THE FLEET. 



269 



ing and carving ; he saw pollution in every pic- 

 ture, and his Arahs supposed the royal berth to 

 he the Tabut Hazrat Isa — Our Lord's coffin. 

 Instead of this article he wished to receive the 

 present of a steamer, but political and other ob- 

 jections prevented.* Eastern rulers also will not 

 pay high and regular salaries ; and without 

 European engineers every trip would have cost 

 a boiler. Repairs were impossible at Zanzibar ; 

 and, as actually happened to Mohammed Ali's 

 expensive machinery in Egypt, the finest work 

 would have been destroyed by mere neglect. A 



m m O 



beautiful model of a steam-engine was once sent 

 out from England : it was allowed to rust un- 

 opened in the Sayyid's ' godowns.' Still the 

 main want of the Island was rapid communica- 

 tion. Sometimes nine months elapsed before an 

 answer came from Bombay : letters and parcels 

 — including my manuscript — were often lost ; 

 and occasionally, after a long cruise, they re- 

 turned to their starting-point, much damaged by 

 time and hard usage. The Bombay Post-office 

 clerks thinking, I presume, that Zanzibar is in 

 Arabia, shipped their bags to Bushire and Mas- 



1 "VVellsted's Travels in Arabia, vol. ii. p. 403. This author 

 exposes, without seeming to know that he was doing so, the 

 selfish and short-sighted policy of the H. E. I. Company 

 which wanted a squadron subsidiary to its own. 



