30 



BAYT EL BA'AS. 



a heavy spicy perfume, as if passing before the 

 shop of an Egyptian c attar/ and the sensorium 

 was not the less pleasantly affected, after a hard 

 diet of briny N.E. Trade. Various legends of 

 hair-oil rubbed upon the bulwarks have made 

 manv a tricked traveller a shallow infidel in the 

 matter of smelling the land. But we soon 

 learned that off Zanzibar, as off 'Mozambic/ 

 the fragrant vegetation makes old Ocean smile, 

 pleased with the grateful smell, as of yore. The 

 night breeze from the island is cool and heavy 

 with clove perfume, and European residents 

 carefully exclude the land-wind from their sleep- 

 ing-rooms. 



Eor a little while we glided S. by E. along 

 the shore, where the usual outlines of a city 

 took from it the reproach of being a luxuriant 

 wilderness. The first was 6 Bayt el Ra'as, a large 

 pile, capped with a dingy pent-house of cajan 

 (cocoa leaves), and backed by swelling ground — 

 here bared for cultivation, there sprinkled with 

 dense dark trees, masses of verdure sheltering 

 hut and homestead. Followed at the distance of 

 a mile, the Royal Cascine and Harem of Mto-ni, 

 the Rivulet. 1 Our ancient ally c Sayyid Said, 



1 Yet we read of the ' great river Matoney,' and of ' travel- 

 lers crossing the great Eiver Mtony.' Mto, in the language 



