THE 



LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



CHAPTER I. 



WE QUIT ZANZIBAR ISLAND IN DIGNIFIED STYLE. 



At noon, on the 16 th of June, 1857, the corvette Artemise, 

 after the usual expenditure of gunpowder w^hich must in 

 Eastern lands announce every momentous event, from 

 the birth of a prince to the departure of a bishop, slowly 

 gliding out of Zanzibar harbour, afforded us a farewell 

 glance at the whitewashed mosques and houses of the 

 Arabs, the cadjan-huts, the cocoa-grown coasts, and the 

 ruddy hills striped with long lines of clove. Onwards 

 she stole before a freshening breeze, the balmy breath of 

 the Indian Ocean, under a sun that poured a flood of 

 sparkling light over the azure depths and the bright 

 green shallows around, between the "elfin isles" of Kum- 

 beni, with its tall trees, and Chumbi, tufted with dense 

 thickets, till the white sandstrip mingled with the blue 

 ocean, the gleaming line of dwarf red cliff and scaur 

 dropped into the w r ater's edge, the land faded from eme- 

 rald to brown, and from brown to hazy purple, the tufts 

 of the trees seemed first to stand out of, then to sw r im 

 upon, the wave, and as evening, the serenest of tropical 

 VOL. i. B 



