ARRIVAL AT MANDARA'S COURT. 9 ? 
a civilized settlement, nor seen the ocean, or a ship, of 
the leading factors in Oriental politics, how the Wa¬ 
in grezi (English) possessed India; how the Wa-fransa 
(French) had tried to conquer Madagascar with their 
“manowari” (men-of-war); and how the Wa-dachi 
(Deutsche = Germans) were making treaties with the 
chiefs of Us agar a. It is no doubt largely through 
Swahili merchants that the mind of Mandara has been 
prepared, since my departure, for the acceptance of the 
suzerainty of Sayyid Barghash of Zanzibar. He was 
shrewd enough to know that before the advent of 
Europeans he could not stand alone, and he greatly 
dreaded the coming of French or Germans. His 
suspicions and fears of these two leading European 
nations were positively ridiculous, considering that 
they both ignored his existence, and had never at any 
time evinced the slightest wish to annex Kilima-njaro. 
All that he knew of them was of course derived from 
the exaggerated accounts of the Wa-swahili, and it is 
a curious thing that these people of the Zanzibar coast 
should so detest the French and Germans. Some of 
the traders, I know, confuse the Belgians with the 
French, and imagine it is the former nation that has 
(happily) abstracted the Upper Cougo from the slave- 
and-ivory-hunting operations of the Zanzibaris. But 
what can these people have known of Germany and the 
Germans hitherto to bear so marked a grudge against 
the children of the Fatherland? Curiously enough 
the European power most liked and respected by the 
Zanzibar traders is England, though for half a century 
we have tried our hardest to ruin the slave-trade, on 
which the prosperity of the Zangian Arabs has been so 
largely based. Yet every bombardment or capture of 
slave-daus only seems to add to our prestige, and the 
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