406 



THE BAYAZI. 



boys learn to read the Koran, and to write the 

 crabbed angular hand which distinguishes these 

 Moslems. Nakhodas master a little arithmetic and 

 navigation at Bombay and Calcutta. Some few 

 have been sent to England and France, where 

 they showed no want of attention or capacity : 

 on their return to semi-barbarism, however, al- 

 most all went to the bad; they robbed and plotted, 

 and most of them died of drunkenness and de- 

 bauchery. 



The best education to be had at Zanzibar can 

 only exercise the memory ; it does little to culti- 

 vate the understanding or to improve the mind. 

 Yet the people, averse to literary labour and 

 despising learning in the presence of business, 

 pleasure, or idleness, are shrewd and plodding 

 1 thinkers,' and probably for the reason that their 

 wits are not blunted by books and lectures, they 

 are a match for Europeans in the everyday busi- 

 ness of life. It is evident that where the prof ound- 

 est ignorance of our elementary knowledge co-ex- 

 ists with practical wisdom, there is a large field for 

 the labours of civilization, and that the western 

 school, if kept strictly secular and pure of prose- 

 lytizing, would be a blessing to the children of 

 both sexes at Zanzibar. 



