MOMBASAH FORT
CHAPTER II.
MOMBASAH OR MVÍTA.[[2]]
‘Est autem urbs illa sita intra sinum quemdam in rupe præcelsâ et editâ. Fluctus cùm se ab introitu sinus incitant, in adversam frontem urbis incurrunt. Inde deducti introrsus penetrant et utrumque latus urbis alluunt ita, ut peninsulam efficiunt.’—Osorio, describing Mombasah.
From early ages the people of this inhospitable coast left untried neither force nor fraud, neither secret treachery nor open hostility, to hinder and deter Europeans from exploration. Bribed by the white and black ‘Moors’—Arab and Wasawahili—then as now monopolists of the interior trade, Vasco da Gama’s pilots attempted to wreck his ships. In later years the Banyans, becoming the chief merchants of this coast, excited against travellers the half-caste maritime races, as usual the worst specimens of the population; these in turn worked upon their neighbours, the sanguinary savages of the interior, who, in addition to a natural fear of everything new, cherish old traditions of the white man’s piracy and kidnapping. In 1826 the brig Mary Anne was assaulted near Berberah and her crew was massacred by the Somal at the instigation, according to Lieut. Wellsted (Travels in Arabia, chap. xviii.), of the Banyans, who certainly withheld all information by which the attack could have been prevented or repelled. In 1844 a combination, secretly headed by Jayaram, the Collector of Customs at Zanzibar, so effectually opposed Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton that, unable to hire a vessel on the Island, he crossed over to the Continent in a launch borrowed from the Sayyid and manned by his own boat’s crew. Now, however, the increased number and power of the European houses, the greater facility of communication, the presence of our ships in these ports, and the more settled state of the Dominion, have convinced Arabs, Banyans, and Wasawahili, that it is vain to kick against the pricks in European shape. Yet they yield unwillingly, knowing that exploration will presently divert their monopoly into other channels, and, quoting the Riwayat or rhymed prophecy, that sovereignty shall depart from them when the Franks’ first footstep shall have defiled the soil. Even in our time (1857) travellers should consider the countenance of the Sayyid’s government a sine quâ non, and unless marching in great force or prepared for universal bakhshish, they should never make their starting-point any port distant from head-quarters.
The town of Mombasah, still called ‘Mwita,’ meaning fight or battle, is mentioned in A.D. 1331 by the Shaykh Ibn Batuta, as a large place abounding in fruits, and peopled by a ‘chaste, honest, and religious race.’ Two centuries afterwards the site is thus described by the Colto e buon Luigi—as Camoens was termed by the amiable Tasso.
The isle before them stood so near the land,
that narrow was the strait which lay between;
a city situate upon the strand
was on the seaboard frontage to be seen:
with noble edifices fairly planned