ZANZIBAR. 407 



Indian traders), and a background of flaring cottons, prints, calicoes, domestics, 

 and what not ; or of floors, crowded with ivory tusks ; or of dark corners, 

 with a pile of ungummed and loose cottons ; or of stores of crockery, nails, 

 cheap Brummagem ware, tools, &c, in what I call the Banyan quarter; of 

 streets smelling very strong — in fact, exceedingly malodorous, with steaming 

 yellow and black bodies, and woolly heads, sitting at the doors of miserable 

 huts, chatting, laughing, bargaining, scolding, with a compound smell of 

 hides, tar, filth, and vegetable refuse in the negro quarter; of streets lined 

 with tall, solid-looking houses, flat roofed; of great carved doors, with large 

 brass knockers, with baabs, sitting cross-legged, watching the dark entrances 

 to their master's houses ; of a shallow sea inlet, with some dhows, canoes, 

 boats, an odd steam tub or two, leaning over on their sides, in a sea of mud, 

 which the tide has just left behind it, called M'nazi-Moyo, ' one cocoa tree,' 

 whither Europeans wend on evenings, with most languid steps, to inhale the 

 sweet air that glides over the sea, while the day is dying, and the red sun is 

 sinking to the westward ; of a few graves of dead sailors, who paid the forfeit 

 of their lives on arrival in this land ; of a tall house, in which lives Dr. Tozer, 

 Missionary Bishop of Central Africa, and his school of little Africans ; and of 

 many other things, which got together into such a tangle that I had to go to 

 sleep, lest I should never be able to separate the moving images, the Arab from 

 the African, the African from the Banyan, the Banyan from the Hindi, the 

 Hindi from the European, &c." 



In the harbour of Zanzibar are Arab dhows, engaged in the gum copal, 

 cloves, pepper, and cocoa-nut oil trades, and foreign vessels, hailing from 

 England, Germany, France, and the United States; man-of-war ships, carrying 

 the flags of these four nations, come and go, or rest at anchor in the channel 

 between the mainland and the Island. The exports reach about a million 

 annually, while the value of merchandise imported is in excess of that 

 amount. 



The Island of Zanzibar, which is distant from the mainland about forty 

 miles, contains a population of about 200,000 inhabitants, one-half of 

 whom are in the town of Zanzibar. The inhabitants consist of Arabs, 

 Banyans, Mahommedans, Hindis, native Africans, and a considerable sprinkling 

 of European merchants. The Arabs are all engaged in the ivory, gum, 

 copal, and slave-trade, and most of them have wandered for years in the 

 interior of Africa, collecting the articles in which they trade, and are perfectly 

 familiar with the regions which Dr. Livingstone and others have made known 

 to us. It is no uncommon thing for an Arab trader to cross the Continent 

 from Zanzibar, Khiva, or Mozambique, to the West coast. They are a most 

 reticent class, and although they have gone through adventures, and seen 

 sights which would make the reputation of a European traveller, they make 

 no allusion to their adventures. The Banyans are the most wealthy class j 



