The weather now set seriously against us. The thermometer fell some 5° (F.), and heavy showers, mostly in the morning, wetted us clean through, despite all precautions. Lightning from the N. West appeared; the ‘egg of the cloud’ showed the focus of electric matter, and tornados, exactly resembling those of the Guinea coast, made the crew down sail, and satisfy themselves with one knot an hour. They had a peculiar style of keeping watch; all sat up singing till 10-11 P. M., after which every man slept as unanimously. The only waker was poor Said, who with red eyes and peeling nose suffered crispations when the squalls came on. About 9 A. M. (January 10) we sighted for the first time Pemba, the Emerald Isle of these Eastern Seas; and after three days’ stumbling over 33 miles from Kokoto-ni, Pemba channel, with the hills of the Mrima clear on our left, appeared at 3 P. M. To the right rose the tree-grown banks, and the verdant coral-ledges, which have given a name to the Green Island of the Arabs. Except from the mast-head it is invisible at an offing of 12 miles, this forest-clump emerging from the blue and buoyant wave, and therefore it was neglected by the Periplus. In A. D. 1698 the bold buccaneer Captain Kidd here buried his blood-stained hoards of gold and jewels, the plunder of India and of the further Orient. The people have found pots of ‘nuggets,’ probably intended for buttons, in order that the pirate might wear his wealth. Thus it is that the modern skipper, landing at Madagascar, or other robber haunts of the older day, still frequently witnesses the disappearance of his brass buttons, whilst the edge of a knife resting upon his throat secures the quiescence essential to the rapid performance of the operation.
The complicated entrance to Chak-Chak, or Shak-Shak as the Arabs call it, the chief port, fort, and town, has that silent, monotonous, melancholy beauty, the loveliness of death, which belongs to the creeks and rivers of those regions. The air was pure and sparkling; a light breeze played with the little blue waves; the beach, wherever it appeared, was of the purest golden hue, creamed over with the whitest of foam; and luxuriant trees of the brightest green drooped from their coralline beds over a sea, here deeply azure, there verdigris coloured by the sun shining through it upon a sand-shoal. But animated nature was wanting: we heard not a voice, we saw no inhabitant—all was profoundly still, a great green grave. A chain of islets forms the approach to a creek, below all mangrove and black vegetable mud, which stains the water, and bears roots upsticking like a system of harrows; above on both sides are rounded swelling hillocks, crowned with the cocoa and the clove. We sailed about on various tacks, and near sunset we anchored in the outer port, four or five miles distant from the town. On a wooded eminence rose the white walls and the tall tower of Fort Chak-Chak[Chak-Chak], standing boldly out from its dark green background, and apparently commanded by higher land, nowhere, however, exceeding 150 feet, while the spars of an Arab craft peered above the curtained trees. With the distinctest remembrance of Indian rivers, my companion and I could not but wonder at the scene before us.
Early on the next morning we manned the Louisa, and rowed slowly through a gate, formed on the right by Ra’as Kululu, and on the left by a high plantation Ra’as Bannani. It led to a broad, deep basin, where two or three Sayas, small Arab vessels, not wishing to approach the town, lay at anchor. After a couple of hours, during which progress was of the mildest, we entered a narrow creek, bordered by a luxuriant growth of mangroves. The black and fœtid sea-ooze, softer than mud, which supports these forests of the sea, contrasts strangely with the gay green of their foliage, and the place was haunted by terns, grey kingfishers, and hawks of black and white robe, big as the ‘Ak-baba,’ and said to be game birds. Here and there a tall man paddled a tiny canoe, and an old slave woman went to catch fish with a body-cloth, used as a net: she suggested the venerable comparison of the letter S mounted on ‘No. 11.’ The old Arab geographers seem to have been struck by the piscatorial peculiarities of these coasts. El Idrisi (1st climate, 7th section) informs us that ‘the people supply themselves from the sea without craft or without standing upon the shore. They use, whilst swimming or diving, little nets which they themselves make of woven grass; they tie them to their feet, and by slip-knots and lashings held in their hands, they draw fast the snare when they feel that a fish has entered it. All this they do with exceeding art and with a cunning bred by long experience: they also teach land reptiles to drive their prey’—possibly the iguana.
The tide, which hereabouts rises from twelve to thirteen feet, was then rapidly ebbing. At high water large boats run up under the walls of Chak-Chak; during the ebb the creek within several yards of the landing-place is a quaking bog, which receives a man to his waist. After three hours of persistent grounding, and nearly despairing to reach our mark, a sharp turn showed us the fort almost above our heads: we disembarked and waded up to the landing-place.
Ascending the sea-slope, I was struck, even after Goa and Zanzibar, by the wondrous fertility of the land. All that meets the eye is luscious green; cocoas, jacks, limes, and the pyramidal mangoes grow in clumps upon the rises; the wild solanum with bright yellow apples, and the castor shrub, rich in berries, spread over the uncultivated slopes; excellent rice, of which the Island formerly paid tribute, clothes the lowlands, and the little fields bear crops of holcus and sesamum, vetches as Thur (Cajanus Indicus), Mung (Phaseolus radiatus), and Chana or Gram (Cicer arietinum), with manioc, and many species of garden-stuff and fruit-trees, especially oranges and citrons. The eternal humidity—páni jo ghano sukh, say the Banyans—unfavourable to human, fosters vegetable development in a luxuriance more oppressive than admirable. After a few minutes’ climb we entered Chak-Chak, which, like a Brazilian country-town, consists of one long narrow lane. It is formed by square huts of wattle and dab, raised upon platforms of tamped clay: each tenement has a ‘but’ and a ‘ben,’ and most are fronted by a deep verandah, where poultry, fruit, and stale fish are exposed for sale by many familiar faces hailing from Hindostan.
My first visit was to the Wali or Governor, Mohammed bin Nasif bin Khalaf. In his absence at Zanzibar, we were received by his brother Sulayman, who lay upon his bed shaking with fever: the house was like its neighbours, and the verandah was partly occupied by a wooden ship’s-tank. We then took refuge against the sun at the shed called Place of Customs, where we were duly welcomed, whilst cloves were being weighed by the slaves. The Collector of government dues was a nephew of Ladha Damha, this Pisuji was at the head of some ten Bhattias: they are readily distinguished by red conical fools’ caps, and by their Indian Dhotis, or loin-cloths. His reception was far more cordial than it would have been in his own land, where Banyans are by no means famous for hospitality to the Mlenchha, or outcaste. We determined him to be an exceptional man, but afterwards, on the coast, we received the same civilities from all the Hindu and almost all the Hindi (Moslem) merchants. Pisu reproached Saíd for not landing us last night, seated us on cots, and served upon a wooden tray sliced mango and pineapple, rice, ghee, and green tea. An old Sindi tailor, Fakir Mohammed, son of a petty officer who had served as a Turkish gunner in Yemen, brought a bottle, and invited us to carouse with ‘wuh safed,’ that white one—probably gin. Our refusal to taste it did us good service with the Sherif Mohammed, a Hazramaut man, educated in Sind, and chief of the 25 to 30 Indians who compose the little colony. We were visited by the Jemadar, Musa Khan, who commands a score of Baloch mercenaries, readily distinguished by close-fitting lips and oval heads in this land of muzzles and cocoa-nut skulls. They greatly admired our weapons, specially my basket-hilted Andrea Ferrara, the gift of an old friend, Archibald McLaren, and one young fellow volunteered to accompany us up country. The Wasawahili were the least civil; they heard that certain Muzungu Kafirs had visited their town, and came to stare accordingly.
The good Pisu sent for our casks, and had them filled from the Mto-ni, behind the fort. This streamlet, some 15 feet broad and armpit deep, supplies water far superior to that of the wells and the brackish produce of the sands near the anchorage ground. Finally, he accompanied us, with the chief notables, to the landing-place, and sent us off in his own boat, which he had loaded with rice and fruits.
Pemba is an irregular coralline bank, composed of some 15 or 20 smaller items, covered with the richest vegetable humus. It is, in fact, an archipelago growing up into an island. Like Zanzibar, it is a low bank perched upon the summits of submarine mountains, which rise from depths not yet fathomed. Its extreme length is 42 miles, from Ra’as Kigomathe (Kegomatchy of Owen), the N. West point in S. lat. 4° 47′, and Ra’as Msuka (Said Point), in S. lat. 5° 29′ 30″. The long narrow steep varies in breadth from 2 to 10 miles (Owen), between E. long. (G.) 39° 39′, and 39° 48′, to which 5′ must be added since Bombay[[1]] and the Cape of Good Hope have been found to be placed that much too far west. Ra’as Kigomathe, the point nearest the mainland, is separated from it by Pemba Channel, here 19 to 20 miles broad, and the greatest width is 35 miles. The western sea-board, where calmer waters under a lea land favour the labours of the polypus, is evidently advancing rapidly, and here the coast-line is notably broken compared with that of Zanzibar and with its own eastern or windward coast. In this point it resembles Jutland, Iceland, and Norway, where the S. West, a prevalent wind, tears to pieces the occidental shores, and deposits the débris upon the leeward half. The reefs and shoals, branching in all directions, but especially westward, are still unexplored, and every ship that sounds does new work. The height of the Island nowhere exceeds 180 feet, and the soil is purely vegetable. The streamlets are not worth mentioning, and the general unimportance of the long narrow bank unfits it for representing the Menouthian depôt.
A strong current runs between Zanzibar and Pemba, carrying ships northwards sometimes at the rate of 50 miles per diem. The principal settlement, Chak-Chak, is built upon a deep inlet on the western coast, where the Island is narrowest. The distance is some 17 direct geographical miles (or 25 by course) north with easting from the southern Cape, and the approach is winding and difficult. The most objectionable part of the Green Isle is its climate. No man here is in rude health, laming ulcers on the legs exactly resembling syphilitic sores, stomach pains, and violent indigestions afflict new comers: hydrocele is a plague, and the population is decimated by small-pox, dumb agues, and bilious fevers.
In its palmy day many Portuguese, merchants and soldiers, settled at Pemba upon large plantations, and with the abundance of water and provisions, amongst which cattle are specified, consoled themselves for the insalubrity of the atmosphere. At the end of the sixteenth century, when that celebrated corsair the Amir Ali Bey had raised the coast, the ‘Moors’ of Pemba revolted against their Shaykh, and murdered the foreign settlers—men, women, and children. The chief, with a few fugitives, took refuge in Melinde, and was speedily restored to his own by the Captain-Major Thomé de Souza Coutinho, brother of the Viceroy of India. He was again expelled shortly after A.D. 1594; and this time he retired to Mombasah, became a Christian, and married a Portuguese orphan: he eventually visited India with D. Francisco da Gama, who also promised to restore him, and the promise seems to have been kept. In December, 1608, the Island was visited by Capt. Sharpey, en route to India, and the treacherous Europeans persuaded the ‘Moors’ to attack his crew, after inveigling them on shore by a show of hospitality. Hence the ‘villanies of Pemba’ became a proverb on the coast.