SIR JOHN KIRK AT HOME. 
35 
ception is over, the coffee and rose-sherbet drunk, and 
the Sayyid hands you down the well-like staircase, 
and you depart with the band playing “ Rule 
Britannia,” you feel that you have met a man who, 
had he received anything like an education, and had 
been trained by civilized ideas of morality to conceal, 
if not to bridle, his unruly passions, would have 
made no mean figure among the world’s rulers and 
statesmen. 
Sayyid Barghash is the son of the last joint ruler of 
Maskat and Zanzibar—Sayyid Sa’id. His mother was 
an Abyssinian woman. He has nearly a hundred wives 
and five or six children, one son only among them. He 
is brother to the present Imam of Maskat. His income 
is approximately 300,000£. a year, mostly derived from 
Customs duties. 
Zanzibar, the chief town of his dominions, known as 
IJnguja to the inhabitants, has a population of about 
90,000. As regards trade it is the most flourishing 
and important place in East Africa, and the value of 
its exports exceeds at the present time 1,300,000Z., of 
which ivory alone contributes 400,000^. The value of 
the imports is about 1,000,000Z., and they chiefly con¬ 
sist of cotton stuffs, kerosene oil, and rice. About 
6,000 British subjects reside in the town, mostly Indians, 
and in their hands lie the whole retail and most of the 
wholesale trade. 
The streets of Zanzibar are paved with a sort of 
coral “ray,” sometimes cemented over, and are generally, 
from the nature of their paving, clean and inodoriferous. 
They are very narrow, and the houses in the Arab 
quarters are lofty, so that you may walk about most of 
the town in perfect shade. There are few really hand¬ 
some buildings externally, yet many of the portals to 
d 2 
