SIB JO JIB KIRK AT HOME. 
29 
palms or the flags of the Sultan’s palace and the 
different Consulates. 
This view at sunset becomes really beautiful. The 
eastern sky is a sombre blue-grey, and the water of 
the harbour reflects the same tint, unvaried in the 
evening stillness by a ripple. The long headland of 
dark green forest, which stretches out into the sea, 
lends a deepening tone to the darkened water and sky, 
and forms with them an effective foil, a neutral back¬ 
ground to the white tower and the mass of white 
buildings which, turned towards the west, reflect on 
their sympathetic surfaces the warm glow of the 
sunset. In the daytime, under the blaze of a vertical 
sun, these houses of Zanzibar are disagreeably dazzling, 
but now, in this one quiet half-hour of the short even¬ 
ing, they glow with a soft pink radiance, and their 
tender blush-colour is heightened by its background 
of strangely-coloured eastern sky which, first becoming 
sombre blue with the sinking sun, for a brief while 
grows green with jealousy of the west and partial 
reflection of the sunset, and offers a complementary 
contrast to the houses at their pinkest. Then, along 
the shore, and on the blue bay, the shipping, turned 
towards the warm light of evening, loses its blackness 
and distinct outlines, and fuses into dusky brown, the 
mazes of masts and rigging seeming to part with their 
perspective and to stick together in one indistinct 
mass. As the shadows deepen and the rose-tinted 
houses fade into dull grey, the stages of the Sultan’s 
tower are picked out with yellow lamps, and suddenly 
from the summit gleams out in cold radiance a star of 
more than first magnitude—Sayyid Barghash has 
fitted up his clock-tower with the electric light. 
Any one visiting Sir John Kirk at home will hardly 
