374 THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



Mubarak " has tasted the intoxicating draught of liberty, 

 he is in high good humour with himself and with all 

 around him, he is a slave merely in origin, he has been 

 adopted into the great family of free men, and with it 

 he has identified all his interests. Eastern history 

 preserves instances of the valour and faithfulness of 

 bondsmen, as the annals of the West are fond of record- 

 ing the virtues of dogs. Yet all the more civilised races 

 have a gird at the negro. In the present clay the 

 Persians and other Asiatics are careful, when bound on 

 distant or dangerous journeys, to mix white servants 

 with black slaves ; they hold the African to be full of 

 strange childish caprices, and to be ever at heart a 

 treacherous and bloodthirsty barbarian. Like the 

 "bush-negroes" of Surinam, once so dangerous to the 

 Dutch, the runaway slaves from Zanzibar have formed 

 a kind of East African Liberia, between Mount Yombo 

 and the Shimba section of the Eastern Ghauts. They 

 have endangered the direct caravan-road fromMombasah 

 to Usumbara ; and though trespassing upon the terri- 

 tory of the Mwasagnombe, a sub-clan of the Wadigo, 

 and claimed as subjects by Abdullah, the son of Sultan 

 Kimwere, they have gallantly held their ground. Ac- 

 cording to the Arabs there is another servile republic 

 about Gulwen, near Brava. Travellers speak with 

 horror of the rudeness, violence, and cruelty of these 

 self-emancipated slaves; they are said to be more 

 dangerous even than the Somal, who for wanton mis- 

 chief and malice can be compared with nothing but the 

 naughtiest schoolboys in England. 



The serviles at Zanzibar have played their Arab 

 masters some notable tricks. Many a severe lord has 

 perished by the hand of a slave. Several have lost 

 their eyes by the dagger's point during sleep. Curious 

 tales are told of ingenious servile conspiracy. Mo- 



