The people of Tumbatu, like the Greeks, have their good points. They are skilful pilots and stout seamen, diligent in gathering their bread from the waters, and comparatively industrious, considering their enervating, prostrating climate. Their low, jungly ledge wants the sweet element, compelling them to fetch it from Zanzibar—their mainland; hence travellers have described the islet as uninhabited. The people are mentioned as Moslems by Yakut (early 13th century), and this island of ‘Tambat’ was made a refuge for the inhabitants of Languja or Zanzibar. We inquired in vain about the fort which the Arabs are said to have built there. The skins of Tumbatu are sooty, the effect, according to some, according to others the concomitant, of humid heat. The reader must not charge me with ‘trimming’ between the rival schools of ‘race versus climate, the cause of complexion.’ Many peoples betray but a modicum of chromatic and typical change. On the other hand, I have found an approximation of colour as well as of form between the Anglo-American and the Luso-Brazilian; and I have enlarged upon this chromatic heresy, if heresy it be, in the Highlands of the Brazil (Vol. i. chap. xxxviii.). Finally, when speaking of the permanence of type, it is well to bear in mind that our poor observations hardly extend over 2500 years.

The next morning placed us at the base of our operations, and we were on deck with Aurora. The stout ship ‘Elphinstone,’ urged by the cool land breeze, slid down the channel, the sea-river that separates the low-lying and evergreen Zanzibar Island from its reflection, the Mpoa-ni.[[9]] We were sensibly affected by the difference between the Sawáhil, this part of the East African sea-board which begins at the Juba River, and the grim physiognomy of Somaliland, Region of Fragrant Gums, with its sandy horrors of Berberah, and its granitic grandeurs of Guardafui, which popular apprehension refers to Garde à vous, and which Abyssinian Bruce, according to Ritter (Erdkunde, 2nd Division, § 8), altered, to Gardefan, the Straits of Burial.[[10]] We were in the depths of the ‘dries,’ as they are called in West Africa, in the local midwinter, yet this land was gorgeous in its vestment when others would be hybernating in more than semi-nudity.

Truly prepossessing was our first view of the then mysterious island of Zanzibar, set off by the dome of distant hills, like solidified air, that form the swelling line of the Zanzibar coast. Earth, sea, and sky, all seemed wrapped in a soft and sensuous repose, in the tranquil life of the Lotus Eaters, in the swoon-like slumbers of the Seven Sleepers, in the dreams of the Castle of Indolence. The sea of purest sapphire, which had not parted with its blue rays to the atmosphere—a frequent appearance near the equator—lay basking, lazy as the tropical man, under a blaze of sunshine which touched every object with a dull burnish of gold. The wave had hardly energy enough to dandle us, or to cream with snowy foam the yellow sandstrip which separated it from the flower-spangled grass, and from the underwood of dark metallic green. The breath of the ocean would hardly take the trouble to ruffle the fronds of the palm which sprang, like a living column, graceful and luxuriant, high above its subject growths. The bell-shaped convolvulus (Ipomæa Maritima), supported by its juicy bed of greenery, had opened its pink eyes to the light of day, but was languidly closing them, as though gazing upon the face of heaven were too much of exertion. The island itself seemed over-indolent, and unwilling to rise; it showed no trace of mountain or crag, but all was voluptuous with gentle swellings, with the rounded contours of the girl-negress, and the brown-red tintage of its warm skin showed through its gauzy attire of green. And over all bent lovingly a dome of glowing azure, reflecting its splendours upon the nether world, whilst every feature was hazy and mellow, as if viewed through ‘woven air,’ and not through vulgar atmosphere. Most of my countrymen find monotony in these Claude-Lorraine skies, with the pigment and glazing on. I remember how in Sind they used to bless the storm-cloud, and stand joyously to be drenched in the rain which rarely falls in that leather-coloured land. Zanzibar, however, must be seen on one of her own fine days: like Fernando Po and Rio de Janeiro, the beauty can look ‘ugly’ enough when she pleases.

As we drew nearer and vision became more distinct, we found as many questions for the pilot as did Vasco da Gama of old. Those prim plantations which, from the offing, resembled Italian avenues of oranges, the tea-gardens of China, the vines of romantic Provence, the coffee plantations of the Brazil, or the orange-yards of Paraguay, were the celebrated clove-grounds, and the largest, streaking the central uplands, were crown property. We distinctly felt a heavy spicy perfume, as if passing before the shop of an Egyptian ‘attar,’ and the sensorium was not the less pleasantly affected, after a hard diet of briny N.E. Trade. Various legends of hair-oil rubbed upon the bulwarks have made many a tricked traveller a shallow infidel in the matter of smelling the land. But we soon learned that off Zanzibar, as off ‘Mozámbic,’ the fragrant vegetation makes old Ocean smile, pleased with the grateful smell, as of yore. The night breeze from the island is cool and heavy with clove perfume, and European residents carefully exclude the land-wind from their sleeping-rooms.

For a little while we glided S. by E. along the shore, where the usual outlines of a city took from it the reproach of being a luxuriant wilderness. The first was ‘Bayt el Ra’as, a large pile, capped with a dingy pent-house of cajan (cocoa leaves), and backed by swelling ground—here bared for cultivation, there sprinkled with dense dark trees, masses of verdure sheltering hut and homestead. Followed at the distance of a mile, the Royal Cascine and Harem of Mto-ni, the Rivulet.[[11]] Our ancient ally ‘Sayyid Said, Imam of Maskat and Sultan of Zanzibar and the Sawahil,’ had manifestly not attempted African copies of his palaces in Arabian Shináz and Bat’hah, pavilions with side-wings and flanking towers, the buildings half castle half château, so much affected by the feudal lords of Oman. He preferred an Arabo-African modification, here valuable for ‘sommer-frisch.’

The demesne of Mto-ni has a quaint manner of Gothic look, pauperish and mouldy, like the schloss of some duodecimo Teutonic Prince, or long-titled, short-pursed, placeless, and pensionless German Serenity in the days now happily gone by, when the long drear night of German do-nothingness has fled before the glorious daybreak of 1866-1870. We can distinguish upon its long rusty front a projecting balcony of dingy planking, with an extinguisher-shaped roof, dwarfed by the luxuriant trees arear, and by the magnificent vegetation which rolls up to its very walls. Mto-ni takes its name from a runnel which, draining the uplands, supplies the ‘Palace,’ and trickles through a conduit into the sea. We shall presently visit it.

Entering the coral reef which defends this great store-house of Eastern Intertropical Africa, I remarked that the lucent amethyst of the waters was streaked and patched with verdigris green; the ‘light of the waves’ being caused by shoals, whose golden sands blended with the blue of heaven. The ‘Passes of Zanzibar’ reminded me in colouration of the ‘Gateways of Jeddah,’ and as the coral reefs cut like razors, they must be threaded with equal care. So smooth was the surface within the walls, that each ship, based upon a thread of light, seemed to hover over its own reflected image.

And now we could distinguish the normal straight line of Arab town, extending about a mile and a half in length, facing north, and standing out in bold relief, from the varied tints and the grandeur of forest that lay behind. A Puritanical plainness characterized the scene—cathedrals without the graceful minarets of Jeddah, mosques without the cloisters of Cairo, turrets without the domes and monuments of Syria; and the straight stiff sky-line was unrelieved except by a few straggling palms. In the centre, and commanding the anchorage, was a square-curtained artless fort, conspicuous withal, and fronted by a still more contemptible battery. To its right and left the Imam’s palace, the various Consulates, and the large parallelogrammic buildings of the great, a tabular line of flat roofs, glaring and dazzling like freshly white-washed sepulchres, detached themselves from the mass, and did their best to conceal the dingy matted hovels of the inner town. Zanzibar city, to become either picturesque or pleasing, must be viewed, like Stambul, from afar.

We floated past the guard-ship, an old 50-gun frigate of Dutch form and Bombay build, belonging to ‘His Highness the Sayyid;’ it was modestly named Shah Allum (Alam), or ‘King of the World.’ The few dark faces on board bawled out information unintelligible to our pilot, and showed no colours, as is customary when a foreign cruizer enters the port. We set this down to the fact of their being blacks—‘careless Ethiopians.’ But flags being absent from all the masts, and here, as in West Africa and in the Brazil, every ‘house’ flies its own bunting, we decided that there must be some cause for the omission, and we became anxious accordingly.

But not for such small matter would the H. E. I. C.’s ship-of-war ‘Elphinstone’ have the trouble of casting loose and of loading her guns gratis. With the Sayyid’s plain blood-red ensign at the main, and with union-jack at the fore, she cast anchor in Front Bay, and gallantly delivered her fire of 21. Thereupon a gay bunting flew up to every truck ashore and afloat, whilst the brass carronades of the ‘Victoria,’ another item of the Maskat navy, roared a response of 22, and, curious to say, did not blow off a single gunner’s arms. We had arrived on the fortieth or last day of Moslem mourning; and the mourning was for Sayyid Said, our native friend and ally, who had for so many years been calling for volunteers and explorers, and from whom the East African expedition had been taught to expect every manner of aid except the pecuniary.