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over her own reflected image. More the fortieth, or the last day of
like Malabar than dreary Arabia and mourning.
sterile Persia, this land has a spring St Julian, patron of the wayfarer,
even in its midsummer.

had frowned upon us this time: the
We glided south by east through a first visit to Colonel Hamerton, H.
breach in the coralline reef that re- B. M.'s Consul, showed us the extent
called the gateways of Jeddah. Pre- of our mishap. H. H. Sazzid Said
sently, detached houses sprinkled the of Maskat, upon whose aid and influ-
shore. A large unfinished pile, white- ence we calculated, had died on his
washed, but fast decaying, was called way from Arabia to Zanzibar. State
by our pilot Akhir el Zaman—the affairs had not been settled between
End of Time. Under divers inaus- the rival brothers, Sazzid Suwazui,
picious omens, it had been com- the eldest, and successor, to whom
menced by the late Prince in his Oman had been left, and Sazzid Ma-
latter days; and the death of sundry jid, installed by his father Viceroy of
masons killed by a falling wall, ren- the African possessions. This prince,
dered it so hateful to the Arabs that moreover, being still confined to the
it will probably remain uninhabitable. house by an attack of the small-pox,
Then, at the distance of a mile, ap- which, during the last three years,
peared the royal harem and demesne has twice carried off thousands of the
of Mtony, a large rusty building with inhabitants, was ashamed to show a
an extinguisher-roofed balcony, of pitted face to subjects or visitors.
dingy planking. It has a quaint kind Colonel Hamerton, now our mainstay,
of Gothic look, like a castle in a play, was also in poor health. The north-
or the Schloss of a pensionless German ern coast of the mainland, about
baron : the luxuriant trees in rear Lamu, as usual on such occasions,
have the faux air of an English was in anarchy, the southern suffer-
park. A fetid lagoon here diffuses ing from drought and famine. We
pestilence around it; and skippers spent some heavy hours that night.
anchoring off Mtony for convenience I will relieve my feelings by describ-
of watering with the purest element ing the town of Zanzibar :
on the island, have, in the course of a Zanzibar (to begin with the begin-
few days, had occasion to lament the ning) lies in S. lat. 6° 9', and in E.
loss of half their crews. Presently long. 39° 14'. The chief, and indeed
we floated past the “Shah Allum," the only settlement upon the island,
an old fifty-gun frigate, of Bombay it occupies one side of a wide curve
build : she showed no colours, as is on the coast of Coralline. Ras Chhan-
usual when a ship enters ; and the gany, “Sandy Point” (this name,
few men on board shouted informa- corrupted to " Shangany,” has erro-
tion which neither we nor the pilot neously been given to the whole town
understood. This worthy, as in charts), divides the front harbour
drew near, decided, from the ab- from a back bay, where ships anchor,
sence of Friday flags on the consular especially during the N.E. monsoon,
staffs, that some great man had gone to avoid the swell whilst landing
to his long home. The “Elphinstone,” cargo. The place is modern, owing
however, would not have the trouble its existence to the exigencies of
of casting loose her guns for nothing: trade. At the beginning of the pre-
with H. H., the Sazzid* of Zanzibar's sent century it consisted of a fort
ensign--a plain red-at the fore, and and a ragged line of mat huts, where
the union at the main, she cast an- the Suk Mahogo, or Manioc Market,
chor in Front Bay, about half a mile now stands : as late as 1842, it
from shore, and fired a saluteoftwenty- boasted but five storehouses of the
one. A gay bunting thereupon flew up humblest construction, and the now
to every truck, and the brass cannon crowded cast end was in those days
of the < Victoria” roared a response a palm plantation. But an Arab ever
of twenty-two. We had arrived on builds as soon and as extensively as

we

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* It is incorrect to call the Chief of Oman an Imam, although some of his ancestors had a right to the ecclesiastical title. Moreover, “Sazzid,” amongst these Arabs, means a chief or ruler, not, as Sherif," a descendant of the Prophet.

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his means permit. Zanzibar now where, in 1823, stood a clump of contains in the season about fifty huts and a mosque, five fathoms of thousand inhabitants (slaves in- water now roll. The British Consulcluded), and there cannot be less than ate, formerly many yards removed three thousand stationary habitations. from the surf, at present requires the

This normal Arab town forms the protection of piles and rubble. Some segment of a circle, the chord resting of the larger houses have sunk four upon the sea, and the arc fronting feet, and have sloped nine from terthe plantations of the interior. It is race to ground, owing to the instabia mere “dicky a clean front, con- lity of their soppy foundations. These cealing something unsightly. Facing coral formations are peculiarly fickle. northwards is a line, about a mile The “Middle Shoal,” about fifteen and a half lóng, of large Arab houses, years ago, was awash; it is now glaring, dazzling, whitewashed liké high and dry. The "Tree Island sepulchres, and unrelieved save by a of our earliest charts has been understraggling cocoa, instead of domes mined and carried away by the waves. and minarets. Like Jeddah and the On the other hand, the sea has enRed-Sea cities, the material is wholly croached upon Mtony, where the lime and coralline. The best houses Prince's flagstaff four times required -of course, those of the European removal. merchants—are in the west end ; At Zanzibar the line of streets is, Wealthy natives,” and a few for- as it should be, deep, narrow,

and eigners, inhabit the eastern extre- winding: In the west end a pavemity. In rear of the dicky, and at ment of chunam, provided with a both flanks, is a foul dense mass of gutter the first I have seen in dwelling-places, where the poor and « Orient climes carries off the the slaves pig together. There are violent rain, and secures coolness huts of cadjar-matting, with or with- and purity. The east end shows out wattle-and-dab walls, windowless, attempts at similar civilisation ; but blackened externally by wind and green and miry puddles argue a sun, and consisting internally of a preponderance of black population. “but and a ben,” surrounded by pro- Houses are on the favourite Arab jecting eaves, forming a deep and plan familiar to travellers in Spain shady verandah, where articles are and her colonies : some of the oldest exposed for sale. The poorest classes buildings in Galway and western content themselves with mere sheds. Ireland still display the type Two tumble-down bridges, ignorant "patio," or hollow paved quadrangle, of the arch, span the foul lagoon, where animals may be penned for which, at the Lyzygies, converts the safety, with galleries, into which the settlement into almost an island, and rooms open, running round the seleaves behind it a legacy of fevers veral floors. But architecture is at its and terrible maladies. The drainage lowest ebb. There is not a straight of the front is good, owing to the line in the masonry; the arches are of seaward slopes, but the inner town every shape and form, and the floors is in a dead flat. Drainage is all in' will have a foot of depression beall where tropical suns shine ; drain- tween the centre and the corners. age has rendered even Sierra Leone The roofs, or rather terraces, supand our West Indian barracks salu- ported by Zanzibar rafters, and walls brious. In the hands of Europeans, of massy thickness, are copiously Zanzibar would soon be drained intó chunamed : bere men sit to enjoy healthiness; but the Arab looks upon the sundown breezes. Bandanis, or pestilence as a minor plague com- pent-hcuses of cadjans, garnish the pared with the trouble of cutting a house-tops in the native town : Eutrench or building a dam.

ropeans do not allow these adjuncts, The tides, here rising twelve, fires being frequent, and the slaves sometimes fifteen, and even sixteen being addicted to aiding the work of feet, occasionally walk into the lower destruction in hope of plunder. Some apartments. Unchecked by quay or foreigners secure the delights of a breakwater, this nuisance is on the cool night by erecting upper cabins increase. Off Chhangany Point, of planking: the oldster, however,

VOL. LXXXIII.NO. DVIII.

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conforms to Arab precept, and al- billet into the battery. Between the ways perspires during the bours of two, a space of fifty feet or so represleep. The higher the house, the sents the arsenal : a score of iron larger the doorway, the huger the carronades, and a few fine old brass studs which adorn the massive pieces, probably the plunder of Horplanks, and the heavier the padlock, muz-one of them bears the dent of a the greater is the owner's dignity. heavy blow-lie piled on the right of An inscription cut in the wood of the Fort entrance. The gateway is the lintel secures the entrance from the usual intricate manner of barbiwitchcraft; and half a yard of ships' can : the square excrescence from the chain-cable, from thieves. Even the main body contains upper rooms for little square holes placed high up in the Beloch Yemadar or commandant; the wall, and doing duty for win- the interior ground-floor is a large dows, are closely barred. As glass vestibule, and the soldiery, with their cannot be used in sleeping-rooms, by armed slaves, lounge, plav, chew bereason of the heat, rough or paint- tel, and chat upon the shady masonryed plank-shutters supply its place, benches at the outer door. On the and persiannes deform the best ha- left of the Fort is a cadjan shed, bitations. Arabs here, as elsewhere, where native artists are continually love long narrow apartments, with occupied in making carriages for the many apertures towards the sea, se- battery, whose furniture now lies curing the breeze essential to health: upon the ground. The experiment of they as carefully close the eastern firing a gun was lately attempted : side-walls against the spicy feverish the piece reared up and fell backland - wind. The reception - hall is ward, smashing the crazy woodwork always on the ground-floor. It con- and crushingtwo gunner-slaves. Some trasts strongly with an English room, traveller has observed that a launch where the uncomfortable confusion would suffice to capture this Fort. of furniture, and the crowding of It was once, according to accounts, ornaments, ruin the proportions, and taken by a drunken American sailor, “put out” the eye. Here the long who, determining to liberate a pair lines and the rows of niches, which, as of citizens in trouble, attacked the elsewhere in the East, supply the want guard cutlass in hand, accompanied of tables, are unbroken save by the by a huge Newfoundland, and represence of a chandelier and a mirror, maining master of a bloodless field, à Persian rug or carpet for the dais, waved his flag in triumph upon the a matting over the floor, and half-a- walls. Melancholy to relate, this hero dozen Indian black - wood chairs. fell by African fraud. The discomSuch is the upholstery of an Arab fited slaves, holding a long rope, ran palace and an Italian villa. In the round him, till, wound up like a houses of the very wealthy, porcelain, windlass, he could no longer keep glass-ware ornaments, and articles of bis footing. European luxury, lie about the niches. The interior of the Fort is jammed The abodes of the poorer classes with soldiers' huts and courts, divided provided with kitandahs, or cartels by rickety walls. Here, too, is the of cord, twisted round a rude wooden only jail on the island. Its stocks, frame, trays for food, gourds, coarse fetters, iron collars, and waist-chains stools, pots, and similar necessaries. do not prevent Black Man from

The centre of the town frontage is chatting, singing, and gambling with occupied by the Fort, one of those cowries and pebbles. But the most naïve, straight - curtained, round - refractory white that ever knocked towered, crenellated, and tumble - down merchant-skipper has not fordown erections, whose plan dates titude to endure in it a second night. probably from the days of Peleg. It Such is the Arab's beau ideal of a is fronted by a detached battery of prison : the very word should cause twenty guns, with embrasures so the horrors and the goose-skin. They close together that the first salvo term our Bombay jail “ El Bistan would blow away the thin wall, and (the garden) because the courts are with armature so placed that every planted with a few shrubs ; and, with bullet striking the Fort must send a them, a Bistan has always an arrière

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pensée of Paradise. Foreigners usually the world the two potent romancers, visit the prison to see its standing Ignorance and Interest, have been bucuriosity-one Mezingera, a wretched sily at work. An industrious Frenchclansman of the villain Panzij, who man, seeing scrapings of elephants' had beaten the death-drum whilst tusks upon the beach, reported to the his chief was cutting M. Maizan the Prussian Government that ivory is so French traveller's throat. Mezingera plentiful as to be thrown up by the was seized, instead of his master, by tide. Adventurers of all nations have an Arab expedition, and chained two circulated the most ridiculous tales; years in front of the French Consul- amazons bestriding battle-bullocks— ate. Since that time (1847) he has a confusion with the 5000 women-musbeen heavily ironed to a gun in the keteers of Dahomey, or possibly a Furt, under a cadjan-shed, where he revival of El Masudi, who, in our can neither stand nor lie; yet the tenth century, reports that the king wretch looks fat and well.

of Zanj, or Zanzibar, commanded an Eastward of the Fort is the cus- army mounted, like modern Kafirs, on tom-house, an Arab bourse, where oxen-hordes of steel-clad negroes,and millions of dollars change hands un- brilliant troops of horse-artillery :--der the dirtiest shed, a long low a battery was actually sent out to the cadjan roof supported by two dozen Sazzid as a present from Woolwich! rough uprights. It is surrounded by The palace, fronted by a stuccoed sacks and bales, baskets and pack- platform that supports eight or nine ages, heaps of hides, old ships' tanks, small brass guns, placed in barbette piles of valuable woods, layers of for show, is a kind of double-storied ivory, and a heterogeneous mass of barrack, 140 feet long, whitewashed, waits and strays. The small adjacent with tender green shutters, pentsquare shows a dilapidated and un- roofed with dingy-red tiles, provided finished line of arches, the fragments seawards with a verandah for levees, of a new custom-house : it was begun and a few stunted trees for beauty, twenty-six or twenty-seven years ago, and backed by stables full of Oman but the superstition of Yayaram, the blood, an oratory and a graveyard, late Hindu collector, who had become where runaway slaves, chained torich under the matting, but was not gether by the neck, lie in the shade. sure that stone and chunam would be The public buildings in Zanzibar as lucky to him, condemned it to rot. are poor. The mosques, which adorn This is a general idea with Orientals : other Eastern towns with light and they are full of wise instances con- airy turrets, breaking the monotony cerning the downfall of great men of square white houses, are here who have exposed themselves to the in the simplest form.

There are shafts of misfortune by enlarging about thirty of these buildings, oltheir gates, or by building for them- long flat-roofed rooms, divided interselves palaces.

nally by dwarf rows of square and In the centre of the square opposite polygonal columns supporting Sarathe palace stands the Sazzid's flag- cenic arches, broad, pointed, and lanstaff, where the Bakur—the Kurbaj ceated, with inner emarginations in of these regions- brings man to a the shape of small crescents or scolsense of his duty, and where, accord- lops. A Shafei place of worship boasts ing to an American traveller,* distin- of a diminutive cone, resembling an guished criminals are fastened to the Egyptian pigeon-tower, and another pole, and bound upwards from the has a dwarf excrescence like the lanankles to the throat, till “the soul of tern of a lighthouse. The Kojalıs the dying man is literally squeezed out have a ruined old niosque at Naziof its earthly tenement." "I may ob- mozza, on the sea-shore south of the serve, en passant, that in this part of town; and the Shiahs their place of

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Recollections of Mazunga, Zanzibar, Muscat, A den, Mocha, and other Ea tern Ports. Salem : George Creamer, 1854. The author, who visited Zanzibar "in the mercantile," was grievously “hoaxed” by some kind friend. Only one mutilation took place under H. H. Šazzid Said. Death was inflicted according to Koranie order, and torture was unknown,

meeting in the Kipondah Quarter. loin-cloths, chaffer with yellow InPrayers of the great festivals, during dian Kojahs ; tricky-faced men with the Prince's life, were recited at evil eyes and silky beards, forked Mtony: now in the Palace oratory, after the fashion of ancient Rustam. and other mosques. Sazzid Said also More picturesque than these, gaunt built a gable-ended house, after the light - brown Arabs from the Gulf, model of the Dutch factory at Bun- whose unkempt elf-locks flow low der Abbas. Unhappily a large chan- over their saffron - stained shirts, delier dropped from the ceiling, and armed with two-handed swords, daggave the place, which was intended gers, and small round hide-targes, for levees and a hall of pleasure,” a

stalk like beasts of prey, eyeing the permanent bad name.

It has ever

crowd with cut-throat stare and sinsince been shut up.

gle gaze. Sometimes a white manThere are four Suk or bazars at how hideous his garb appears ! Zanzibar; the fish-market lies be- threads the streets, arousing the hind the Suk Mahogo, a long street mangy curs, and using the stick upon in the south of the town, where paddy the naked shoulders that obstruct and grain, cloth and cotton, vegetan him. Here and there waddles an Arab bles and provisions, generally

are for woman-a heap of unwashed clothes sale; and eastward is the Suk Melinde, on invisible feet, with the Maskat where the butchers expose their ven- masque exposing only her eye-balls. dibles. The best articles disappear The black population, male and febefore 7 A.M., after which time nought male, is more varied. Here is the but refuse remains. The most charac- tall Mhiao woman, of stalwart frame teristic spot in Zanzibar—the slave and sooty skin, known by the hole auctions are held in an empty walled which, pierced in her upper lip, allows court-is undoubtedly the salt bazar a pearl to shine through the outer at the foot of the Fort's eastern bas- darkness, and her man,

with cautertion. It derives its name from huge ised skin worked and raised in inheaps of saline sand, exposed for sale tricate patterns over all his muscular by the Mekranis and the Suri Arabs. trunk. The half-caste Sawahili girl Being near the custom-house, it is wears a single piece of loose red or thronged with people, and gives, like blue check bound tight under her the bazars of Cairo and Damascus, arms, and extending to her ankles ; an exaggerated idea of the popula- her frizzly crop of hair is twisted into tion. The staple material is a double a multitude of lines, which have the line of negresses and black youth, appearance of being razor-traced upon with heaps of sun-dried manioc, the scalp; one wing of her flat nose mangoes, pine-apples, greasy fritters, is pierced to adınit a bone or metal the abominable jack-fruit, and redo- stud, and the lobes of her ears are lent fish piled up between their ex- distended with wooden pegs or twists tended legs. They vary the tedium of palm-leaf, which, by continued presof plaiting leaves and mat-weaving, sure, enlarge the aperture to a prodiwith conversations arguing an admi- gious extent. The slave shaves her rable conformation of the articulat head into semblance of a magniing organs, and a somewhat lax mo- fied coco-nut. She is accompanied rality. Pairs of muscular Hazramant by her hopeful, a small black imp porters, hobbling along with bales of ignorant of clothing; on his head is goods and packs of hides suspended a water-jar bigger than his own potfrom a pole, pass chanting down the belly, and he screams Na-kújá—“I central road, kicking out of their come”-to his friends, who are otherway the huinped cows, who placidly wise disporting themselves. There munch offal, fruits, and vegetables a group of Wanyassa, with teeth under the shadow of their worship- filed into shark shape, are “chaffing pers the Banyans. Stout Bhattias, old Shylock, an Arab slave-dealer; traders from Cutch, distinguished whilst Wazegura, with patterned by high features, pale skins, shaven skins, scowl evilly at the Suri Nakbeards, peaked turbans of spotted hoda, the professed kidnapper of purple or crimson edged with gold, their race. The tattoo distinguishes snowy cotton coats, and immaculate this confusion of tribes; all, how