I have always found that the farther people dwell from civilisation, the more punctilious they are about observing its usages. That is why English officials at remote and lonely stations in India invariably put on evening clothes before they sit down to their solitary dinners, and why the question of precedence is not taken nearly as seriously in London or Paris or New York as it is in Entebbe or Sierra Leone. One would quite naturally suppose that the Europeans dwelling in those sun-scorched, fever-ridden, God-forsaken countries along the East Coast would adopt the careless attitude of Kipling's homesick soldier, who longed for a land “where there ain't no Ten Commandments and a man can raise a thirst”; but, strangely enough, the exact opposite is the case. There is plenty of drinking throughout Africa, it is true, for the white men dwelling there will assure you that to exist in such a climate a man must “keep his liver afloat,” but, though heavy drinking is the rule, the man who so far loses control of himself as to step beyond the bounds of decency is ostracised with a promptness and completeness unheard of in more civilised places. This respect for the social conventions was graphically illustrated by an unpleasant little episode which occurred during my stay in Zanzibar. A young Englishman, who had been rubber-prospecting in the wilds of the back country for nearly a year, celebrated his return to civilisation, or what stands out there for civilisation, by giving a stag dinner at the club. It was rather a hilarious affair, as such things go, and when it broke up at dawn every one had had quite as much to drink as was good for him, while the youthful host had had entirely too much. In fact, he insisted on winding up the jollification by smashing all the crockery and glassware in sight, and, when the native steward remonstrated, he tripped him up very neatly and sat on him. Some hours later, being sober and very much ashamed of himself, he sent a check for the damage he had done, together with a manly letter of apology, to the board of governors, which promptly responded by demanding his resignation. Now, to drop a man from a club in East Africa is equivalent to marooning him on a desert island, for out there the club is invariably the rendezvous of the respectable European society, the only place where one can get a European book or newspaper to read or a well-cooked meal to eat, and the scene of those dinners, dances, card parties, charades, and other forms of amusement which help to make existence in that region endurable. Not content with demanding his resignation and thus closing to him the gateway to every decent form of recreation in Zanzibar, the virtuous board of governors notified every other club on the coast of its action, so that when business called the youngster to Mombasa or Dar-es-Salam or Lourenço Marques, he found himself barred from the privileges of the clubs in those places as well. But his punishment did not end there, for, a few days after his escapade, two club members to whom he nodded upon the street cut him dead, while another, a man whom he had known intimately for years, answered his greeting by remarking, as he raised his eyebrows, “Really, sir, I don't think I have the pleasure of your acquaintance.”
In the happy-go-lucky days before the reorganisation of our consular service a profane and uncouth lumberman named Mulligan—the name will do as well as another—was rewarded for certain political services by being appointed consul at Zanzibar. At that time the American consulate was in a building on the edge of the harbour and almost next door to the Sultan's palace. Mulligan had not been in Zanzibar a week before he began to complain that he was being robbed of his sleep by the women of the royal harem, who chose the comparatively cool hour just before sunrise in which to bathe on the sandy beach below the consulate windows. Mulligan, after making numerous complaints without receiving any satisfaction, openly announced that the next morning he was disturbed he would take the law into his own hands. He did not have to wait long for an opportunity, for, returning a few nights later from an unusually late séance at the club, he had scarcely fallen asleep when he was aroused by the shrieks of laughter of native women bathing beneath his window. Springing out of bed, he caught up a shot-gun standing in the corner, slipped in a shell loaded with bird-shot, and, pushing the muzzle out of the window, fired at random. The roar of the discharge was echoed by a chorus of piercing screams and Arabic ejaculations of pain and terror, whereupon the consul, satisfied that he had effectually frightened the disturbers of his rest, returned to bed and to sleep. An hour later he was reawakened by his excited vice-consul, who burst into the bedroom exclaiming, “You'll have to get out of here quick, Mr. Consul! It won't be healthy for you in Zanzibar after what happened this morning. There's a German boat in the harbour and if you hurry you'll just about catch her! But there's no time to spare.” “Now, what the devil have I got to get out of here for, confound you?” demanded the consul, now thoroughly awake and thoroughly angry. “Certainly not because I frightened a lot of nigger wenches who were waking me up at four o'clock every morning with their damned hullabaloo?” “Nigger wenches nothing!” exclaimed the vice-consul, as he began to throw his chief's belongings into a trunk. “When you let off that load of bird-shot this morning you peppered the Sultan's favourite wife, and now the old man's fairly hopping with rage and swears that he'll have your life even if you are the American consul.” Forty minutes later ex-Consul Mulligan ascended the gangway of a homeward-bound steamer, for those were the days before the British protectorate, when the tyrannical sultans of Zanzibar were laws unto themselves.
The morning before I left I went with the consul to call on his Highness Seyyid Ali bin Hamoud bin Mohammed, the Sultan of Zanzibar. [3] The 'rickshaw stopped with a jerk in front of the handsome iron gates of the palace; the guard turned out and presented arms, while a negro bugler sounded a barbaric fanfare; an official in white linen and much gold lace met us at the entrance and escorted us up flight after flight of heavily carpeted stairs, until we emerged, breathless and perspiring, on the breeze-swept upper veranda of the four-story building, which, with its long piazzas and its uncompromising architecture, looks more than anything else like an American summer hotel. After a quarter of an hour spent in smoking highly perfumed cigarettes, another official announced that his Highness would receive us, and we were ushered into a small room furnished like an office, where a pleasant-looking young negro of twenty-six or so was sitting at an American roll-top desk dictating letters to an English secretary. Like every one else, he was dressed entirely in white linen, with a red tarboosh, gold shoulder-straps, and pumps of white buckskin. Motioning us to be seated, he offered us more of the perfumed cigarettes, inquiring, with an Eton accent, as to the state of my health, when I arrived, what were my impressions of Zanzibar, when I intended to leave, and where I was going. As we were bowing ourselves out, after ten minutes of perfunctory conversation, the Sultan's secretary sidled up and whispered: “His Highness expects that you will give him the pleasure of staying to luncheon.”
[3] Since this was written Sultan Ali bin Hamoud has abdicated in favour of his cousin, Seyyid Khalifa.
The luncheon was very much the same as one would get at Sherry's or Claridge's or the Café de Paris, except that for our special benefit a few native dishes with strange names and still stranger flavours had been added to the menu. The wines were irreproachable and the Hodeidah coffee and Aleppo cigarettes could have been had nowhere west of Suez. My eye was caught by the magnificence of the jewel-monogrammed cigarette-case which the Sultan constantly passed to me, and I ventured to comment on it admiringly. “Do you like it?” said he, with a pleased smile. “It is only a trifle that I picked up last spring in Paris. Accept it from me as a little souvenir of your visit to Zanzibar—really—please do.” Quite naturally I hesitated, as who would not at accepting offhand a thing worth a couple of thousand rupees. The Sultan looked disappointed. “It is not worthy of you,” he remarked. “Some day I shall send you something more fitting,” and he put it back in his pocket. All the rest of my stay in Zanzibar I kept thinking how near I came to getting that magnificent case, and what a story it would have made to tell at dinner tables over the camembert and coffee; and it almost spoiled my visit. As I was leaving the palace the military secretary inquired: “Why on earth didn't you take the cigarette case when the Sultan offered it?” “Polite hesitation,” I replied. “I was going to accept it in just a minute.” “In the East you should accept first and hesitate afterward,” he answered.
After luncheon I played billiards with the Sultan. He is a good player, and it was no trouble at all to let royalty win gracefully. The conversation turned on America. It seemed that the two Americans whom his Highness most admired were Theodore Roosevelt and John Philip Sousa; the one because he had visited Africa and proved himself a real shikari; the other because he had immortalised the Sultan's dominions in his A Typical Tune of Zanzibar. (It happened that a month or so later I dined with Mr. Sousa in Johannesburg and told him this incident, whereupon he offered to send the Sultan an autographed copy of El Capitan. If he has forgotten to do it, this will serve to remind him that the Sultan's address is still “The Palace, Zanzibar.”) Incidentally his Highness mentioned that he was about to be married. Later on the English secretary supplemented this by explaining that his latest bride—he already had three wives—was the fifteen-year-old daughter of a well-to-do merchant in the bazaars, with whom the Sultan had been haggling regarding the price to be paid for the girl for a year or more. After a time we strolled out on the breeze-swept veranda. As I leaned over the railing I noticed something sticking up out of the harbour and I pointed to it. “What is that, your Highness?” I inquired. “A wreck,” he answered shortly. “A wreck! A wreck of what?” I persisted. “The wreck of the Zanzibar navy,” he said, turning away—and I suddenly recalled the story of the little gun-boat with its negro crew that stood up to the great British cruiser and banged away with its toy guns until it was sent to the bottom with every man on board, and all at once I felt very sorry for this youth, whose fathers held sway over a dominion as large as all that part of the United States lying west of the Rocky Mountains, but which, thanks to the insatiable land hunger of the European nations, has dwindled to a territory scarcely larger than Rhode Island.
That in the not far-distant future Zanzibar will again play a part in the drama of international politics there is but little doubt. The island's position adjacent to the mainland, from which it is separated by a channel less than thirty miles wide, combined with the advantages of its deep and roomy harbour, mark it naturally as the chief entrepôt of all East Africa, and the gate through which the interior of the continent is destined to be opened up to European settlement and exploitation. Being almost equidistant—some two thousand four hundred miles—from India, the Cape, and the Canal, and controlling the lines of cable communication with Madagascar and Mauritius, it affords a strategic position of immense importance as a naval base in the contingency of closing the Suez Canal in time of war. Germany has long had a greedy eye on Zanzibar, for the nation that holds it controls, both strategically and commercially, Germany's East African possessions and their capital of Dar-es-Salam. That England would be willing to turn Zanzibar over to Germany in return for the cession of a strip of territory through German East Africa which would permit the completion of her long-dreamed-of, and at present indefinitely interrupted, Cape-to-Cairo trunk line, there is every reason to believe. So I trust that the little brown man in the white-and-gold uniform will enjoy playing at sovereignty while he may, for if that day ever comes to pass when the red banner on his palace flagstaff is replaced with the standard of Germany, there will pass into the pleasant oblivion of the Paris boulevards the last of a long line of one-time powerful, oftentimes piratical, but always picturesque rulers, the Sultans of Zanzibar.