THE EAST COAST 157 



have anything approaching minarets, and the 

 call of the muezzins lacks the intensity and 

 music of the true Orient. This emerald isle, 

 which for ever exudes the tender scent of cloves 

 and the sickening stench of copra, though it has 

 much of the life and colour and odour of the 

 East, is, after all, an adjunct of Africa. True, 

 the Orient has conquered it and encrimsoned 

 Zanzibar with some of its own gorgeous colouring, 

 but still this is an annexe of the Dark Continent. 

 The Cassiterides were not Phoenicia because of 

 the traders who bartered for tin. It is a curious 

 ethnological blending of the peoples, this island 

 city that, seen from a high outlook, is a variegated 

 ant-heap full of innumerable little alleyways 

 tunneling below acres of flat roofs and wooden 

 outlooks. Like all places that bask in sunlit 

 seas, it is a vision of dazzling whiteness and 

 purity when seen from the ocean, but a town 

 that you quickly realize has more than its share 

 of filth when you tread its twisting, twining 

 streets. Surely there must be few less perilous 

 cities in the world in which to sit a runaway 

 horse than Zanzibar. 



Streets bolt like rabbits down into dark holes, 

 and just when a cul-de-sac seems inevitable a 

 little slender opening directs the way to another 

 path in the warren. It is a sort of Hampton 

 Court maze, but if you will bear with the twin- 

 ings sufficiently long you will either arrive at the 

 Hotel Africa or the market-place, wherein one 

 may drink the fresh milk of the cocoanut and 

 buy prayer mats and rusty old Arab knives at 

 twice their worth. And if you continue the 

 peregrination, you will probably arrive some- 

 where outside the Sultan's Palace, which stands 



