The Arab statute-book is the Koran interpreted by what may be called the priesthood. But witchcraft is a great power, not only with the heathen but also with Mahometans, in Africa, and, after consulting his sheiks and sherifs, the sultan often has recourse to the heathen Mganga. One is reminded of the Witch of Endor, Pharao’s magicians, and many of the old superstitions which we find recorded in the ancient Hebrew Scriptures.
The population of the city may be one hundred thousand, and that of the remainder of the island rather more; but one cannot decide this with any accuracy, as it is against Moslem principles to take a census. Who are they to count the favors of God? Of the mongrel population of Zanzibar the Arab is the dominant race, though there are few, if any, pure Arabs—sometimes that name being applied to a man as black as a negro. But the better class of them are fine, handsome men, splendidly dressed, and very dignified and self-possessed. They are ignorant, however, bigoted, supercilious, and licentious. They are also very indolent and have few redeeming features. Lower classes of Arabs there are, who are soldiers, sailors, traders, and so on, and from them are drawn the villains who carry on the iniquitous slave-traffic.
There are about seven thousand British subjects—Banians and other Indian peoples. The commerce of the East African coast is chiefly in their hands, and they are the bankers and represent the moneyed interest. Those owning slaves are in danger of losing them, if the British consul discover the fact; but it is hardly possible for them not to trade in slaves, as they are always sold with landed properties, and without them labor could hardly be obtained.
Most of the army, which numbers nine hundred, is composed of Belooches, who are a motley set of rascals, brutal, lazy, and cowardly. But somehow they contrive to live, and arm themselves too, on three dollars a month, and seem to be pretty prosperous. The artillerymen are Persians—tall, handsome men with black moustaches, high black sheepskin caps, green tunics, and loose trowsers. But their battery, which is full of small brass and iron guns overlooking the sea, is a poor affair, ridiculous from a military point of view, and better adapted for firing salutes than for purposes of warfare.
There are about two thousand men from the Comoro Islands, but no one seems to have anything good to say of them.
The mass of the population is composed of blacks from the east coast. These are almost entirely slaves, and are made to work for the support of the lazy Arabs. A person acquainted with the country easily distinguishes members of the different tribes from each other; they may be known by the tribe marks—mostly punctures in the forehead—and by their general appearance. The slaves are capable of much endurance; the writer once paid thirty or forty slave women eight cents each for a day’s work, which consisted of walking thirty miles, carrying weights on their heads half the way. They did not seem at all exhausted after this arduous task. Great cruelties are perpetrated in the capture of the slaves and in conveying them to Zanzibar, but, as a rule, they are treated fairly enough when once they are received into a family, being allowed one day a week to work for themselves, besides other extra time.
There are only sixty or seventy white people—American, English, Scotch, French, and German—but without them the commerce of the place would collapse. The chief exports are spices, ivory, ebony, cocoanuts, and gum-copal. The imports are cotton fabrics, pocket-handkerchiefs of bright colors, crockery, etc.
The climate of Zanzibar is healthier than that of the mainland, though it is quite bad enough; the wonder is that any one can live there. The city lies very low, almost surrounded by a shallow lagoon, over which the water flows at every tide, leaving a deposit of reeking filth. No attempt at drainage has been made; sanitary reform is totally unknown; and the smell of the beach caused Livingstone to suggest that the name should be changed to Stinkibar. The year before the great hurricane there was a cholera epidemic which is supposed to have killed ten thousand people. Strangely enough, the Europeans, who mostly suffer much from fevers, were totally exempt, and the natives got the notion that the devil, who gave them the cholera, was afraid to attack the redoubtable Myungoo; so they sometimes whitewashed a man who showed symptoms of the disease, to cheat the devil, but the devil refused to be cheated so easily. The physical is far superior, however, to the moral condition of Zanzibar; in fact, the place is a Sodom where morality is unknown.
To arrive at an idea of the religious condition of the peoples it is necessary to consider each race separately, and try to understand their habits and modes of thought. First let us take the negro—the most numerous class. Even so we shall be generalizing for the different tribes and nations of the interior, as distinct from each other and the races of Europe.
The writer has had considerable opportunities of judging of the black man, having served in a British man-of-war engaged in the suppression of the slave-trade, and having for some time been in charge of an establishment of liberated slaves—mostly boys. The negro character is a strange series of contradictions, and it takes some time to understand him. He is profoundly conscious of his inferiority. An English officer adopted a little slave boy taken from a dhow, and we taught him a few elements of religion, which he eagerly grasped. Amongst others he was much struck by the idea of a future state. One day he was being chaffed: “Ah! you nigger—thick lips—flat nose,” when he replied: “If I’m a good nigger, after I die I shall get up again, not black then, but white as you are.” It was a long time, though, before he could believe that a negro could rise again, though it did not seem unreasonable to him for an Arab or white man to rise.