18 
THE KILIMA-N JAB 0 EXPEDITION. 
Zanzibar, distinct traces of Fire Worship remain 
engrafted on the African Mohammedanism of the 
inhabitants. After several centuries of quasi Arab 
rule, Zanzibar in the beginning of the sixteenth 
century came under the dominion of the Portuguese, 
whose language has left its traces in the Swahili 
vocabulary. When Portugal fell into the power of 
Spain, and her hold on Abyssinia and the Eastern 
Horn of Africa waned and faded, the Arabs reasserted 
their independence in Zanzibar, and the island re¬ 
mained in the possession of various Arab chiefs till 
the end of the last century, when the Imam of Maskat 
proclaimed and maintained his suzerainty over Pemba, 
Zanzibar, and the neighbouring coast. 
In 1841, the East India Company first established 
relations with the ruler of Zanzibar, who had assumed 
the title of “ Sayyid,” or Lord of the Island. He was 
at the same time Sovereign of ’Oman, that East 
Arabian principality of which Maskat is the capital. 
Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton, the first British representa¬ 
tive at the Court of Zanzibar, remained many years 
at his post, and was still in East Africa when Burton 
undertook his pioneer journey to the Lake regions. 
On his death General Bigby succeeded him as Consul- 
General and Political Agent, and was in turn followed 
by several officials whose* residence in the island was 
of short duration. At length, in 1878, Sir John Kirk, 
who had first come to Zanzibar as Vice-Consul in 1866, 
and who had for some years acted in a superior 
capacity, received his formal appointment to the post 
of Consul-General, and later on attained the further 
office of Political Agent. Sir John Kirk, who comes 
of an old Forfarshire family, was educated primarily 
as a doctor, and served as a physician to the British 
