360 



BUINS. 



ing, and it may return to its original condition, 

 a group of three reefs, the southernmost being 

 Songo Mnara. The Shirazi fort was a parallelo- 

 gram about 500 feet each way, with a curtain 

 loop-holed for musketry, and square bastions — 

 lodgings for the garrison — at the angles : the 

 entrance was high, the northern wall was breached, 

 and the interior preserved a dry masonry-revetted 

 well, 40 feet deep by 2 across. Of these there 

 are several on the Island : drinking water, how- 

 ever, is usually drawn from pits which are higher 

 than sea-level. The Governor's palace, a double- 

 storied building with torn roof and rafters pro- 

 jecting from the Avails, seemed to contain only 

 corpses indecently buried in shallow graves : it 

 resembled the relics about Tongo-ni, and doubtless 

 the architects were of the same race. lulwa, we 

 are told, was a mass of wooden huts for some 200 

 years, till the reign of the Amir Sulayman Ha- 

 san, who, 198 to 200 years after Sulayman bin Ha- 

 san, built it of stone, embellished it with mosques, 

 and strengthened it with forts and towers of 

 coralline and lime. 



The cultivators of the many Mdshambd prefer 

 to sleep upon the mainland, yet here there is no 

 mud : the air is said to be far purer than that of 

 modern Kilwa, and the only endemic is a mild 



