IS 



THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



received a bribe, called his " rice " ; and the crafty 

 Hindu buys for eighteen to twenty dollars an article 

 worth, at Zanzibar, fifty. If the barbarian be so un- 

 wise as to prefer cash, being intellectually unfit to 

 discriminate between a cent and a dollar, he loses even 

 more than if he had taken in barter the coarse and 

 trashy articles provided for him by the trade. An adept 

 at distinguishing good from bad cloth and a cunning 

 connoisseur in beads of sorts, he has yet no choice : if 

 he reject what is worthless, he must return home with 

 his ivory and without an investment. Such is an out- 

 line of the present system. It is nowhere the same in 

 its details ; but everywhere the principle is one — the 

 loss is to the barbarian, and the profits are to the coast- 

 clans, the Wamrima and their headmen. Hence the 

 dislike to strangers and the infinite division into little 

 settlements, where people might be expected to prefer 

 the comfort and safety of large communities. The 10th 

 article of the commercial treaty, concluded on the 31st 

 May, 1839, between Her Majesty's Government and 

 His Highness Sayyid Said of Muscat and Zanzibar, 

 secured to the possessors of the Mrima a monopoly in 

 the articles of ivory and gum-copal on that part of the 

 east coast of Africa from the port of Tangata (Mtan- 

 gata), situated in about 5^° S. lat. to the port of Quiloa 

 (Kilwa) lying in about 7° S. of the equator. It is not 

 improbable that the jealousy of European nations, each 

 fearing the ambitious designs of its neighbour, brought 

 about this invidious prohibitionist measure. 



Besides the Baloch and the Wamrima, the settlements 

 usually contain a few of the " Washenzi" or barbarians 

 from the interior, who visit them to act as day-labourers, 

 and who sometimes, by evincing a little disrespect for 

 the difference between the " mine " and the "thine," leave 



