298 THE ZANZIBARI 



It is natural that stories of difficulty, mutinies, and crimes, 

 and of the frequent failure of expeditions through the mis- 

 behaviour of the men, should leave a deeper impression on 

 the mind than the records of faithfulness and quiet obedience. 

 The prevalent belief in the utter villainy of the Zanzibar! is 

 expressed by Drummond in the following passage : — 



" These black villains the porters, the necessity and the 

 despair of travellers, the scum of old slave-gangs, and the 

 fugitives from justice from every tribe, congregate for hire. 

 And if there is one thing on which African travellers are for 

 once agreed, it is that for laziness, ugliness, stupidness, and 

 wickedness, these men are not to be matched on any continent 

 in the world. Their one strong point is that they will engage 

 themselves for the Victoria Nyanza or for the Grand Tour of 

 the Tanganyika with as little ado as a Chamounix guide volun- 

 teers for the Jardin ; but this singular avidity is mainly due to 

 the fact that each man cherishes the hope of running away at 

 the earliest opportunity. Were it only to avoid requiring 

 to employ these gentlemen, having them for one's sole com- 

 pany month after month, seeing them transgress every com- 

 mandment in turn before your eyes — you yourself being 

 powerless to check them except by a wholesale breach of the 

 sixth — it would be worth while to seek another route into the 

 heart of Africa." ^ 



I shared this opinion when I first went to Africa, and 

 agreed with the other members of the expedition as to the 

 great importance of the attempt to run a camel caravan on a 

 large scale so far to the south. We thought that if camel transport 

 succeeded, it would revolutionise the conditions of travel in 

 Equatorial Africa by superseding the lazy, lying, expensive and 

 mutinous Zanzibari. It was therefore a surprise to me when, 

 on asking Mr. Piggott on the " Malda " about systems of trans- 

 port, he spoke enthusiastically of the merits and virtues, 

 efficiency and economy of the Zanzibari, and said that he 

 doubted whether anything else could compete with them. I 

 was the more astonished to hear the Mombasa men thus 

 praised, as I remembered Johnston's warning to travellers — ■ 

 " Never, if they can help it, to engage porters at Mombasa. 

 Independently of all questions of religion — Mohammedan and 



1 H. Drummond, Tropical Africa, 4th ed. (1891), pp. 5-6. 



