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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



he wrote at once to the Moluccas to ob- 

 tain the finest plants which could be 

 bought for money. 



Two Dutch ships brought them in an 

 unusually short time, and the Sultan, the 

 most remarkable man Zanzibar has ever 

 produced or associated with its fortunes, 

 sent out numbers of his henchmen to 

 compel laborers from every side to get 

 the plants into the soil immediately. He 

 had read up the whole subject in a book 

 of French authorship, which he had 

 caused to be written out in Arabic, and 

 saw that the enterprise had a great mer- 

 cantile future for Zanzibar. He knew 

 that the island's supremacy as a trade 

 center would pass, and he hoped to make 

 it with Pemba, the extremely fertile but 

 rather uninteresting island to Zanzibar's 

 north, paramount in the world of spices. 



In 1872 a cyclone blew over Zanzibar, 

 which uprooted all the clove trees and 

 blew the cocoanuts flat to the earth with- 

 out breaking them. Many clove trees 

 were blown into the sea; many were 

 broken off short. Within a week after 

 the storm Said Burgash was rounding up 

 his laborers again and sending hither and 

 yon for plants, which he presented to the 

 poorer Arabs, who had seized on the idea 

 of a crop which could be sold to Euro- 

 peans, and had put their all into the pur- 

 chase of plants and slaves for their cul- 

 ture. 



THE world's supply 



From that second planting comes nine- 

 tenths of the world's clove supply today, 

 and when one realizes that the least out- 

 put of cloves per annum has amounted 

 (from Zanzibar alone) to 80,000 bales 

 and the greatest output to 200,000, and 

 when one furthermore realizes that the 

 government claims as tax one bag out of 

 each five, one may catch a vista of Bur- 

 gash's dream, and concede that even the 

 Oriental has in part the greatest of men- 

 tal attributes — imagination. 



One might write a book on Zanzibar, 

 and in the hurry of its beauties and the 

 horrors of its mysterious catastrophes, 

 like the smallpox epidemic or the bu- 

 bonic plague, forget to tell the half of its 

 wonders. It will always remain in one's 

 mind like a soiled page of the Arabian 



Nights, with what promised to be a splen- 

 did outcome rumed by some fearful vis- 

 itation of cyclone or of sickness. But 

 the intrinsic strength of the island con- 

 tinues in the clove crop and has attracted 

 an enormous quantity of Indians, who 

 are fast driving out the Arab and keep- 

 ing up a desultory intercourse with India 

 for caste reasons. The penalty for visit- 

 ing Zanzibar is the lightest inflicted on 

 any Indian who travels ; he is merely re- 

 quired to wash in the Ganges, so that 

 emigration to Africa's east coast is vir- 

 tually encouraged. 



THE MELTING POT 



To realize Zanzibar's cosmopolitan 

 quality one must reflect that with the ex- 

 ception of a handful of the Wa-Hadimu, 

 or original people (Bantu) of Zanzibar, 

 no one lives there for any reason except 

 greed of gain or acquiescence to coercion. 

 The Swahili boys are a compromise be- 

 tween the Arab masters and their savage 

 wornen. One sees Nyassa children black 

 and glossy as lumps of coal, pointing at a 

 distinguished old Arab as their father, or 

 slim young Galla boys, leaning in their 

 coffee - colored perfection over lakes 

 crammed wuth blue water lilies, claiming 

 kin with an Indian as a parent on one 

 side of the house and a slim Somali on 

 the other. Mohammedanism knits them 

 together in its strong embrace, while only 

 the Indian women secured in the Zenana 

 system remain quite unchanged by travel 

 and the different mode of life which a 

 new country affords. 



Much good ivory still comes to Zan- 

 zibar, but the world's supply lessens 

 yearly, while the demand for it increases 

 month by month. The best ivory in the 

 world comes from Benadir coast (Italian 

 Somaliland), and as a return American 

 cotton and oil find their way to the Bena- 

 dir ports — Mogdesho, Barawa, and Mer- 

 ker. For four months of each year these 

 ports are closed, and the "dhows," or 

 sailing ships, which take up case oil and 

 cotton cargo from Zanzibar, together 

 with flour, sugar, and candles, stand 

 stacked in Zanzibar's harbor, waiting for 

 a wind from the north again to promise 

 safety on that sandy treacherous shore 

 of Benadir. 



