THE EAST COAST 153 



up the coast from the ports of Portugal, from 

 Kihndini and Tanga and Dar-es-Salaam and 

 Mogdishu — that hell of burning hovels which 

 cries to the Indian Ocean for the cooling breath 

 of the deep — and the gales of modern commerce 

 drive before the Palace gates great hungry 

 liners and cargo boats from the seaports of the 

 North and the bays of the South. Union-Castle 

 steamers, Deutsche Ost-Afrika galleons of Kaiser- 

 dom, coal-blackened tramps — the pirates of 

 modern commerce — these and many other craft 

 have known the shop of his Highness the Sultan 

 as one worth patronizing in the bazaars of the 

 high seas. Here, too, the liners of the Messageries 

 Maritimes — called with some reason by seamen 

 the " menagerie boats " — halt on their way to 

 Madagascar. It is a curious place, this island 

 of a Moslem, a cosmopolis of the East Coast, 

 where Bantu and Asiatic rub shoulders in the 

 twining, twisted streets, and squat together on 

 the broad slabs of the market-place. 



All nations, tongues and people have had some 

 say in the moulding of this island. Greek 

 geographers knew of it before the beginning 

 of the Christian era. The Persians helped to 

 found it, and the shores of East Africa and 

 Zanzibar were visited by the Japanese and 

 Chinese about the time that William the 

 Conqueror was making himself Lord of England. 

 Nearly two centuries later, Marco Polo, the globe- 

 trotter of the Middle Ages, wrote of the people of 

 Zanzibar : " They are all idolaters . . . and pay 

 tribute to nobody." The Arabian, Ibne Batuta, 

 sailed along the littoral but a few years afterwards 

 and cruised the archipelago. He gave the lie 

 direct to Marco Polo, for he found the people 



