32 THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



and cunning, the coast- Arab has little education. He 

 is sent at the age of seven to school, where in two or 

 three years he accomplishes the Khitmah, or perfection 

 of the Koran, and he learns to write a note in an anti- 

 quated character, somewhat more imperfect than the 

 Cufic. This he applies to the Kisawahili, and as nothing 

 can be less fitted for the Semitic tongues than the Arabic 

 syllabarium, so admirably adapted to its proper sphere, 

 his compositions require the deciphering of an expert. 

 A few prayers and hymns conclude the list of his ac- 

 quirements. His mother-tongue knows no books except 

 short treatises on Bao, or geomancy, and specimens of 

 African proverbial wisdom. He then begins life by 

 aiding his father in the shop or plantation, and by giving 

 himself up to intoxication and intrigue. After suffering 

 severely from his excesses — in this climate no constitu- 

 tion can bear up against over-indulgence long continued 

 — at the age of seventeen or eighteen, he takes unto 

 himself a wife. Estranged from the land of his fore- 

 fathers, he rarely visits Zanzibar, where the restraints 

 of semi-civilisation, the decencies of oriental society, and 

 the low estimation in which the black skin is held, weary 

 and irritate him. His point of honour seems to con- 

 sist chiefly in wearing publicly, in token of his Arab 

 descent, a turban and a long yellow shirt, called El 

 Dishdasheh. 



The Wamrima, or coast-clans, resemble even more 

 than the half-caste Arabs their congeners the Washenzi. 

 The pure Omani will not acknowledge them as kinsmen, 

 declaring the breed to be Aajam, or gentiles. They are 

 less educated than the higher race, and they are more 

 debauched, apathetic, dilatory, and inert ; their favourite 

 life is one of sensual indolence. Like the Somal, they 

 appear to be unfitted by nature for intellectual labour; 



