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.’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 subscriptionsubscription 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.’
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.
‘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
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—
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,
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.