8 THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



presence. By acting in any other way I should have 

 lost the assistance of the consul, and the Arabs, with a 

 ready display of zeal, would have secured for me an in- 

 evitable failure. 



At six p.m. on Wednesday, the 17th of June, 1857, 

 the Artemise cast anchor off Wale Point, a long, low 

 bush-grown sandspit, about eighty-four miles distant 

 from the little town of Bagamoyo. Oar sailing-master, 

 Mohammed bin Khamis, anchored in deep water, throw- 

 ing out double the length of chain required. For this 

 prudence, however, there was some reason. The road- 

 steads are open ; the muddy bottom shelves gradually, 

 almost imperceptibly ; the tides retire ten or eleven feet, 

 and a strong gale, accompanied by the dangerous raz 

 de maree, or rollers from seaward, especially at the 

 seasons of the syzygies, with such a shore to leeward, is 

 justly dreaded by the crews of square-rigged vessels. 



There is a something peculiarly interesting in the first 

 aspect of the " Mrima," the hill-land, as this portion of 

 the African coast is called by the islanders of Zanzibar. 

 On one side lies the Indian Ocean, illimitable towards 

 the east, dimpled with its " anerithmon gelasma," and 

 broken westward by a thin line of foam, creaming upon 

 the whitest and finest of sand, the detritus of coralline 

 and madrepore. It dents the coast deeply, forming 

 bays, bayous, lagoons, and backwaters, where, after 

 breaking their force upon bars and black ledges of sand 

 and rock, upon diabolitos, or sun-stained masses of a 

 coarse conglomerate, and upon strong weirs planted 

 in crescent shape, the waters lie at rest in the arms 

 of the land like sheets of oil. The points and islets 

 formed by these sea- streams are almost flush with the 

 briny surface, yet they are overgrown with a profuse ve- 

 getation, the result of tropical suns and copious showers, 



