24 



MOMBASAH-MEN. 



neither secret treachery nor open hostility, to 

 hinder and deter Europeans from exploration. 

 Brihed by the white and black ' Moors ' — Arab 

 and Wasawahili — then as now monopolists of 

 the interior trade, Yasco da Gama's pilots at- 

 tempted to wreck his ships. In later years the 

 Banyans, becoming the chief merchants of this 

 coast, excited against travellers the half-caste 

 maritime races, as usual the worst specimens of 

 the population ; these in turn worked upon their 

 neighbours, the sanguinary savages of the in- 

 terior, who, in addition to a natural fear of every- 

 thing new, cherish old traditions of the white 

 man's piracy and kidnapping. In 1826 the brig 

 Mary Anne was a§;saulted near Berberah and 

 her crew was massacred by the Somal at the insti- 

 gation, according to Lieut. Wellsted (Travels in 

 Arabia, chap, xviii.), of the Banyans, who certain- 

 ly withheld all information by which the attack 

 could have been prevented or repelled. In 1844 

 a combination, secretly headed by Jayaram, the 

 Collector of Customs at Zanzibar, so effectually 

 opposed Lieut. -Colonel Ilamerton that, unable to 

 hire a vessel on the Island, he crossed over to the 

 Continent in a launch borrowed from the Sayyid 

 and manned by his own boat's crew. Now, how- 

 ever, the increased number and power of the 



