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.

‘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—

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.

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—

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—

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.

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 (= 3/4d.) 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.

‘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 MakdishuMakdishu 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’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—