As sterile and unlovely for the same cause—the absence of tropical rains—are the southern regions of the great Nineteenth Century Island. Good harbours are even rarer than in the north, and the seas about the Cape of Hope, sweeping up unbroken from the South Pole, are yet more perilous. The highlands fringing the southern and eastern coasts arrest the humid winds, and are capable of supporting an extensive population; but the interior and the western coast, being lowlands, are wild and barren. The South African or Kafir family, which has overrun this soil, is still for the most part in the nomade state, and its ‘evident destiny’ is to disappear before the European colonist.
The central and equatorial land, 34° deep, including and bordering upon the zone of almost constant rain, is distinguished by the oppressive exuberance of its vegetation and by the consequent insalubrity of its climate. The drainage of the interior, pouring with discoloured efflux to the ocean, in large and often navigable channels, subject to violent freshes, taints the water-lines with deadly malaria. The false coasts of coralline or of alluvial deposits—a modern formation, and still forming—fringed with green-capped islets, and broken by sandy bays and by projecting capes, are exposed to swells and rollers, to surf and surge, to numbing torrents and chilling tornadoes, whilst muddy backwaters and stagnant islets disclose lagoon-valves or vistas through tangled morass, jungle, and hardly penetrable mangrove-swamp. This maremma, the home of fever, is also the seat of trade, but the tribes which occupy it soon die out.
The true coast has already risen high enough above the waters to maintain its level; and the vegetation—calabashes, palms, and tamarinds—offers a contrast to the swampy growth below. Inland of the raised seaboard are high and jungly mountains and coast-range or ghaut, in many parts yet unvisited by Europeans. Beyond these sierras begins the basin-shaped plateau of Central Equatorial Africa. The inhabitants are mostly inland tribes, ever gravitating towards the coast. They occupy stockaded and barricaded clumps of pent-houses or circular tents, smothered by thicket and veiled, especially after the heavy annual rains, with the ‘smokes,’ a dense white vapour, moisture made visible by the earth being cooler than the saturated air.[[26]]
I have elsewhere remarked (The Lake Regions of Central Intertropical Africa; Abeokuta and the Camaroons Mountains, &c.) the striking geological contrast between the two equatorial coasts, eastern and western. The former, south of the Guardafui granites, offers to one proceeding inland from the ocean a succession of corallines, of sandstone and of calcaires, which appear to be an offset from the section of that great zone forming the Somali country. The western coasts, after quitting the basalts and lavas of the Camaroons, are composed chiefly of the granites and syenites with their degradations of schiste, gneiss, and sandstone. Similarly, in the great Austro-American continent, one shore, that of the Brazil, is granitic, whilst the other, Chili, mainly consists of the various porphyries.
The negroes and negroids of both these inhospitable coasts, an undeveloped and not to be developed race—in this point agreeing with the fauna and flora around them—are the chief obstacles to exploration, and remarkably resemble each other. The productions of the east and west are similar. The voracious shark swims the seas, turtles bask upon the strands and islets, and the crocodile and hippopotamus haunt the rivers. The forests abound in apes and monkeys, and the open plains support the giraffe, the antelope, and the zebra, hog and wild kine (Bos Caffir and B. Brachyceros), herds of elephants and scatters of rhinoceros. The villagers breed goats and poultry. In the healthier regions they have black cattle and sheep, whilst one tribe has acclimatized the ass. The exceeding fertility of the rain-drenched plains gives an amazing luxuriance to cassava and rice, maize, and holcus, cotton, sugar-cane, and wild indigo, banana, lime and orange, ground-nuts and coffee. The hills and torrent-beds yield gold and copper, antimony, and abundance of iron. On both sides of the continent there are rich deposits of the semi-mineral copal. Coal was found by the Portuguese at Tête and in the Zambeze Valley, as related in Dr Livingstone’s First Expedition (Missionary Travels, &c., xxxi. 633-4). His second prolonged the coal-field to beyond the Valley of the Rufuma (Rovuma) river (xxi. 440), and it will probably be found to extend still further.
Dr Krapf declares (Travels, &c., p. 465) that he discovered coal, ‘the use of which is still unknown to the Abessinians,’ on the banks of the Kuang, a river said to rise in the Dembea Province, near Lake Tsana (Coloë Palus). Finally, to judge from the analogy of the South American continent, the valuable mineral will yet be struck near the western coast, south of the equator.
From time immemorial, on both sides of Africa, the continental Islands, like Aradus and Sidon, Tyre and Alexandria, have been favourite places with stranger settlers. They have proved equally useful as forts, impregnable to the wild aborigines, and as depôts for exports and imports. Second to none in importance is Zanzibar, and the future promises it a still higher destiny.
And first, of the name, which does not occur in Strabo, Pliny, or the Periplus. The log-book attributed to Arrian, of Nicomedia, calls the whole shore, ‘Continent of Azania;’ probably an adaptation, like Azan, and even Ajan, of the Arabic, Barr el Khazáin, or the Land of Tanks,[[27]] the coast between Ra’as Hafun and Ra’as el Khayl. So Pliny (vi. 28 and 34) speaks of the ‘Azanian Sea’ as communicating with the ‘Arabian Gulf.’ Ptolemy, however (I. 17, sec. iv. 7), has the following important passage: ‘immediately following this mart (Opone) is another bay, where Azania begins. At its beginning are the promontory Zingis (ζίγγις, Zingina promontorium), and the tree-topped Mount Phalangis.’ The name may have extended from the promontory to the coast, and from the coast to the island. Dr Krapf speaks of a tribe of the ‘Zendj’ near the Rufiji river, but I could not hear of it. It is easy to show that the Pelusian geographer’s Opone is the bay south of Ra’as, or Jurd Hafun. Like Pomponius Mela, Ptolemy evidently made his great point de départ the Aromata Promontorium et emporium in Barbarico sinu (Cape Guardafui), and he placed it N. lat. 6° 0′ 0″, instead of N. lat. 11° 50′. This error threw the whole coast 6° (in round numbers, more exactly 5° 50′) too far south, and made the world doubt the accurate position of the Nile lakes. Thus, to his latitude of Opone N. 4° add 5° 50′, and we have N. lat. 9° 50′, the true parallel of Hafun being N. lat. 10° 26′.
Amongst late authors we find the word Zanzibar creeping into use. The Adulis inscription (4th century) gives ‘Zingabene’; and its copier, the Greek monk Cosmas Indicopleustes, who proved the globe flat (6th century), calls the ‘unnavigable’ ocean beyond Berberia, the ‘Sea of Zenj,’ and the lands which it bathes ‘Zingium.’ It is found in Abu Zayd Hasan, generally known as Hunayn bin Ishak (died A.D. 873); in El Mas’udi, who describes it at some length (died A.D. 957); in El Bayruni (11th century), and in the learned ‘Nubian Geographer,’ the Sherif El Idrisi (A.D. 1153). Marco Polo (A.D. 1290), who evidently wrote his 37th chapter from hearsay, makes Zanzibar a land of blacks; and, confounding insula with peninsula (in Arabic both being Jezireh), supplies it with a circumference of 2000 miles, and vast numbers of elephants. The India Minor, India Major, and India Tertia of the mediæval Latin travellers are the Sind, Hind, and Zinj of the Arabs. Ibn Batuta (A.D. 1330, 1331), the first Arab traveller who wrote a realistic description of his voyage, has accurately placed Kilwa, which he calls ‘Kulua,’ in the ‘land of the Zunúj.’ Finally, we meet with it in El Nowayri, and in Abulfeda, the ‘Prince of Arab Geographers,’ who both died in the same year, A.D. 1331.
The word Zanj (زنج), corrupted to Zinj, whence the plural ‘Zunúj,’ is evidently the Persian Zang or Zangi (زنگ), a black, altered by the Arabs, who ignore the hard Aryan ‘Gaf’ (گ), the ‘G’ in our gulf. In the same tongue bár means land or region—not sea or sea-coast—and the compounded term would signify Nigritia or Blackland. In modern Persian Zangi still means a negro, and D’Herbelot says of the ‘Zenghis’ that ‘they are properly those called Zingari,[[28]] and, by some, Egyptians and Bohemians.’ Scholars have not yet shown why the Arab, so rich in nomenclature, borrowed the purely Persian word from his complement the ‘Ajam.’ They have forgotten that the Persians, who of late years have been credited with the unconquerable aversion to the sea which belongs to the Gallas and the Kafirs, were once a maritime people. ‘The indifference or rather the aversion of Persians to navigation’ (M. Guillain, i. 34, 35) must not be charged to the ancient ‘Furs.’ Between A.D. 531–579, when Sayf bin Dhu Yezin, one of the latest Himyarite rulers, wanted aid against the Christian Abyssinians, who had held southern Arabia for 72 years, he applied to Khusrau I., better known as Anushirawán, the 23rd king of the Sassanian dynasty, which began with Ardashir Babegan (A.D. 226), and which ended with Yezdegird III. (A.D. 641), thus lasting 415 years. The ‘Just Monarch’ sent his fleet to the Roman Port’[Roman Port’] (Aden), and slew Masruk. In his day the Persians engrossed, by means of Hira, Obollah, and Sohar, the rich tracts of Yemen and Hindostan; while Basrah (Bassorah) was founded by the Caliph Omar, in order to divert the stream of wealth from the Red Sea, a diversion which will probably soon be repeated. In A.D. 758 the Persians, together with the Arabs, mastered, pillaged, and burn Canton. Much later (17th century) Shah Abbas claimed Zanzibar Island and coast as an appanage of the suzerainty of Oman.