MORESBY, HART. 



45 



the natives. In 1822 Sir Robert Townsend 

 Fairfax, Governor and Commander-in-Chief of 

 the Mauritius, after a crusade against the slave- 

 trade in the dominions of Eadama, King of the 

 Hovas, commissioned Captain (afterwards Ad- 

 miral) Fairfax Moresby, of H. M.'s ship Menai, 

 to draft a treaty between England and Maskat 

 for limiting the traffic. The mission was suc- 

 cessful. The sale of Somalis, a free people, was 

 made piracy ; and the Sayyid's vessels were sub- 

 ject to seizure by the Royal, including the Com- 

 pany's, cruizers, if detected carrying negroes c to 

 the east of a line drawn from Cape Delgado, 

 passing south of Socotra and on to Diu, the west 

 point of the Gulf of Cambay. 1 In 1822, the 

 Sayyid's assent having been formally accorded, 

 Captain Moresby left the coast. 



In January, 1834, Captain Hart, of H. M.'s 

 ship Imogene, visited Zanzibar, and submitted 

 to the Imperial government brief notes, append- 

 ing a list of the Sayyid's squadron then in the 

 harbour, with their age, tonnage, armature, and 

 other particulars. Still geographers declared 

 that Zanzibar was a more mysterious spot to 

 England and India than parts of Central Africa 



1 This ■ restrictive treaty' was published in No. 24 of the 

 Bombay Selection (1S5G), under the head of ' Persian Gulf.' 



