In 1818 the clove-tree (Caryophyllus aromaticus) was introduced from Mauritius and Bourbon into Zanzibar; requiring little care, it speedily became a favourite, and in 1835 the aristocratic foreigner almost supplanted the vulgar valuable cocoa-nut, and the homely rice necessary for local consumption. The Banyans, Americans, and Europeans shared amongst them the principal profits of other commerce, and the cloves enriched the squirearchy, the landed proprietors. Yet it was early predicted that this prosperity would end in ruin; and presently the man who first introduced the spice became a beggar. After a few years extensive plantations, some containing 15,000 to 20,000 feet, were laid out in the richest parts of the Island. The trees, however, set at intervals of 14 to 40, and now 20 feet, occupied large tracts of ground, and they were so rarely trimmed, that degeneracy soon ensued. Similarly the Brazilian planter, though well aware of his loss, cannot prune his coffee shrub: his hands are all negroes, and if allowed to use cutting instruments, they would hack even the stem. Now the Zanzibar article cannot compete with the produce of Bourbon; and the Dutch having thrown into the market the valuable and long-withheld produce of the Moluccas, it threatens to become a drug. The people would do well to follow the example of Mauritius, whence the clove has long departed in favour of sugar. For the latter Zanzibar is admirably adapted: when factories shall everywhere be established, the Island will have then found her proper profession, and will soon attain the height of her prosperity.
The clove (Karanful), planted in picturesque bands, streaking the red argillaceous hills, is allowed to run to wood, and to die, withered at the top, in the shape of a bushy thick-foliaged tree 35 feet tall, and somewhat resembling a laurel. Grown from seed, it bears in the fifth year, and the fruit, the unexpanded flower-bud, is usually ripe in October. In rainy years the harvest beginning with early September is continued uninterruptedly: when the season, however, is dry the picking ceases in November and December, to be resumed in January. Hence the tales of two yields per annum. The crop, which lasts even till March, and which appears to be very uncertain, is hand-picked by Wasawahili and slaves—gathered, in fact, like coffee, except that, requiring ladders and more labour, it is a very slow process. Under favourable circumstances the tree should produce a maximum of 6 lbs; here, however, the ground is neither cleared nor manured, and the consequence is, that 30 trees rarely yield more than 35 lbs per annum. The fruit is sun-dried upon matting for three days: the workmen forget to turn it, and allow it to be broken and injured; moreover, they will not smoke it, and thus prevent over-shrinking and wrinkling. Some years ago Mr Wilson, an English engineer who died at Zanzibar, produced, by attending to the tree, and by properly desiccating his cloves upon iron hurdles, a superior article, with red shanks and large full heads. M. Sausse, a Creole from Bourbon or Mauritius, also succeeded in extracting an excellent oil, the clove oil of commerce being generally made by distilling cinnamon leaves. This novelty became a universal favourite with the Zanzibar public, who held it to be highly medicinal, and used it especially for inflammations. Locally the spice is employed as a condiment and infused as a medicine and a tonic: women of the poorer classes make necklaces and ear-rings of the corns; they also pound them to a paste, and mould them into different shapes.
The Asákif, or stalks pulled off when the fruit is dry, are exported to Europe under the name of ‘clove stems,’ and are used as a mordant for dyeing silks. An English house once provided tin canisters to preserve its purchases, whereas they are mostly sent home in bulk. Certain other merchants, ‘born with the pencil behind their ears,’ open the hatches, and to make the cargo ‘weigh out’ heave in sea-water, which, they say, does not much affect the flavour of pepper and cloves. The stems fetch from one-eighth to half of a German crown per Farsilah, or frail of 35 lbs. The price of cloves, originally $5 to $6 per Farsilah, has now fallen to $2 and even to $1. In 1856, the Island exported five millions of lbs; the next year, however, was unfavourable—the trees had been injured by drought; the over-supply had sunk the price 70 per cent., and many Arab proprietors talked of returning to rice and cocoa-nuts. Yet, in 1859, the crop rose to some 200,000 Farásilah = 7,000,000 lbs, valued at about £85,000; whereas 10 years before the total produce of Zanzibar, including Pemba, was 120,000 to 150,000 Farásilah, and in 1839-40 it barely numbered 9000.
We returned viâ the bush to the south of the city, passing through a luxuriant growth of the hardest woods. After a stiff ride over the worst of paths, a mere ‘picada,’ as the Brazilians say, we skirted the fetid lagoon which subtends the eastern city from north to south, and reached Mnazi Moyya, ‘One Cocoa-nut Tree.’ This bit of open ground is the Bois de Boulogne of Zanzibar, the single place for exercise, and we did not wonder that so many prefer to stay at home.
During the ’Id Saghir or Kuchuk Bayram, here called Siku-khu za Ídí, ‘One Cocoa-nut Tree’ is a lively place. Whilst the boys sing and dance about the streets, and the garrison blacks, armed with sabres, engage near the fort in a Zumo or Pyrrhic, wildly waving their tremulous blades, and the Wahiao or Bozals from about Kilwa execute their saltations near the bridge, and the other slaves carouse and junket in their own quarter of the town, each clan from the mainland keeping itself distinct, the grandees, fingering their rosaries and supported by long staves, proceed to Mnazi Moyya, where gallops, called races, form the attraction. About half-a-dozen garrons, rushing wildly about, represent the performers, and the performance is nothing new to the Anglo-Indian. The groups are motley if not picturesque. Here and there, surrounded by rings of sable admirers, are women boisterously singing and clapping hands, dancing and acting lionnes with all their might. Tremendous are the Vijelejele, the Kil, Zaghárit, or trilling of the spectatresses. Men also stamp and wriggle in a rude ‘improper’ style to the succedaneum for a drum, a hollow wooden cylinder one foot in diameter, with the open end applied to the breast, and the dried and stretched snake-skin patted upon with finger and palm. Most of these people, regardless of fever or cholera, are primed with fermented cocoa juice. The heavily-clad Shaykhs, bestriding their asses, are preceded by outrunners, who mercilessly push aside and ‘bakur’ the crowd; and the latter turn viciously as bull-terriers. There is not much striking, but jostling and thrusting away are the rules. At Lamu and the wilder places swords and daggers are often bared on these occasions, and the Shaykhs have no little trouble to preserve the peace. Contrasting with the full-dressed crowd are the naked children, who seem all afflicted with umbilical hernia. This is the result of careless cutting, but the unsightly protuberance will wear away in after life, and a pot-belly is here, as elsewhere in Africa, looked upon as a good sign. The negro faces and bodies are marked with the tattoo in almost every possible fashion; some wear straight black lines, others curved; these have perpendicular, those horizontal marks, and not a few wear painted squares with central spots, like the wafers upon the garment of the old country clown. At length the princes make their appearance, and are received with a file-firing of guns and pistols, whilst shouts and drums disturb the air; the races are formally run, and the crowd disperses through the unclean streets of the city.
There is still some exploration to be done on the west or landward front of Zanzibar Island. Colonel Hamerton, however, strongly advises us not to risk fever, and to reserve every atom of strength and energy for the Continent.
CHAPTER X.
COMPARATIVE ANTHROPOLOGY (ETHNOLOGY) OF ZANZIBAR. THE ARABS.
‘Les Arabes ne sont maintenant, dans l’Afrique Orientale, que des parasites, comme l’est tout peuple exclusivement commerçant.’—M. Guillain, vol. ii. part ii. chap. ii. p. 151.
The Arabs upon the Island may amount to a total of 5000,[[97]] all Omans; and they are divided, as in their fatherland, into two great Kabilah or tribes, the Hináwi and the Gháfiri.
When Malik bin Fakhm, of the Benu Hunayfah tribe, marched from his own country, Nejd, to recover Oman from the Persians under Dara, son of Bahman, son of Isfandiyar, an event popularly dated about the end of our 1st century, he was joined by some 100 Yemeni warriors who were called Benu Yemin, sons of the right hand, because they dwelt to the south or on the right hand of the Ka’abah. Their migration is attributed to the bursting of the dyke of Arim, near Mareb, the Mariaba of Ptolemy, which is the Babel-tower of Arabian history in the Days of Ignorance. The learned Dr Wetzstein (p. 104, Reisebericht über Hauran, &c. Berlin, 1860) believes this event to have taken place about the beginning of our era; most authors, however, place it at the end of the 1st or the beginning of our 2nd century. It was probably the over-populating of the land which sent forth the two great Sabæan tribes of Azud and Himyar to Bahrayn and N. Eastern Arabia; they united, and were known as the Tanukh or Confederates. The former, also called from a chief ‘Nasri,’ settled upon the Euphrates, and founded the East Tanukh kingdom, whose capital was afterwards Hira. The Himyar or Kudai originated, in the Hauran and the Belka, the West Tanukh kingdom, also termed from a chief ‘Salih.’ These men, converted to Christianity, were probably the builders of the ‘Giant cities’ of Bashan, mere provincial towns of the Greco-Roman Empire. Ta’alab (Thalaba), one of the sons of Malik bin Fakhm, is mentioned as the first ruler of East Tanukh. The extinct family of the Druze Tanukhs claimed descent from the western kingdom.