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How I Found Livingstone

Chapter 2 - ZANZIBAR.

Word Count: 3544    |    Released on: 06/12/2017

nds of the continent loomed like a lengthening shadow in the grey of dawn. The island lay on our left, distant but a mile, coming out of its shroud

island, and there were depressions visible at agreeable intervals, to indicate where a cool gloom might be found by those who sought relief from a hot sun. With the exc

ch soon resolved itself into a pretty large and compact city, with all the characteristics of Arab architecture. Above some of the largest houses lining the bay front of the city streamed the blood-red banner of the Sultan, Seyd Burghash, and the flags of the American, English, North German Confederation, and French Consulates. In the ha

t have condescended to take board and lodging at a house known as "Charley's," called after the proprietor, a Frenchman, who has won considerable local notoriety for harboring penniless itinerants, and manifesting a kin

table house my own; to enjoy myself, with the request that I would ca

nd that consequently I had penetrated the meaning, the full importance and grandeur, of the work I was about to be engaged upon. But my estimates, for instance, based upon book inform

dies, and woolly heads, sitting at the doors of miserable huts, chatting, laughing, bargaining, scolding, with a compound smell of hides, tar, filth, and vegetable refuse, in the negro quarter;-of streets lined with tall, solid-looking houses, flat roofed, of great carved doors with large brass knockers, with baabs sitting cross-legged watching the dark entrance to their masters' houses; of a shallow sea-inlet, with some dhows, canoes, boats, an odd steam-tub or two, leaning over on their sides in a sea of mud which the tide has just left behind it; of a place called "M'nazi-Moya," "One Cocoa-tree," whither Europeans we

come the gum-copal, the hides, the orchilla weed, the timber, and the black slaves from Africa. Bagdad had great silk bazaars, Zanzibar has her ivory bazaars; Bagdad once tr

his island. He is as much of an Arab here as at Muscat or Bagdad; wherever he goes to live he carries with him his harem, his religion, his long robe, his shirt, his slippers, and his dagger. If he penetrates Africa, not all

y dangerous positions, as they penetrated Central Africa in search of the precious ivory; and their various experiences have given their features a certain unmistakable air of-self-reliance, or of self-sufficiency; th

those unfortunates brought under their yoke. If I saw a miserable, half-starved negro, I was always sure to be told he belonged to a half-caste. Cringing and hypocritical, cowardly and debased, treacherous and mean, I have always f

mallest fraction of a coin over a native. Possibly the native has a tusk, and it may weigh a couple of frasilahs, but, though the scales indicate the weight, and the native declares solemnly that it must be more than two frasilahs, yet our Banyan will asseverate and vow that the native knows nothing whatever about it, and that the scales are wrong; he musters up courage to lift it-it i

rous to make a journey into the interior, whether for slaves or ivory, gum-copal, or orchilla weed, proposes to a Banyan to advance him $5,000, at 50, 60, or 70 per cent. interest. The Banyan is safe enough not to lose, whether the sp

uld sell for $25 on the coast. We will say he purchases slaves to the full extent of his means-after deducting $1,500 expenses of carriage to Ujiji and back-viz. $3,500, the slaves-464 in number, at $7-50 per head-would realize $13,920 at Zanzibar! Again, let us illustrate trade in ivory. A merchant takes $5,000 to Ujiji, and after deducting $1,500 for expenses to Ujiji, and back to Zanzibar, has still remaining $3,500

tribe of Indians can produce scores of unconscionable rascals where they can show but one honest merchant. One of the honestest among men, white or black, red or yellow, is a Mohammedan Hindi called Tarya Topan. Among the Europeans at Zanzibar, he has become a proverb for honesty, and strict busines

gher and the middle classes. These classes own the estates, the shi

island are the negroes. They consist of the aborigines, Wasawahili, Somalis,

roes are men, like himself, though of a different colour; that they have passions and prejudices, likes and dislikes, sympathies and antipathies, tastes and feelings, in common with all human nature. The

uch, as much as if he were of my own colour and race. Neither his colour, nor any peculiarities of physiognomy should debar him with me from any rights he could fairly claim as a man. "Have these men-these black savages from pagan Africa," I asked myself, "the qualities which make man loveable among his fellows? Can these men-these barbarians-appreciate kindnes

or perform the work of carriers, whether in the country or in the city. Outside the city they may be seen carrying huge loads on their heads, as happy as possible, not because they are kindly treated or that their work is light, but because it is the

uiding of their pace as they shuffle through the streets with bare feet. You may recognise these men readily, before long, as old acquaintances, by the consistency with which they sing the tunes they have adopted. Several times during a day have I heard the same couple pass beneath

pulation of nearly one hundred thousand inhabitants; that of the island altogether I

he German, then come the French and English. They arrive loaded with American sheeting, brandy, gunpowder, muskets, beads, English cottons

is estimated at $3,000,000, and the im

are either Government officials, independent merchants, or ag

ria is exhaled from the shallow inlet of Malagash, and the undrained filth, the garbage, offal, dead mollusks, dead pariah dogs, dead cats, all species of carrion, remains of men and beasts unburied, assist to make Zanzibar a mo

itself, and what wonders would it not effect as to health and salubrity! I have never heard this suggestion made, but it struck me that the foreign consuls resident at Zanzibar might suggest this work to the Sultan, and so get the credit of having made it as healthy a place to live in as any near the equator. But apropos of this, I remember what Capt. Webb, the American Consul, told me on my first arrival, when I expressed to him my w

most energetic spirits are subdued, and to which they must submit in time, sooner or later. We were all terribly energetic when we first came here, and struggled bravely to make things go on as we were accustomed to have them at home, but we have found that we were knocking our heads against granite wal

ow one, an American; I fancy I hear the quick pit-pat of his feet on the pavement beneath the Consulate, his

ar several years, subject to the infructuosities of the business he has been engaged in, as well as to the calor and ennui of the climate, who yet presents

ican, English, German, and French residents have ever treated me with a courtesy and kindness I am not disposed to forg

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