100 



SLA VERY. 



niercliants, tlie ' sellers of men/ When a certain 

 Ali bin Nasir was Governor of Mombasah he took 

 advantage of a scarcity to feed the starving 

 Wanyika with grain from the public depots. He 

 was careful, however, to secure, as pledges of re- 

 payment, the wives and children of his debtors, 

 and these becoming insolvent, he sold off the 

 whole deposit. Such a transaction was little sus- 

 pected by our acute countrymen, when, to honour 

 enlightened beneficence, they welcomed with all 

 the plaudits of Exeter Hall, 'that enlightened 

 Arab statesman, His Excellency Ali bin Nasir, En- 

 voy Extraordinary of H.M. the Imam of Muscat, 

 to the Court of H. B. Majesty ; ' presented him 

 with costly specimens of geology, and gold chro- 

 nometers ; entertained him at the public expense, 

 and sent him from Aden to Zanzibar in the Hon. 

 East India Company's brig of war, Tigris. This 

 Oriental votary of free trade came to a merited 

 bad end. He was one of the prisoners taken by 

 the doughty B'ana Mtakha of Sewi, where the 

 late Sayyid's ill-starved and worse-managed force 

 was destroyed by the Bajuni spear. Becognized 

 by the vengeful savages, he saw his sons expire 

 in torments; he was terribly mutilated, and at 

 last he was put to death with all the refinements 

 of cruelty. And he deserved his fate. 



