Numerous fresh earth mounds may be seen in graveyards in the settlements along the East Coast. Fat men are scarce in these districts, all having a slender frame and veiny, bleached appearance, with drooping eyelids. Malarial and black-water fever are prevalent in Dar-es-Salaam. White clothes, white cloth or skin shoes, and white helmets are worn. This place has a European population of 1,000, most of them government employes. The native population is 25,000.
Natives build their own huts, which are of mud, covered with cocoanut leaves, and settlements are located some distance from town.
The sight of native women prisoners, with a band of iron around the neck and a chain fastened to the first band, then to the second, and so on, according to the number of prisoners, seemed pretty severe punishment—too barbarous even for blacks. This is what we saw in Dar-es-Salaam. Six or eight men and women are generally chained together. The steel collar or band, an inch and a half wide, opens and closes with a clasp, and the length of the chain from band to band is between two and three feet. Groups of women were seen carrying water on their heads in five-gallon oil-cans. The prisoners have to move at the same time, as the chain is connected with the iron band around each neck. The band and chain is a relic of slavery days, as we are at a noted slave-trading center.
This German capital is the prettiest town on the East Coast of Africa. It is smart in appearance, has an electric light plant and good drives. Cocoanut palms grow all around, and the fragrance from the frangi-pangi flower heavily perfumes the atmosphere and adds much to the attractiveness of that center. Germany acquired this possession in 1886.
"Should you wear your street dress ashore, instead of the short skirt, it may 'let the cat out of the bag,' and then we would have to pay the full fare," one of our lady passengers cautioned her daughter who wished to join other travelers making ready to leave the ship to take a look at the German colony capital. Mother and daughter embarked at Lourenzo Marques, having come from the Transvaal, their destination being Bombay, India. The daughter, twenty, being slightly under medium size, did not look her age. When booking their passage she was represented as "fifteen," any one of that age or under being carried for half rate. Short skirts, extending to just below the knees, were worn as an age "decoy" to this point of the journey. Though Miss Agnes bravely nursed her sheepishness, evoked by wearing "kid clothes" as she termed the "disguise," aboard ship, she drew the line at appearing "in public" in them. The captain having been observed leaving the vessel in his launch, Agnes, learning of this, hurriedly donned a "woman's" dress, joined the sightseeing party ashore, and took the chance of being detected. Returning to the ship before the skipper, she quickly changed street clothes to the "kid" garb, breaking her suspense, none of the officers being any the wiser, and resumed the journey to Bombay, as she started from the Portuguese port—a combination of woman-juvenile-half-fare passenger.
Zanzibar, on Zanzibar Island, is located 40 miles from Dar-es-Salaam. All the way from Durban we had been getting breaths of Asia, but Zanzibar is like an Asia in Africa. With perhaps the exception of Cairo and Alexandria, Egypt, Zanzibar is the largest place on the African continent. Out of a mixed population, composed of Arabs, Mohammedans, Hindus, Singhalese, Goanese, Parsis and natives—negroes—only 500 are whites. Though the city was inhabited as early as the tenth century, their first sultan did not begin to reign until 1741.
Mohammedan women—on whose features no one but husband or family are permitted to set eyes—walking about with their faces covered in a cloth having eye-holes cut out; palanquins, enclosed boxes accommodating one person, are carried by two natives, one on each end of a pole, on which the box rests, these containing the wives of Arabs and Mohammedans; native women, ever ready to imitate the clothing of others, are seen entirely covered in black cloth, save for the eye-holes in their face coverings; these dark, mysterious, and weird creatures stalk about the alleyways of Zanzibar during the day and the night hours. The pale face of the Parsi woman, the Hindu woman with ornaments in her nostrils, on her ears, arms, hands and toes, and the gewgaws worn by native women, are seen at every turn. The Parsi, with his cuff-like cap; the Singhalese with his long, oily hair and amber haircomb; the Hindu, in his big, cloth head-covering; the bewhiskered Arab, wearing a fez, and the black, woolly bare head of the native, form an unusual scene on entering the city of Zanzibar. The Waswahili are the natives, and the native language of the island, German-East Africa, and British-East Africa is the Kiswahili.
Zanzibar, comprising the island of Pemba, 40 miles to the north, is a British possession. The island of Zanzibar is 50 miles in length and 20 miles wide. These islands are presided over by a Sultan, Seyid Khalifa bin Harub, but his ruling has to be approved by a British governor-general. He is sultan in name only, but his salary is $60,000 a year. The national flag is of a plain red color. The Sultan received his education in England.
The streets of the city are so narrow in some instances that both sides can almost be touched by the hands extended. Houses are built of brick and cement, and one to three stories in height. A couple of goats are usually found tied in front of buildings, and often a donkey may be seen munching a whisk of grass while standing on the steps of a home. A stranger able to find his way about Zanzibar must have a pretty level head. On entering a street, one has no assurance that the street has an opening, for they often end in a solid building across—a "blind alley." Doors to the buildings are heavy enough for a jail, and the alleys, veiled women, black and suspicious-looking men, wearing sandals and strange head-coverings, bespeak Asia. Europeans live in another section.
A very good hospital is pointed out to the visitor, which indicates in that part of the world a very large graveyard, Zanzibar being regularly visited with smallpox, while malarial fever is prevalent and bubonic plague and leprosy common.