102 



DRAINAGE. 



the water edge. £ Intermural sepulture ' is also 

 here common, though not after the fashion of 

 West African Yoruha ; and the city contains 

 sundry unenclosed plots of ground, in which 

 dwarf lime-plastered walls, four to five feet long, 

 fancifully terminated above, and showing, in- 

 stead of epitaph, a china saucer or hits of por- 

 celain set in the stone, denote tombs. 



Drainage and cleanliness are panaceas for 

 the evils of malaria where tropical suns shine. 

 Drainage of swamps and lagoons can improve 

 S'a Leone, and can take away the stink from 

 South African barracks. Zanzibar city, I con- 

 tend, owes much of its fatality to want of drain- 

 age, and it might readily be drained into com- 

 parative healthiness. But the East African Arab 

 holds the possibility of pestilence and the pro- 

 bability of fever to be less real evils than those 

 of cutting a ditch, of digging a drain, or of open- 

 ing a line for ventilation. The Dollar-hunters 

 from Europe are a mere floating population, ever 

 looking to the deluge in prospect, and of course 

 unwilling to do every man's business, that is — 

 to drain. 



Such was Zanzibar city when I first walked 

 through it. Though dating beyond the days of 

 Arab history, and made, by its insular and cen- 



