Zanzibar. 
Z1 
this case, I must say that the advantage to the slave 
would be decidedly on the side of purchase. A slave 
owned is liable to better treatment than the slave hired, 
on the same principle that most people take better care 
of their own horses than of borrowed, and especially 
of hired, ones. The disposition in the latter case is a 
determination to get one's money's worth out of the 
brute, while in the former, care is exercised lest, by 
overwork, the animal should be injured, and so 
depreciated in value. However, whatever may be 
said, there is no doubt that our Indian British sub- 
jects do buy, sell, and hold slaves, and that, in their 
commercial transactions, they get large profits out of 
the traffic. 
The Banians are a most influential people in Zan- 
zibar and all along the coast. The customs are 
farmed by some of their fraternity, Jeram and Co. 
of Cutch. These people are the bankers, too, of 
Zanzibar. Ladha Damji, the head of the firm for so 
many years, died in 1870, and he is succeeded by his 
son Likmidas. 
A Banian is a very prominent and, I may add, a 
very picturesque person wherever found upon the east 
coast. He is a wonderfully sharp, shrewd, clever 
fellow, ever keeping an eye open for the main chance, 
and grasping at it wherever he sees, or fancies he sees 
it. He grasps at shadows often enough, but he had 
rather do this a thousand times than miss one real 
chance. See him at his books, and you see a man 
lost to all the world. Tailor-fashion he sits upon his 
low couch — a mattress spread upon the ground — and 
surrounded by a row of cash and other boxes ; his 
only garments a thin cloth about his loins and a red 
