bandars,
retaining nothing of their political consequence. The Yu’rabi clan,
which gave to Oman its old patriotic Imams, is of scant account. The
other sections, who are for the most part visitors during the commercial
season, comprise the Jenabah, the Bímáni, the Benu Katúb, the Benu bu
Ali, and the Benu Riyám of Nezwah in the Jebel el Akhzar.
The Arab holds, and, according to old Moslem travellers, has long held
in these regions the position of an Osmanli in Arabia; he is a ‘superior
person.’ As the Omani chiefs, however, like the Sherifs of El Hejaz, did
not disdain servile concubines, many of their issue are negroids: of
these hybrids some are exceedingly fair, showing African pollution only
by tufty and wiry hair, whilst others, ‘falling upon their mothers,’ as
the native phrase is, have been refused inheritance at Maskat, and have
narrowly escaped the slave-market. The grandsons of purest Arabs who
have settled in Africa, though there has been no mixture of blood,
already show important physical modifications worked by the ‘mixture of
air,’ as the Portuguese phrase is. The skin is fair, but yellow-tinted
by over-development of gall; whilst the nose is high, the lips are
loose, everted, or otherwise ill-formed; and the beard, rarely of the
amplest, shrinks, under the hot-house air, to four straggling tufts upon
the rami of the jaws and the condyles of the chin. Whilst the
extremities preserve the fineness of Arab blood, the body is weak and
effeminate; and the degenerate aspect is accompanied by the no less
degraded mind, morals, and manners of the coast-people. The nervous or
nervoso-bilious temperament of the Sons of the Desert here runs into two
extremes: many Arabs are bilious-lymphatic, like Banyans; a few, lapsing
into the extreme of leanness, are fair specimens of the ‘Living
Skeleton.’ This has been remarked even of Omanis born and bred upon the
Island. Those who incline to the nervous diathesis have weakly drooping
occiputs and narrow skull-bases, arguing a deficiency of physical force,
and they exaggerate the flat-sided unconstructive Arab skull—here an
Indian may almost always be recognized by the comparative roundness of
his calvaria. And as the Zanzibar Arab is mostly of burgher race in his
own land, the forehead rarely displays that high development of the
perceptive organs which characterizes the Bedawin.
The Arab noble is still, like those of Meccah in Mohammed’s day, a
merchant, and here wealth has done much to degenerate the breed, climate
more, and slavery most. The ‘Californian fever’—indolence—becomes
endemic in the second generation, rendering the race hopeless, whilst
industry is supplied by the gross, transparent cunning of the Wasawahili
and of the African generally. Honesty is all but unknown; several
European merchants will not have an Arab’s name in their hooks. A
Nakhodá (Captain, Maskat R.N.) in the Prince’s service, commissioned to
bring a watch or other valuables from Bombay, will delay to deliver it
until threatened with the bakur, and the terrors of being blown from a
gun do not defend the ruler from the most shallow and impudent frauds.
Like their kinsmen of Oman, they despise truth, without versatility
enough to employ it when required, and few rise to the height of Bacon’s
model, ‘who hath openness in fame and opinion, secrecy in habit,
dissimulation in reasonable use, and a power to feign, if there he no
remedy.’ Haughty in the highest degree, and boasting descent from the
kings of Yemen, they hold themselves to be the salt of the earth. Man’s
nature everywhere objects to restraint, these people cannot endure it:
nothing afflicts them so much as the necessity of regular occupation, as
the recurrence of ‘duty,’ as the weight of any subject upon the mind.
Constant only in procrastination, as they are hebetous in body so they
are mentally torpid and apparently incapable of active exertion,
especially of immediate action. Like their congeners of Maskat and Sur,
they have distinguished themselves on all occasions when opposed to any
but Arabs, by excessive poltroonery. They seldom mix with strangers, for
whom they have generally an aversion, and they will refuse a dollar to a
wretch who has changed his faith to save his life. They are never worse
than in youth, when excessive polygamy and debauchery have enslaved
them: as with the Arabs of the Peninsula, a people of violent and unruly
passions, and seldom ripe for use till their beards are grey, these
Zanzabaris improve by age, and body and mind seem to grow better, to a
certain point, as they grow old.
To this sweeping evil account there are of course exceptions. I have
rarely met with a more honest, trustworthy man than Saíd bin Salim, the
half-caste Arab, who was sent with us as Ra’as Kafilah, or guide. Such
hitherto has been his character; but man varies in these regions: he may
grievously disappoint me in the end.[98]
The poorer Arabs who flock to Zanzibar during the season are Hazramis,
and they work and live hard as the Hammals of Stamboul. These men club
and mess together in gangs under an Akidah (head man), who supplies them
with rice, ghi, and scones, and who keeps the accounts so skilfully,
that the labourer receives annually about $35, though he may gain four
times that sum. Pauper Arabs settled upon the Island refuse ‘nigger
work,’ the West Indian synonym for manual labour, and, as a rule, the
Mashamba or plantations supply them, like Irish estates of old, with
everything but money. At first many were ruined by the abolition of
slave export: at present most of them confess that the measure has added
materially to the development and the prosperity of the Island. There
are now Arab merchants who own 80,000 clove-trees, $100,000 floating
capital, a ship or two, and from 1000 to 2000 slaves.
The results of wealth and general aisance have been luxury and unbridled
licentiousness. As usual in damp-hot climates, for instance, Sind,
Egypt, the lowlands of Syria, Mazenderan, Malabar, and California, the
sexual requirements of the passive exceed those of the active sex; and
the usual result is a dissolute social state, contrasting with mountain
countries, dry-cold or damp-cold, where the conditions are either
equally balanced or are reversed. Arab women have been described as
respectable in the Island, because, fearing scandal and its
consequences, they deny themselves to Europeans. Yet many of them prefer
Banyans to those of the True Faith, whilst the warmest passions abandon
themselves to African slaves:[99] these dark men are such pearls in
beauteous ladies’ eyes, and their fascinations at Zanzibar are so great,
that a respectable Hindostani Moslem will not trust his daughter to live
there, even in her husband’s house. A corresponding perversion and
brutality of taste make the men neglect their wives for negresses; the
same has been remarked of our countrymen in Guiana and the West Indies,
and it notably prevails in the Brazil, where the negress and the Mulatta
are preferred to the Creole. Considering the effect of the African skin
when excited by joy, rage, fear, or other mental emotion, of course a
cogent reason for the preference exists.
Public prostitutes are here few, and the profession ranks low where the
classes upon which it depends can always afford to gratify their
propensities in the slave-market. I have alluded to the Wasawahili women
of the Madagascar Quarter; a few also live scattered about the town, but
all are equally undesirable—there is not a pretty face amongst them. The
honorarium varies from $0.25 to $1, and the proceeds are expended upon
gaudy dresses and paltry ornaments. Retired Corinthians who have not
prospered, live by fishing upon the sands, or make rude pottery at
Changani Point: those who can afford it buy a slave or two, and give the
rest of their days to farming. Girls who work for hire are always
procurable, but such amours are likely to end badly: the same may be
said of the prostitutes; consequently most white residents keep
Abyssinian or Galla concubines. The ‘Liwát’ is here considered a mere
peccadillo: the late Sayyid, however, denied Moslem burial to a nephew
who built the British Consular residence. This ‘Maf’úl’ died in agony
after the bungling performance of an operation which his debaucheries
rendered necessary, and the body was cast naked into the sea.
Both sexes and all ages delight in drinking. The rich use bad but
expensive French and American liqueurs, gin, brandy, and rum, from
Marseille, India, and the Mauritius. Some eat opium, others prefer Bhang
in its several forms: the material is imported from Bombay and Cutch. We
found it near the continental seaboard, and therefore the Indian shrub
is also probably grown upon the Island. A distillation, I have said, is
made from the Cashew-nut and from palm-wine; this alcohol is called
Zerámbo, and a free-born Arab is disgraced by touching it; preserved in
foul old pots, it has the effect of poison; a drunken sailor will fall
down insensible, breathe with stertorous loudness, and gradually pass
from insensibility to death. Tembo or toddy is of two kinds—Támú, the
sweet and unintoxicating, and Khálí, sour or fermented. The liquor is
drawn from the trees by the Wasawahili and the slaves insular and
continental. The Pombe, like the Buzah of Egypt and Berberia, Adel, and
Abyssinia, is a simple hopless beer, made from maize or holcus.
Drunkenness amongst the poor is very properly punished only when it
leads to crime. It is singular that the late Sayyid, who never touched
an intoxicating drink, should have been so tender to an offence with
which Moslems usually deal so barbarously.
The Arab’s head-dress is a Kummeh or Kofiyyah (red fez), a Surat calotte
(Alfiyyah), or a white skull-cap worn under a turban (Kilemba) of Oman
silk and cotton religiously mixed. Usually it is of fine blue and white
cotton check, embroidered and fringed with a broad red border, with the
ends hanging in unequal lengths over one shoulder. The coiffure is
highly picturesque. The ruling family and grandees, however, have
modified its vulgar folds, wearing it peaked in front, and somewhat
resembling a tiara. The essential body-clothing and the succedaneum for
trowsers is an Izar (Nguo ya ku chini), or loin-cloth tucked in at the
waist, 6 to 7 feet long by 2 to 3 broad. The colours are brick-dust and
white or blue and white, with a silk border striped red, black, and
yellow. The very poor wear a dirty bit of cotton girdled by a Hakab or
Kundávi, a rope of plaited thongs; the rich prefer a fine embroidered
stuff from Oman, supported at the waist by a silver chain. None but the
western Arabs admit the innovation of drawers (Suruwali). The ‘Jama’,’
or upper garment, is a collarless coat of the best broadcloth, leek-
green or some tender colour being preferred. It is secured over the left
breast[100] by a silken loop, and the straight wide sleeves are gaily
lined. The Kizbáo is a kind of waistcoat, covering only the bust: some
wear it with sleeves, others without. The Dishdasheh (in Kisawahili
Khanzu), a narrow-sleeved shirt, buttoned at the throat and extending to
mid-shin, is made of calico (baftah), American drill, and other stuffs
called Doriyah, Tarabuzun, and Jamdani. Sailors are known by Khuzerangí,
a coarse cotton, stained dingy red-yellow with henna or pomegranate
rind, and rank with Wars (bastard saffron) and sharks’ oil. Respectable
men guard the stomach with a ‘Hizám,’ generally a Cashmere or Bombay
shawl; others wear sashes of the dust-coloured raw silk manufactured in
Oman. The outer garment for chillv weather is the long, tight-sleeved
Persian Jubbeh, Jokhah, or Caftan, of European broadcloth. The Na’alayn,
Viatu, or sandals of peculiar shape, made at Zanzibar, have already been
described. Most men shave their heads, and the Shafeis trim or entirely
remove the moustaches. The palms are reddened with henna, which is
either brought from El Hejaz or gathered in the plantations. The only
ring is a plain cornelian seal, and the sole other ornament is a
talisman (Hirz in Kisawahili Hirízi). The eyes are blackened with Kohl
or antimony of El Sham—here not Syria, but the region about Meccah—and
the mouth, crimsoned by betel, looks as if a tooth had just been knocked
out.
None but women and slaves leave the house unarmed. The lowest Arab
sticks an old dagger in his belt, handles a rusty spear, or shoulders a
cheap firelock. Gulf men are generally known by their round targes
(Tursi) made of carved and spangled rhinoceros or addax hide, toys with
high central umbo, and at the utmost a foot in diameter; others have
fish-skin shields, and the Baloch affect the Cutch ‘Dhal,’ or buckler.
The sword is of three forms, of which the Sayf Faranji (Frankish sword,
in Kisawahili Upanga) has long been the favourite. It is a straight,
broad, two-edged, guardless, double-handed weapon, about 4 ft 3 in.
long, sheathed in a scabbard of red morocco: the thin and well-worn
blade vibrates in the grip, and by the side of its razor-like keenness
our weapons resemble iron bars. The price varies from $10 to $100, and,
as at modern Damascus, cheap German imitations abound. The usual handle
is wood bound with thread like plaits of black leather and silver wire
forming patterns; the pommel is an iron knob, and the general aspect of
the article suggests that it is derived from the Crusading ages. The
‘Kittáreh’ is a curved European sabre: the young princes and those about
the coast carry in hand expensive specimens with ivory hilts and gold
mountings. Thirdly, the ‘Imani,’ as they call it, is a short straight
blade made in Europe, Oman, or Hazramaut. The Arab knows but two cuts,—
one the ‘Kalam,’ across the ankles, and the other our No. 7, directed at
the head or preferably at the shoulder: the former is evaded by leaping
or breaking ground, the latter is parried with the shield. Jamhiyahs,
Khanjars, or daggers, worn strapped and buckled round the waist, are
curved till the point forms almost a right angle with the hilt. It is a
silly construction; but anything will serve to stab the enemy’s back
above the shoulders. The dudgeon of black or white rhinoceros or buffalo
horn is adorned with a profusion of filagree-work, and silver or gold
knobs; the blade, sharp on both sides, is nearly three inches broad at
the base. The sheath (’Alá) is similarly ornamented upon a ground of
leather, cloth, or brocade, dark or scarlet, with the usual metal rings
and ‘fixings.’ The Khanjar often costs $200, and a handsome dagger is a
sign of rank.
Not having seen at home the higher classes of Arab women, who are said
to be sometimes remarkably handsome, I can describe them only from
hearsay. In the house they wear tight Mezár, Sarwál, or pantaloons of
Oman silk or cotton fastened at the waist with rich tasselled ties
brought from Maskat, the Hejaz, and Bandar Abbas: the body dress is a
long chemise of Bengal or Surat stuff, worn over a Mkájá or loin-cloth.
The hair is plaited into Masúká (pig-tails) or Nyule (curls), and here,
as elsewhere, the back of the head being the most sacred part of the
feminine person, adults bind round the forehead a kerchief (Ngúo ku
jitándá) or dastmal of bright-coloured silk, which depends behind to the
waist. Abroad they appear masqued with the hideous black ‘Burka’-veil of
Oman, whilst a Rida, Kitambi, or sheet of white calico or black silk,
conceals even the dress from prying eyes. A Mávuli or umbrella shows
dignity; some wear sandals (Vyatu), like the men, others Egyptian
Papushes.
The favourite feminine ornaments are Banajireh, or Khalkhál, bracelets
or bangles, gold, silver, or copper rings, solid or hollow, plain or
embossed, with or without hinges. A Yekdani (single gem, or ‘union’), a
cordiform or oval brooch and pendents of precious stones or stained
glass, massively set in gold, hangs round the neck by a string of
bullet-sized gold-foiled heads. The Matale (anklets) are of silver
worth, that is to say weighing, from $10 to $20. A Kirt, Kupini, P’hete
ya Pua, or flower-shaped ornament of gold, silver, or base metal, is
worn in the wing of the left nostril. Earrings are of many varieties:
the rim is pierced sometimes all round for silver Halkeh or rings, whose
place is supplied amongst the poor with leaden ‘Kipini’ (in the plural
‘Vipini’). The lobe is bored and trained to encircle a disk of silver or
ivory; the slaves use a bright-coloured roll of palm leaf, and when that
is not procurable, a betel-nut: the result is unnatural distension, and
in age the ear, as among the Moplahs of Malabar, hangs down, a mere
strip of skin, to the collar bone. They have also the Kengele, copper
balls for the neck; the Mpogo, or ivory ring; the Kikomo, a copper or
brass bracelet; the Mkhufu, or silver necklace chain; the Mchuhu, or
coarse Cassolette, and a variety of Talismans or Grigris (Hirizi) round
the wrists and ankles. These women, like most Easterns, prefer strong
and heady perfumes of musk, ambergris, ottar of roses, and the large
Indian jasmine; their cosmetics are oil, henna, Kohl, or Collyrium
(Wánjá), and saffron applied to the head and eyebrows; and they are
cunning in the matter of fumigation, which might with benefit be
introduced into Europe.
The Zanzibar Arab’s day is regular, varied only by a journey, a family
festival, a debauch, or the yearly Ramazan fast. He rises at dawn for
ablution and prayer, eats ‘Suwayk,’ a kind of vermicelli, wheaten bread,
or even a little meat, drinks a cup of coffee, and chewing betel,
repairs to the bazar for business or calls upon his friends. Men shake
hands when meeting, wish good-morning, and ask, ‘How is thy state?’ to
which the reply is, ‘And how art thou?’ They then sit down and renew
queries, interspersed with many Marhabas, Sáná-B’ánás and Na shikamaus,
‘Allah preserve thee!’ and ‘Thanks be to Allah, we are well!’ If one
sneeze, the others exclaim, ‘May Allah have mercy upon thee!’ which he
acknowledges, with ‘Allah guide you!’—this is an old Arab superstition.
Sneezing being an omen of impending evil to the patient, an ejaculation
was made to the gods: ‘Homer mentions the custom; Aristotle fruitlessly
attempts to explain its existence; Apuleius refers to it; and Pliny has
a problem on it: “Cur sternutantes salutantur;”’ Asia still practises
it, and the older Brazilians have not forgotten it. Here the convulsion
is considered unsonsy: many a deputation waiting upon the late Sayyid
has been prematurely dismissed because the ill-omened sternutation
happened. As in Turkey and the Moslem East generally, the visitor’s
place of honour is on the host’s left hand. Where coffee is offered on
ceremonious occasions, all rise and take the little Finjan or thimble-
cup from the house-master, who does not allow the servant to hand it;
they then sit down, and they drink, contrary to usual Arab custom, more
than one cupful. The hospitality concludes with a glass of sherbet.
Amongst the wealthier classes at Zanzibar and Mombasah, tea is becoming
a favourite beverage; not only ‘fashionable,’ but held to be hygienic
because less heating than coffee.
At 5 o’clock, our 11 A.M., the Arab, like the Syrian, eats the ‘Ghada’
of fish and meat, of wheaten bread and vegetables, and of rice boiled
with the cream of rasped cocoa-nut, ending with half-a-dozen Finjans of
coffee and with betel. Some then repair to the Mosque; most men pray the
noon-day at home, and sleep like the citizens of Andine Mendoza till the
Asr or after 3 P.M. They again, perform ablution and devotions, after
which they dress for out-of-door business and for home visits. The
evening prayers are generally recited in public. Some eat the Isha-
supper before sunset; usually it is deferred till after worship. The
climate effectively prevents those last pleasant rambles by moonlight
and open air séances—the Makamat so much enjoyed in the hot-dry sub-
tropical regions. Here the evening is spent sometimes in society,
oftener in the harem, and all apply to sleep between 10 P.M. and
midnight.
The yearly fast begins with the new moon of Ramazan; crowds assemble in
the open places and upon the terrace roofs till the popping of pistols
and matchlocks and salvos from the squadron warn the faithful that the
crescent has appeared. In the days of Sayyid Said the strict Arab salute
of three guns (our 21) was kept up; five denoted a victory, and seven
the decease of some eminent person. Arabs observe the dietetic law
strictly; their women are expected to fast, and boys of 13 and 14 take a
pride in imitating their parents. Many, especially those with weak
digestion, cannot eat the dawn meal general throughout Egypt, Syria, and
Persia. The Shafei ordeal ends when the sun has wholly sunk below the
horizon; the Bayázi waits till daylight has almost faded from the
_east_, and he prays before breaking bread. Most men begin hygienically
with something easily digested, as dates and sour milk,—a more
substantial meal follows after an hour. The rich pass much of the
fasting time in sleep, and the burden here, as elsewhere, falls far more
heavily upon the poor. At Zanzibar, however, the infliction is lightened
by the damp climate and by the equinoctial day, short compared with the
terrible 16 hours which must sometimes be endured in subtropical
latitudes. Yet the servants and slaves are useless during Ramazan: idle
at all times, they then assert a right to do nothing: as I before
observed, the fast is one-twelfth of the year thoroughly wasted. On the
other hand, it may be remarked that El Islam has wisely limited its
festivals to six days in the year, a great contrast to the profuse waste
of time which still characterizes the faith of Southern Europe.
As at the beginning of the month, crowds assemble to sight the new moon
which ends the fast, and every fellow who has a matchlock wastes powder
and ball, without much regarding where the latter flies. Here, as in the
Brazil, nothing can be done without wasting gunpowder: at Zanzibar the
matchlock is perforce preferred, in Rio de Janeiro the rocket and the
squib have taken its place. This year (1857) a storm of rain on the
evening of May 24th concealed the crescent, and it was not till half-
past five P.M. on the 25th, that a salute from the shipping announced,
despite the thick drifting scud which hid every inch of sky, that the
weary ‘blessed month’ was no more. Then the men gathered about the
palace, the women flocked to the house-tops, and the city, usually so
sadly silent, rang with shouting, singing, the braying of trumpets, and
irregular discharges of small arms. After sunset again all was still as
the grave.
The ’Id el Saghir, or lesser festival, that concludes the Ramazan, began
at dawn on May 26th; the usual public prayers were recited in the
mosques, and at 8.30 A.M. the squadron, dressed with flags, fired whilst
the townsmen followed suit. The servants and slaves gathered in their
new clothing to kiss the master’s hand and to wish him a happy festival.
The Princes rode out in state. In the bazars an endimanché mob assembled
despite the heavy rains, and before sunset they trooped through the miry
lanes to witness the races at Mnazi Moyya, which take place only when
the tide is out. These festivities—they have already been described—
continued to a late hour, and thus passed away the earliest and the
noisiest day of the ’Id.
The second and the third days are diluted copies of the first; visits
are exchanged between all acquaintances, and the Prince holds levées in
full Darbar. Here the sons of Sayyid Said and their blood relations
occupy one side of the long bare hall, opposite them are the high
officials and interpreters, whilst the honoured guests sit by the ruler
at the Sadr, or top of the room, and fronting them, near the door, stand
the eunuchs and the slaves. On leaving, as on entering, the stranger
shakes hands with the whole family according to seniority, and he is
accompanied by the Prince either a few paces or to the doorway, the
steps, in fact, being carefully proportioned to his rank.
There is little peculiarity in the religious ceremonies of the Zanzibar
Arab. An Azan (call to prayer) is repeated in the ear of the new-born
babe, and on the Arba’in (40th day) the mother and infant are bathed,
and become pure—until then the husband will not sit by his wife’s side.
On this occasion the head of the male child is shaved, as usual amongst
Moslems. Marriage is expensive, seldom costing the respectable man less
than $500; all the food provided for the occasion must be eaten, even if
guests be sought in the streets; this indeed is the rule of Arab feasts.
Half the Mahr, or settlement-money, should be paid before the Fatihah is
recited; the remainder is claimed upon separation or after the husband’s
death. A woman cannot demand divorce except for the usual legal reasons,
and the ‘Iddeh,’ or interval before re-marriage, is three months and ten
days. After a Khitmah or perlection of the Koran, the relict, who has
hitherto been confined to the house, is bathed by her feminine friends,
in token of readiness for engagement. Many widows refuse to change their
condition, and apply themselves to money-making by commerce,
plantations, or slave-dealing. I heard of one jovial ‘Armalah’ who
invited Europeans to _petit soupers_ and _parties fines_, in which
merriment takes precedence of modesty. The Arab women of Zanzibar appear
unusually spirited, especially when compared with their lords; in every
great house some energetic petticoat or rather trowsers takes or forces
her husband or her brother to take the lead—perhaps, as nearer home,
they are the more courageous and venturous in braving danger because the
risk and the brunt do not fall upon their heads. Men of pure family will
not give their daughters to any but fellow-clansmen. They themselves do
not object to Waswahili, and negro-girls, but the single Arab wife—there
is rarely more than one—rules the concubines with a rod of iron.
Men, women, and children weep at funerals, but it is not the custom to
hire ‘keeners.’ The feminine mourning dress is black, and the period, as
general among Moslems, lasts 40 days. Contrary to Arab custom, the
graves are lined with boarding. The exterior is a wall of coralline rag
and lime from a foot to a foot and a half high, with little raised steps
at the head and feet; here a porcelain saucer or an encaustic tile is
sometimes mortared in by way of ornament. Old cemeteries abound
throughout the city and the suburbs, sometimes showing offensive sights.
A simple slab sufficed for the late Sayyid’s ancestors; on the spot,
however, where he and his son Khalid lie, they are building a dwarf
truncated pyramid of stone and cement, an unusual memorial to a Bayazi
or a Wahhabi. Of late years the Arabs have begun to inter their slaves.
Formerly the corpses were thrown to the beasts or tossed into the sea,
and from the windows of H.M.’s Consulate I have seen more than one body
bleached snow-white by sea-water, and stranded upon the beach where no
one cared to bury it.
During the reign of the last ruler, El Islam at Zanzibar was tolerant by
compulsion; the Shiahs were allowed an Imambara at which they bewailed
the death of Hasan and Husayn—few Sunni countries would have tolerated
the abomination. But as these ‘sectarians’ almost worship whilst others
absolutely adore Ali and his descendants; and as the ‘Khariji’ schism
slew the former and well-nigh damns all the rest, they join issue and
agree to differ. This indeed is a recognized rule in religions, where
the most minute distinctions cause and perpetuate the deadliest feuds,
and the family quarrel will not be reconciled, because love perverted
becomes not indifference but hate.
The Arabs are here all Shafei or Bayazi. As the latter schism is now
rare under that name in the Moslem world, some notice of it may be
considered advisable. I have seen the Bayazi confounded with the
Mutazali (Motazilites who support Free-will _versus_ Predestination),
but there is an important difference: the latter hold Ali in high esteem
and object only to the Caliph Muawiyah.
The Bayázi, also called Abázi,[101] Ibáz and Ibáziyyeh derive their name
from Abdullah bin Yahya bin Abáz (in our dictionaries ‘Ibáz’). Some
authors have corrupted this name to Beydan, that of a Persian sectarian;
others translate it the ‘Whites,’ as opposed to the green of the
Fatimites, and the black of the Abbasides. This arch-heretic, according
to the Jehan-Numa, began to preach under the reign of El Merwan, the
last Ommiade Khalifeh, between A.H. 127-132 (A.D. 744 and 749), and was
shortly afterwards conquered and put to death. His tenets spread far and
wide amongst the Khawárij of Nezwah, extended to the littoral, and
filled the land with battle and murder.
The Bayazi, who through their Imams governed Oman for 163 years,
beginning from A.D. 751, are thus one of the many Khariji (in the plural
Khawárij) sects whose origin may be traced in the rival faiths of
Saheism and Kuraysh idolatry; in the contest of the ‘Prophets’ Mohammed
and Musaylimeh, and in the political interference of the first Caliphs
between the turbulent tribes of Oman. Under the names of Shurah (شراه),
Haruriyah (حرورّيه), and Muhakkimah (محکمّه), these ‘Seceders’ were once
numerous in northern Africa, Spain, and Arabia; in A.D. 1350 Ibn Batuta
found them at Timbucktu. They are now mostly confined to a few cities in
Morocco, and to the parts about Maskat. Some theological writers derive
these Kharijites from the malcontents who declared that both Ali and
Muawiyah had forfeited their right to the Caliphate by appealing from
Allah’s judgment to human decisions, and who carried out their objection
by murdering Ali and by attempting the murder of Muawiyah and Amru.
Their descendants are held to have formed 20 schools like the Shiahs (or
Rawáfiz) and the Mutazali; whilst the Marjiyyeh number six; the Mujbirah
or Sunnites four, and, together with the Batiniyah, the Hululiyah, and
the Zaydi, make up the 73 divisions into which the first Moslem declared
El Islam would split. The principal Kharijite schools (Usul el Firak)
have, however, been reduced to the following five. The first four are
now common only in books.
1. The Azarikah, or followers of Abu Rashid Nafi’ ibn el Azrak. They
permit, in religious warfare, the massacre of women and children; they
do not lapidate adulterers, Koranic command being absent, and they
severely punish the male, not the female, slanderer of the Faithful.
2. The Najdát, disciples of Najdat bin Amir, formerly abounded in
Mekran, Kerman, Mosul, Mesopotamia, Seistan, and Oman. They hold
persistency in the minor sins (Sughair) equivalent to polytheism
(Shirk); whereas mortal sins are not damnable unless accompanied by
persistency (Israr).
3. The Baghghasiyyeh, Banhasiyyeh, or Bayhasiyyeh, followers of Abu
Baghghas, Banhas, or Bayhas. I have found no account of their ‘doctrinal
quiddities.’
4. The Safar, so called from their founder Ziyad ibn el Asfar, believe
concealment of tenets (‘Takiyyeh’) permissible in word not in deed, and
they extend infidelity (Kufr) even to such offences as neglecting
prayer.
5. The Abazi or Bayazi, who form the mass of Arab population at
Zanzibar, and who are also numerous in Oman. They are Karmati and anti-
Moslem in the matter of Freewill, a vital distinction from the Sunnis;
like the Ismailiyyeh and sundry mystic schools, they believe the
Imamship to be a supreme pontificate, but not the succession, by grace,
of the prophethood and the caliphate. They are opposed to the Mutazali
by respecting the Shaykhayn (Ahubekr and Omar), their exoteric reason
being that El Islam then throve under a single head. Therefore they deem
it lawful and right to abuse Usman and Ali (damning the Shiahs for
venerating the latter), Muawiyah and Yezid, Talhah, Zubayr,[102] and
others, who brought calamities upon the Faithful, and who caused the
spilling of Moslem blood. In this age of decaying zeal they do not
‘Sabb’ or blaspheme any one publicly by name, and by order of the late
Sayyid they bless, during the Friday sermon (Khutbah), the two first
Caliphs, and then generally the Sahabah (Companions of the Prophet), the
Muhajirin (Meccans who accompanied the Flight), and the Ansar (Medinites
who received Mohammed). As are all Moslems they may not use the word
‘La’anat,’ or curse, except to Satan—so Christians are forbidden to call
others fools, and with equal success. Moravian-like they pride
themselves upon preserving pure and undefiled the tenets and the ritual
handed down to them from the Prophet’s day, and, with the rest of the
Moslem Ulema, who in this point are the most conservative and anti-
progressive of men, they would model all modern civilization upon that
of barbarous Arabia in the 7th century. One of their favourite sayings
is, ‘All innovation (Bida’ah, i.e. a practice unknown to Mohammed’s day)
is error, and all error is in hell-fire.’ Possibly, however, this may be
the effect of Wahhabi neighbourhood.
The faith of the Bayázi is narrow and exclusive, a monopoly of
righteousness, a moral study of the infinitely little. Amongst
Christians I can compare him only with the ‘hard-grit’ style of
Baptists, who aspire alone to people a Heaven in which the letter H is
of no account. All who do not profess his tenets are Kafirs, and, as it
is a standing belief that whoso calls a Moslem Kafir becomes a Kafir
himself, they are replied to in kind. Each of the 73 schools naturally
considers itself the ‘Nájiyah,’ or Saving Faith; but it is not justified
in consigning to Jehannum those that do not agree with it. The Bayázi
condemn all the Sunnis, and especially the Shafeis, who expect actually
to see the Deity (el Ru’uyah) during the next life. Quoting the debated
passage of the Koran ‘Sight shall not see Him’ (لاتدمرکه الابصار), the
Kharijis agree that if the Lord be visible, He must be material and
personal, consequently created and unessential. In these matters they go
beyond their depth; but who, it may be asked, attempts the subject and
does not? The idea of the Godhead varies with every race, of which it is
the highest mental and moral expression; the higher the conception the
higher will be the intellectual status, and vice versâ; even the same
race constantly modifies its hold for better or for worse. I do not
believe that the sages of Greece and Rome were polytheists or idolaters,
although they may have sacrificed cocks to Esculapius. Under almost all
mythologies, even the Hindu, there is an underlying faith in monotheism.
But the God of the Jews, of the Christians, and of the Moslems, differs
in kind as well as in degree, even as the God of Calvin would not be the
God of Channing. A late writer has published several pages of very good
writing and very bad reasoning, upon the contrast of the Deity, as
worshipped by Christianity and by El Islam. His error has been to assume
Wahhabiism for the typical form of the latter. I might as well work out
the theory that the Anabaptist Protestant is the Christian _par
excellence_. Like the article on the Talmud which lately created so much
attention, it is an able bit of special pleading and no more.
Amongst Moslems, Paradise is supposed to embrace the extent of the earth
and firmament, and the late Sayyid used quaintly to remark, that his
scanty orthodox subjects would people it but poorly. The Bayázi, unlike
others of the Saving Faith, which we may better translate ‘le Salut,’
hold hell-fire to be the eternal portion of even their own sinners; thus
literally interpreting the text, ‘ever, to all eternity (dwelling) in it
(hell),’—خالدين فيها ابدًا. They have no prayer-station round the
Ka’abah, and they relieve then chagrin by proving these oratories to be
‘novelties,’ unknown to the Prophet’s day.
The ritual differences between the Bayázi and other schools are small;
in prayer the arms and hands are extended down the thighs, instead of
being folded over the waist. Contrary to the practice of Sunnis and
Shiahs, they may wear gold or silver rings of indefinite weight, and
silks and satins, provided that the latter be removed during prayer.
These sectarians cannot marry women with whom they have cohabited;
divorce is imperative from wives whom they have visited at a forbidden
season, and they allow legitimacy to children horn within two years
after the father’s death. Amongst the Shafei the period extends to four
years: physiological ignorance of ovarian dropsy fixed the time; and
mistaken charity has refused to shorten it. In general the Bayázi, like
the Druze, appears unwilling to explain his tenets, a remarkable
contrast with the self-assertion and the controversial readiness of
other Moslems. When betrayed into argument they quarrel about their
belief—a sign of weakness; the calmly and thoroughly convinced, for
instance an honest Scotch country minister, only smiles with pity upon
the man who dares to differ from him. The studied simplicity and
literalness of the sect and its fierce intolerance, combined with its
crass semi-barbarism and isolation from the great family of nations,
have favoured the progress of Wahhabi puritanism, and accordingly many
Bayázi have ranged themselves under the uncompromising banner of
puritanical ‘Unitarianism’—literalism and Koranolatry.
Of old the Kharijis were the flowers of the Islamitic garden; and
history will ever dwell upon the literary glories of Seville and
Cordova. It was this heresy that produced the Allámat (doctissimus) El
Ghazali, and the celebrated Persian grammarian and poet, the Imam Abú’l
Kasim Mohammed bin Omar, El Zamakhshari. His wife attacked his vile
belief in man’s Free-will with an argumentum ad hominem more
demonstrative than purely logical. It caused him, however, to recant the
error and to express his penitence in that glorious ode beginning—
يا من يرا مدّ البعوض جناحه
فی ظلمة ليل البهيم اّليالى
‘O Thou who seest the midge extend her wing
Athwart the gathered glooms of gloomiest night,’
and to end life in the firm conviction of fate and predestination. His
commentary (the Kashsháf ’an Hikáik el Tanzíl) displayed a logical
reasoning, a profundity of learning, and purity of style which made it
popular throughout El Islam, and it cleared the way for a long
procession of similar productions.
In modern degenerate days the Bayázis of Zanzibar have little education
and no learning: they must even borrow from the Sunnis commentaries
(Tafsir) and other religious works, whence they can extract food for
their own cravings of belief. Of these the most popular are El Bokhári,
the Jelálayn, and El Baghawi; the abstruse Bayzáwi is seldom troubled.
Logic is neglected: history, philosophy, and the exact sciences are
unknown. Being Arabs, they do not require El Sarf (accidence or the
changes of the verb), and the Alfiyyeh of Ibn Malik is the only popular
treatise upon the subject of El Nahw (syntax, and the changes of non-
verbal parts of speech). The Kazis of the Bayázi and the Sunni schools
lecture in their own houses upon the religious sciences, and the
elementary establishments may number on the Island 15 or 16. Here boys
learn to read the Koran, and to write the crabbed angular hand which
distinguishes these Moslems. Nákhodás master a little arithmetic and
navigation at Bombay and Calcutta. Some few have been sent to England
and France, where they showed no want of attention or capacity: on their
return to semi-barbarism, however, almost all went to the bad; they
robbed and plotted, and most of them died of drunkenness and debauchery.
The best education to be had at Zanzibar can only exercise the memory;
it does little to cultivate the understanding or to improve the mind.
Yet the people, averse to literary labour and despising learning in the
presence of business, pleasure, or idleness, are shrewd and plodding
‘thinkers,’ and probably for the reason that their wits are not blunted
by books and lectures, they are a match for Europeans in the everyday
business of life. It is evident that where the profoundest ignorance of
our elementary knowledge co-exists with practical wisdom, there is a
large field for the labours of civilization, and that the western
school, if kept strictly secular and pure of proselytizing, would be a
blessing to the children of both sexes at Zanzibar.
-----
Footnote 97:
In 1846 M. Guillain proposed 3000, including a floating population of
300 to 400. Documents, &c., part ii. p. 78.
Footnote 98:
I have the words as they were written early in 1857.
Footnote 99:
It is easy to explain the preference of Arab women for slaves, and the
predilection of the husbands for negro women: the subject, however, is
somewhat too physiological for the general reader.
Footnote 100:
In Moslem countries Christians prefer the right breast.
Footnote 101:
Niebuhr terms them Beïasi and Abadhi (Travels in Arabia, chap. cxiv.).
Salíl ibn Razik makes Abdullah the son, not the grandson, of Abáz.
Footnote 102:
These two Ashab or ‘Companions of the Apostle’ are popularly supposed
to have been buried under a now ruined dome in a garden lying East of
the Dahdah cemetery, Damascus. It is, however, a mistake; they were
interred near Basreh where they fell in battle.
CHAPTER XI.
COMPARATIVE ANTHROPOLOGY (ETHNOLOGY) OF ZANZIBAR—THE WASAWAHILI AND THE
SLAVE RACES.
‘Venti anni sono, il commercio di Zanzibar era nullo; ora il commercio
li supera 50 milioni di franchi. Per alcuni articoli, per esempio, pel
garofano, per la gomma copale, e per l’avorio, il mercato di Zanzibar è
divenuto il principale del Mondo.’—P. 17, La grandezza Italiana, by the
learned geographer Cavagliere Cristoforo Negri. Torino, 1864.
The Wasawahili, bounded north by the Somal and the Gallas, south by the
so-called Kafir tribes, extend along the Indian Ocean from Makdishu to
Mozambique, a coastal distance of some 1050 miles; they also occupy the
Zangian Archipelago, and the islets that fringe the shore. They call
themselves Wazumba, ignoring the term Jabarti or Ghiberti (Gibberti),
still applied to them by the northern Moslems. It is given by El Makrizi
to Zayla in Somaliland, and by other writers to the Abyssinian ‘Moors;’
vocatur quoque Jabarta, i. e. Regio Ardens. This insititious race might
be called Hamito-Semitic if anywhere we could discern that the mythical
Ham, or his progeny, ever became negroes. They are, as they confess
themselves to be, mulattos, descended from Asiatic settlers and
colonists, Arabs, and Persians of the Days of Ignorance, who
intermarried with the Wakafiri or infidels. The author of the Natural
History of Man is correct in asserting their African origin, but he
under-estimates the amount of Asiatic innervation. The traveller still
witnesses the process of breeding half-castes: Maskatis and Baloch still
trade to the coast harbours, and settle as agriculturists in the
maritime regions, whilst the African element is maintained in the Island
by a steady importation of slave girls. The Wasawahili differ in one
essential point from their congeners of mixed blood, Egyptian, Nubian,
Abyssinian, Galla, Dankali, Somal, and the northern negroids; these have
not, those like the Comoro men distinctly have, the negro effluvium,
they are the ‘foumarts, not the civets,’ of the human race.
I am compelled by its high racial significance to offer a few words upon
this unpleasant topic. The odour of the Wasawahili, like that of the
negro, is a rank fœtor, _sui generis_, which faintly reminded me of the
ammoniacal smell exhaled by low-caste Hindus, popularly called Pariahs.
These, however, owe it to external applications, aided by the want of
cleanliness. All agree that it is most offensive in the yellow-skinned,
and the darkest negroids are therefore preferred for domestic slaves and
concubines. It does not depend upon diet. In the Anglo-American States,
where blacks live like whites, no diminution of it has been remarked;
nor upon want of washing,—those who bathe are not less nauseous than
those who do not. After hard bodily exercise, or during mental emotion,
the epiderm exudes a fœtid perspiration, oily as that of orange peel: a
negro’s feet will stain a mat, an oar must be scraped after he has
handled it, and a woman has left upon a polished oaken gun-case a
hemispherical mark that no scrubbing could remove. This ‘Catinga,’ as
the Brazilians call it, taints the room, infects every part of the body
with which it comes in contact, and exerts a curious effect on the white
races. A missionary’s wife in Zanzibar owned to me that it caused her
almost to faint. I have seen an Englishman turn pale when he felt that a
crowded slave-craft was passing under his windows, and the late Sayyid
could not eat or drink for hours after he had been exposed to the
infliction.
The Wasawahili may be roughly estimated at half a million of souls. In
1850 Dr Krapf (Vocabulary of six East African Languages) proposed
350,000 to 400,000. In Zanzibar Island they are divided into two great
families, a distinction hitherto disregarded by travellers. The Shirazi,
or nobles, derive themselves from the Shangaya settlement, also called
Shiraz, on the coast north of Lamu in about S. lat. 2°; thence they
extended to Tungi, four days’ sail south of the Rufuma river. Asserting
themselves to be Alawi Sayyids (descended from the Khalifah Ali) they
take the title of Muigni, ‘lord,’ equivalent to the Arab ‘Sherif,’
whereas the other chiefs are addressed as B’ana—master. The last
Msawahili Sultan in the days of the Arab conqueror, Ahmed bin Said, was
Ahmed bin Sultan bin Hasan el Alawi. The actual head of the family is
entitled Muigni Mku by his people; by the Europeans, ‘King of the
Sawahili.’ His name is mentioned in the Khutbah or Friday Sermon; he
collects the poll-tax, and receives a percentage, some say one half,
others only $2000, when paying it into the Sayyid’s treasury. He was
never, however, admitted to any equality by the Arab ruler. The Shirazi
clan does not now contain more than a hundred families.
The Wasawahili race appears, from the ‘Kilwa Chronicle’ (Huma Chronica
dos Reys de Quiloa) mentioned by De Barros (1st Decade of Asia, viii. 4,
5), to have been derived from the ‘Emozaydis’ (Amm Zayd) or followers of
their Imam, Zayd bin Ali Zayn el Abidín bin Husayn, the grandson of the
Prophet. He was proclaimed Khalifah at Kufa in A. H. 122 (A. D. 739),
under the Khalifat of El Hesham bin Abd el Melek, the Ommiade, by whom
he was conquered and slain. The pretender’s son, Yahya, fled to
Khorasan, where the Abbasides were already making head against the
Ommiades, and the tenets of his followers, the Zaydis, spread throughout
Yemen, where they formed, and they still form, a numerous and
influential class. Other ‘Shiah’ partisans took refuge from persecution
in East Africa, fortified themselves upon the littoral about Shangaya,
and, extending southwards, became lords of the land. Some generations
afterwards an emigration of Sunni Arabs from El Hasa, in three ships,
commanded by seven brothers flying from the tyranny of their chief,
visited the coast, founded Makdishu and Brava, and extended to Sofala.
The ‘Emozaydis,’ unwilling to accept orthodox rule, retired into the
interior, intermingled with the Kafir race, and became the Bedawin of
the country. The second Persian emigration took place early in our
eleventh century. A certain Ali, son of a ‘Moorish’ Sultan Hasan, who
governed Shiraz, by an Abyssinian slave, finding himself despised by his
six brethren, fled with wife and family in two ships from Hormuz to East
Africa. At Makdishu and Brava, finding Arabs of another faith (Sunnis),
he went to Kilwa Island, bought land with cloth, took the title of
Sultan, and fortified himself against the Kafirs and against the Moslems
of Songo-Songo and Changa, whose dominion extended to Mompana (Mafiyeh).
The latter, together with other islets, was conquered by his son, Sultan
‘Ali Bumale,’ and the dynasty lasted a grand total of 541 lunar years
before the arrival of Cabral at Kilwa in July, A. D. 1500. These
Shirazis originated the noble family of the Wasawahili, who do not claim
descent from the older ‘Emozaydis.’[103]
The Mahadimu, or serviles, a word derived from the Arabic Makhadim, the
‘Mohaydin’ of Europeans, compose the mass of the Wasawahili race. They
are popularly derived from the slaves left upon the Island by the
Portuguese. It must, however, be observed that most of the great
families in Eastern and Southern Africa have congener clients, or rather
outcastes, who are probably, like the Spartan Helots, remnants of
subjugated rivals. Thus, to quote but a few, there are the Midgans
amongst the Somal, the Walangúlo or Ariangulo and Dahalo amongst the
Southern Gallas,[104] and the Wandurobo amongst the Wakwafi. The
Wasumbara have their Washenzi; the Hottentots their Bushmen, and the
Kafirs their Fingos. In a former volume I have shown that even the Arabs
of Oman and Yemen are mixed with Khadims, a system of race within race,
as contrary to the spirit of El Islam as of Christianity. These servile
castes are distinguished by swarthier skins, weaker frames, and other
signs of inferior development. The Mahadímu of Zanzibar are evidently
the ancient lords of the Island, reduced to a manner of servitude by
northern conquerors. Though now free, and often slave-owners, these
Helots are subject, at the Prince’s order, to an occasional corvée, and
to a poll-tax. The amount of the latter affords a rude census; the adult
males range between 10,000 and 12,000, and the women, it is said, are
proportionally more numerous.
The Wasawahili of the Island appear physically inferior to those of the
seaboard: as in the days of Marco Polo, they are emphatically an ugly
race. If the girls in early youth show traces of prettiness, it is a
grotesque order of the beauté du diable. Some of the men have fine,
large, strong, and muscular figures, without being able to use their
strength, and as amongst uncivilized people generally, the reality falls
short of the promise. The national peculiarity is the division of the
face into two distinct types, and the contrast appears not a little
singular. The upper, or intellectual part, though capped by woolly hair,
is distinctly Semitic—with the suspicion of a caricature—as far as the
nose-bridge, and the more ancient the family the more evident is the
mixture. The lower, or animal half, especially the nostrils, lip, jaws,
and chin is unmistakably African. There are a few Albinos with silk-
cocoon-coloured hair, and tender-red eyes, their pinkish skins are
cobwebbed by darker reticulations and rough from pellagrous disease.
Leucosis, however, is rare; we saw only two cases, one on the Island,
the other a youth near Tángá.
The Wasawahili are by no means a jet-black people, as Pritchard, misled
by Dr Bird, has assumed; nor, indeed, is this the distinction of the
Zanzibarian races generally. The skin is a chocolate-brown, varying in
shades, as amongst ourselves, but usually not darker than the complexion
of Southern Arabia. About Lamu and Patta the colour is yellow-brown; at
Mombasah and Zanzibar dark-brown; and south of Kilwa, I am told, black-
brown. Mostly the hair is jetty, unless sunburnt; crisp, and curling
short; it splits after growing a few inches long, and often it is
planted like the body pile, in distinct ‘pepper-corns.’ The barbule is a
degeneracy from the Arab goatee, and the mustachios are short and
scanty. The oval skull, too dolichocephalous to be purely Caucasian, is
much flattened at the walls, and sometimes the upper, brow (the
reflective region of Gall) is too highly developed for the lower. The
eyes, with dark-brown pupils and cornea stained dirty bilious-yellow,
are straight and well-opened, but the nose is flat and patulous, the
mouth is coarse and ill-cut; the lips, often everted, project unduly;
the teeth are obliquely set, and the jaw is prognathous. The figure is
loose and pulpy, and even in early manhood the waist is seldom finely
formed; in many men I have seen the nipples placed unusually low down,
whilst the women have the flaccid pendulous breasts of negresses. Both
sexes fail in point of hips, which are lank and angular, whereas those
of the inner savages are finely rounded. The shanks are bowed forwards,
the calf is high raised and bunchy, the heel is long, and the
extremities are coarse and large. There is another proof of African
blood which can hardly be quoted here: many overland travellers have
remarked it amongst the boatmen of Egypt.[105]
Veritable half-castes, the Wasawahili have inherited the characters of
both parents. From the Arab they derive shrewd thinking and practice in
concealing thought: they will welcome a man with the determination to
murder him; they have unusual confidence, self-esteem, and complacency;
fondness for praise, honours, and distinctions; keenness together with
short-sightedness in matters of business, and a nameless horror of
responsibility and regular occupation. Africa has gifted them with
comparative freedom from bigotry—they are not admodum dediti
religionibus. Usually the Moslem combines commerce with proselytizing,
opposed to our system, which divides by a wide gulf the merchant’s
career from that of the Missionary, and which unites them only upon the
subscription sheet. These people care little to make converts: their
African languor upon doctrinal points prevents their becoming fanatics
or proselytizers. African also is their eternal, restless suspicion, the
wisdom of serf and slave compensating for their sluggish imagination and
small powers of concentration. They excel in negro duplicity; they are
infinitely great in the ‘Small wares and petty points of cunning,’ and
they will boast of this vile eminence, saying, ‘Are we not Wasawahili?’
men who obtain their ends by foxship? Natum mendacio genus, truth is
unknown to it; honesty and candour are ignored even by name. When they
assert they probably lie, when they swear they certainly lie. The
favourite oath is ‘Mi mi wad (or M’áná) harámí—I am a bastard if,’ &c.,
&c., and it is never respected. The language is very foul, and such
expressions as Komanyoko are never out of the mouth. The Msawahili will
not ask a thing openly: he waits, fidgeting withal, till the subject
edge itself in, and then he will rather hint than speak out. At the same
time he is an inveterate beggar, and the outstretching of hands seems to
relieve his brain. When his mind is set upon an acquisition, he becomes
a monomaniac, like that child-man the savage. His nonchalance,
carelessness, and improvidence pass all bounds. He will light his pipe
under a dozen leaky kegs of gunpowder; ‘he will set a house on fire, as
it were, to roast his eggs;’ he will wreck his ship because anchoring
her to the beach saves trouble in loading; he might make his coast a
mine of wealth, but he will not work till hunger compels him, and his
pure insouciance has allowed his valuable commerce to be wrested from
him by Europeans, Hindus, and Arabs. His dislike of direct action
exceeds that of the Bedawi, and yet he quotes a proverb touching
procrastination, ‘Leo kabli yá kesho,’—to-day is before to-morrow—better
than our ‘To-morrow never comes.’
In disposition the Msawahili is at once cowardly and destructive: his
quarrelsome temper leads him into trouble, but he fights only by being
brought to bay. Sensual and degraded, his self-indulgence is that of the
brutes. He drinks, and always drinks to excess. He would stake and lose
his mother at play. Chastity is unknown in this land of hot
temperaments—the man places paradise in the pleasures of the sixth
sense, and the woman yields herself to the first advances. Upon the
coast, when an adulterer is openly detected, he is fined according to
the ‘injured husband’s’ rank; mostly, however, such peccadillos are
little noticed. Unnatural crimes are held conducive to health. * * *
The manners of ‘the perverse race of Kush’ are rough and free,
especially compared with those of India, yet dashed with a queer African
ceremoniousness. Their conversation turns wholly upon the subjects of
women and money. With these optimists all that is is good, or, at least,
it is not worth the trouble of a change for the better. They ‘make a
stand upon the ancient way,’ and they hold that old custom, because it
is old, must be fit for all time. This savage conservatism, combined
with their traditional and now instinctive dread of the white face, and
perhaps with a not unreasonable fear of present and future loss, has
made them close the interior to Europeans. They have no especial dislike
to, at the same time no fondness for, foreigners, who in mind as well as
body are separated from them longo intervallo.
The characteristic good points of the coast race are careless merriment,
an abundance of animal spirits; strong attachments and devoted family
affection. There is amongst men an artificial fraternity which reminds
us of the ‘fostering’ of Ireland and the ‘Lambmas brother and sister’ of
the local Kermess, St Olla’s Fair: a similar brotherhood is found at
Madagascar. Amongst the negro races generally each sucks or exchanges
blood from an arm vein, and the two then swear relationship. The
operation is called Ku chanjana and the oath Sare or Sogu,—the Arabs, by
whose law it is forbidden, name it Mushátibeh. Girls, even though their
parents be living, adopt a Kungwí or stead-mother, who may or who may
not be of the family: the latter attends her ‘Mwari’ (adopted child)
when the first ablution for puberty is performed, and at the wedding
sits upon the couch till decency forbids. The connection reminds us of
the Persian proverb, ‘The nurse is kinder than the mother.’ Like
Orientals and certain peoples of Southern Europe, they make little
distinction between near and distant relationship: a man’s son may come
from the same city and his brother perhaps from the same province. So in
West Africa ‘brother’ has an extensive signification.
The Wasawahili from Makdishu to Mozambique (Mussumbeg) are all Moslems
and Shafei, as they were in the 14th century when Ibn Batuta reported
them chaste and honest, peaceful and religious. Possibly under the
orthodox denomination they may still preserve the heretical Zaydi tenets
of their ancestors; but of this point I was not familiar enough with
them to judge. If Persians, they must date from the days before the
universal prevalence of Tashayyu (Shiitism), or they have abandoned
their ancient faith. Feuds with the late Sayyid Said spread the school
along the coast, and his Bayázi subjects became Sunnis in spite, even as
Irishmen and Romans sometimes turn Protestants. El Islam, however, only
fringes the Continent. With their savage irreverence for holy things,
the Wasawahili calling themselves Moslems know little beyond the Kalmah,
or profession of faith, rarely pray, and fast only by compulsion. Like
Hindostanis, Persians, and Egyptians, nations professing El Islam at a
distance from the fountainhead, amongst whom local usage has been
largely incorporated with the pure practice of the Faith, they have
retained a mass of superstitions and idolatries belonging to their pagan
forefathers. They have a terror of the sorcerers, with whom Maskat is
said to swarm, and they tell frightful stories of men transformed into
hyænas, dogs, sheep, camels, and other animals. They defend themselves
and their huts against evil spirits (Jánn) and bad men by Koranic
versets, greegrees, and various talismans, mostly bought from the pagan
Mganga or Medicine-man. They believe in alchemy and in Rimbwata, or
love-philters, the latter, as usual in the East, containing various
abominations. The slave girls from about Mangáo, a small port near
Kilwa, are famous for concocting draughts which, after bringing on a
possibly fatal sickness, subjugate for ever the affections of the
patient. Similarly in India, Sind, Egypt, and Persia, no man will touch
sherbet under the roof of his betrothed and prepared by her mother,
unless his future father-in-law set him the example. Some of the
Rimbwata or philters are peculiar: a few grains of Jowari are ‘forced’
in an exceptional way till they sprout; they are then pounded and mixed
with the food. This harmless adhibition causes, say the people, either
death by violent disease or intense affection. It is a superstition
common to the Western East, and I have found it in India and Sind, in
Peru and Egypt. Ghosts and larvæ haunt the houses in which men have
died, a Fetish belief which does not properly belong to El Islam or to
Christianity: the British Consulate has a had name on account of the
terrible fate of its owner, the late Sayyid’s nephew. Descended from
‘devil-worshippers,’ the Wasawahili rather fear the ‘Shaytani’ than love
Allah, and to the malignant powers of preternatural beings they
attribute sickness and all the evils of human life. A Zanzibar negroid
will not even fetch a leech from the marsh, for fear of offending him to
whom the animal is ‘Ju-ju,’ or sacred.
Generally, the Msawahili Alim or literato, though capable of reading the
Koran, cannot write a common Arabic letter. Some, however, attain high
proficiency: I may quote as an instance the Kazi Muhiyy el Din. These
negroids begin arithmetic early, a practice which, perhaps, they have
learned from the Banyans. They excel in memory and in quickness of
apprehension from early childhood to the age of puberty: the same has
been remarked about the Arabs, and Anglo-Indians observe it in the
natives of Hindostan. Whether at the virile epoch there is an arrest of
development, or the brain suffers from exclusive, excessive obedience to
the natural law, ‘increase and multiply’ and its consequent affections,
is a question still to be settled. Boys are sent to school when aged
seven, and finish their Khitmah (perlection of the Koran) in one to
three years; after this they are usually removed to assist their fathers
in the business of life.
Upon the Island the Msawahili child receives some corrupted Moslem name,
as Taufiki (Taufik) Muamádi (Mohammed), Tani (Usman), Shibu (Nasib),
Muhina (Muhinna), Usy (Ali), or Hadi. Upon the coast the appellations
are mostly heathen: I may quote the following from the Benu Kendi tribe—
Bori, Chumi, Kambi, Kangaya, Kirwasha, Mareka, Mkame, Mkhokho, Mombe, or
Mwambe, Mwere, Nungu, Shangora, Shenkambi, Zingaji. The wilder
Wasawahili communities adopt very characteristic compounds: such are
Machuzi wa Shimha (fish-soup), Mrima-khonde (mountain plantation),[106]
Mkata-Moyyo (cutter-out of heart), Khiro-kota (treasure trove), Mchupio
wa Keti (leaper upon a chair), Mshindo-Mamba (conqueror of crocodile),
Khombe la Simba (lion’s claw), Mguru Mfupi (short-legs), Mui’ Mvua
(Mister rain), Mkia ya Nyani (monkey’s tail), Masimbi (cowries), and
Ugali (stirabout).
Girls take Arabic names, as Mamai Khamisi (Mother Thursday), Fatimah,
and Arusi, or they borrow from the pagans Magonera, Zawádi and Apewai (a
gift), Tímeh, Sítí, Baháti, Tínisí, and Machoyáo (their eyes). The
ceremonial address to men is Bwana (pronounced B’áná) master, possibly a
corruption of the Arabic ‘Abuna:’ it is prefixed to proper names,
especially Arabic, as B’áná Muamádi. The diminutive Kib’áná is the
Italian ‘Signorino.’ The feminine form Mwana (M’áná) has equal claims of
descent from the Arabic Ummaná, our mother. It means, however, ‘child’
generically in the proverb M’áná uwwá Mze, Mze hawwá M’áná—child slays
parent, parent slays not child—the equivalent of the Italian Amor
descende non ascende, and the Arab’s ‘My heart is on my son, my son’s is
on a stone.’ Amongst certain interior tribes it is still prefixed to the
names of chiefs; hence probably the ‘Emperor’ Monomotapa (M’áná Mtápa)
which J. de Barros writes Benomotapa: the latter may not be a misprint,
but represent ‘B’áná Mtápa.’ Muigni, contracted to Mui’, is applied to
Sayyids, Sherifs, and temporal rulers, and Shehe is the equivalent of
Shaykh. Mkambi belongs to the sultan or chief, and the Anglo-Arab
‘Seedy’ (Sídi = my lord) is unknown.
The marriages (Máowáno) of the Wasawahili are operose, as might be
expected amongst a race whose family festivals are, as in the far north
of Europe, their only public amusements. I may, perhaps, here remark
that in matching, as well as in despatching, even civilization has not
thrown off all traces of the old barbarism, and that the visit to M. le
Maire and the wedding breakfast, to mention no other troubles and
disagreeables, should make us uncommonly lenient to those less advanced
than ourselves. The relatives of the bridegroom, as soon as he reaches
the mature age of 15, having found for him a fit and proper mate, repair
to the parents; propose a Mahr, or settlement, varying according to
means from $15 to $25, and obtain the reply ancipital. The women then
visit one another; the answer emerges into distinctness, and all fall to
cooking. In due time Cœlebs receives, as a token of acceptance, a large
Siniyyah, a tray of rice, meat, and confectionery, a ‘treat’ for his
friends, forwarded by the future father-in-law. The feast concludes the
betrothal;[107] either of the twain most concerned is still at liberty
to jilt; but in such a case, as usual throughout the Moslem East, enmity
between the families inevitably results.
The wedding festivities outlast the month: there are great ‘affinities
of gossips;’ tympanum et tripudium; hard eating and harder wetting of
the driest clay with the longest draughts of Tembo K’hali (sour toddy),
of Pombe beer (the Kafir Chuala), and of the maddening Zerambo.
Processions of free women and slave girls, preceded by chattels
performing on various utensils of music, perambulate the streets,
singing and dancing in every court. At length the Kazi, or any other man
of letters, recites the Fatiheh, and the two become one, either at the
bridegroom’s or at the bride’s house. The women are present when the
happy man enters the nuptial chamber, and they always require to be
ejected by main force. Unlike the Arabs, they retain the Jewish practice
of inspection: if the process be satisfactory, the bridegroom presents
$10 to $50 to his new connections, while the exemplary young person is
blessed, congratulated, and petted with small gifts by papa and mamma.
She often owes, it is whispered, her blushing honours to the simple
process of cutting a pigeon’s throat. In case of a disappointment, there
is a violent scene of abuse and recrimination; but when lungs and wrath
are exhausted, the storm is lulled without blows or even divorce. The
first ‘Mfungato,’ i. e. seven (days) after consummation, is devoted to
the wildest revelry, the ‘Walímeh,’ or wedding feast, concluding only
with the materials for feasting.
The Msawahili is allowed to breathe his last upon a couch, and the
corpse, after being washed by an Alim or by some kinsman, is hastily
wrapped in a perfumed winding-sheet. Women of the highest rank sit at
home in solitary grief. The middle-classes stain their faces, assume
dark or dingy-coloured dresses, and repair to the sea-shore for the
purpose of washing the dead man’s clothes before dividing them amongst
his relations or distributing them to the poor. The slave girls shave
their heads like Hindus, bathe, and go about the streets singing Neniæ,
and mourning aloud. Meanwhile a collection, technically known as Sándá
(the winding-sheet), is made amongst the people, who are almost all
connected by a near or distant tie. One of the blood-kinsmen acts
Munádi, or crier. As each one appears with his quotum, he shouts ‘lo!
such a person (naming him) has bought such and such articles for his
brother’s funeral feast.’ This publicity tends of course to make men
liberal. The corpse is buried, as is customary amongst Moslems, on the
day, generally the evening, of decease, and there is a popular belief,
in which some Europeans join, that deaths take place mostly when the
tide ebbs, at the full and change of the moon. The custom of abusing the
corpse, accompanied with the greatest indecencies, is confined to the
least civilized settlements. After the funeral all apply themselves to
eating, drinking, and what we should call merriment; whilst music and
dancing are kept up as long as weak human nature permits. The object is
not that of the Yorkshire Arvills, to refresh those who attended from
afar—it is confessedly to ‘take the sorrow out of the heart.’ So the
Velorio of Yucatan is para divertise—to distract kin-grief. As in the
matter of marriage, however, so in funerals, we can hardly deride
barbarous races whilst we keep up our pomp and expense of ridiculous
trappings, taxing even the poor for mutes and carriages, for ‘gloves,
scarves, and hatbands.’
The Wasawahili have all the African passion for the dance and song: they
may be said to exist upon manioc and betel, palm-wine and spirits, music
and dancing. The Ngoma Khu, or huge drum, a hollowed cocoa-stem bound
with leather braces, and thumped with fists, palms, or large sticks,
plays an important and complex part in the business of life: it sounds
when a man falls sick, when he revives, or when he dies; at births and
at marriages; at funerals and at festivals; when a stranger arrives or
departs; when a fight begins or ends, and generally whenever there is
nothing else to do. It is accompanied by the ‘Siwa,’ a huge pipe of
black wood or ebony, and by the ‘Zurmári,’ a more handy variety of the
same instrument. On occasions which justify full orchestras, an ‘Upatu,’
or brass pan, is placed upon the ground in a wooden tray, and is tapped
with two bits of palm-frond. Some wealthy men possess gongs, from which
the cudgel draws lugubrious sounds. The other implements are ‘Tabl,’ or
tomtoms of gourd, provided with goatskin; the Tambire, or Arab Barbut, a
kind of lute; the Malagash ‘Zeze,’ a Calabash-banjo, whose single string
is scraped with a bow; and finally horns of the cow, of the Addax, and
the Oryx antelopes. These people are excellent timeists, but their
music, being all in the minor key, and the song being a mere recitative
without change of words, both are monotonous to the last degree. The
dancing resembles that of the Somal, and, as amongst the slaves, both
sexes prance together. The Diwans, or chiefs, caper with drawn swords,
whilst the women move in regular time, shaking skirts with the right
hand. The ‘figures’ are, unlike the music, complicated and difficult:
they seem to vary in almost every village. The only constant
characteristic appears to be that tremulous motion from the waist
downwards, and that lively pantomime of love which was so fiercely
satirized by the eminently moral Juvenal. It is, indeed, the groundwork
of all ‘Oriental’ dancing from Morocco to Japan.
The principal occupation of the Wasawahili is agriculture; they form the
farmer class of the Island, and everywhere in the interior we find their
little settlements of cajan-thatched huts of wattle and dab, with flying
roofs, acting chimney as well as ventilator—a right sensible
contrivance, worthy of imitation. The furniture consists of a few mats;
of low stools, mostly cut out of a single block; of chairs, a skin being
stretched on a wooden frame; and invariably of a Kitándá, or cartel of
coir and sticks; even the beggar will not sleep or sit upon the damp
face of his mother earth. The dwelling is divided into several rooms, or
rather closets, by partition walls the height of a man; as usual in
tropical lands, the interior is kept dark. Sometimes the hovel boasts
the convenience of a Cho’oni or Shironi (latrina), but in no case is
there a window. Gossips meet under the shade of huge Calabashes and
other trees.
Like the Somal, the Wasawahili are essentially a trading race, a
crumenimulga natio, and they do business with the characteristic
dishonesty of Africans. They defraud and even offer violence to Banyans,
and acting as trade-men to European merchants, they never allow a
purchase without deducting their percentage. At the same time their
plausibility, like that of the travelling Dragoman, so impresses upon
the civilized dupe, whom they hedge round with an entourage of their
own, and whom it is their life-business to cozen, that nothing can
convince him of their rascality. Some of them make considerable
fortunes: I heard of one who lately purchased an estate for $14,000.
They are also commercial travellers of no mean order. Upon the Zanzibar
coast they cut rafters and firewood; they dig for copal, and they act as
middlemen; they wander far into the interior, buying hides, slaves, and
ivory, and they have thus become familiar with the Lake Regions, which
are now attracting our attention. The poorest classes employ themselves
in fishing, and many may be seen by day plying about the harbour in
little ‘Monoxyles,’ which they manage with admirable dexterity. Others
have learned to make the rude hardwares with which the mainland is
supplied: there are also rough masons, boat-builders, and carpenters of
peculiar awkwardness.
Respectable Wasawahili dress like Arabs in ‘Kofíyya,’ here meaning red
caps, and the long Disdashah, or night-gown; the loins are girt with a
‘Kamarband’-shawl, and sandals protect the feet. Others are contented
with the Hammam-toilette, waist-cloth (Shukkah or Tanga) and shoulder-
sheets (Izár), always adorned with the favourite fringe (Tambúa or
Taraza). This is at once the simplest and one of the most ancient of
attires; the plate from Montfaucon’s Cosmas Indicopleustes (1706,
Topographia Christiana) reproduced by Vincent (Periplus, Appendix, part
I.) shows the kilt to have been the general dress of the ancient
Æthiopians, as the spear was their weapon. Before superiors they bare
the shaven poll, an un-Oriental custom probably learned from the
Portuguese. As amongst the Arab Bedawin, the Syrian Rayahs, and the
Persian Iliyat, the women mostly go abroad unveiled. The ‘Murungawánah,’
or freeborn, however, is distinguished out-of-doors by her rude
mantilla, and ‘ladies’ affect an Ukaya, or fillet of indigo-dyed cotton,
or muslin, somewhat like that of the Somal and the Syrians. The feminine
garb is a Kisitu, or length of stained cotton, blue and red being the
pet colours. It resembles the Kitambi of the Malagash, and it is the
nearest approach to the primitive African kilt of skin or tree bark.
Wrapped tightly round the unsupported bosom, and extending from the
armpits to the heels, this ungraceful garb depresses the breast, spoils
the figure, and conceals nothing of its deficiencies. The hair, like the
body, drips with unfragrant cocoa-nut oil; and though there is not much
material to work upon, it is worked in various fanciful styles. Many
shave clean; some wear a half-crop, like a skull-cap of Astracan wool;
others a full-grown bush covering the whole head. These part it down the
middle, with an asinine cross over the regions of veneration; those draw
longitudinal lines above the ears, making a threefold parting; there are
also garnishings and outworks of stunted pigtails, forming stiff and
savage accroche-cœurs. Two peculiar coiffures at once attract the
stranger’s eye. One makes the head look as if split into a pair of
peaks, the side hair being raised from sinciput to occiput in tall
double unpadded rolls, parted by a deep central hollow: this style is
nowhere so pronounced as near the Gaboon river, where the heads of the
Mpongwe girls appear short-horned. The other consists of frizzly twists
trained lengthwise from nape to brow, and the whitish etiolated scalp
showing itself between the lines as though the razor had been used: the
stripes suggest the sections of a musk-melon or the meridians of a map.
The favourite feminine necklace is a row of sharks’ teeth; some use
beads, others bits of copal, but the amber so highly valued in the
Somali country is here not prized. I have alluded before to the
artificial deformity of ear-lobes distended by means of the Mpogo, a
mixture of raw Copal (Chakazi) and Cinnabar. The left nostril is usually
honoured with some simple decoration—a stud or rose-shaped button of
wood or bone, of ivory or of precious metal, and at times its place is
taken by a clove or a pin of Cassava. The tattoo is not so common on the
Island as upon the Continent. These women are said to be prolific, but
apparently they have small families: the child is carried in a cloth
called Mbereko, and, curious to say, they do not bind up its head
immediately after birth. They are hard-worked; and, like the dames of
Harar, they buy and sell with men in the bazar. Their food is manioc,
holcus, rice, and sometimes fish; a fowl is the extent of luxury, flesh
being mostly beyond their means. Few smoke, but almost all chew tobacco
as lustily as their husbands, and their mouths are horrid chasms full of
‘Tambúl’—quids of betel-nut and areca leaf peppered with coarse shell-
lime.[108] This astringent, like the Kola-nut of the Guinea Regions,
acts preventive against the effect of damp heat, and it is a stomachic,
consequently a tonic. The habit of ‘chawing’ it becomes inveterate:
Hindostanis visiting Portugal, and unable to procure the favourite ‘Pán-
Supári,’ have imitated it with cuttings of cypress-apples and ivy
leaves. Ibn Batuta declares the betel to be highly aphrodisiac, and
hence partly the high esteem in which this masticatory is held.
The Wasawahili are not an honoured race; even the savage Somal call them
’Abíd, or serviles, and bitterly deride their peculiarities. The
unerring instinct of mankind has pointed them out for slaves, and they
have readily accepted the position. As Moslems they should be free, and
the Faith forbids them to trade in Moslems. Yet by local usage, as the
children become the property not of the parents, but of the mother’s
brother, the latter can sell any or all of his nephews and nieces;
indeed, he would be subject to popular contempt if, when poor, he did
not thus ‘raise the wind.’
The most interesting point connected with these coast negroids is their
language, the Kisawahili. It was anciently called Kingozi, from Ungozi
or the region lying about the Dana, or rather Zana, the river known to
its Galla accolœ as ‘Maro,’ and ‘Pokomoni’ from the heathen Pokomo who,
living near its course, form the southern boundary of Galla-land proper.
The dialect is still spoken with the greatest purity about Patta and the
other ancient settlements between Lamu and Mombasah. Oral tongues are
essentially fluctuating; having no standard, the roots of words soon
wither and die, whilst terms, idioms, and expressions once popular
speedily fall into oblivion, and are supplanted by neologisms. Thus the
origin of words must often be sought by collation with the wilder
kindred dialects of the coast tribes; for instance, the root of ‘Mbua’
(rain), which has died out of Kisawahili, still visits in Kinyika—ku
buá, to rain. In Zanzibar Island Kisawahili is most corrupted; the
vocabulary, varying with every generation, has become a mere
conglomerate which combines South African, Arabic, Persian, Hindi, and
even Portuguese, an epitome of local history. On the coast it greatly
varies, being constantly modified by the migration and mixture of
tribes. Like the Malay of the Indian Islands, it has become the Lingua
Franca, the Lingoa Geral of commerce from Ra’as Hafun to the Mozambique
and throughout Central Intertropical Africa. This Urdu Zaban, or
Hindostani of East Africa, is indispensable to the explorer, who
disdains mere ‘geography;’ almost every inland tribe has some vagrant
man who can speak it. My principle being never to travel where the
language is unknown to me, I was careful to study it at once on arriving
at Zanzibar; and though sometimes in the interior question and answer
had to pass through three and even four media, immense advantage has
derived from the modicum of direct intercourse.
The base of Kisawahili is distinctly African; and, totally unlike its
limitrophe the Galla, it grammatically ignores the Semitic element. It
is now time for writers to unlearn that, ‘all the languages over the
face of the earth, however remotely different and however widely spread,
appear to be all reducible to the one or the other of three radically
distinct tongues’ (Dr Beke, p. 352, Appendix to Jacob’s Flight. London,
Longmans, 1865).[109] It is only, I believe, the monogenist pure and
simple who in these days would assert ‘there exist three linguistic
types, as there are three physical types, the black, the yellow, and the
white’ (M. de Quatrefages, p. 31, Anthropological Review, No. xxviii.).
To the old and obsolete triad of Turanian, Semitic, and Aryan, or
Turanian, Semitic, and Iranian, we must now add at least another pair—
without noticing the Asianesian—namely, the American or Sentence
language, and the prefixitive South African family. These two great
tongues, one extending over half a world, the other through half a
continent, are, I believe with Lichtenstein and Marsden, unborrowed,
indigenous, and marked with all the peculiarities which distinguish
their inventors. Both are idioms which seem to indicate nice linguistic
perceptions and high intellectual development; history, however,
supplies many cases of civilization simplifying and curtailing the
complicated tongues of barbarians, thus making language the means, not
the end, of instruction.
The limits of the South African family may be roughly laid down as
extending from the Equator to the Cape of Good Hope. The Equatorial
Gaboon on the Western Coast[110] evidently belongs to it; and upon the
Congo river I found that whole sentences of Kisawahili were easily made
intelligible to the people.[111] Though the language is evidently one in
point of construction throughout this immense area, isolation and
hostilities between tribes have split it into a multitude of dialects.
Almost every people, at the distance of 30 to 50 miles, has its peculiar
speech, and in these regions it would not be difficult to collect
‘Specimens of a hundred African Languages.’ The older travellers
remarked that the Tower of Babel must have been near the Gulf of Guinea;
they would have found the same throughout the interior and Eastern
Coast.
My experience[112] of the tongues spoken to the west of the Zanzibar
coast proper is that their amount of difference greatly varies: some
average that of the English counties, others of the three great Neo-
Latin languages, whilst in some the degree amounts to that between
English, German, and Dutch. And generally, I may remark, the East-West
extremities of the lingual area are more closely connected than the
North-South: the language of Angola, for instance, is more like
Kisawahili than the Sichuana. I am at pain to understand why Dr Krapf
should have named this linguistic family, Orphno-(dark-brown) Hamitic,
Orphno-Cushite, Nilo-Hamitic, and Nilotic,[113] when it is far more
intimately connected with the Kafir regions, the Congo and the Zambeze
rivers, than with Æthiopia or the Nile Valley proper. Mr Cooley’s term
‘Zangian’ or ‘Zingian’ also unduly limits the area to that of a mere
sub-family.
The crux grammaticorum of the great South African language is its highly
artificial system of principiatives or preformatives.[114] In the three
recognized lingual types of the old world the work of inflexion, the
business of grammar, and the mechanism of speech disclose themselves at
the ends of vocables. In this prefixitive tongue the changes of mood,
tense, case, and number, are effected at the beginning of words by
prepositive modifying particles, which are evidently contractions of
significant terms, and whose apparatus supplies the total want of
inflexion. This development, arrested in other languages—the Coptic, for
instance—here obtains a significance which isolates it from all
linguistic society. The practised student at once discovers that he is
dealing with a completely new family by the unusual difficulty which
unvaried terminations and initial changes present to one accustomed only
to the terminal.
The minor characteristics of the Kisawahili are the peculiarities of the
negative system in substantives and adjectives, pronouns, adnouns, and
verbs; for instance, Asie, he or she who is not, Isie, it which is not.
Secondly, are the broad lines of distinction drawn between words
denoting the rational and the irrational, and in a minor degree the
rational-animate (as man), and the rational-inanimate (as ass). In most
cases the rational-animate affixes Wa as a plural sign: the irrational-
animate Ma. Umbu, a sister, properly makes Waumbu, sisters: the
ignorant, however, and the Islanders often say Maumbu (sisters) like
Map’hunda (asses). Thus personality supplies the place of gender, a
phenomenon that already dawns in the Persian and in other Indo-European
tongues. Next is the artful and intricated system of irregular plurals,
and last, not least, the characteristic alliteration, an assonance
apparently the debris of many ancient dialects based upon an euphonious
concord not always appreciable by us, and therefore not yet subjected by
our writers to rule. We understand, for instance, that an alliterative
speaker should say Mtu mema (a good man), and Watu wema (good men); but
why is the regularity altered to Máháli _p_ángo (my place), p’hunda
_z_ango (my donkey), and Mtu _wa_ Rashidi (Rashid’s man), instead of
mango, pango, and ma? These distinctions appear far too empirical,
arbitrary, and artificial for the wants of primitive speech.
The Kisawahili is an oral tongue—an illiterate language in the sense
assigned to the term by Professor Lepsius. The people, like the Somal
and the Gallas, never invented a syllabarium. This absence of alphabet
is a curious proof of deficient constructiveness in a race that
cultivates rude eloquence, and that speaks dialects which express even
delicate shades of meaning: it contrasts wonderfully with the Arabs and
Hindus, who adapt to each language some form of Phœnician or Dewanagari.
The coast races use the modern Arabic alphabet, which, admirable for its
proper purpose, represents African sounds imperfectly, as those of Sindi
and Turkish, and is condemned to emulate the anomalous orthography or
cacography of our English. The character is large, square, and old-
fashioned, resembling later Kufic even more than that of Harar, and he
must be a first-rate scholar who can read at sight all the letter of a
man to his friend. Literature is confined, to a few sheets upon the
subject of Báo or Uganga (Raml or geomancy), to proverbs and proverbial
sayings, mostly quatrains; to riddles and rabbit tales, which here
represent the hare legends of the Namaquas and the spider stories of the
Gold Coast; to Mashairi, or songs rhymeless, measureless, and unmusical,
and to ‘Utenzi,’ religious poems, and eulogies of the brave.
In Zanzibar Island Arabic is ever making inroads upon the African
tongue, and the student who knows the former will soon master the
latter. The first short vocabulary, by Mr Salt, was published in 1814,
and was presently followed by others, especially the ‘Soahili
vocabulary’ of the late Mr Samuel K. Masury, of Zanzibar (Memoirs of the
American Academy, Cambridge, May, 1845), and Mr J. Ross Browne’s
‘Specimen of the Sowhelian Language’ (Etchings of a Whaling Cruise. New
York, 1846).[115] Strange to say, the ‘Mombas Mission’ translated the
Gospels into the obscure local Kinyika, when only three chapters of
Genesis and a version of the English Prayer Book (Tubingen, 1850-54)
were published ‘in the one language, by the instrumentality of which the
missionary and the merchant can master in a short time all the dialects
spoken from the Line down to the Cape of Good Hope.’ Dr Krapf’s ‘Outline
of the Elements of the Kisauaheli Language’ (Tubingen, 1850) requires
great alterations and additions, especially in the alliterative and
other characteristic parts of the tongue. Messrs Rebmann and Erhardt,
who both were capable of writing a scholar-like book, or of perfecting
the ‘Outline,’ turned their attention to the languages of the Nyassa,
Usumbara, and the Wakwafi. In 1857 M. Guillain published, as an Appendix
to his third volume, a short grammar and vocabulary of the ‘langue
Souahhéli:’ they are mere bald sketches, and they convey but the
scantiest idea of what they attempt to illustrate. A good study of
Kisawahili would facilitate the acquisition of the whole sub-family. For
my own use I commenced a grammar intended to illustrate the intricate
and difficult combinations and the peculiar euphony which here seems to
be the first object of speech: unfortunately my transfer to West Africa
left it, like my vocabularies, in a state of MS. My friend Mr Trübner
has lately advertised a volume called ‘East African folk-lore, Swahili
Tales, as told by the natives of Zanzibar,’ with an English translation
by Edward Steere, L.L.D., Rector of Little Steeping, Lincolnshire, and
Chaplain to Bishop Tozer (London: Bell and Daldy, 1870);[116] and Dr
Krapf has proposed to publish the Juo ya Herkal (Book of Heraclius), ‘an
account of the wars of Mohammed with Askaf, Governor of Syria, to the
Greek Emperor Heraclius, in rhyme; a MS. in ancient Ki-Suahili written
in Arabic characters.’ Also ‘Juo ja Utenzi, Poems and Mottoes in rhyme,’
the dialect being that formerly spoken in the Islands of Patta and Lamu.
Both the ‘linguistic treasures’ were presented to the Oriental Society
of Halle. The last publications which I have seen are ‘Specimens of the
Swahili Language’ (Zanzibar, 1866); ‘Collections for a Handbook of the
Swahili Language, as spoken at Zanzibar,’ by Bishop Tozer and Rev. E.
Steere (Zanzibar, 1865), and the Rev. E. Steere’s ‘Collections for a
Handbook of the Shambala Language’ (Zanzibar, 1867), the ‘tongue spoken
in the country called in our maps Usumbara, which is a mountainous
district on the mainland of Africa, lying opposite to the Island of
Pemba, and visible in clear weather from the town of Zanzibar.’
Kisawahili is at once rich and poor. It may contain 20,000 words, of
which, perhaps, 3000 are generally used, and 10,000 have been published.
Copious to cumbrousness in concrete, collective, and ideal words, it
abounds in names of sensuous objects; there is a term for every tree,
shrub, plant, grass, and bulb, and I have shown that the several ages of
the cocoa-nut are differently called. It wants compounds, abstract and
metaphysical expressions: these must be borrowed from the Arabic, fitted
with terminal and internal vowels, to suit the tongue, and modified
according to the organs of the people, harsh and guttural consonants
being exchanged for easy cognates. Even the numerals beyond twenty are
mere Semitic corruptions. All new ideas, that of servant, for instance,
must be expressed by a short description. In the more advanced South
African dialects, as in the Mpongwe of the Gaboon, a compound or a
derivative would be found to include all requirements. The sound would
be soft and harmonious were it not for the double initial consonants,
aspirated or not; for the perpetual reduplications (the Arabic
Radif),[117] a savage and childish contrivance to intensify the word,
and for the undue recurrence of the coarse letter K. Possibly the
fondness of the people for tautology may have tended to develop their
tautophony and euphony. Abounding in vowels and liquids, the language
admits of vast volubility of utterance; in anger or excitement the words
flow like a torrent, and each dovetails into its neighbour till the
whole speech becomes one vocable. Withal, every vowel has its distinct
and equal articulation. It wants the short and obscure sound of the
English and other European languages (e. g. a li_a_r, h_e_r, f_i_rst,
act_o_r, and h_u_rled) called by us the original vowel sound. Like the
Chinese and Maori languages, and the other South African tongues, it
confounds the so often convertible letters, the L and the R.[118] The
slaves, the Wasawahili, and the wild natives mostly prefer the former,
e. g. Mabeluki for Mabruki, and the Arabs and civilized speakers the
latter, although Mr Cooley (Geography of N’yassi, p. 20) asserts the
contrary. The metastasis, however, appears to me often arbitrary,
occasioning trouble, e. g. when ku ría (to eat) becomes ku lía (to
weep). Dr Livingstone, (chap. xxx. First Expedition) complains of
Loangoa, Luenya, and Bazizulu being transformed into Arroangoa, Ruanha,
and Morusurus, but he also similarly errs when he converts Karagwah into
Kalagwe, and when (p. 266) he uses indifferently Maroro and Maloli. The
R is often inserted pleonastically, to prevent hiatus, as Ku potéra for
Ku potéa, to lose; Ku pakíra for Ku pakía, to pack. Sometimes, again, it
is omitted, as U’ongo for Urongo, a lie. In pronouncing it the tongue
tip must (be more vibrated than in our language, which loves to slur
over the sound. Aspirated consonants are found, as in Sanskrit,
especially B’h, P’h, D’h, T’h, K’h, and G’h. Quiescent consonants are
rare in the middle of words; thus the Arabic Mismar (a nail) is changed
to Misumari, and treble are unknown. There are only five peculiar
sounds[119] which are generally mispronounced by the Arabs, and these
are mostly of little importance. The dialect is easily learned: many
foreigners who cannot speak understand, after a short residence, what is
spoken to them. It may be said to have no accent, but a sinking or
dropping of the voice at the terminal syllable—possibly the case with
Latin hexameters and pentameters—seems to place the ictus upon the
penultimate, as Wasawahíli for Wasawahĭli.[120] Hence when first writing
proper nouns I preferred Mtony and Pangany to Mto-ni and Pangani.
Similarly the W when placed between a consonant and a vowel is often so
slurred over as hardly to be detected. For instance, Bwáná, master,
becomes B’áná, and Unyamwezi might be both written Unyam’ezi were it not
liable to confuse the reader. There is also a Spanish ñ (Niña), as in
Ñika, the bush, and Ñendo, the P. N. of a district, which I express by
Ny, e. g. Nyika and Nyendo. Finally, being a lazy language, which well
suits the depressing climate, it takes as little trouble to articulate
as Italian: hence, even in the first generation, Arabs and Baloch
exchange for it their own guttural and laborious tongues, and their
offspring will learn nothing else. This is more curious than the
children of the Scandinavians abandoning the father-tongue for Norman
and Anglo-Scandinavian, vulgarly called Anglo-Saxon. In East Africa
adult settlers forget their mother-tongue,
And now of the slave races proper.
The treaty of 1845, which modified Capt. Moresby’s, of 1822, and Capt.
Cogan’s, of 1839, forbade exportation from the Zanzibarian ports north
of Lamu and its dependencies (S. lat. 1° 57′) and south of Kilwa (S.
lat. 9° 2′): thus the upper markets were cut off, and the traffic was
confined to the African dominions of the late Sayyid. The object of
these provisions was, of course, to avoid interference with the status
of domestic slavery, in the dominions of a foreign and friendly power.
It actually, however, led to what it was intended to prevent. The
vigilance and the summary measures of our Cape cruisers, especially when
commanded by men like Admiral Christopher Wyvill, inflicted severe
injuries upon, and in some places almost abolished, the contraband. I
have said that the diminution of export has materially benefited the
Island and its population. But at Zanzibar, as in the Guinea regions and
the African interior, prædial slavery appears still an evil necessity:
upon it hinges not only the prosperity but the very existence of the
present race. An abolition act passed in this Island would soon restore
it to the Iguana and the Turtle, its old inhabitants.
The slave, on the other hand, has lost by not being exported. It is the
same in the Oil rivers of West Africa, where in 1838 Sir T. Fowell
Buxton proposed to substitute for illegal and injurious, harmless and
profitable trade leading to ‘Christianity, which would call forth the
capabilities of the soul, and elevate the savage mind.’ It was expected
that at Benin, for instance, man would become too valuable as a labourer
to be sold as a chattel. Unhappily the reverse took place; man became so
cheap, that to work and to starve him to death paid better than to feed
him. A fresh gang could be purchased for a few shillings, and the price
of provisions was of far more importance than the value of life. The
Buxtonian idea was founded upon simple ignorance of Africa, and upon the
ill-judged assertion that slavery was caused by foreigners. The internal
wars, whose main object is capturing serviles, are the normal state of
Blackland society; they continued and they will continue, whether
slavers touch the coast or not. Briefly, the results to the captive are
now not sale, but slaughter or sacrifice in the interior, and death by
starvation upon the coast.
When I visited Zanzibar, in 1857, the English public, periodically
stimulated by the Liberal press, had split up, on the subject of the
African slave trade, into two sets of opinions, both honestly believed
in, both diametrically opposed to each other, and both somewhat in
extremes. The one sanguinely represented it as crushed, and
congratulated the nation upon having dealt its death-blow to a system
which was rotting the roots of prosperity and progress. The others
despondently declared that, although in some places the snake was
scotched, yet that it was nowhere killed; they proved that whilst
slavery had increased in horrors, the result of our interference, yet
the average quantity of the wretched merchandise had not been
diminished; they opined that nothing save the special interposition of
Providence could end that which had so long baffled many best efforts;
and being well acquainted with details, they maintained that the average
opinion was a mere pandering to popularity at the expense of truth. And,
when weary of the self-glorifying theme whose novelty had engrossed the
attention of their fathers, the public readily attributed selfish
motives to those who would enliven their zeal.
Fact, as usual, lay between the two assertions, but the inner working of
the slave-abolition measures was known only to few, and those few hardly
cared to speak out. England, ripe for free labour, had resolved to throw
off the African; she kicked away, to use a popular phrase, the ladder by
which she had risen, and she made slavery, for which she had shed her
best blood in the days of Queen Anne, the sum of all villanies in the
reign of King George. This was natural. The steps by which nations
attain to the summit of civilization appear, as they are beheld from
above, gradations of mere barbarism: to revert to them would be as
possible as to enjoy the nursery tales which enlivened our childhood.
Other European peoples were not in the condition of England to dispense
with slave labour, but the termination of a long continental war was
made the inducement to sign abolition treaties. All were so much waste-
paper, not being based upon public opinion. As long as Cuba and the
slave-importers of the Western world required (A.D. 1830-57) an annual
supply of 100,000 men, their demands were supplied. Neither the word
piracy, nor the prospect of hanging from the yard-arm—a remedy more
virulent than the disease—could deter adventurers from engaging in a
trade where a ‘pretty girl’ was to be ‘bought for a few rolls of
tobacco, fathoms of flannel, and pieces of calico,’ and whose profits
were estimated at 200 per cent. As long as sugar, tobacco, and dollars
increase, so long will the desire for more support the means by which
the supply may be increased. Of old one cargo run home out of three
paid: presently one in four was found sufficient. The losses, however,
added greatly to the misery of the slave; ships were built with 18
inches between decks, one pint of water ahead was served out per diem,
and five wretches were stowed away instead of two. With curious
contradiction and ‘wrong-headedness,’ these evils, caused by an
abolitionary squadron, were quoted against the slaver, as if the
diabolical malignity of the latter could be gratified only by destroying
his own property.
It was soon discovered that the slaves, being often condemned
criminals,[121] could not be returned under pain of death to their
homes. The natural result was to disembark them free upon English
ground, and thus certain British colonies were amply supplied with the
hands of which their government was depriving foreign powers. This
proceeding added jealousy to the ill-will with which our ‘meddling and
muddling’ philanthropy was regarded. But both those chiefly concerned—
the slaver and anti-slaver—gained; for the former the price of his wares
was kept up, whilst the latter made not a little political capital out
of his position. Slave exportation might at once have been crushed at
head-quarters: Madrid could have ended it in Cuba; Lisbon, and Rio de
Janeiro, in Africa and in the Brazil; it was, however, judged best to
let it die quietly, and to make as much use as possible of its dying
throes. Some five years ago, after defying for a generation the
squadrons of civilized Europe and the United States, it perished of
itself, and to-morrow it would revive if the old conditions of its
existence could be restored.
The Zanzibar slave-depôt is so situated that its market was limited only
by the extent of Western Asia. From Ra’as Hafun to the Kilima-ni river
was gathered the supply for the Red Sea, for the Persian Gulf, for the
Peninsula of Hindostan, and for the extensive regions to the East. A
spirited trade was carried on, and few obstacles were placed in its way.
The Anglo-India Government did not in this matter rival the zeal of the
Home Authorities. It lacked earnestness, judging slavery leniently, and
finding the practice conducive to the well-being of its subjects. A
squadron of at least four steamers was required: the work was left to a
sloop and a corvette stationed in the Persian Gulf, with orders, amongst
other things, to arrest slavers. The Cape squadron, whose beat extended
to the Equator, rarely visited these seas, and the French ships of war
were popularly said to do more harm than good. Even in after years, when
a considerable impulse was given to our cruisers, they could capture
only 6.6 per cent.: thus, from Zanzibar and Kilwa, in 1867-9 were taken
116 daus carrying 2645 slaves, leaving 37,000 to escape. There were
neither special agents nor approvers; steam-launches and crews
sufficiently numerous for arduous boat-service were wanting. An infinite
deal of nothing in the shape of bescribbled foolscap was collected, by
way of sop for the Court of Directors and for Exeter Hall; but the
counsels of such authorities as Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton and Capt. Felix
Jones, I. N., were passed over with the scant attention of a compliment.
The fact is, in British India, as to a certain extent in France, no
political capital could be made out of Abolition. Few men retain, after
long residence in the East, that lively horror of the institution which
distinguishes the home-bred Englishman, and which has arisen partly from
his crass ignorance of negro nature and from the misrepresentations of
very earnest but also deluded anti-slavers. The Anglo-Indian has seen
many a chattel happy and contented, enjoying an enviable lot compared
with the poor at home free to starve or to die in the workhouse:
possibly he has dined with some emancipated slave: certainly he has
heard of Mamluk Beys and purchased Pashas; and, whilst he owns in the
abstract that one man has no right to buy another, in practice he is
lenient to the ‘patriarchal system.’
The apathy of the Anglo-Indian Government gave the cue to its executive.
When it was proposed that the Cutch ‘Nakhodas’ (skippers) should be
compelled to keep crew-lists for inspection, some ‘collector’ objected
that such men cannot write—surely he must have known that every vessel
carries its own ‘Kirani,’ or accountant. That imperium in imperio the
Supreme Court, was enough to paralyze the energies of a fleet; the
captured slave-dau was carried to Bombay, whence, after a year’s
detention by the claws of the law, it was probably restored to its
owner. The officers of the Indian Navy would not exercise increased
vigilance, necessitating exposure of their men and neglect of other more
important duties, when their labours were so likely to be made futile.
And as very little prize money was followed by a very large amount of
correspondence, slaver-hunting appeared as undesirable to them as to the
officers of the French squadron on the West Coast of Africa.
At Zanzibar, where the French Consul, or in his absence the first
‘Drogman’ (like all consuls here, their office is rather political than
commercial), could fine and imprison an offender, and even ship off a
merchant skipper to the nearest port, the English functionary was a
magistrate absolutely without magisterial or criminal jurisdiction. He
could not deport an Indian convicted of slave-dealing. Whilst the Arab
Courts were not allowed jurisdiction over British subjects, the latter,
unless merchant seamen ashore, were not liable to be arrested for
felony. All this might easily have been remedied by extending eastward
the British Order in Council for the exercise of power and jurisdiction
by English functionaries (e.g. Consuls for the Levant), in the Ottoman
Dominions (June 19, 1844), and by adding power ashore to Article 124 of
Consular Instructions, making offences on the high seas cognizable by
the Consul.
Thus, despite Order upon Ordinance, Asia was supplied by the whole
slave-coast of Eastern Africa, without hardly the decency of
concealment. Boys and girls might be seen on board every native craft
freshly trapped in the inner wilds, unable to speak a word of any
language but the Zangian, and bearing upon their heads the trade-marks
of the Hindu Banyan. The commerce was openly carried on by aliens
sailing under British protection. Kidnapping was common and daring, as
about Lagos and Badagry. Scarcely a vessel manned by crews from Súr or
Ra’as el Khaymah, the greatest ruffians of these pirate seas, left
Zanzibar city or mainland without stealing a few negros or negrets. By
the temptations of a bottle of rum or of some decoy girl, they were
enticed into the house or on board, and they suddenly found themselves
safe under hatches: even Arabs, men and women, have been carried off in
mistake by these inveterate thieves. A child here worth from £1 5_s._ to
£3 would fetch in Persia £14 to £20; hence the practice. And the anti-
slave exportation treaties became exactly worth their weight in words,
because the sword was known to be sheathed.
The slaves on Zanzibar Island are roundly estimated, at two-thirds of
the population; some travellers increase the number to three-fourths.
The annual loss of males by death, export, and desertion, amounted, I
was told, to 30 per cent., thus within every fourth year the whole gang
upon a plantation required to be renewed. The actual supply necessary
for the Island is now estimated at a total varying from 1700 to 6000,
and leaving 12,000 to 16,000 for the export slave-market. As usual in
Moslem lands, they may be divided into two distinct classes: first, the
Muwallid or Mutawallid, the Mazáliyá of the Wasawahili, the famulus or
slave born in the family, or rather on the Island; secondly, the captive
or imported chattel.
The Muwallid belongs solely to his mother’s owner, who sells him or
gives him away at pleasure. Under no circumstances can he claim
manumission—one born a slave is a slave for ever, even in the next
world, amongst those nations which, like the Dahomans, have a next
world. If notoriously ill-treated, however, he may compel his proprietor
to dispose of him. Few Arabs behave cruelly to their ‘sons;’ they fear
desertion, which here is always easy, and the master, besides being
dependent for comfort upon his household, is also held responsible for
the misdeeds of his property. He is also probably living in concubinage
with the sisters of his slaves, and in this case the latter can take
great liberties—they are the most unruly of their kind. I need hardly
remark that the issue of a slave-girl by an Arab or by any other ‘Hurr’
(free-born man) has been legitimate in El Islam since the days of
Ishmael, inheriting like the son of a lawful wife, and that neither
mother nor child can be sold. It is to be regretted that in this matter
the Christian did not take example of the Mohammedan.
The domestic slave-girl rarely has issue. This results partly from the
malignant unchastity of the race, the women being so to speak in common;
and on the same principle we witness the decline and extinction of wild
tribes that come in contact with civilized nations. The chief social
cause is that the ‘captive’ has no interest in becoming a mother; she
will tell you so in the Brazil as in Zanzibar; her progeny by another
slave may be sold away from her at any moment, and she obviates the
pains and penalties of maternity by the easy process of procuring
abortion.
The wild slaves are brought over in daus which carry from 10 to 500
head. Most of those intended for the Island market are comparatively
young: the Portuguese settlements at Mozambique give higher prices for
able-bodied adults. Since the last treaty the value has more than
trebled; what then cost $10 has now risen to $30 to $35. A small boy
fresh from the mainland commands from $7 to $15; a girl under 7 or 8
years old, from $10 to $18. The live cargo pays duty to the Zanzibar and
Kilwa custom-houses, as at Zayla, Tajurrah, and the slave-exporting
harbours of the Red Sea: the sick and the refuse, however, enter free.
About 1835 the import duty varied from $0.50 to $4, according to the
port whence the ‘black ivory’ was shipped: some races had such an ill
fame that only excessive cheapness found purchasers. Presently $2 and at
last $1 were levied upon all, good or had. Of late years (1857) the
annual maximum collected was $23,000: this enables us to rate the import
at an average of 14,000 to 15,000 per annum, the extreme being 9000 or
18,000. In 1860-61 it rose to 19,000, in 1861-62 it fell to 14,000, and
in 1862-63 there was a further declension.[122]
The impudence and audacity of the wild slaves almost passes belief. Such
is their habit of walking into any open dwelling and carrying off
whatever is handy, that no questions are asked about a negro shot or cut
down in the act of simple trespass. At night they employ themselves in
robbing or smuggling, and at times in firing a house, when they join the
crowd and spread the flames for the purpose of plunder. They are armed
burglars, and not a few murders are laid at their door. In the
plantation they gratify their savage, quarrelsome, and ungovernable
tempers, by waging desultory servile wars with neighbouring gangs;
hundreds will turn out with knobsticks, stones, and a few muskets, and
blaze wildly in the direction of one another: at the first casualty all
will run. Some proprietors have had as many as 2000 blacks—not half the
number often owned in the Southern United States, and in the Brazil—but
at those times the negro was worth only from $3 to $10. They were
allowed two days out of the week to fish for themselves, and to work at
their own patches of ground.
Of late years the Zanzibar serviles have attempted to compete with the
honest and hardworking porters of Hazramaut; but they cannot keep their
hands from picking and stealing, and thus they have ruined several of
their ‘Akidahs,’ or headmen, who rendered themselves responsible to the
merchant. Being capable of considerable although desultory exertion,
they get a living by day-work on board European ships, and they prefer
this employment because they receive rations of rice and treacle, with
occasionally a bit of beef or pork. When there is no work upon the
plantation its slaves are jobbed at the rate of 8 to 10 pice per diem,
and of this sum they receive 2, about the wage of an Indian ‘biggaree.’
Of course they do their best to defraud their masters of the hire.
The following are the distant races of whom a few serviles find their
way to Zanzibar.
Circassians and white slave girls being exceedingly rare, are confined
to the harems of the rulers. They are brought from Persia, and are as
extravagant in tastes as they are expensive in prime cost. A ‘Járiyeh
bayza’ soon renders the house of a moderately rich man unendurable.
Abyssinians, or rather Africans from Gurague, Amhara, and the continent
north of the parallel of Cape Guardafui, are mostly imported from El
Hejaz. Boys and lads range from $50 to $100: girls, from $60 to $150.
The former are circumcised, and having a good reputation for honesty,
intelligence, and amiability, they are educated as stewards,
superintendents, and super-cargos. The latter, though exceedingly
addicted to intrigue, are favourites with men, and, it is said, with
Arab women.
Galla captives of many tribes, especially of the Arisha and a few of the
southern Somal, are shipped from Hafun, Brava, and Hanir or Makdishu.
They fetch low prices, and are little prized, being considered roguish
and treacherous. In appearance they are savage likenesses of the
Abyssinians.
The coast of Zanzibar, which before the days of the Periplus supplied
the eastern world with slaves, has of late years been exhausted by over-
driving. It may be divided into two sections: the northern country,
which exports from Mombasah and the little adjacent harbours as far
south as the Pangani river; and the southern regions between Pangani and
Kilwa. Details concerning all these servile races will be given when we
visit their respective ports.
-----
Footnote 103:
Further details will be given in Part II. chap. xi.
Footnote 104:
A highly interesting account is given of this almost unknown race by
the Rev. Thomas Wakefield in his ‘Footprints in Eastern Africa, or
Notes of a Visit to the Southern Gallas’ (London, Reed. 1866, pp. 76-
79). We are told that ‘the Gálas never stab a Mlangúlo, but removing
the blades of their spears, they thrash him to death with the shafts
or handles:’ moreover, that ‘the Walangúlo approach a Gála on their
knees, crying, “tiririsho! tiririsho! tiririsho!” until their greeting
is acknowledged by a grunt from their lord or by the latter spitting
out a little saliva!’
Footnote 105:
The curious reader will find it in the Travels of Marco Polo (chap.
xxxvii. note 1, p. 432, of Bohn’s Antiquarian Library).
Footnote 106:
Mr Cooley (Geog. 37) tells us that ‘Conda, in Congoese and also in
Sawahili, means hill.’ It certainly does not in Zanzibar, where Konda
is an adjective, lean or thin. Konde means the fist (in Arabic جِمع
and Khonde is applied to a Shamba or plantation.
Footnote 107:
M. Guillain (Part II. 108) calls the preliminary ceremony ‘Outoumba,’
and I cannot help thinking that he was grossly ‘sold’ by some
exceedingly impudent interpreter.
Footnote 108:
The areca-nut is called in Arabic Fofal, and in Kisawahili Popo: the
betel-nut, Tambul and Tambuli, and the lime Nurah and Choka.
Footnote 109:
This is repeated by my friend (p. 59, The Idol in Horeb: Evidence that
the golden image at Mount Sinai was a cone, and not a calf. London:
Tinsleys, 1871), who, however, informs us that in 1846 Major, now Sir
Henry, Rawlinson agreed with him in saying that, ‘the class of
languages to which the designation Semitic or Semitish is properly
applicable is that comprising the whole of the aboriginal languages of
Asia, Polynesia, and America.’ This latter continent, however, should
not have been included without proofs, and hitherto we have failed to
find them.
Footnote 110:
Grammar of the Baĕlele language, &c., by the Missionaries of the A. B.
C. F. M. Gaboon Station, Western Africa. New York: Pratt, 1854. Also
Grammar of the Mpongwe language, &c., by the same. New York: Snowdon
and Pratt, 1847.
Footnote 111:
A Vocabulary of the Malemba and Embomma Languages. (Appendix I.
Tuckey’s Expedition to the River Zaire. London: Murray, 1818.) Also
Fr. B. M. de Cannecatim’s Diccionario da Lingua Bunda. Lisboa, 1804.
Footnote 112:
When travelling in East Africa I took as a base the vocabulary of
Catherine of Russia, and filled it up with five dialects, viz., those
of the Sawahil, Uzaramo, Khutu, Usagara, and Unyamwezi.
Footnote 113:
In these days, however, we cannot say, with the Opener of Inner Africa
(p. 123), ‘The Nilotic family of languages nowhere extends into the
basin of the Nile.’
Footnote 114:
I have sketched the distinguishing points of the Hamitic tongues in my
Preface (p. xxii.) to ‘Wit and Wisdom from West Africa’ (London:
Tinsleys, 1865).
Footnote 115:
Mr Ross Browne has lately been engaged in writing a voluminous report
to the Government at Washington upon the mineral resources of the
Western States of the Union.
Footnote 116:
Messrs Monteiro and Gamitto (O Muata Cazembel, Appendix, 470) doubt
whether the Tete grammar can be reduced to an intelligible system of
verbs. I see no difficulty. Capt. Boteler, R. N. (Appendix, vol. i.
Voyage to Africa, Bentley, 1835) easily collected a ‘Delagoa
Vocabulary’ from George, his interpreter.
Footnote 117:
In Kisawahili reduplication sometimes seriously modifies the root
meaning, e. g. Mbhali means ‘far’ or ‘distant;’ Mbhali-Mbhali is
different or ‘several,’ meaning ‘distinct.’
Footnote 118:
The Tupys of the Brazil, according to the Portuguese, ignored both
sounds—I presume initiative.
Footnote 119:
These are
1. B—an emphatic and explosive perfect-mute, formed by compressing the
lips apparently to the observer’s eye.
2. D—which is half T, formed somewhat like the Arabic Ta (ط) by
touching the lower part of the central upper incisors with the
thickened tongue-tip. Strangers write indifferently Doruma and Toruma,
Taita and Daida.
3. G—harder and more guttural than ours, the tongue root being applied
thickened to the soft palate. An instance is _G_ombe, a large cow
(Gnombe), which Arabs and Europeans pronounce Gombe, meaning a shell.
Incrementation is also effected by simplifying the initial sound, as
Gu, a large foot, from Mgu; Dege, a large bird, from Kdege.
4. J—a semi-liquid: the J is expressed by applying the fore part of
the tongue to the palate, above the incisors closely followed by a
half-articulated Y. It is often confounded with D and Y, e. g. Unguja,
Unguya, and Ungudya, for Ungujya (not Ugúya, as Mr Cooley believes),
and Yambeho or Jambeho for Jyambeho. The sound is not ‘peculiarly
African;’ it exists in Sindi and other tongues, and a likeness to it
occurs at the junction of English words, as ‘pledge you’ Even the
Arabs distinguish it from their common Jim, and it is well worth the
conscientious student’s attention.
5. K—half G, a hardened sound whilst the mid tongue is still applied
to the palate. It might be taken for a corruption of the Arabic Kaf
(ق).
At Mombasah we shall remark other sounds mostly peculiar to the coast
Kisawahili. As a rule, however, the stranger will be understood even
before his tongue has mastered these minutiæ.
Footnote 120:
Nothing can be more erroneous than the following sentence: ‘But the
Mohammedan natives of the Eastern Coasts of Africa, who are
comprehended under the name of Sawáhili, do not pronounce the hard _h_
of the Arabs; the vowels, therefore, between which it stands in their
name, unite to form a diphthong, like the Italian _ai_ or the English
i in wile; and Sawáhili is pronounced Sawïli’ (Inner Africa Laid Open,
p. 88). The Wasawahil merely change the hard Arabic h (ح) into the
softer guttural (ه).
Footnote 121:
I regret to read such statements as the following in the Journal of
the Anthropological Society: ‘It may be asserted, without fear of
exaggeration, that it is to this demand for slaves that are to be
attributed the desultory and bloody wars which are waged in Central
Africa.’ (On the Negro Slaves in Turkey, No. 29, April, 1870.)
Footnote 122:
Concerning Kilwa further details will be found in Vol. II.
CHAPTER XII.
PREPARATIONS FOR DEPARTURE.
‘The port of Zanzibar has little or no trade; that to Bombay consists of
a little gum and ivory, brought from the mainland, with a few cloves,
the only produce of the island; and the import trade is chiefly dates,
and cloth from Muscat, to make turbans. These things are sent in small
country vessels, which make only one voyage a year. The trade is
consequently very trifling.’—CAPT. HART, Commanding H. M. S. Imogene,
1834.
The dry season—and uncommonly dry it had been—was judged by all old
hands unfit for travel, and I was strongly advised to defer exploration
of the interior till after learning something of the coast. The Rev. Mr
Erhardt’s Memoir on the Chart of Eastern and Central Africa, which threw
into a huge uninterrupted Caspian half-a-dozen central lakes, and called
it in the south Niandsha (Nyassa), in the north Ukerewe, and on the
coast Niasa and Bahari ya Uniamési, had proposed a choice of three
several routes. The first was through Dshaga (Chaga), and the lands of
the Wamasai. It numbered 59 days, over level land, though studded with
many isolated hills and mountains, and it traded to the Wanyamwezi, ‘of
the race of Wazambiro,’ probably the Wafioma of the Usambíro district,
near Karagwah. The middle caravan was reported to start ‘from Bagamoyo
and Mboamaji to Uniamési.’ The general features of the country, the
distances, and even the position of Ujiji, were remarkably well laid
down. The ‘Stadt Ujiji,’ inhabited partly by Arabians, partly by Wahas
(Wahhas), of course, did not exist: the saline stream of the Wapogo[123]
and the people, whose teeth became yellow by drinking of another water,
were evidently the creations of some lively negro’s fancy. The ‘third or
southern caravan line,’ set out from Kilwa, and after 200 miles struck
the ‘Niasa or Niandsha’ Lake. In this section the distances were
miscalculated, and except the Wafipa and the Wabembe, the tribes were
incorrectly named and placed.
In his plan for exploring the Great Lake, and laid before the Royal
Geographical Society in 1854, M. Erhardt proposed to land at Kilwa,
where he had touched with Dr Krapf; to collect a party of Wasawahili,
and with an outfit of $300 to march into the continent. This might have
been feasible in 1854; it was impossible in 1856. The sum mentioned was
inadequate; the missionaries had spent as much upon a fortnight’s march
from Pangani to Fuga. Slaves are the only porters of the land, and the
death of Sayyid Said had then made the coast Arabs and the Mrima people
about Kilwa almost independent of Zanzibar. My directions from home were
to follow, if possible, this line; Lieut. Christopher, I. N., however,
who visited the coast in 1843, more wisely advised explorers to avoid
the neighbourhood of Kilwa. Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton, moreover, strongly
objected to our landing anywhere but under the guns of Zanzibar, as it
were. He informed me that the Wangindo, a tribe settled behind Kilwa,
had lately murdered a native trader, at the instigation of those settled
on the coast; and that nothing less than a ship of war stationed at the
port would open the road to a ‘Muzungu’ (white man).
The Consul had also warned me that my inquiries into the country trade,
and the practice of writing down answers—without which, however, no
report could have been compiled—were exciting ill will. The short-
sighted traders dreaded, like Orientals, that competition might result
from our discoveries, and their brains were too dull to perceive that
the development of the resources of the interior would benefit all those
connected with the coast. Houses that had amassed in a few years large
fortunes by the Zanzibar trade, were exceedingly anxious to ‘let
sleeping dogs lie.’ As far as dinners and similar hospitality, the white
merchants resident on the Island received us with the usual African
profuseness. There were, of course, honourable exceptions: I have
especially mentioned Captain Mansfield, Mr Masury, and M. Bérard; but
not a few—exempla sunt odiosa—spread reports amongst the natives,
Banyans, Arabs, and Wasawahili, which were very likely to secure for us
the disastrous fate of M. Maizan. Captain Speke, who subsequently
ignored this fact, threatened to throw one of the ‘first houses’ out of
the window; and Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton declared that unless more
discretion in spreading evil reports were shown he would withdraw
British protection from another well-known firm. The son of a Hamburg
merchant had written to his father for leave to supply us with sums to
be recovered from the Royal Geographical Society. When informed of this
peculiar kindness I inquired the object, and the answer was that,
intending himself to visit India, he wished to prepare his father for
the expense of travel in the East. Certainly knowing all these
intrigues, I see no reason why they should not be published.
The Arabs were as much alarmed at the prospect of opening up the African
interior as were the foreign merchants; they knew that Europeans had
long coveted a settlement upon the sea-board, and they had no wish to
lose the monopoly of the copal coast and the ivory-lands. Nothing indeed
would be easier, I repeat, for a European power than to establish itself
upon the mainland; and if it followed the wise example of the early
Portuguese, who limited their possessions to the principal ports and to
the great centres of trade, it would soon monopolize an enriching
traffic. With respect to copal, and to the articles most in demand, our
commercial relations with Zanzibar might be altered for the benefit of
both contracting parties. It is at present an unnatural, exclusive
system, a monopoly claiming advantages of which it will not, or cannot,
avail itself. But all steps in these matters must be taken by the Home
Governments; the petty jealousies of rival powers here render all local
interference unadvisable.
At length the Kazi Muhiyy el Din, the ‘celestial doctor’ of the
Wasawahili, was detailed by the curious to investigate the subject, and
to represent the terrors of the public. He retired, satisfied that our
plans were not of conquest. The Arab chiefs pressed Lieut.-Colonel
Hamerton to swear upon the ‘Kalmat Ullah’ that the expedition was to be
conducted only by English officers, upon whose good-will they could
rely; that it was not a proselytizing movement of the Wanajuoni (sons of
the book, missionaries), and that it would not be accompanied by
‘Dutchmen,’ as certain gentleman from Germany were called by the
Zanzibaris.[124] Had the Consul hesitated to satisfy them, the course of
events is clear to all who know the Eastern man. The surface of Arab
civility would have run unruffled, but the undertow would have carried
us off our legs.
Persuaded at last by the earnestness of our energetic supporter, the
Sayyid Sulayman bin Hamid bin Said—a noble Omani never neglects the name
of his grandsire—came forward in our favour. This aged chief, a cousin
of the late Sayyid, rejoiced in the nickname of Bahari Maziwa (Sea of
Milk), the Ethiopic equivalent for ‘soft-sawder.’ He had governed
Zanzibar during the minority of Sayyid Khalid, who died in 1854, and his
influence was strong upon the sea-board. He gave us his good word in
sundry circulars, to which the Prince Majid added others, addressed to
Kimwere, Sultan of Usumbara; to the Diwans or Wasawahili head-men, and
to the Baloch Jemadars, commanding the several garrisons. On the other
hand, Ladha Damha of Mandavie, the Banyan Collector of Customs, provided
me with orders upon the Hindu coast-merchants, to raise the requisite
moneys, without which our reception would have been of the coolest. The
horizon now began to clear, and even to look bright, as it generally
will when the explorer has time and patience to await the change of
weather.
If we travellers in transit had reason to be proud of our countryman’s
influence at Zanzibar, the resident foreigners should have been truly
thankful for it. When Lieut-Colonel Hamerton first made this Island his
head-quarters (1841), he found that for nine years it had not been
visited by a British cruiser, and that interested reports had been
spread, representing us to be no longer masters of the Indian Seas.
Slavery was everywhere rampant. Bozals, green or wild slaves, here
called Baghams (بغم), were thrown overboard when sick, to avoid paying
duty; and the sea-beach of the city, which acts Marine Parade, as well
as the plantations, presented horrible spectacles of dogs and birds of
prey devouring swollen and spotted human carcases—the remnants of
‘slaves that never prayed.’[125] The Consul’s representations were
listened to by Sayyid Said, who, through virtue of certain dry floggings
and confiscations of property, à la Mohammed Ali, instilled into the
slave-owners some semblance of humanity.
Negro insolence was dealt with as summarily. The Arabs had persuaded the
Wasawahili, and even the Creoles, that a white man is a being below
contempt, and the ‘poor African’ eagerly carried out the theory. Only 17
years have elapsed (1857) since a certain trading-consul, Mr W—, in
consular hat and sword, was horsed upon a servile back, and was solemnly
‘bakur’d,’ in his own consular house, under his own consular flag. This
occurrence was afterwards denied by the best of all authorities, the
gentleman who told the tale: I have, however, every reason to believe
it. A Msawahili would at any time enter the merchant’s office, dispose
his sandaled or bare feet upon the table or the bureau, call for cognac,
and, if refused, draw his dagger. Impudent fishermen would anchor their
craft below the windows of the British Consulate, and, clinging to the
mast-top, enjoy with derision the spectacle of feeding Kafirs. The Arabs
jostled strangers in the streets, drove them from the centre, and
compelled them to pass by the wall. At night no one dared to carry a
lantern, which would inevitably have been knocked out of his hand; and a
promenade in the dark usually caused insults, sometimes a bastinado. To
such a pitch rose contempt for the ‘Faranj,’ that even the ‘mild
Hindus,’—our ‘fellow-subjects’ from Cutch and other parts of Western
India,—could not preserve with a European the semblance of civility.
Time was required to uproot an evil made inveterate, as in Japan, by
mercantile tameness, and by the precept quocunque modo rem. Patience,
the Sayyid’s increasing good-will, and at times a rough measure which
brought the negro man to a ‘sense of his duty,’ were at last successful,
and the result now is that the Englishman is better received here than
at any of our Presidencies. The change is wholly the work of Lieut.-
Colonel Hamerton, who, in the strenuous and unremitting discharge of his
duties, has lost youth, strength, and health. The iron constitution of
this valuable public servant—I have quoted merely one specimen of his
worth—has been undermined by the terrible fever, and at fifty his head
bears the ‘blossoms of the grave,’ as though it had seen its seventieth
summer.
Before we could set out a guide, a Mahmandar a Cafilah-báshí or
Kirangozi, was requisite, and this necessary was soon provided by the
‘Sea of Milk.’ Saíd bin Sálim el Lamki, the companion of our way for
many a weary league, must not depart this life unsketched. He is a half-
caste Arab, as is shown by the wiry, woolly hair, which he generally,
however, removes with care; by his dead yellow skin; by scanty
mustachios, and by a heard which no pulling will lengthen. Short, thin,
and delicate; a kind of man for the pocket; with weak and prominent
eyes, the long protruding beak of a young bird, loose lips, and regular
teeth dyed by betel to the crimson of chess-men, he owns to 40, and he
shows 45. Of noble family on the father’s side, the Benu Lamk of the
Hináwi, he was born when his progenitor governed Kilwa, hence his
African blood; and he has himself commanded at the little port Sa’adani.
Yet has not dignity invested him with the outer show of authority. He
says ‘Karrib,’—draw near!—to all, simple and gentle. He cannot beat his
naughty bondsmen, though he perpetually quotes Ali the Khalifeh—
‘Buy not the slave but with staff and sword;
Or the lord will slave, and the slave will lord.’
I have heard, him address, with ‘rotund mouth,’ his small boy Faraj, a
demon of impudence; yet he is mostly ashamed to scold. This results from
his extreme timidity and nervousness. He never appears abroad without
the longest of daggers and a two-handed blade fit for Richard of
England. He will sleep in an oven rather than open the door when a
leopard has been talked of: on board ship he groans like a colicky
patient at every ‘lop,’ and a shipped sea brings from his lips the
involuntary squeak of mortal agony. In the hour of perfect safety he has
a certain quietness of manner and mildly valorous talk which are
exceedingly likely to impose. He cannot bear hunger or thirst, fatigue
or want of sleep, and until Fate threw him in our way he probably never
walked a single consecutive mile. Though owner of a wife, and of three
quasi wives, he had been refused by Allah the gift of issue and
increase. Possibly the glad tidings that a slave girl was likely to make
him a father—he swore that, if a boy, Abdullah should be his name—
suddenly communicated to him on his return from our first cruise, caused
him to judge my companionship canny, and once more to link his destiny
with ours.
Saíd bin Sálim is a Bayázi of the Kháriji schism. He prays regularly;
fasts uncompromisingly; he chews but will not smoke tobacco; he never
casts away a date-stone; and he ‘sips water’ but ‘swills milk’ as the
Moslem saying directs. His mother tongue is the Kisawahili: he speaks,
however, the grotesque Arabic of Oman, and sometimes, to display his
mastery of the humanities, he mixes hashed Koran and terminating vowels
with Maskat ‘baragouinage,’ Paradise Lost and Thieves’ Latin. He has
read syntax; he writes a pretty hand; he is great at epistles, and he
loves to garnish discourse with saw and song. When in the ‘doldrums’ he
will exclaim—
‘The grave’s the gate all flesh must pass—
Ah! would I knew what lies behind.’
I have heard him crooning for long hours—
‘The knowledge of this nether world,
Say, friend, what is it?—false or true?
The false, what mortal cares to know?—
The true, what mortal ever knew?’
Sometimes he will break out into rather a ‘fast’ strain, e. g.—
‘At Meccah I saw a lass selling perfume,
She put forth a hand, and I cried, “O sweet!”
(Three sniffs, crescendo.)
She leant over me, casting a glance of love,
But from Meccah I sped, saying, “Farewell, sweet!”’
(Three Kafir clicks, diminuendo, signifying ‘No go.’)
The reader will ask what induced me to take a guide apparently so little
fit for rough and ready work? In the first place, the presence of Saíd
bin Sálim el Lamki, el Hináwi, was a pledge of our utter
‘respectability,’ and as a court spy, he could report that we were not
malignants. Moreover, he was well known upon the coast, and he had a
knowledge-box filled with local details, which he imparted without
churlishness. During the first trip I found him full of excellent gifts,
courteous, thoroughly good-tempered, and apparently truthful, honest,
and honourable—a bright exception to the rule of his unconscientious
race. When I offered him the task he replied, ‘Verily, whoso benefiteth
the beneficent becometh his lord; but the vile, when well treated, will
turn and rend thee.’ I almost hoped that he would not disappoint me in
the end; but the delays, the dangers, and the hardships of the second
journey proved too much for Saíd bin Sálim. The thin outer varnish
disappeared from the man, and the material below was not inviting. The
Maskat Arab, especially the half-caste, easily becomes the Bedáwi, the
Ishmael, the Orson. These people have rarely any ‘stay’ in them; they
are charming only as long as things run smooth, and after once showing
true colours, they care not to conceal them. Arabs, however, are not the
only handsome shoes that badly pinch. How often would fellow-travellers
have avoided one another like fire, had they been able to see a trifle
below the surface! Saíd bin Sálim, offended by certain remarks in my
Lake Regions of Central Africa (passim), and wishing to ‘prove his
character for honour and honesty,’ persuaded Capt. Speke to give him
another chance, and began by telling a gross falsehood, which Capt.
Speke at once believed. He accompanied the second East African
expedition: he played his usual slavish tricks, and he had to be
‘dropped,’ utterly useless, at Kazeh, with the Arabs.
I had engaged at Bombay two Portuguese boys, Valentino Rodrigues and
Caetano Andrade, who resolved that what Sahib Log could endure, that
same could they. Having described them once there is no object in saying
further of them, except that they were, despite all deficiencies, a
great comfort to us; and that they proved themselves, in the long run,
better men than the Arab. Taking no interest in ‘African exploration,’
and desirous of seeing only the end of the expedition, they must, poor
fellows, have yearned sadly for home, even Goa; and I am rejoiced to
think that they both reached it alive.
The outfit and expenses of an African journey are always interesting to
travellers. For the personnel, we expended in two months a total of $172
($50 to Said, and $20 per mens. to the two Goanese), including $32 for
ship hire, and the inevitable ‘Bakhshish’ which accompanies it. As
presents to the native chiefs who might entertain us, we took 20
Jamdanis, or sprigged muslin, for turbans ($15); a score of embroidered
Surat caps (Alfiyyah = $17.50); a broad-cloth coat and a Maskat Sabai,
or loin-cloth of silk, cotton, and gold thread ($20.50) for the Sultan
Kimwere; two gaudy cotton shawls, yellow and scarlet ($2.50), and 35
lbs. of small white-and-pink Venetian beads ($14). This item amounted to
$69.50. I made the mistake of ignorance by not laying in an ample store
of American domestics (Merkani), the silver of the country, and a
greater quantity of beads, which are the small change. About $250
represented the expenses of living and travelling ($94 in January, and
in February $84): this included the expenditure of the whole party. The
provisions were, rice (three bags), maize flour (one barrel), dates (one
bag), sugar and coffee (each 20 lbs.), salt, pepper, onions, and curry
stuff, oil and clarified butter, snuff and tobacco. Of course soap and
candles were not forgotten, and we had a small but necessary supply of
cords for baggage—these, however, soon followed the way of our knives.
The several items form a grand total of $480, equal to about £50 per
mensem. I must observe, however, that we travelled in humble guise,
hired poor vessels, walked the whole way, and otherwise practised a
somewhat rigid economy.
Ladha Damha, who had provided us with these necessaries, also hired for
the coasting cruise an old Arab Beden, or ‘Awaysiyeh’ (foyst) called the
Riámi. She was a fine specimen of her class; old and rotten, the boards
and timbers of the deck were breaking up; the tanks were represented by
a few Girbahs, or empty skins; the sails were in rags; the ropes and
cables broke every half-hour, and the awning leaked like a cheap
waterproof, despite bits of cotton rudely caulked in. Ants effected
lodgment in our instrument cases, cockroaches dropped upon us all day,
and the rats made marriage, as Saíd said, during the live-long night.
The crew was picked up out of the bazar: one was a tailor, a second
stuttered unintelligibly, a third was maimed and purblind, a fourth was
sick, and a fifth, the Chelebi (fop) of the party, was a malingerer, who
could do nothing but shave, pluck his eyebrows, and contemplate a flat
face in the glass. The only man on board was old Ráshid, a scion of that
Súrí race, the self-styled descendants of the Syrians, well-known for
beggary and niggardness, for kidnapping and safe piracy. They are the
most uncourteous of the Arabs; and while ever demanding Hishmah
(respect) for themselves, they forget their own proverb, ‘Politeness has
two heads,’ and they will on no occasion accord it to others. Ráshid,
however, proved a hero and a treasure, by the side of our Nakhoda Hamid,
a Saudawi or melancholist of the most approved type—never was brain of
goose or heart of hen-partridge hidden by brow so broad and
intellectual; never did liver of milk wear so Herculean a beard! He
squats upon the deck screaming and abusing his men; now silent and
surly, then answering every question with El ’ilm ’ind Allah (God
knows!), and in danger he weeps bitterly. With such fellows the only
system is to be as distant as possible: the least familiarity ends
badly; they will hate you more for one cross word than love you for a
thousand favours. The civility of a pipe or a glass of sherbet
infallibly spoils them: they respect only the man who tells them once a
day that they are unworthy to eat with a Walad Amir (gentleman). They
will call you proud; but that matters little, and if you pay them well
they will speak of you accordingly.
On the evening of Sunday, Jan. 4, 1857, we bade a temporary farewell to
our kind friend and host, Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton, and transferred
ourselves on board the Ríami, expecting to set out. Simple souls that we
were! There was neither wood nor water on board, and our gallant captain
lost no time in eclipsing himself. The north-east wind coursing through
the clear sky was dead against us, but he pretended that the sailors had
remained in the bazar. He came on board next morning, when we made sail
and ran down to Mto-ni, there filling our skins with bad saltish water.
Hamid again went ashore, promising to return in half an hour, and
leaving us to spend the day in vain expectation. Said bin Salim solaced
himself by wishing that the Shaytan might appear to Hamid on his death-
bed and say, ‘O friend of my soul, welcome home!’ But when the truant
came off, he was welcomed by the half-caste Arab with a cup of coffee
and a proverb importing that out of woe cometh weal; this considerably
diminished the effect of my flea in the ear and threat of the ‘bakur.’
Finally, after the loss of two nights and a day, we fished up our
ground-tackle and began our journey. I afterwards learned that in this
part of East Africa the traveller must ever be prepared for three
distinct departures—the little start, the big start, and _the_ start.
Amongst our belongings was a life-boat which we determined to tow, and
the trouble which it gave was endless. In consequence of a lecture
delivered at the United Service Institution (May 2, 1856), by Major, now
Sir Vincent, Eyre, of the Bengal Artillery, I wrote through him to Mr
Joseph Francis, of New York, whose application of iron had taken the
place of the old copper article in which Lieut. Lynch, of the United
States navy, descended the Jordan rapids. The total length, 20 feet, was
divided into seven sections, each weighing under 40 lbs. The pieces were
so numbered that experienced men could put the thing together in one
hour, and it was provided with rivets, bolts, nuts, and japanned
waterproof awning. A flat keel and a cork fender were proposed by Major
Eyre to the manufacturers, Messrs Marshall, Lefferts, and Co., and were
rejected: the former would have offered greater hindrance to the joints,
and the latter would have been only additional weight.
This life-boat, after being set up with some difficulty at Zanzibar,
accompanied us on our trip northwards. The galvanized and corrugated
iron, in longitudial furrows, like the roofing of railway stations, but
only sixpence-thick, proved far superior to the softer copper formerly
used. The Arabs, who could not sufficiently admire her graceful form,
the facility with which she was handled, and above all things, her
speed, called her the Sharrádeh, or runaway (mare). The ‘Louisa’ was
indeed sadly given to breaking her halter and to bolting. We lost her
during a storm near Mombasah, but an article so remarkable and so
useless to any but ourselves was of course easily recovered. Compelled
by want of carriage on the coast to reduce my material, I left her most
unwillingly at Zanzibar. Buoyant as graceful, fireproof, wormproof, and
waterproof, incapable of becoming nail-sick or water-logged, she would
indeed have been a Godsend upon the Tanganyika lake, sparing us long
delay, great expense, and a host of difficulties and hardships.
-----
Footnote 123:
This salt stream might have been some confusion with the salt Lake
Naivasha or Balibali, in about S. lat. 1° 40′, first laid down by the
Rev. Thomas Wakefield, ‘Routes of Native Caravans from the Coast to
the Interior of Eastern Africa, chiefly from information given by Sádi
bin Ahédi, a native of a district near Gázi (Gási?), in Udigo, a
little north of Zanzibar’ (pp. 303-339, Journal of the Royal
Geographical Society, vol. xl. 1870). Of this very valuable paper I
shall have more to say in Vol. II.
Footnote 124:
I leave these words as they were written in 1857, a time when German
nationality did not exist, and when the name of German had perhaps
reached its lowest appreciation. Throughout the history of the
nineteenth century there is nothing more striking than the change
which the last decade has worked in Europe, than the rise of the
mighty power, which in a month crushed the armies of France, and which
tore from her side the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. By an
Englishman who loves his country, nothing can be more enthusiastically
welcomed than this accession to power of a kindred people, connected
with us by language, by religion, and by all the ties which bind
nation to nation. It proves that the North is still the fecund mother
of heroes, and it justifies us in hoping that our Anglo-Teutonic
blood, with its Scandinavian ‘baptism,’ will gain new strength by the
example, and will apply itself to rival our Continental cousins in the
course of progress, and in the mighty struggle for national life and
prosperity.
Footnote 125:
Dr Ruschenberger remarked the skeletons on the beach to the North and
to the East of the Island.
APPENDIX.
THE UKARA OR UKEREWE LAKE.
A DEDUCTION FROM THE REV. MR WAKEFIELD’S ‘ROUTES.’
The following paper was read out on December 11, 1871, before a meeting
of the Royal Geographical Society, Major-General Sir Henry Rawlinson,
President of the Society, being in the chair.
Much light had been lately thrown upon the dark points of Eastern
Africa, especially those which gather round the much-vexed Ethiopic
Olympus, Kilima-njaro, by the labours of the Rev. Thomas Wakefield. This
gentleman, we are informed (Preface by Mr Samuel S. Barton, General
Mission Secretary, to ‘Footprints in Eastern Africa.’ London: Reed,
1866), was one of four missionaries sent out to Mombasah in 1861 by the
United Methodist Free Churches under charge of Dr Krapf, who first
established the now world-renowned ‘Mombas Mission.’ After a residence
of five years he published the interesting series of ‘Notes on a Visit
to the Southern Gálas’ above alluded to; and in 1866-7, accompanied by
the Rev. C. New, he marched from Mombasah to Upokomo, on the Dana river.
He is therefore an African traveller of some experience; and as he has
evidently mastered the Kisawahili tongue, he is unusually well qualified
to supervise and to correct the ‘Routes of Native Caravans from the
Coast to the Interior of Eastern Africa, chiefly from information given
by Sádi bin Ahedi, a native of a district near Gázi (Gasi Bandar?) in
Udogo, a little north of Zanzibar.’ Especially advocated by my old and
tried friend Mr Alexander Findlay, F.R.G.S., this valuable paper was
published in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society (pp. 303-339,
No. xi. Vol. xl. of 1870), and I felt somewhat surprised that the extent
of its importance has not attracted more attention in England.
I will consider this addition to our scanty knowledge of one of the most
interesting regions in tropical Africa under two heads—the philological
and the geographical.
Firstly, Mr Wakefield, like Doctors Livingstone and Kirk, all being
practical linguists, invariably uses the system of Zangian
orthography, adopted by the ‘Mombas Mission,’ and by myself since
1859. He speaks, for instance, of Kilima-njaro and Unyamwezi, not the
Monomoezi of Mr Cooley or ‘the authentic word Mueni Muezi,’ translated
landlord, or petty chief country (p. 11, The Memoir on the Lake
Regions of East Africa reviewed, &c. &c., by W. D. Cooley. London:
Stanford, 1864). We find in Mr Wakefield’s Notes (p. 316) ‘_Líma_, a
term denoting extraordinary size—Mlíma being the general term for
mountain,’ whilst (p. 321) Ki-Mrima is justly applied to the dialect
spoken on the Mrima or mainland facing Zanzibar Island. We read also
(323) ‘Mtanganyíko,[126] Kisawáhílí, meaning the place of _mingling_
or _mixture_ (rendezvous).’ This is precisely the meaning attached by
me to the Lake’s name, yet I was assured in the Memoir above alluded
to (p. 7) that nothing can be ‘more ridiculous’ than my explanation of
Tanganyika. Even in philological details of the Kisawahili dialect Mr
Wakefield agrees with me. He writes, for instance, Udogo (Notes, p.
313), Ugala (Footprints, p. 67, 68), and Ulangulo (Ibid. p. 63). I was
assured in the Memoir (p. 9) that U is prefixed to the names of
countries only by Dr Krapf and Captain Burton—this, too, after I had
for years been talking of Europe as Uzungu, literally, Land of white
men. Mr Wakefield speaks of Wasămbá, of Wasawahili (or Wa-Sawahili),
and of Wanyamwezi, thus sanctioning the use of Wamrima, continental
men, and Wakilima, hill-men. He adopts Kisawahili, Kikwavi, Kimasai,
and so forth, prefixing an adjectival particle ‘Ki’ to the root, and
denoting chiefly dialect, yet I was assured by Mr Cooley (Memoir, p.
9) that ‘Ki’ has never an adjectival form. I may now invite the author
of Inner Africa Laid Open to revise the verdict (Memoir, p. 7) which
pronounces me ‘totally ignorant’ of the language of which I affect to
be master.
It may be deemed trivial to dwell upon these philological minutiæ, but,
firstly, nothing is unimportant when it affects the accuracy of a
traveller, especially of an explorer, in the smallest matters of detail.
Secondly, without an exact nomenclature all topographical literature
must be imperfect and of scant value. And, finally, as Mr Cooley and I
have been differing upon these points for the last ten years, it is well
that the portion of the public which takes an interest in the subject
should see who is right and who is not. I have no personal feeling in
the matter; and if the ‘Geographer of N’yassi’ will bring, as I have
done, independent testimony to bear upon the points in question, and not
evolve his learning out of the depths of his self-consciousness, I am at
all times ready and willing to own myself wrong.
Far more important and generally interesting, however, is the
geographical knowledge brought home or rather confirmed to us by Mr
Wakefield’s ‘Routes.’ We now know that the block whose apices are Mounts
Kilima-njaro and Kenia (alias Doenyo Ebor, Mont Blanc) to be a great
upland, bounded on the South by the Panga-ni river in S. lat. 5°, and on
the N. West by a lacustrine region in S. lat. 6°; whilst it may possibly
anastomose to the North, as was suggested by my friend Dr Beke, with the
Highlands of Harar and of Moslem Abyssinia, lying upon the same
meridian. The breadth between N. West and S. East will be included
between East long. (G.) 37° and 39°. Assuming, therefore, roughly the
bounding lines to measure 240 by 120 direct geographical miles—we obtain
a superficies of 28,800 square geographical miles, more than a fourth of
the area assigned to the British Islands. We can now safely believe,
with Dr Krapf and Mr Rebmann, the explorers, that the block is a high
volcanic country, separating the watershed of the Nilotic Basin from
that of the Indian Ocean; sending off, like the Highlands of Abyssinia,
its own tributary or tributaries to the White river, and corresponding
with the Camarones or Theōn Ochēma in West Africa (N. lat. 4°); that it
is a land of high plains and thickly forested hills, rising to summits
capped, not with delomite and quartz, but with glaciers and eternal
snows; and that it abounds in the lakes and swamps, sweet and salt,
necessary to feed the inland ‘smoke mountains’ or volcanoes,[127] whose
existence before appeared so problematical. And now the two mighty
summits, Kilima-njaro, explored by the late lamented Baron von der
Decken and Doenyo Ebor, reported to Dr Krapf under the alias Kenia or
Kirenia, and unexpectedly confirmed by fresh evidence, have obtained
local habitations as well as names.
But the interest of Mr Wakefield’s Routes culminates in the fact that
they show even to a certainty the existence of a lake before unknown,
and they lead to the conclusion that the area of 29,900 square
geographical miles, assigned to the so-called Victoria Nyanza, contains
at least four and probably a greater number of separate waters; that it
is, in fact, not a Lake, but a Lake Region.
Mr Keith Johnston observes (p. 333), ‘It is remarkable that not one
single name of a district, people, or place (with the exception of that
of the Wamasai, a general name for the people of the white region west
of the Lake)[128] given in these new routes has any such remote
resemblance to names reported by Speke and Burton as to warrant any
identification with any one of them.’ The reason will presently appear
in the fact that we are speaking of different waters. The annotator
further observes (p. 333) that ‘the arguments which Captain Burton used
in recommending a division of the Nyanza had not a sufficient basis of
proof to give them moment, as is shown by the acceptance of the Lake as
one sheet by the whole geographical world.’
The mapper will readily understand that it is much more sightly and
convenient to have a basin neatly outlined, and margined sky-blue, like
the Damascus swamps, than to split it into fragments as I did. A volume
published by the late Mr Macqueen and myself (The Nile Basin. London:
Tinsleys, 1864), offered a sketch of what was actually seen by the
second expedition, and the aspect of disjecta membra was not inviting.
Afterwards, however (p. 334), Mr Johnston remarks, ‘Captain Burton’s
recommendation would seem to receive some slight support from the new
information obtained by Mr Wakefield.’ To this I would add that his
language might have been less hesitating, as these ‘Routes,’ so
important to the geography of Eastern Africa, at once establish the
existence of two lakes wholly independent of the so-called Victoria
Nyanza.
The first is that which we named from hearsay Bahari ya Ngo, contracted
to Bahari Ngo, sea or water of Ngo(-land). In the atlas of Mercator
(Gerhard Kauffmann) we find it written Barcena for Barenca or Barenga.
Mr Wakefield prefers (324) Baringo, meaning a ‘canoe,’ and ‘possibly so
called from its form.’ I shall follow his example, at the same time
observing that African negroes rarely adopt such general and
comprehensive views of larger features or venture upon such comparisons
unless they can command a birds-eye glance at the prospect. Route No. 5,
from ‘Lake Nyanza’ to Lake Baringo, conclusively proves that the latter
is not ‘a sort-of backwater’ connected with the former ‘by a strait, at
the same distance from the East of Ripon Falls as the Katenga river is
to the West.’ Nor is it a ‘vast salt marsh’ without effluent: the saline
water has evidently been confused with the lately reported Lake
Naïrvasha or Balibali lying S. West of Doenyo Ebor. Native description
supplies the Baringo with the Northern Nyarus—the southern effluent of
the same name being clearly an influent. Nyarus thus corresponds with
the old Thumbiri, Tubirih, and Meri, afterwards called Achua, Usua, and
Asua, words probably corrupted from Nyarus.
The map of 1864, printed by Mr now Sir Samuel Baker in the Proceedings
of the Royal Geographical Society, affirms the Asua to have been a dry
channel 150 yards wide when he crossed it, in Jan. 9, 1864, but rolling
15 feet deep in the wet season. He can hardly be speaking of the drain
from the Baringo Lake, which must be large and perennial, and which
therefore must be sought farther north, unless it anastomoses with some
other stream. M. d’Arnaud, the French engineer sent in 1840-1841 by
Mohammed Ali Pasha to explore the Upper Nile, reported (Journal Royal
Geographical Society, vol. xviii. p. 73) that about 30 leagues south of
where the expedition was stopped by shallow water in N. lat. 4° 42′ 42″,
and therefore in N. lat. 3° 12′, the several branches unite, the chief
one flowing from the east.
[Illustration: Nº 1 BURTON & SPEKE. _May 1858_]
[Illustration: Nº 2 SPEKE. 1859]
[Illustration: Nº 3 SPEKE & GRANT. 1863]
[Illustration: Nº 4 SIR S. W. BAKER. 1864]
The Baringo Palus must act reservoir to the whole N. Western declivities
of Doenyo Ebor, whose snows have given it a name. Ptolemy (iv. 8)
distinctly mentions the χίονας, or (melted) snows which feed the Nile;
and though he places them in S. lat. 12° 30′, he is correct as to the
existence of snowy feeders. Some years ago a Swiss traveller drew my
attention to the fact that glacier-water would explain the term White
river as opposed to Blue river. The quantity of melted snow or glacier-
water which finds its way to the true Nile may be comparatively
inconsiderable, but that little may perhaps modify the colourless
complexion of rain-water when its suspended matter has been deposited,
and distinguish it from the pure azure of a stream issuing from a Lake
Geneva. In 1857 Captain Speke, an experienced Himalayan, easily
detected, when drinking from the Pangar-ni or Rúfu river, the rough
flavour of snow water.
More important, however, than Baringo is the new Lake announced to us by
Mr Wakefield’s African Pandit, Sádi bin Ahedi. The latter ignoring
Nyanza, calls it Nyanja, possibly a dialectic variety, and therefore a
difference neither to be dwelt upon too much nor wholly to be neglected.
Of greater value is the name Bahari ya Pili, or Second Sea, not called
so, we are expressly informed, because inland of the First Sea—Indian
Ocean—but evidently because leading to a neighbouring water on the west.
Most suggestive of all, and therefore adopted by me, is the term ‘Bahari
ya Ukara,’ or Sea of Ukara, the latter being the region on the Eastern
shore. Here we detect the true origin of the ancient Garava, and of
Captain Speke’s Ukewere, which he applied to a peninsula projecting from
the Eastern shore, and which the Wanyamwezi, translating ‘island water,’
gave to the Oriental portion of the so-called Victoria Nyanza.
Respecting the length of the Ukara Lake, Sádi was informed that it could
be crossed by canoes in 6 full days, paddling from sunrise to sunset;
but if the men went on night and day, the voyage is to be accomplished
in three days. Now the native craft used upon these dangerous plateau-
waters never dare to cross them: the voyager may rush over the narrow
parts of the Tanganyika Lake, but of course he would not attempt the
physical impossibility of navigating without chart or compass beyond
sight of land. It is impossible to believe in a canoe-cruise of 6 days
across the lake: it is evident that a coasting-cruise is meant. The
total of hours, allowing the day to be 12, and without halts, would be
72. Upon the Tanganyika I estimated the rate at a little more than 2
knots an hour. Thus, in round numbers, we have 145 miles, which probably
require reduction: an estimate of the mean amount of error distributed
on the whole of Mr Wakefield’s ‘Routes’ gives, according to the
annotator, an exaggeration of 1.24 : 1.0; and of course, when estimating
the length of these distant and dangerous navigations, exaggeration
would be excessive. We may, therefore, fairly assume the semi-
circumference of the Ukara Lake at 120 miles, and the total
circumference at 240. Sádi, we are told (p. 309), made Bahari-ni on the
Eastern shore the terminus of his long journey from Tanga Bandar to the
‘Lake Nyanza’ (Nyanja?). Let us protract the full 145 miles as the
exceptional rate of 3 knots an hour upon Captain Speke’s last map,
without allowing anything for the sinuosities of the coast, and the end
would strike the entrance of ‘Jordan Nullah’ off the ‘Bengal
Archipelago,’ about half the width of the so-called ‘Victoria Nyanza.’
As regards the breadth of the Ukara Lake, we read (p. 310), ‘Standing on
the Eastern shore, Sádi said he could descry nothing of land in a
western direction, except the very faint outline of a mountain summit,
far, far away on the horizon.’ This passage is again suggestive. The
sandy and level Eastern shore of the Nyanja (i. e. water) or Ukara Lake
about Bahari-ni, whence Sádi sighted, it is probably in E. long. (G.)
35° 15′. The easternmost, that is, the nearest, point of the Karagwah,
or, as Captain Speke writes it, the Karague Highlands, is in E. long.
(G.) 32° 30′. Thus the minimum width is 165 miles, whilst man’s vision
under such circumstances would hardly cover a dozen. Here, again, we
have room for a First as well as for a Second Sea. Mr Johnston suggests
that the mountain-summit in question might be an island rising high in
the midst of the Lake; but, he adds, such a feature could not well have
been missed entirely by Captain Speke. Here I join issue with him for
reasons which can be deduced from these pages—my companion and second in
command never saw or heard of the Ukara Lake. But it is highly
improbable that those who could tell Sádi the number of days required to
cross or to coast along the Lake would not have known whether the summit
was that of a mountain on terra firma or of a lacustrine islet. The
latter feature is not unfamiliar to Mr Wakefield’s informant: he does
not fail to mention (p. 324) the small conical hill in the southern
waters of the Baringo Lake.
When Sádi declared that ‘he travelled 60 days (marches?) along the shore
without perceiving any signs of its termination,’ he evidently spoke
wildly, as Africans will. His assertion that the natives with whom he
conversed were unable to give him any information about its northern or
southern limit, simply means that in this part of the African interior
neither caravans nor individuals trust themselves in strange lands,
especially with the prospect of meeting such dangerous plunderers as the
Wasuku. Similarly a ‘two months’ journey’ and ‘going to Egypt,’ asserted
by ‘all authorities without exception, African and Arab,’ signify
nothing but the total ignorance of the informant concerning the country
a few leagues beyond his home. A lake 120 miles in length, that is to
say, even a little smaller than the Baringo is supposed to be, will
amply satisfy all requirements in this matter.
Finally, we have Sádi’s report that 8 or 9 years ago (before 1867?) the
Ukara Lake was navigated by Europeans. Certain very white men, we are
told, who bought only short ivories (Serivellos), refusing long tusks,
and who purchased large quantities of eggs—Africans have learnt by some
curious process to connect Europeans with oöphagy—came up in a large
vessel, carrying three masts and another in front (bowsprit?), with many
white cloths (sails). The event took place only a month and a half
before he reached the Lake, and it is described with an exactness of
detail which seems to vouch for its truth. If this be a fact, it is
clear that the Nyanja cannot be Captain Speke’s Nyanza, and that the
visitors could not have made it viâ his ‘White Nile,’ with its immense
and manifold obstructions. But it may be that of which he heard
(Journal, p. 333) from the ‘Kidi officers,’ who reported a high mountain
to rise behind the Asua (Nyarus?) river, and a lake navigated by the
Gallas in very large vessels. We now understand why the ‘King’ Mtesa
(Ibid. p. 294) offered to send the traveller home (to Zanzibar) in one
month by a frequented route, doubtless through the Wamasai and other
tribes living between the Nyanja and the Nyanza. Thus Irungu of Uganda
(Ibid. p. 187) expressed his surprise that Captain Speke had come all
the way round to that country, when he could have taken the short and
safe direct route up the mid-length of his own lake—viâ Umasai and
Usoga, by which an Arab caravan had travelled.
The Ukara Lake will be found laid down (A.D. 1712) in the Africa of John
Senex, F.R.S. (quoted by the late Mr John Hogg, F.R.S., ‘On some old
maps of Africa, in which the central equatorial lakes are laid down
nearly in their true positions’). It is evidently the Garava of Mercator
(A.D. 1623), whose atlas supplies it with a northern effluent draining
to the Nile. The ‘Couir’ of D’Anville’s folio atlas (A.D. 1749), and
placed where the Lake No and the Bahr el Ghazal actually exist, may be a
confusion with the equatorial Lake Kura Kawar, given by Ja’afar Mohammed
bin Musa el Khwarazmi (A.D. 833) in the Rasm el Arzi, published in
Lelawel’s Géographie du Moyen Age (Brussels, 1850), and, like Garava,
both may be derived from Ukara.
The third water is evidently the Nyanza of which I first heard at Kazah
of Unyamwezi, whence Captain Speke was despatched on a reconnoitre
between July 29 and August 25, 1858. After returning, he reported that
this lake being nearly flush with the surface of the level country to
the south, bears signs of overflowing for some 13 miles during the
rains. The second expedition found no traces of flood on the marshy
lands to the North and the N. West of the so-called ‘Victoria Nyanza.’
This fact, combined with a difference of level amounting to 400 feet in
the surface of the two waters, speaks for itself. We are justified in
suspecting a fourth lake, or broadening of a river along whose banks
Captain Speke and Grant travelled northward to Uganda, and there must be
more than one, if all his effluents be correctly laid down.
Briefly to resume: Mr Wakefield’s very valuable ‘Routes’ teach us these
novelties:
1. That the Baringo is a Lake distinct from the so-called Victoria
Nyanza; that it has a northern effluent, the Nyarus, and consequently
that its waters are sweet.
2. That the Nyanja, Ukara, Ukerewe, Garava or Bahari ya Pili, is a long
narrow formation like the Baringo, perhaps 20 miles broad, with 240 of
circumference, and possibly drained to the White River or true Nile by a
navigable channel.
And I have long ago come to the following conclusions:
1. That the 30,000 square miles representing upon our maps the area of
the so-called Victoria Nyanza represent not a lake, but a Lake Region.
2. That the Victoria Nyanza Proper is a water—possibly a swamp—distinct
from the two mentioned above, flooding the lands to the south, showing
no sign of depth and swelling during the hot season of the Nile, and
vice versâ.
3. That the Northern and N. Western portions of the so-called ‘Victoria
Nyanza’ must be divided into sundry independent broads or lakes, one of
them marshy, reed-margined, and probably shallow, in order to account
for three large effluents within a little more than 60 miles.
I cannot finish these lines without expressing my gratitude to Mr
Wakefield for the interesting information with which he supplied us. He
has returned to his labours at Mombasah, amongst the Wasawahili and the
Wanyika, and as he has, I am assured by my friend Captain George, R. N.,
qualified himself to take astronomical observations, we may rest assured
that with his aid the ‘Mombas Mission’ will lose nothing of its well-won
fame for linguistic study and African exploration.
END OF VOL. I.
---------------------
JOHN CHILDS AND SON, PRINTERS.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcriber’s Note
The word ‘seaboard’ appears both hyphenated and unhyphenated.
The word ‘Kipiní’ on p. 387 is likely to be an error for ‘Kipini’.
On page 397, the printed Arabic word محکمّه) does not match the
Romanization. A reading as محكّمه does.
My thanks to Olive and Manny for providing assistance with the rendering
of the Arabic words and phrases.
Errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected, and
are noted here. The references are to the page and line in the original.
6.30 [‘]And see the twain Added.
45.15 the Gulf of Cambay.[’] Added.
58.6 a subscrip[t]ion for exploring Inserted.
63.25 (Map of the Lake Region of Eastern Africa[)] Added.
126.20 to the [‘]Roman Port’ Inserted.
127.13 ‘Shirazían[’] dynasty Added
(probably).
129.5 (S. lat. 10° 41′ 2”[)] Added.
129.25 [‘]men (des hommes):’ Added.
131.21 Zeramu, and Gogo.[’] Added.
131.35 with other words.[’] Added.
174.7 and in 1856 [i/o]n August 26. Replaced.
178.13 the inevitable ‘seasoning fever[’] Added.
197.21 (Viverra civetta, and V. genetta)[./,] one Replaced.
small,
248.26 and ran a[.] vein of silver Removed.
279.4 after touching at Makdish[ú/u] Replaced.
300.26 It began, ‘Yá Dayyus! yá Mal’ún[’], Added.
387.14 with leaden ‘Kipin[í/i’] (in the plural Replaced.
‘Vipini’)
393.27 for [t]he occasion Restored.
397.26 (محکمّه>) perhaps
محكّمه
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Zanzibar; city, island, and coast" ***
Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.