The much-puffed squadron of the late Sayyid, stationed during his life at Mto-ni, and now being divided amongst the rival heirs, flanks with its single and double tiers of guns these peaceful traders, of whom, by-the-by, some are desperate pirates. The number is imposing; but the decks have no awnings against the weather, the masts are struck and stripped to save rigging, the yards lie fore-and-aft upon the booms, the crews consist of half-a-dozen thievish, servile ‘sons of water’ (M’áná Májí); rats and cockroaches compose the live stock; the ammunition is nowhere, and though the quarter and main decks are sometimes swept, everything below is foul with garbage and vermin. The exteriors are dingy; the interiors are so thoroughly rotted by fresh water that the ships are always ready to go down at their anchors. The whole thing is a mistake amongst Arabs, who are fitted only for a ‘buggalow,’ or at best a ‘grab.’ The late Sayyid once attempted English sailors, who behaved well as long as they did what they pleased, especially in the minor matters of ’baccy and grog; but when the dark-faced skipper began loud speaking and tall threats, they incontinently thrashed him upon his own quarterdeck, and were perforce ‘dismissed the service.’ Every captain in the R. N. Maskat, besides impudently falsifying the muster-rolls, will steal the fighting-lanterns, the hammocks, and other articles useful at home; whilst the care-takers sell in the bazar, junk, rope, and line; copper bolts, brass-work, and carpenter’s chests bearing the government mark. When a ship is wanted an Arab Nakhoda (here called Náhozá), a Muallim or sailing-master, and a couple of Sukkanis (pilots), are sent on board with a crew composed of a few Arab non-commissioned officers and ‘able seamen,’ Baloch, Maskatis, and slaves. The commander, who receives some 50 dollars per lunar month, kills time with the cognac bottle; the sailing-master (7 dollars) dozes like a lap-dog in his own arm-chair on the quarter-deck; and the seamen do nothing, Jack helping Bill. One of these vessels sent to England a few years ago lost, by want of provisions and bad water, 86 out of its crew—100 men; and can we wonder at it? A single small screw-steamer, carrying a heavy gun, and manned and commanded by Europeans, would have been more efficient in warfare, and far more useful in peace, than the whole squadron of hulks. It is, however, vain to assure the Arab brain that mere number is not might; and, indeed, so it is when people believe in it.

The high and glassless windows of H. M.’s Consulate enable us to prospect the city. Zanzibar, in round, numbers 6° south of the line, occupies the western edge and about the midway length of the coral reef that forms the island. The latter is separated by a Manche or channel from the continent, a raised strip of blue land, broken by tall and remarkable cones all rejoicing in names still mysterious enough to flutter the traveller’s nerves. The inclination of the island from N.N.W. to S.S.E. shelters the harbour from the Indian Ocean, whilst the bulge of the mainland breaks the force of dangerous Hippalus, the S.W. monsoon. The minimum breadth of the Manche is 16 geographical miles; from the Fort to the opposite coast there are 24, and from the bottom of Menai Bay 35. The Periplus gives to the Menouthian Channel about 300 stadia, in round numbers 30 geographical miles: 600 common stadia correspond, within a fraction of the real measurement, with a degree of latitude (1° = 1/360 of the earth’s circumference). Marinus of Tyre and Ptolemy, however, unduly reduced the latter to 500 stadia.

Zanzibar city is built upon a triangular spit, breaking the line of its wide, irregular, and shallow bay. The peninsula is connected with the island by an isthmus some 300 yards wide, and it is backed by swamp and lagoon, bush and forest. Arc-shaped, with the chord formed by the sea-frontage, and the segment of the circle facing landwards, its greatest length is from N.E. to S.W., and it is disposed beachways, like the sea-ports of Oman. The front is a mere ‘dicky,’ a clean show concealing uncleanness. Instead, however, of a neat marine parade and a T-shaped pier, the foreground is a line of sand fearfully impure. Corpses float at times upon the heavy water; the shore is a cess-pool, and the younger blacks of both sexes disport themselves in an absence of costume which would startle even Margate. Round-barrelled bulls, the saints of the Banyans, and therefore called by us ‘Brahmani,’ push and butt, by way of excitement, the gangs of serviles who carry huge sacks of cowries, and pile high their hides and logwood. Others wash and scrape ivory, which suggested to a young traveller the idea that the precious bone, here so plentiful, is swept up by the sea. At night the front often flares as if on fire. The cause is lime-burning on the shore, in small, round, built-up heaps.

Another evil, arising from want of quay and breakwater, is that the sea at times finds its way into the lower parts of the town. The nuisance increases, as this part of the Island appears to be undergoing depression, not an uncommon process in fictile madrepore formations. Off Changáni Point, where in 1823 stood a hut-clump and a mosque, four fathoms of water now roll. The British Consulate, formerly many yards distant from the surf, must be protected by piles and rubble. Some of the larger houses have sunk four, and have sloped nine feet from terrace to ground, owing to the instability of their soppy foundations. The ‘Tree-island’ of our earliest charts has been undermined and carried away bodily by the waves; whilst to the north the sea has encroached upon Mto-ni, where the Sayyid’s flag-staff has four times required removal. On the other hand, about 15 years ago, the ‘Middle Shoal’ of the harbour was awash; now it is high and dry.

In 1835 Dr Ruschenberger estimated the census of Zanzibar at 12,000 souls, of whom two-thirds were slaves. In 1844 Dr Krapf proposed 100,000 as the population of the island, the greater number living in the capital. Captain Guillain, in 1846, gave 20,000 to 25,000, slaves included. I assumed the number, in 1857, as 25,000, which during the N.E. monsoon, when a large floating population flocks in, may rise to 40,000, and even to 45,000. The Consular report of 1849 asserts it to be ‘about 60,000.’

The city is divided into 18 quarters (Mahallat), each having its own name; and when travellers inform us that it is called ‘Hamuz,’ Moafilah, or Baur, they simply take a part for the whole.[[21]] The west-end boasts the best houses, chiefly those which wealthy natives let to stranger merchants. The Central, or Fort quarter, is the seat of government and of commerce, whilst few foreigners inhabit the eastern extremities, the hottest and the most unhealthy. The streets are, as they should be under such a sky, deep and winding alleys, hardly 20 feet broad, and travellers compare them with the threads of a tangled skein. In the west-end a pavement of Chunam, or tamped lime, is provided with a gutter, which secures dryness and cleanliness—it is the first that I have seen in an African city. As we go eastward all such signs of civilization vanish; the sun and wind are the only engineers, and the frequent green and black puddles, like those of the filthy Ghetto, or Jews’ quarter, at Damascus, argue a preponderance of black population. Here, as on the odious sands, the festering impurities render strolling a task that requires some resolution, and the streets are unfit for a decent (white) woman to walk through. I may say the same of almost every city where the negro element abounds.

As in the coast settlements of the Red Sea and of Madagascar, the house material is wholly coral rag, a substance at once easily worked and durable—stone and lime in one. The irregularity of the place is excessive, and it is by no means easy to describe its peculiar physiognomy. The public buildings are poor and mean. The mosques which adorn Arab towns with light and airy turrets, breaking the monotony of square white tenements, magnified claret-chests, are here in the simplest Wahhabi form. About 30 of these useful, but by no means ornamental, ‘meeting-houses’ are scattered about the city for the use of the ‘established church.’ They are oblong rooms, with stuccoed walls, and matted floors; the flat roofs are supported by dwarf rows of square piers and polygonal columns; whilst Saracenic arches, broad, pointed, and lanceated, and windows low-placed for convenience of expectoration, with inner emarginations in the normal shape of scallops or crescents, divide the interior. Two Shafei mosques, one called after Mohammed Abd el Kadir, the other from Mohammed el Aughan (Afghan), have minarets, dwindled turrets like the steeples of Brazilian villages; another boasts of a diminutive cone, most like an Egyptian pigeon-tower; and a fourth has a dwarf excrescence, suggesting the lantern of a light-house. The Shiahs, who are numerous, meet for prayer in the Kipondah quarter, and the Kojahs have a ruined mosque outside the city.

The best houses are on the Arab plan familiar to travellers in Ebro-land and her colonies. The type has extended to France and even to Galway, where we still find it in the oldest buildings. A dark narrow entrance leads from the street, and the centre of the tenements is a hypæthral quadrangle, the Iberian Patio or Quintal. We miss, however, the shady trees, the sweet flowers, and bright verdure with which the southern European and the Hispano-American beautify their dwellings. Here the ‘Dár’ is a dirty yard, paved or unpaved, usually encumbered with piles of wood or hides, stored for sale, and tenanted by poultry, dogs, donkeys, and lounging slaves. A steep and narrow, dark and dangerous staircase of rough stone, like a companion-ladder, connects it with the first floor, the ‘noble-quarter.’ There are galleries for the several storeys, and doors opening upon the court admit light into the rooms. Zanzibarian architecture, as among ‘Orientals’ generally, is at a low ebb. The masonry shows not a single straight line; the arches are never similar in form or size; the floors may have a foot of depression between the middle and the corners of the room; whilst no two apartments are on the same level, and they seldom open into each other. Joiner’s work and iron-work must both be brought from India.

The ‘azotéas’[[22]] flat roofs, or rather terraces, are supported by mangrove-trunks, locally called ‘Zanzibar rafters,’ and the walls, of massive thickness, are copiously ‘chunam’d.’ Here the inmates delight to spread their mats, and at suitable seasons to ‘smell the air.’ Bándá or bándáni, pent-roofed huts of plaited palm-leaf (makuti or cajan) garnish the roofs of the native town. Europeans do not patronize these look-outs, fires being frequent and the slaves dangerous. Some foreigners have secured the comfort of a cool night by building upper cabins of planking, and have paid for the enjoyment in rheumatism, ague, and fever.

Koranic sentences on slips of paper, fastened to the entrances, and an inscription cut in the wooden lintel, secure the house from witchcraft, like the crocodile in Egypt; whilst a yard of ship’s cable drives away thieves. The higher the tenement, the bigger the gateway, the heavier the padlock, and the huger the iron studs which nail the door of heavy timber, the greater is the owner’s dignity. All seems ready for a state of siege. Even the little square holes pierced high up in the walls, and doing duty as ventilators, are closely barred. As heat prevents the use of glass in sleeping-rooms, shutters of plain or painted plank supply its place, and persiennes deform the best habitations. The northern European who sleeps for the first time in one of these blockhouses fairly realizes the first sensations of a jail. Of course the object is defence, therefore the form is still common to Egypt and Zanzibar, Syria and Asia Minor.