ZANZIBAR 



811 



unequaled loveliness, the beauty of the 

 whole writes itself on the memory of 

 the most commonplace of observers as 

 an indelible delight. 



The island, about the same size in 

 square miles as Long Island, is of a dif- 

 ferent shape, being shorter and much 

 broader. It is one of Great Britain's pro- 

 tectorates, but Sayyid Ali bin Hamoud, 

 its present Sultan, has political instinct 

 and a spirit of progress. Since his ac- 

 cession he has materially bettered his 

 position and exalted his dominion in 

 European as well as British eyes. 



To the south of the town the landscape 

 is less redundant and riotous in vegetable 

 expression, but goats abound, and find 

 all they need in the way of food to make 

 them marketable. 



A TROPICAL paradise; 



But to the north the mango trees, 

 palms, cloves, and every form of orange 

 and lemon crowd thick and glorious under 

 the most primitive of husbandmen. Just 

 as Africa itself is netted over with aim- 

 less footpaths, so is Zanzibar veined with 

 little tracks worn deep into the living 

 green so long ago that no tradition fol- 

 lows the feet of those who made them. 

 That black, furtive, futile being whose 

 American enfranchisement convulsed the 

 United States still stands there at the 

 door of his hand-hewn hut like a crea- 

 ture potentially human, but lovable be- 

 yond belief in these appropriate sur- 

 roundings, knowing himself to be but 15 

 minutes out of the jungle, and as one 

 once said to the writer, who was endeav- 

 oring to tell him of the civil war, "hap- 

 pier when he lives near to the leopard 

 and the trail of the things that eat and 

 are eaten than when the shadow of a 

 master's hand is always on his shoulder." 



THE OI.D SLAVE TRADE 



The industrial life of Zanzibar has 

 changed three times since David Living- 

 stone cried for mercy for the black man, 

 who sorely needed it. Under the Arabs 

 the town was a slave center, where the 

 poor creatures, who were caught in the 

 course of one of Tippoo Tib's "war 

 walks" Into the interior, were brought to 

 the island carrying ivory, and prepared 



by various heavy-handed methods for 

 service as slaves in the Persian Gulf or 

 in the shambas and warehouses of Zan- 

 zibar itself. The Arabs achieved the best 

 negroes imaginable, whatever their meth- 

 ods may have been, and when England 

 ruined Tippoo Tib by her slave regula- 

 tions ivory took the place of slaves as a 

 trade staple, and dealers from hither and 

 yon brought their ivory for sale to the 

 quaint Arab town, whose sanitation was 

 then a by-word of the East. 



The bodies of dead slaves were fre- 

 quently put out on the beach by Arabs 

 too inhuman to give them burial, and 

 animals who had died were disposed of 

 in the same fashion. Bath water was in- 

 formally evicted through harem win- 

 dows, and all the wanton waste of the 

 cooking department in large Arab houses 

 was banked up by the kitchen doors. 

 There is a tendency to that sort of thing 

 still, but Dr. Spurrier, Zanzibar's health 

 officer, untrained as a sanitary engineer, 

 but essentially scientific and resourceful, 

 has removed Sir Richard Burton's re- 

 proachfully apt epithet of filthy in con- 

 nection with Zanzibar town. 



THE CLOVE INDUSTRY A SALVATION 



But the third and last phase of indus- 

 try in Zanzibar has been its salvation, 

 and will keep it alive as a place of im- 

 portance long after Mombasa has caught 

 up with and passed it as the center for 

 general trade and the entrepot for the 

 African Hinterland. This last phase is 

 clove cultivation, and the history of the 

 clove in Zanzibar is a record of such 

 pluck and foresight as may well teach a 

 lesson to the proud Saxon who con- 

 siders_ his race a monopolist of both 

 qualities. 



In i860 an Arab named Telim bin Isse 

 came up from Mauritius with a handful 

 of cloves in his pockets and 200 plants to 

 put into his shamba. His idea of agri- 

 culture was very unique, and he only in- 

 tended to persevere in clove culture if he 

 could depend on a crop after every neg- 

 lect and afifront had been offered his 

 trees. Their beauty (cloves are a kind 

 of myrtle and exquisite in appearance) 

 excited the interest of Said Burgash, 

 about to become Zanzibar's Sultan, and 



