“Yes, and seen too,” I said in response.
“Have you, sir?” replied the ex-man-o’-war’s-man—“then all I can say is that you’ve seen the handsomest harbour in the world! But, still, Zanzibar ain’t far behind it. The front of the town, which faces the anchorage, looks quite imposing like. The water of the bay is clear too, so that you can see the bottom down to any depth; and the white sandy beach fringing it round is just like snow against the dark background of palm-trees and green foliage. Along the beach are the warehouses and residences of the English-speaking merchants, the grand mansions of the richer sort of citizens, and the offices of the different foreign consuls—each with its own national flag fluttering gaily from the top, the British Union Jack and the Yankee Stars and Stripes being very prominent; while, in the very centre of the lot, is the palace of the sultan, a fine concern. From the top of this flies the red ensign of Arabia, and around it may be seen sentries in a sort of zouave uniform, selected from that very slave army I told you of just now.”
“What struck you as most peculiar about the place?” I asked.
“Well, I’m hanged if it weren’t the niggers, sir!” said my informant. “You see there the most extraordinary number of little darkies you ever saw in your life, all with nothing on ’em, no more than Adam—not even a fig-leaf! The next thing to strike you, if a stranger, would be the heat, for it is far hotter, strange to say, ashore there than it is aboard your own ship. Some of the houses are curious to look at, for they have neither windows nor doors; for the best dwellings are built round an open court, and the windows, or air-holes as they might more properly be called, open on to that. Instead of being light and built of some flimsy stuff, as you might expect, the houses are all put up ‘on the heat-resisting principle,’ as I heard an engineer describe them—just like the Irishman that wore his Connemara frieze coat in summer to keep out the sun, as he said, in the same way as he put it on in winter to keep out the cold!”
“Indeed!” I said.
“Yes, sir,” continued my friend; “the walls of all the large houses at Zanzibar are many feet thick of solid stone masonry; and even the floors and partitions dividing the rooms are of several thicknesses too, all made of wood and stone and lime, the wood being covered over with mortar. The roof is the best part of them, however. It is made quite flat, and it is the principal spot for the family to go of an evening when the sun has gone down and the night-breeze begins to blow. The Arabs and Parsees go on top in the mornings too, at sunrise, to say their prayers, spreading out a bit of sacred carpet over the stone flagging that forms the floor of the roof.”
“Are there many shops?” I next inquired.
“Bless you, the town’s crammed full of them! but they’re only open sheds, in the centre of which some Hindoo or Banian merchant is to be seen squatting all day long, chewing hashish or smoking his hubble-bubble, as if he hadn’t a stroke of business to do, and didn’t care about doing it either if he got the chance!”
“I suppose they have goods to sell, though, eh!” I said.
“Oh, yes, shawls and sandals and silks and such like; while in the eatable line you can get coffee and sherbet, and arrack too, or what they call English rum, besides pine-apples and mangoes, oranges, citrons, guavas, green cocoa-nuts, and every fruit you could think of, as well as cakes and sweetmeats. The streets in the town are very narrow and are crowded with these sorts of shops or rather stalls, for they’re just like the places you see old apple-women rig up at the corners in London; but the bazaars are the best spots to look at—they’re just like those in India, and some that I’ve seen too in Constantinople. Lor’ sakes! why, they’re crowded with Arabs and Hindoos, Persians, Africans, Somali Arabs, and every sort of coloured native you can imagine, sir, from the lightest coffee-tinted mulatto down to the jettiest black of the pure nigger brought originally from the interior as a slave.