We are now at the mouth of the Lagoon, which, at high tides, almost encircles the city. I am told that of late years the natives have built all round this backwater. In 1857 the Eastern or landward side was hush and plantation. As the waters retired they left behind them a rich legacy of fevers and terrible diseases; especially in the inner town, a dead flat, excluded from the sea breeze, and exposed to the pestiferous breath of the maremma.
Ships anchoring off this inlet soon stock French Islet. The whalers and American and Hamburg vessels, that prefer Changáni Point and the west end of the city, often escape without a single case of sickness. Similarly at Havannah, crews exposed to breezes from the Mangrove swamps have lost half their numbers byyellow fever; and the history of our West Indian settlements proves, if proof be required, how fatal is night exposure.
Zanzibar, city and island, is plentifully supplied with bad drinking water. Below the old sea-beach, and near the shore, it is necessary only to scrape a hole in the soft ground. Throughout the interior the wells, though deep, are dry during the hot season, and the people flock to the surface-draining rivulets. West Africans generally will not drink rain-water for fear of dysentery; and so with us—when showers fell in large drops men avoided it, or were careful to consume it soon lest it should putrefy. The purest element is found at Kokotoni, a settlement on the N. W. coast of the island, and in the Bububu, a settlement some five miles north of the city, where Sayyid Suleyman bin Hamid, once governor of Zanzibar, had a small establishment, and where Hasan bin Ibrahim built a large house called Chuweni or Leopard’s Place. So at São Paulo de Loanda the drinking water must be brought from the Bengo river. The best near the city is from a spring which rises behind the royal Cascine, Mto-ni. Here the late Sayyid built a stone tank and an aqueduct 2000 yards long, which, passing through his establishment,came out upon the beach. Casks could then be filled by the hose, but soon the masonry channel got out of repair, and sailors will not willingly drink water flowing through a dwelling-house.
The produce of the town greatly varies. Some wells are hard with sulphate and carbonate of lime, whilst others are salt as the sea itself; and often, as in Sind and Cutch, of two near together one supplies potable and the other undrinkable water. A few to the south of the city are tolerably sweet. The pits are numerous, and a square shaft, usually from 12 to 15 feet deep, may be found at every 40 or 50 yards. There are no casings; the edges are flush with the filthy ground about them, and the sites must frequently be changed, as the porosity of the coral rock and the regular seaward slope direct the drainage into them. Similarly, nearer home the bright sparkling element is not unfrequently charged with all the seeds of disease. When rain has not fallen for some time the water becomes thick as that of a horsepond, and when allowed to stand it readily taints. I could hardly bear to look at the women as they filled with cocoa-shells the jars to be carried off upon their heads.
Formerly Europeans were not allowed, forreligious reasons, to ship water from the wells near the town. Also, cask-filling was carried on at low tide, to prevent the supply of the Mto-ni being brackish, and the exhalations of the black mud were of course extra-dangerous. It is no wonder that dysentery and fever resulted from the use of such a ‘necessary.’ The French frigate Le Berceau, after watering here, was visited by the local pest, and lost 90 men on her way home. Even in January, the most wholesome month, Lieut. Christopher had 16 deaths amongst his scanty crew. In this case, however, the lancet, so fatal near the Line, and the deadly Zerámbo, or toddy-brandy, were partly to blame. As early as 1824 Captain Owen condemned the supply of Zanzibar, as liable to cause dysentery. It has this effect during and after heavy rains, unless allowed to deposit its animal and vegetable matter. During the second visit of H. M. S. Andromache, in August, 1824, Commander Nourse and several of his officers spent one night in a country house, after which the former and the greater number of the latter died. The water, as well as the air, doubtless tended to cause the catastrophe. In the dry season the element sometimes produces, according to natives and strangers, obstinate costiveness.Between Zanzibar and the Cape, five brigs lost collectively 125 men from fever, dysentery, and inflammation of the neck of the vesica; whilst others were compelled to start their casks, and to touch at different ‘aguadas’ en route. Hence skippers learned to fear and shun Zanzibar. During her 14 months’ exploration of the island and the coast the Ducouëdic lost 16 men; and to keep up a crew of 122 to 128, no less than 226 hands were transferred to her from the naval division of Bourbon and Madagascar. Each visit to Unguja was followed by an epidemic attack. Formerly as many as seven whalers lay in harbour at one time; now (1857) they prefer to water and refresh at Nossi-beh, Mayotta, and especially at the Seychelles, a free port, with a comparatively cool and healthy climate, where supplies are cheap and plentiful.
Besides the lagoon and the water nuisances there is yet another. The drainage of the Zanzibar water-front is good, owing to the slope of the site seaward. But at low tides, and after dark, when the sulphuretted hydrogen is not raised from the sands by solar heat, a veil of noxious gas overhangs the shore, whose whole length becomes exceedingly offensive. This is caused by the shironi (latrinæ) opening uponthe water edge. ‘Intermural sepulture’ is also here common, though not after the fashion of West African Yoruba; and the city contains sundry unenclosed plots of ground, in which dwarf lime-plastered walls, four to five feet long, fancifully terminated above, and showing, instead of epitaph, a china saucer or bits of porcelain set in the stone, denote tombs.
Drainage and cleanliness are panaceas for the evils of malaria where tropical suns shine. Drainage of swamps and lagoons can improve S’a Leone, and can take away the stink from South African barracks. Zanzibar city, I contend, owes much of its fatality to want of drainage, and it might readily be drained into comparative healthiness. But the East African Arab holds the possibility of pestilence and the probability of fever to be less real evils than those of cutting a ditch, of digging a drain, or of opening a line for ventilation. The Dollar-hunters from Europe are a mere floating population, ever looking to the deluge in prospect, and of course unwilling to do every man’s business, that is—to drain.
Such was Zanzibar city when I first walked through it. Though dating beyond the days of Arab history, and made, by its insular and centralsituation, the depôt of the richest trade in Eastern Africa, its present buildings are almost all modern. At the beginning of this our nineteenth century it consisted of a fort and a ragged line of huts, where the ‘Suk Muhogo’ now stands. Dr Ruschenberger (1835) satisfied himself that ‘the town of Zanzibar and its inhabitants possess as few attractions for a Christian stranger as any place and people in the wide world.’ As late as 1842 this chief emporium of a most wealthy coast boasted but five store-houses of the humblest description, and the east end was a palm plantation. Since my departure the city, as the trade returns show, has, despite unfavourable political circumstances, progressed. A Catholic mission, sent by France, has established an hospital, and two schools for boys and girls, and the English Central African Mission has followed suit. These establishments must differ strangely from the normal thing—the white-bearded pedagogue, hugging his bones or rocking himself before a large chintz-covered copy of the Koran, placed upon a stand two feet high, so as to be above man’s girdle, and, when done with, swathed in cloth and stowed away. A change, too, there must be in the pupils; formerly half a dozen ragged boys, some recitingwith nasal monotonous voices sentences to be afterwards understood by instinct, others scraping the primitive writing-board with a pointed stick.
We will now return to the centre of attraction, the Salt Bazar, and prospect the people. The staple material is a double line of black youth and negresses sitting on the ground, with legs outstretched like compasses. At each apex of the angle is a little heap of fruit, salt, sugar, sun-dried manioc, greasy fritters, redolent fish, or square ‘fids’ of shark-flesh,[24]the favourite ‘kitchen’ with Wasawahíli and slaves; it brings from Maskat and the Benadir a goût so high that it takes away the breath. These vendors vary the tedium of inaction by mat-making, plaiting leaves, ‘palavers,’ and ‘pow-wows,’ which argue an admirable conformation of the articulating organs and a mighty lax morality. Sellers, indeed, seem here to double the number of buyers, and yet somehow buying and selling goes on.
Motley is the name of the crowd. One officer in the service of His Highness stalks down themarket followed by a Hieland tail, proudly, as if he were lord of the three Arabias. Negroes who dislike the whip clear out like hawk-frightened pigeons. A yellow man, with short, thin beard, and high, meagre, and impassive features, he is well-dressed and gorgeously armed. Observe that he is ‘breek-less’: trowsers are ‘un-Arab,’ and unpopular as were the servile braccæ amongst the Romans. The legs, which, though spare are generally muscular and well-turned, appear beneath the upper coat, which falls to the knee. He adheres to the national sandals, thick soles of undyed leather, with coloured and spangled straps over the instep, whilst a narrow thong passes between the big toe and its neighbour. The foot-gear gives him that peculiar strut which is deemed dignified, and if he has a long walk before him—a very improbable contingency—he must remove his chaussure. I never yet saw a European who could wear the sandal without foot-chafing.
Right meek by the side of the Arab’s fierceness appears the Banyan, the local Jew. These men are Bhattias from Cutch in western India; unarmed burghers, with placid, satisfied countenances, and plump, sleek, rounded forms, suggesting the idea of happy, well-to-do cows. Suchis the effect of a diet which embraces only bread, rice, and milk, sweetmeats, vegetables, and clarified butter. Their skins are smoother and their complexions are lighter than the Arabs’; their features are as high though by no means so thin. They wear the long mustachio, not the beard, and a Chinese pig-tail is allowed to spring from the poll of the carefully shaven head. These top-knots are folded, when the owners are full-dressed, under high turbans of spotted purple or crimson stuff edged with gold. The latter are complicated affairs, somewhat suggesting the oldest fashion of a bishop’s mitre; bound round in fine transverse plaits, not twisted like the Arabs’, and peaked in the centre above the forehead with a manner of horn. Their snowy cotton coats fit close to the neck, like collarless shirts; shawl-girt under the arms, they are short-waisted as the dresses of our grandmothers; the sleeves are tight and profusely wrinkled, being nearly double the needful length, and the immaculate loin-cloth displays the lower part of the thigh, leaving the leg bare. Their slippers of red leather are sharp-toed, with points turning upwards and backwards, somewhat as in the knightly days of Europe.
Another conspicuous type is the Baloch mercenaryfrom Mekran or Maskat. A comely, brown man, with regular features, he is distinguished from the Arab by the silkiness and the superior length of his flowing beard, which is carefully anointed after being made glossy with henna and indigo. He adheres to his primitive matchlock, a barrel lengthened out to suit the weak powder in use, damascened with gold and silver, and fastened to the frail stock by more metal rings than the old French ‘Brown Bess’ ever had. The match is about double the thickness of our whipcord, and is wound in many a coil round the stalk or stock. A curved iron, about four inches long, and forked in the upper part to hold the igniter, plays in a groove cut lengthways through the wood and the trigger, a prolongation of the match-holder, guides the fire into the open priming-pan. When the match is not immediately wanted it is made fast to a batten under the breeching. (A parenthesis. Were I again to travel in wet tropical lands, I should take with me two flint-guns, which could, if necessary, be converted into matchlocks. Of course they would shoot slow, but they would not want caps, and they would prove serviceable when the percussion gun and the breech-loader would not.) This mercenary carries also twopowder-gourds, one containing coarse material for loading, the other a finer article, English, if possible, for priming. He is never without flint, steel, and tinder; and disposed about his person are spare cartridges in reed cases. His sabre is of the Persian form; his dagger is straighter and handier than that of the Arab; and altogether his tools, like his demeanour, are those of a disciplined, or rather of a disciplinable, man.
The wildest and most picturesque figures are the half-breeds from the western shores of the Persian Gulf—light brown, meagre Ishmaels and Orsons, who look like bundles of fibre bound up in highly-dried human skin. Their unkempt elf-locks fall in mighty masses over unclean, saffron-stained shirts, which suggest the ‘night-gown’ of other days, and these are apparently the only articles of wear. Their straight, heavy swords hang ever ready by a strap passing over the left shoulder; their right hands rest lovingly upon the dagger-hafts, and their small round targes of boiled hippopotamus hide—one of the ‘industries’ of Zanzibar—apparently await immediate use. Leaning on their long matchlocks, they stand cross-legged, with the left foot planted to the right of the right, or vice versâ, and they prowl about like beasts of prey, as theyare, eyeing the peaceful, busy crowd with a greedy cut-throat stare, or with the suspicious, side-long glance of a cat o’ mountain.
These barbarian ‘Gulf Arabs’ differ singularly from the muscular porters of Hazramaut, in whose Semitic blood there is a palpable African mixture. They hobble along in pairs, like the Hammals of Constantinople, carrying huge bales of goods and packs of hides suspended from a pole, ever chaunting the same monotonous grunt-song, and kicking out of the way the humped cows that are munching fruit and vegetables under the shadow of their worshippers, the Banyans. Add half a dozen pale-skinned ‘Khojahs,’ tricky-faced men with evil eyes, treacherous smiles, fit for the descendants of the ‘Assassins,’ straight, silky beards, forked after the fashion of ancient Rustam, and armed with Chinese umbrellas. Complete the group by throwing in a European—how ghastly appears his blanched face, and how frightful his tight garb!—stalking down the streets in the worst of tempers, and using his stick upon the mangy ‘pariah dogs’ and the naked shoulders of the ‘niggers’ that obstruct him. At times the Arabs, when their toes or heels are trampled upon, will turn and fiercely finger their daggers; but a fearwhich is by no means personal prevents their going further.
Such is the aristocracy of the land. As in all servile societies, every white man (i.e. non-negro) is his white neighbour’s equal; whilst the highest black man (i.e. servile) ranks below the lowest pale-face.
Far more novel to us is the slave population, male and female. What first strikes every stranger is the scrupulous politeness and the ceremonious earnestness of greetings when friends meet. The idea of standing in the broiling sun to dialogue as follows is not a little remarkable:
The fact is they are going about ‘Ku amkía,’ to salute their friends, and to waste time by running from house to house. Even freemen generally begin their mornings thus, and idle through the working hours.
The males tie, for only garb, a yard of cotton round the waist, and let it fall to the knees; bead necklaces and similar trash complete the costume. Like all negroes they will wear, if possible, the shock-head of wool, which is not pierceable by power of any sun; and they gradually unclothe down to the feet, which, requiring most defence, are the least defended—‘Fashion’ must account for the anomaly. To the initiated eye the tattoo distinguishes the vast confusion of races. The variety of national and tribal marks, the stars, raised lumps and scars, the beauty-slashes and carved patterns, further diversified by the effects of pelagra, psoris, and small-pox, is a Chinese puzzle to the new-comer. Domestic slaves, bearing their burdens on the head, not onthe shoulder, are known by a comparatively civilized aspect. They copy their masters, and strangers remark that the countenance is cheerful and not destitute of intelligence. The Bozals, or freshly-trapped chattels, are far more original and interesting. See those Nyassa-men, with their teeth filed to represent the cat or the crocodile, chaffing some old Shylock, an Arab dealer in human flesh and blood; or those wild Uzegura-men, with patterned skins and lower incisors knocked out, like the Shilluks to the west of the Nile, scowling evilly, and muttering curses at the Nakhuda (skipper) from Súr, the professional kidnapper of their kind.
The ‘fairer’ half of black world is not less note-worthy. There is the tall and sooty-skinned woman from Uhiáo, distinguished by the shape of her upper lip. A thorn-pierced hole is enlarged with stalks of green reed till it can admit a disk of white-painted wood nearly as big as a dollar. The same is the system of the Dors, the tribe dwelling north of the equator and west of the Nile; their lip-plates equal the thick end of a cheroot; and the ‘pelele’ of the southern regions is a similar disk of bamboo, ivory, or tin, which causes the upper lip to project some two inches beyond the nose-tip, giving it an anserineproportion. In the elder women the ornament is especially hideous. As a rule, the South American ‘Indians’ pierce for their labrets the lower lip, evidently the more unclean fashion—no wonder that kissing (should I say osculation?) is unknown. Yet even amongst the Somal, if you attempt to salute a woman—supposing that you have the right—she will draw back in horror from the act of incipient cannibalism. Often the lip-disk is absent, and then through the unsightly gap a pearly tooth is seen to gleam, set off by the outer darkness of ‘Spoonbill’s’ skin. This woman, broad-shouldered and thick-waisted, is almost as stalwart as her Mhiás, whose tattoo (chale) is a single line forked at both ends:[25]in others the cuticle and cutis are branded, worked, and raised in an intricate embroidery over all the muscular trunk. An abnormal equality of strength and stature between the sexes prevails amongst manyAfrican tribes, especially the agricultural, where women are the workers. The same may be observed in parts of North Britain and of northern Europe. The difference in this matter between the Teutonic and the Latin races never struck me so strongly as when seeing German families land at Rio de Janeiro.
The half-caste Zanzibar girl enviously eyes the Arab woman, a heap of unwashed cottons on invisible feet, with the Maskat masque exposing only her unrecognizable eyeballs. The former wears a single loose piece of red silk or chequered cotton. Her frizzly hair is twisted into pigtails; her eyelids are stained black; her eye-brows are lengthened with paint; her ear-rims are riddled with a dozen holes to admit rings, wooden buttons, or metal studs, whilst the slit lobes, distended by elastic twists of coloured palm-leaf, whose continual expansion prodigiously enlarges the aperture, are fitted with a painted disk, an inch and a half in diameter. The same device was practised (according to the missionary Gumilla) by the Aberne tribe of the Orinoco. If pretty, and therefore wealthy, she wears heavy silver earrings run through the shell of the ear; her thumbs have similar decorations, and massive bangles of white metal adorn, likemanacles and fetters, her wrists and ancles. One wing of her nose is bored to admit a stud—even the patches of Europe were not more barbarous. The Zanzibarian slave girl shaves her head smooth, till it shows brown and shiny like a well-polished cocoa-nut; and she drags along her ‘hopeful’—she has seldom more than one—a small black imp, wholly innocent of clothing. The thing already carries on its head a water-jar bigger than its own ‘pot-belly,’ and it screams Ná-kujá (I come!) to other small fry disporting itself more amusingly.
CHAPTER V.GEOGRAPHICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL.
‘To my surprise, the information concerning Zanzibar and the N. E. coast of Africa ... scarcely contains meagre phrases destitute of precision.’—(Col. Sykes’ Journal, R. G. S., vol. xxiii. 1853.) He forgets that entering from the coast is like jumping from the street into the window.—(R. F. B.)
Africa, East and West—‘Zanzibar’ explained—Menouthias—Position and Formation—The East African Current—Navigation—Aspect of the Island.
It is an old remark that Africa, the continent which became an island by the union of the twin seas in the year of grace 1869, despite her exuberant wealth and her wonderful powers of reproduction, is badly made—a trunk without limbs, a monotonous mass of painful symmetry, wanting opposition and contrast, like the uniform dark complexion of her sons and of her fauna—a solid body, like her own cocoa-nut,hard to penetrate from without, and soft within; an ‘individual of the earth,’ self-isolated by its savagery from the rest of the world. This is especially true of intertropical Africa.
The western coast was, until the last four centuries, cut off from intercourse with mankind by the storm-lashed waters of the northern approach; and to the present day the unbroken seaboard, so scanty in good harbours, and the dangerous bars and bores which defend the deadly river mouths, render it the least progressive part of the old world.
The more fortunate north-eastern and subtropical shores were enabled by their vast crévasse, the Red and riverless Sea, to communicate with Western Asia, whilst the rich productions, gold and ivory, tortoise-shell and ambergris, the hot sensuous climate—which even now induces the northern sailor to ship in the fatal West African squadron—and the amene scenery of the equatorial regions, invited, during pre-historic ages, merchants, and even immigrants, from rugged Persia and sterile Arabia.
Between the two upper coasts, eastern and western, there is, as might be expected, great similarity of grim aspect. The northern seaboards offer, for the space of a thousand miles,the same horrid aspect; deceitful roadsteads and dangerous anchorages, forbidding lines of chalky cliff and barren brown sandstone bluff; flat strands and white downs, hazed over by the spray of desert sand; and lowlands backed by maritime sub-ranges, masses of bald hill and naked mountains, streaked with dry wadis and water-courses, that bear scatters of dates and thorns, and which support miserable villages of tents or huts. The fierce and wandering tribes, Berber, Arab, and Arabo-African—an especially ‘crooked and perverse generation,’—are equally dangerous to the land traveller and to the shipwrecked mariner.
As sterile and unlovely for the same cause—the absence of tropical rains—are the southern regions of the great Nineteenth Century Island. Good harbours are even rarer than in the north, and the seas about the Cape of Hope, sweeping up unbroken from the South Pole, are yet more perilous. The highlands fringing the southern and eastern coasts arrest the humid winds, and are capable of supporting an extensive population; but the interior and the western coast, being lowlands, are wild and barren. The South African or Kafir family, which has overrun this soil, is still for the most part in the nomadestate, and its ‘evident destiny’ is to disappear before the European colonist.
The central and equatorial land, 34° deep, including and bordering upon the zone of almost constant rain, is distinguished by the oppressive exuberance of its vegetation and by the consequent insalubrity of its climate. The drainage of the interior, pouring with discoloured efflux to the ocean, in large and often navigable channels, subject to violent freshes, taints the water-lines with deadly malaria. The false coasts of coralline or of alluvial deposits—a modern formation, and still forming—fringed with green-capped islets, and broken by sandy bays and by projecting capes, are exposed to swells and rollers, to surf and surge, to numbing torrents and chilling tornadoes, whilst muddy backwaters and stagnant islets disclose lagoon-valves or vistas through tangled morass, jungle, and hardly penetrable mangrove-swamp. This maremma, the home of fever, is also the seat of trade, but the tribes which occupy it soon die out.
The true coast has already risen high enough above the waters to maintain its level; and the vegetation—calabashes, palms, and tamarinds—offers a contrast to the swampy growth below. Inland of the raised seaboard are high andjungly mountains and coast-range or ghaut, in many parts yet unvisited by Europeans. Beyond these sierras begins the basin-shaped plateau of Central Equatorial Africa. The inhabitants are mostly inland tribes, ever gravitating towards the coast. They occupy stockaded and barricaded clumps of pent-houses or circular tents, smothered by thicket and veiled, especially after the heavy annual rains, with the ‘smokes,’ a dense white vapour, moisture made visible by the earth being cooler than the saturated air.[26]
I have elsewhere remarked (The Lake Regions of Central Intertropical Africa; Abeokuta and the Camaroons Mountains, &c.) the striking geological contrast between the two equatorial coasts, eastern and western. The former, south of the Guardafui granites, offers to one proceeding inland from the ocean a succession of corallines, of sandstone and of calcaires, which appear to be an offset from the section of that great zone forming the Somali country. The western coasts, after quitting the basalts and lavasof the Camaroons, are composed chiefly of the granites and syenites with their degradations of schiste, gneiss, and sandstone. Similarly, in the great Austro-American continent, one shore, that of the Brazil, is granitic, whilst the other, Chili, mainly consists of the various porphyries.
The negroes and negroids of both these inhospitable coasts, an undeveloped and not to be developed race—in this point agreeing with the fauna and flora around them—are the chief obstacles to exploration, and remarkably resemble each other. The productions of the east and west are similar. The voracious shark swims the seas, turtles bask upon the strands and islets, and the crocodile and hippopotamus haunt the rivers. The forests abound in apes and monkeys, and the open plains support the giraffe, the antelope, and the zebra, hog and wild kine (Bos Caffir and B. Brachyceros), herds of elephants and scatters of rhinoceros. The villagers breed goats and poultry. In the healthier regions they have black cattle and sheep, whilst one tribe has acclimatized the ass. The exceeding fertility of the rain-drenched plains gives an amazing luxuriance to cassava and rice, maize, and holcus, cotton, sugar-cane, and wild indigo, banana,lime and orange, ground-nuts and coffee. The hills and torrent-beds yield gold and copper, antimony, and abundance of iron. On both sides of the continent there are rich deposits of the semi-mineral copal. Coal was found by the Portuguese at Tête and in the Zambeze Valley, as related in Dr Livingstone’s First Expedition (Missionary Travels, &c., xxxi. 633-4). His second prolonged the coal-field to beyond the Valley of the Rufuma (Rovuma) river (xxi. 440), and it will probably be found to extend still further.
Dr Krapf declares (Travels, &c., p. 465) that he discovered coal, ‘the use of which is still unknown to the Abessinians,’ on the banks of the Kuang, a river said to rise in the Dembea Province, near Lake Tsana (Coloë Palus). Finally, to judge from the analogy of the South American continent, the valuable mineral will yet be struck near the western coast, south of the equator.
From time immemorial, on both sides of Africa, the continental Islands, like Aradus and Sidon, Tyre and Alexandria, have been favourite places with stranger settlers. They have proved equally useful as forts, impregnable to the wild aborigines, and as depôts for exports and imports.Second to none in importance is Zanzibar, and the future promises it a still higher destiny.
And first, of the name, which does not occur in Strabo, Pliny, or the Periplus. The log-book attributed to Arrian, of Nicomedia, calls the whole shore, ‘Continent of Azania;’ probably an adaptation, like Azan, and even Ajan, of the Arabic, Barr el Khazáin, or the Land of Tanks,[27]the coast between Ra’as Hafun and Ra’as el Khayl. So Pliny (vi. 28 and 34) speaks of the ‘Azanian Sea’ as communicating with the ‘Arabian Gulf.’ Ptolemy, however (I. 17, sec. iv. 7), has the following important passage: ‘immediately following this mart (Opone) is another bay, where Azania begins. At its beginning are the promontory Zingis (ζίγγις, Zingina promontorium), and the tree-topped Mount Phalangis.’ The name may have extended from the promontory to the coast, and from the coast to the island. Dr Krapf speaks of a tribe of the ‘Zendj’ near the Rufiji river, but I could not hear of it. It is easy to show that the Pelusian geographer’s Opone is the bay south of Ra’as, or Jurd Hafun. Like PomponiusMela, Ptolemy evidently made his great point de départ the Aromata Promontorium et emporium in Barbarico sinu (Cape Guardafui), and he placed it N. lat. 6° 0′ 0″, instead of N. lat. 11° 50′. This error threw the whole coast 6° (in round numbers, more exactly 5° 50′) too far south, and made the world doubt the accurate position of the Nile lakes. Thus, to his latitude of Opone N. 4° add 5° 50′, and we have N. lat. 9° 50′, the true parallel of Hafun being N. lat. 10° 26′.
Amongst late authors we find the word Zanzibar creeping into use. The Adulis inscription (4th century) gives ‘Zingabene’; and its copier, the Greek monk Cosmas Indicopleustes, who proved the globe flat (6th century), calls the ‘unnavigable’ ocean beyond Berberia, the ‘Sea of Zenj,’ and the lands which it bathes ‘Zingium.’ It is found in Abu Zayd Hasan, generally known as Hunayn bin Ishak (diedA.D.873); in El Mas’udi, who describes it at some length (diedA.D.957); in El Bayruni (11th century), and in the learned ‘Nubian Geographer,’ the Sherif El Idrisi (A.D.1153). Marco Polo (A.D.1290), who evidently wrote his 37th chapter from hearsay, makes Zanzibar a land of blacks; and, confounding insula with peninsula (in Arabic both being Jezireh), supplies it with acircumference of 2000 miles, and vast numbers of elephants. The India Minor, India Major, and India Tertia of the mediæval Latin travellers are the Sind, Hind, and Zinj of the Arabs. Ibn Batuta (A.D.1330, 1331), the first Arab traveller who wrote a realistic description of his voyage, has accurately placed Kilwa, which he calls ‘Kulua,’ in the ‘land of the Zunúj.’ Finally, we meet with it in El Nowayri, and in Abulfeda, the ‘Prince of Arab Geographers,’ who both died in the same year,A.D.1331.
The word Zanj (زنج), corrupted to Zinj, whence the plural ‘Zunúj,’ is evidently the Persian Zang or Zangi (زنگ), a black, altered by the Arabs, who ignore the hard Aryan ‘Gaf’ (گ), the ‘G’ in our gulf. In the same tongue bár means land or region—not sea or sea-coast—and the compounded term would signify Nigritia or Blackland. In modern Persian Zangi still means a negro, and D’Herbelot says of the ‘Zenghis’ that ‘they are properly those called Zingari,[28]and, by some, Egyptians and Bohemians.’Scholars have not yet shown why the Arab, so rich in nomenclature, borrowed the purely Persian word from his complement the ‘Ajam.’ They have forgotten that the Persians, who of late years have been credited with the unconquerable aversion to the sea which belongs to the Gallas and the Kafirs, were once a maritime people. ‘The indifference or rather the aversion of Persians to navigation’ (M. Guillain, i. 34, 35) must not be charged to the ancient ‘Furs.’ BetweenA.D.531–579, when Sayf bin Dhu Yezin, one of the latest Himyarite rulers, wanted aid against the Christian Abyssinians, who had held southern Arabia for 72 years, he applied to Khusrau I., better known as Anushirawán, the 23rd king of the Sassanian dynasty, which began with Ardashir Babegan (A.D.226), and which ended with Yezdegird III. (A.D.641), thus lasting 415 years. The ‘Just Monarch’ sent his fleet to theRoman Port’Roman Port’(Aden), and slew Masruk. In his day the Persians engrossed, by means of Hira, Obollah, and Sohar, the rich tracts of Yemen and Hindostan; while Basrah (Bassorah) was founded by the Caliph Omar, in order to divert the stream of wealth from the Red Sea, a diversion which will probably soon be repeated. In A.D. 758 the Persians, togetherwith the Arabs, mastered, pillaged, and burn Canton. Much later (17th century) Shah Abbas claimed Zanzibar Island and coast as an appanage of the suzerainty of Oman.
East Africa still preserves traditions of two distinct colonizations from Persia. The first is that of the ‘Emozaydiys,’ or ‘Emozeides’ (Amm Zayd), who conquered and colonized the sea-board of East Africa, from Berberah of the Somal to Comoro and Madagascar, both included. A second and later emigration (aboutA.D.1000) occupied the south Zanzibarian coast, and ruins built by theShirazíanShirazíandynasty which still lingers, are shown on various parts of the sea-board. Of these Persian occupations more will be found in the following pages. (Part 1, Chap. I, and Part 2, Chap. 2.)
Persia has left nothing of her widely extended African conquests but a name. In modern days she has become more and more a non-maritime power. She has wholly retired from the coast; and Time, who in these lands works with a will, presently obliterated almost every trace of the stranger. A few ruins at Aden and Berberah, and the white and black sheep of Ormania (Galla-land) and of Somali land, are almost the only vestiges of Persian presencenorth of the Equator. On the Zangian mainland wells sunk in the rock, monuments of a form now obsolete; mosques with elaborate minarets and pillars of well-cut coralline; fortified positions, loopholed enclosures, and ruined cities whose names have almost been forgotten, are the results of the civilization which they brought with them southwards.
The limits assigned by the Arab geographers to the ‘Land of the Zinj’ are elastic. While some, as Yakut, make it extend from the mouths of the Jub River (S. lat. 0° 14 30″) to Cape Corrientes (S. lat. 24° 7′ 5″) and thus include Sofala; others, with El Idrisi, separate from it the latter district, and unjustly make its southern limit the Rufiji River (S. lat. 7° 38′), thus excluding Kilwa. It should evidently extend to Mozambique Island (S. lat. 15° 2′ 2″), where the Wasawahíli meet the ‘Kafir’ races. The length would thus be, in round numbers, 15° = 900 geographical miles, whilst the breadth, which is everywhere insignificant, can hardly be estimated.
The Arabs, who love to mingle etymology with legend and fable, derive the word ‘Zanzibar’ from the exclamation of its pleased explorers, ‘Zayn za’l barr!’ (fair is this land!). Similar stories concerning Brazilian Olinda andArgentine Buenos Aíres are well known. ‘El Sawáhil,’ the shores, evidently the plural of Sáhil, is still applied to the 600 miles of maritime region whose geographical limits are the Jub River and Cape Delgado (S. lat. 10° 41′2”2”), and whose ethnographic boundaries are the Somal and the ‘Kafir’ tribes. Others derive it from El Suhayl, the beautiful Canopus which, surrounded by a halo of Arab myth, ever attracts the eye of the southing mariner. The Wasawahíli,’[29]or slave tribes, are fancifully explained by‘Sawwá hílah,’ he ‘played tricks,’—rascals all.
The coast races who, like their neighbours the Somal, have their own African names for places, call Zanzibar Island by the generic term Kisíwa—insula. It is thus opposed to Mpoa-ni, the coast, and to Mrímá, the mainland.[30]The latter,however, is properly speaking limited to the maritime uplands between Tanga and the Panganiriver. Zanzibar city is Unguja (pronounced Ungudya, not Anggouya). The word appears in an ancient settlement on the eastern coast of the island, and the place is still called Unguja Mku, Old Unguja. Some still call it Lunguja, apparently an older form. We find ‘Lendgouya’ in the Commercial Traveller Yakut (early thirteenth century); but ‘Bandgouia’ (Abd el Rashid bin Salih el Bakui, A.D. 1403) is clearly a corruption.
Finally, Zanzibar has been identified by palæogeographers with the Ptolemean Μενουθιὰς or Μενουθεσίας (iv. 9), and with the Μενουθιὰς of the Periplus (Geog. Græci Minores of R. Muller, Paris, 1855), in some copies of which Menouthesías also occurs. Its rivals, however, for this honour are Pemba, Mafiyah (the Monfia of our maps) and Bukini, the northern and north-western parts of Malagash or Madagascar.[31]Ptolemy, it may be observed, places the two important sites, Menouthias and Prasum (or Prassum) in a separate chapter (iv. 9), whereas his principal list of stations is in Book iv. chapter 7. He lays down the site of Menouthias in S. lat.12°, and nearly opposite the Lunar Mountain, and the Lakes whence the Nile arises (S. lat. 12° 30′). The mouth of the Rhapta river and Rhapta, the metropolis of Barbaria, are in S. lat. 7°, the Rhapta promontory is in S. lat. 8° 20′ 5″, and the Prasum promontory in S. lat. 15°. By applying the correction as before, we have for Menouthias S. lat. 6° (the capital of Zanzibar being in S. lat. 6° 9′ 6″); for the Lakes, 6° 30′, which would nearly bisect Tanganyika; for Rhapta river and city, S. lat. 1° (or more exactly, S. lat. 1° 10′); the mouth of the Jub river being in S. lat. 0° 14′ 30″; the Rhapta promontory in S. lat. 2° 30′, corresponding with the coast about Patta; and finally, for Prasum S. lat. 9° 10′—Cape Delgado being in S. lat. 10° 41′ 12″.
The account given of Menouthias in the Periplus (written betweenA.D.64, Vincent, andA.D.210, Letronne[32]) is that of an eyewitness: ‘After two nychthemeral days (each of 100 miles) towards the west [here the text is evidently corrupt] comes Menouthias, altogether insulated, distant from the land about 300 stadia (30 geographicalmiles), low and tree-clad. In it are many kinds of birds and mountain tortoises (land turtle?). It has no other wild beasts but crocodiles (iguanas), and these do not injure man. There are in it sewn boats and monoxyles (canoes), which they use for salt-pans [here the text is defective] and for catching turtle. In this island they trap them after a peculiar fashion with baskets (the modern wigo) instead of nets, letting them down at the mouth of stony inlets’ (chap. i. 15).
The next chapter informs us: ‘From which (island) after two runs (each 50 miles)[33]lies the last emporium of the continent of Azania, called Tà Rhaptà, thus named from the before-mentioned sewn-together vessels. In it are much ivory and tortoise-shell. The men, who in this country are of the largest size, live scattered (inthe mountains?), and each tribe in its own place is subject to tyrants’ (‘tyranneaulx’ or petty chiefs).
Here, then, we have Rhapta 33 leagues (100 miles = 1° 40′) beyond Menouthias. Captain Guillain (Prem. Partie, p. 115) would make the former correspond with the debouchure of the Oufidji river (Rufiji or Lufiji), in S. lat. 7° 50′. But the Periplus, unlike Ptolemy, alludes only to a port, not to a river mouth, nor does the coast-line here show any promontory. Others have proposed Point Puna (S. lat. 7° 2′ 42″), the south-western portal of the Zanzibar manche, near the modern trading port of Mbuamáji, which in former ages may have been more important. D’Anville, Vincent, and De Froberville boldly prefer Kilwa (in round numbers S. lat. 9°), which is distant 157 geographical miles from the southernmost point of Zanzibar, and I think they are right. It is safer in such matters to suspect an error of figures and of distances than of topography, especially where the geographical features are so well marked and cannot be found in other places. Computations of ancient courses and log-books can have little value except when they serve to confirm commonly topographical positions. Kilwa hasever been a central station on the Zanzibar coast, and the slaves brought from the interior are still remarkable for size. Moreover, as Dr Beke well observes (Sources of the Nile, p. 69), ‘In attempting to fix in the map of Africa the true position of Ptolemy’s lakes and sources of the Nile, we must discard all notions of their having been determinedabsolutelyby means of astronomical observations, special maps of particular localities, or otherwise, and regard them simply as derived from oral information, and as laid downrelativelyto some well-known point or points on the coast.’[34]
Zanzibar, the principal link in the chain of islets which extends from Makdishu (Magadoxo), in the Barr el Benadir or Haven-land, to Cape Corrientes, is a long narrow reef, with the major axis disposed from N. N. W. to S. S. E., and subtending a deep bight or bend in the coast, justly enough called the Barbaric Gulf. The length is 48·25 geographical miles from Ra’as Nunguwi, the northern (S. lat. 5° 42′ 8″ Raper), to Ra’as Kizimkaz, the southern, extremity (S. lat. 6° 27′ 7″ Raper). The breadth is 18 miles from the Fort in E. long. 39° 14′ 5″ Raper’s correction, to the continental coast in E. long. (G.)39° 32′ 5″. French travellers assume a max. length of 83 kilomètres, and a max. breadth of 33. The capital (S. lat. 6° 9′ 6″) corresponds in parallel with the Pernambucan province to the west and with Java and central New Guinea to the east. The corrected longitude (laid down by Captain Smee in 1811 as E. lat. 39° 15′) gives a difference of Greenwich time 2h.36m.and 56s.. From Southampton round the Cape the run is usually laid down at 8500 miles, viâ Suez 6200. The Lesseps Canal has shortened the distance from Marseille by 2000 leagues, and thus has placed Zanzibar within 1600 leagues of the great port—in fact, about the distance of the Gaboon ex-colony.
The formation of the island is madrepore, resting upon a core or base of stratified sand-stone grit, disposed in beds varying from 1·5 to 3 feet thick. The surface gently inclines towards the sea, and the lines of fracture run parallel with the shores. Three distinct formations occur to one crossing the breadth.[35]The first is aband of grit-based coralline, which runs meridionally, and is most remarkable on the eastern side. This portion, featureless and thinly inhabited, is protected from the dangerous swell and the fury of the Indian Ocean by a broad reef and scattered rocks of polypidoms. The band thins out to the north and south: in the centre, where it is widest, the breadth may be three to four miles, and the greatest height 400 feet. The coral-rag is mostly white and of many shapes, like fans, plants, and trees: the most usual form is the mushroom, with a broad domed head rising from a narrow stem. The texture is exceedingly reticulated and elastic; solid masses, however, occur where neighbouring rocks meet and bind—hence the labyrinth of caverns, raised by secular upgrowth and preserving the original formation. The ground echoes, as in volcanic countries, hollow and vault-like to the tread; the tunnels are frequently without issue for drainage, and when the rain drips in, the usual calcareous phenomena, stalactites and stalagmites, appear. Many of these caves are found on the coast as well as on the island. The carbonate of lime is very pure, and contains brown or yellow-white crystals.
A stony valley, sunk below the level of both flanks, is said to bisect the island from northto south. Into this basin fall sundry small streams, the Mohayra and others, which are lost through the crevices and caverns, and in the cracks and fissures of the grit. There are other drains, forming, after heavy downfalls, swamps and marshes, whence partly the great insalubrity of the interior. The western part of Zanzibar, with its wealth of evergreen vegetation, appears by far the most fertile. It is a meridional band of red clay and sandy hills, running parallel with the corallines of the eastern coast. Here are the most elevated grounds. I found the royal plantation Sebbé or Izimbane, 400 feet (B.P.) above sea-level, or a little higher than the Bermudas. The least productive parts are those covered with dark clay. Heavy rains deposit arenaceous matter upon the surface, and the black humus disappears. On this side of the island also many streamlets discharge into the sea, bearing at their mouths mangrove beds, whose miasmas cause agues, dysenteries, diarrhœas, and deadly fevers.
The rule established by Dampier and quoted by Humboldt directs us to expect great depth near a coast formed by high perpendicular mountains. Here, as in the rest of the Zanzibarian archipelago, the maritime line, unlike the westAtlantic islands Tenerife and Madeira, is composed of gently rolling hills. Yet seven fathoms are often found within a stone-throw of the land, whilst the encircling ledges are steep-to, marked in the charts 1/100 and 1/140. Evidently, then, the corallines are perched upon the summits of a submarine range which rises sharp and abrupt from abysmal hollows and depressions. As usual too in such formations, the leeward shore line of the island, where occur the lagoon entrances, is more varied and accidented than the eastern. At Pemba this feature will be even more remarkable.
The windward coast, in common with many parts of the continental seaboard, suffers especially from June to August from the Ras de Marée (Manuel de la Navigation et la Côte occidentale de l’Afrique), a tide race, supposed to result from the meeting of currents. It is a line of rollers neither far from nor very near the shore. The hurling and sagging surf is described to resemble the surge of a submarine earthquake; and the strongest craft, once entangled in the send, cannot escape. It would be useful to note, as at West African Lagos, the greater or less atmospheric pressure accompanying the phenomenon, and to seek a connection between itand the paroxysms of the neighbouring cyclone region. At all times sailors remark the ‘shortness’ of the waves and the scanty intervals between their succession. This peculiarity cannot be explained in the usual way by shoals and shallow water causing a ground-swell.
With respect to the great East African ocean-current, which has given rise to so many fables gravely recorded by the Arab geographers,[36]the best authorities at Zanzibar are convinced, and their log-books prove, that both its set and drift, like the Brazilian coast-stream, are in the present state of our knowledge subject to the extremes of variation. The charts and Horsburgh lay it down as a regular S.W. current; and so it is in the southern, whilst in the northern part it is hardly perceptible. Between Capes Guardafui and Delgado it flows now up then down the coast; here it trends inland, there it sets out to sea. Dr Ruschenberger relates that on Sept. 1,1835, his ship, when south of Zanzibar, was carried 50 miles in 15 hours, and was obliged to double the northern cape. The same happened to Captain Guillain in August 1846, when he lost five days. This resulted from the superior force of the S.W. monsoon, which often drives vessels to the north 30 to 40 miles during the day and night. Lieut. Christopher (Journal, Jan. 5, 1843) reported it to be variable and violent, especially close in shore, and observed that it frequently trends against the wind. It is usually made to run to the S.W. between December and April, at the rate of 1·3 miles per hour, from Ra’as Hafun to Ra’as Aswad, and two to three miles per hour between Capes Aswad and Delgado. Shipmasters at Zanzibar have assured me that when this coastal current covers three knots an hour there is a strong backwater or counter-flow, which, like the Gulf-stream, trends to the north, and against which, with light winds, native vessels cannot make way. This counter-current has extensive limits; usually it is considered strongest between Mafiyah and Pomba. The ship St Abbs, concerning which so much has been said and written of late years, was wrecked in 1855 off St Juan de Nova of the Comoro group (S. lat.17° 3′ 5″), and pieces of it were swept up to Brava (N. lat. 1° 6′ 8″), upwards of 1000 miles. The crew is supposed still to be in captivity amongst the Abghal tribe; and in 1865 an Arab merchant brought to Zanzibar a hide marked with letters which resembled N F B N. A writer in thePall Mallopined the letters to be ‘Wasm’ or tribal brands, justly observing that ‘all the Bedawin have these distinguishing marks,’ but forgetting that he was speaking of the analphabetic Somal, to whom such knowledge does not extend. As we might expect, the Mozambique stream, south of Cape Delgado, always flows southerly with more or less westing. The rate is said to vary from 20 to 80 miles a day.
Our hydrographical charts are correct enough to guide safely into and out of port any shipmaster who will sound, and can take an angle. As, however, the navigation is easy, so accidents are common. Any land-lubber could steer a ship from Bombay to Karachi (Kurrachee), and yet how many have been lost! Often, too, it is in seamanship as in horsemanship, when the best receive the most and the heaviest falls. In May 1857 the Jonas, belonging to Messrs Vidal, was sunk by mistaking Chumbi Island for its neighbour Bawi. Three or four days afterwards theStorm King of Salem, Messrs Bertram, ran aground whilst hugging Chumbi in order to distance a rival. The number of reefs and shoals render it always unadvisable to enter the port at night, and in the heaviest weather safe riding-ground is found between Zanzibar Island and the continent.