Sir Richard Francis Burton

“ It is an old remark that Africa, the continent which became an island by the union of the twin seas in the year of grace 1869, despite her exuberant wealth and her wonderful powers of reproduction, is badly made—a trunk without limbs, a monotonous mass of painful symmetry, wanting opposition and contrast, like the uniform dark complexion of her sons and of her fauna—a solid body, like her own cocoa-nut, 117hard to penetrate from without, and soft within; an ‘individual of the earth,’ self-isolated by its savagery from the rest of the world. ”

“ The aspect of Zanzibar from the sea is that of coralline islands generally—a graceful, wavy outline of softly rounded ground, and a surface of ochre-coloured soil, thickly clothed with foliage alternating between the liveliest leek-green and the sombrest laurel, the only variety that vegetation knows in this land of eternal verdure. Everywhere the scenery is similar; each mile of it is a copy of its neighbour ”

“ The Msawahili is allowed to breathe his last upon a couch, and the corpse, after being washed by an Alim or by some kinsman, is hastily wrapped in a perfumed winding-sheet. Women of the highest rank sit at home in solitary grief. The middle-classes stain their faces, assume dark or dingy-coloured dresses, and repair to the sea-shore for the purpose of washing the dead man’s clothes before dividing them amongst his relations or distributing them to the poor. The slave girls shave their heads like Hindus, bathe, and go about the streets singing Neniæ, and mourning aloud. ”

“ Various legends of hair-oil rubbed upon the bulwarks have made many a tricked traveller a shallow infidel in the matter of smelling the land. But we soon learned that off Zanzibar, as off ‘Mozámbic,’ the fragrant vegetation makes old Ocean smile, pleased with the grateful smell, as of yore. The night breeze from the island is cool and heavy with clove perfume, and European residents carefully exclude the land-wind from their sleeping-rooms. ”

“ Usually the Moslem combines commerce with proselytizing, opposed to our system, which divides by a wide gulf the merchant’s career from that of the Missionary, and which unites them only upon the subscription sheet. These people care little to make converts: their African languor upon doctrinal points prevents their becoming fanatics or proselytizers. African also is their eternal, restless suspicion, the wisdom of serf and slave compensating for their sluggish imagination and small powers of concentration. ”

“ I am surprised at the combined folly and brutality of civilized husbands who, anxious to be widowers, poison, cut the throats, or smash the skulls of their better-halves. The thing can be as neatly and quietly, safely and respectably, effected by a few months of African air at Zanzibar or Fernando Po, as by the climate of the Maremma to which the enlightened Italian noble condemned his spouse. ”

“ The Arab care-takers, after refreshing us with cocoa-nut milk, led us out to inspect the grounds. These Semites, satiated with verdure, despise the idea of assisting nature, and yet at Maskat they will gaze delighted upon a dusty, ragged plot of sand-veiled rock, dotted with consumptive trees, and dignified by the name of a garden. Some years ago Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton taught the late Sayyid to plant rose-trees, which gave a crop as abundant as those of ancient Syria: during their owners’ absence the slaves uprooted the young growth in very wantonness. ”

“ The eyes are blackened with Kohl or antimony of El Sham—here not Syria, but the region about Meccah—and the mouth, crimsoned by betel, looks as if a tooth had just been knocked out.
None but women and slaves leave the house unarmed. The lowest Arab sticks an old dagger in his belt, handles a rusty spear, or shoulders a cheap firelock. Gulf men are generally known by their round targes (Tursi) made of carved and spangled rhinoceros or addax hide, toys with high central umbo, and at the utmost a foot in diameter; others have fish-skin shields, and the Baloch affect the Cutch ‘Dhal,’ or buckler. ”

“ Sayyid Said found himself overmatched, submitted to Kismat, and, admiring the traveller’s spirit and openness, determined to win his attachment. The two became firm friends; the Consul was the influential adviser of the ruler, and the latter intrusted him with secrets jealously hidden from his own. The reason why the trade of Zanzibar was surprisingly developed under the primitive rule of an Arab Prince is not only the immense wealth of Eastern Africa, it results mainly from the wise measures of a man who for the greater part of his life devoted himself to the task. ”

“ And as the Zanzibar Arab is mostly of burgher race in his own land, the forehead rarely displays that high development of the perceptive organs which characterizes the Bedawin.
The Arab noble is still, like those of Meccah in Mohammed’s day, a merchant, and here wealth has done much to degenerate the breed, climate more, and slavery most. The ‘Californian fever’—indolence—becomes endemic in the second generation, rendering the race hopeless, whilst industry is supplied by the gross, transparent cunning of the Wasawahili and of the African generally. ”

“ Curiosity may lead us to it in earliest morning, before the black world returns to life. During the day sun or rain, mud or dust, with the certain effluvia of carrion and negro, make it impossible to flâner through the foul mass of densely crowded dwelling-places where the slaves and the poor ‘pig’ together. The pauper classes are contented with mere sheds, and only the mildness of the climate keeps them from starving. ”

“ Many new arrivals complain of depressing insomnia, with alternations of lethargic sleep: I never enjoyed at Zanzibar the light refreshing rest of the desert. Yet the island is a favourable place for the young African traveller to undergo the inevitable ‘seasoning fever’fever’, which upon the coast or in the interior might prove fatal. The highlands, or the borders of the great central basin, are tolerably healthy, but an invalid would find no comforts there—hardly a waterproof roof. ”

“ In Zanzibar Island Kisawahili is most corrupted; the vocabulary, varying with every generation, has become a mere conglomerate which combines South African, Arabic, Persian, Hindi, and even Portuguese, an epitome of local history. On the coast it greatly varies, being constantly modified by the migration and mixture of tribes. Like the Malay of the Indian Islands, it has become the Lingua Franca, the Lingoa Geral of commerce from Ra’as Hafun to the Mozambique and throughout Central Intertropical Africa. ”

“ A mere mass of jungle, it has never been utilized. The eye, however, rests with pleasure upon the sheet of sparkling foam tumbling white over its coralline outliers, backed by dark purple-blue distance, and fronted by tranquil, leek-green shoal water. Connected with its neighbour by a reef practicable at low tides, it is separated from Changu, or Middle Island, by ‘French channel,’ deep enough for men-of-war. The shoals about it supply a small rock-oyster. The Crustacea, however, is uncultivated, and amongst Moslems it is escargot to the typical John Bull. ”

“ If pretty, and therefore wealthy, she wears heavy silver earrings run through the shell of the ear; her thumbs have similar decorations, and massive bangles of white metal adorn, like 115manacles and fetters, her wrists and ancles. One wing of her nose is bored to admit a stud—even the patches of Europe were not more barbarous. The Zanzibarian slave girl shaves her head smooth, till it shows brown and shiny like a well-polished cocoa-nut; and she drags along her ‘hopeful’—she has seldom more than one—a small black imp, wholly innocent of clothing. ”

“ During the Msika the horizon is obscured, 166dangerously indeed for ships: the wind veers round to every point of the compass; the sky is murky and overcast; huge purple nimbi, like moving mountains, float majestically against the wind, showing strong counter-currents in the upper aërial regions. From afar the island appears smothered in blue mist, and often the cloudrock splits into two portions, one of which makes for the coast. Even during the rare days of sunshine the distances, owing to the continuous humidity, are rarely clear, and the exhalations make refraction extensive. ”

“ On the West Coast of Africa the black chiefs often offer considerable sums for English dogs; but none save the lowest ‘palm-oil rough’ would condemn the ‘friend of man’ to this life of vile African slavery. It is really pathetic to meet one of these unfortunate exiles in the interior, where a white face is rarely seen: the frantic display of joy, and the evident horror at being left behind, have more than once made me a dog-stealer.
At Zanzibar, as upon the Continent, fowls may be bought in every village, the rate being 6 to 12 for the dollar, which a few years ago procured 36. ”

“ The sea of purest sapphire, which had not parted with its blue rays to the atmosphere—a frequent appearance near the equator—lay basking, lazy as the tropical man, under a blaze of sunshine which touched every object with a dull burnish of gold. ”

“ The Malagash Quarter is at the far east of the city, leading to two tumble-down bridges which span a lagoon more deadly than that of British Accra. These ruins might easily be converted into dykes, and in process of time the mouth would be sanded or silted up; they are however, fated to make way for iron improvements. In my day the lagoon was connected by 355fresh water with the sea, and became now a muddy pool at the ebb tides of the Syzygies, then a sheet of festering mud which nearly encircled the settlement, and which converted the site of Zanzibar city into a quasi-island. ”

“ All kinds of ‘Chilis,’ from the small wild ‘bird-pepper’ to the large variety of which the Spaniards are so fond, thrive in Zanzibar, which appears to be their home. There are extensive plantations of betel-pepper on the Eastern coast of the Island.
Wheat, barley, and oats here run to straw. Rice is the favourite cereal. The humid low-lands are cleared of weeds by burning, and the seed is sown when the first showers fall. To judge from the bazar-price, the home-grown article is of a superior quality; but nowhere in East Africa did I find the grain so nutritious as that of the Western Coast. ”

“ I heard of one jovial ‘Armalah’ who invited Europeans to petit soupers and parties fines, in which merriment takes precedence of modesty. The Arab women of Zanzibar appear unusually spirited, especially when compared with their lords; in every great house some energetic petticoat or rather trowsers takes or forces her husband or her brother to take the lead—perhaps, as nearer home, they are the more courageous and venturous in braving danger because the risk and the brunt do not fall upon their heads. Men of pure family will not give their daughters to any but fellow-clansmen. ”

“ They are huts of wattle and rufous loamy dab, to which large unbaked bricks of red clay are sometimes preferred. The usual cajan pent-roof forms deep dark eaves, propped by untrimmed palm-boles. These dwellings are unwholesome, because none boast of a second storey; they are not even built upon piles, and thus their sole defence against the surrounding malaria is the shrubbery planted by nature’s hand. Sickness seems generally, both in the island and on the continent, to follow turning up fresh soil, and the highlands are often more subject to miasma than the lowlands. ”

“ The Zanzibar Arab’s day is regular, varied only by a journey, a family festival, a debauch, or the yearly Ramazan fast. He rises at dawn for ablution and prayer, eats ‘Suwayk,’ a kind of vermicelli, wheaten bread, or even a little meat, drinks a cup of coffee, and chewing betel, repairs to the bazar for business or calls upon his friends. ”

“ The short-sighted traders dreaded, like Orientals, that competition might result from our discoveries, and their brains were too dull to perceive that the development of the resources of the interior would benefit all those connected with the coast. Houses that had amassed in a few years large fortunes by the Zanzibar trade, were exceedingly anxious to ‘let sleeping dogs lie.’ As far as dinners and similar hospitality, the white merchants resident on the Island received us with the usual African profuseness. ”

“ Drainage and cleanliness are panaceas for the evils of malaria where tropical suns shine. Drainage of swamps and lagoons can improve S’a Leone, and can take away the stink from South African barracks. Zanzibar city, I contend, owes much of its fatality to want of drainage, and it might readily be drained into comparative healthiness. But the East African Arab holds the possibility of pestilence and the probability of fever to be less real evils than those of cutting a ditch, of digging a drain, or of opening a line for ventilation. ”

“ The absence of Dr Steinhaeuser lost the East African Expedition more than can be succinctly told. A favourite with ‘natives’ wherever he went, a tried traveller, a man of literary tastes and of extensive reading, and better still, a spirit as staunch and determined as ever attempted desperate enterprise,—he would doubtless have materially furthered our views, and in all human probability Lieut. Speke would have escaped deafness and fever-blight, I paralysis and its consequent invalidism. ”

“ I have rarely met with a more honest, trustworthy man than Saíd bin Salim, the half-caste Arab, who was sent with us as Ra’as Kafilah, or guide. Such hitherto has been his character; but man varies in these regions: he may grievously disappoint me in the end. ”

“ A respectable man is derided if seen eating a bit of ripe cocoa-nut, a food for slaves and savages from the far west, but he greedily consumes the blanc-mange-like pulp of the Dáfu, which is supposed, probably from its appearance, to secrete virility. Rasped, the ripe kernel enters into many dishes; the cream squeezed from it is mixed with boiled rice, and the meat, kneaded with wheat-flour and clarified butter, is made, as at Goa, into scone-like cakes. No palm-wine is so delicious as that of the cocoa-tree, and the vinegar is proportionally good. ”

“ As in all Arab towns, the common cat abounds; it has a long tail and ears, a wild look, and a savage temper. This Asiatic importation is never thoroughly domesticated in Africa, and seems always aspiring to become a ‘cat o’ mountain’: on the West coast it is difficult to keep cats in the house after kittening. The feline preserves its fur in Zanzibar Island: at Mombasah there is or was a breed more grotesque than the Manx, and completely bald like the Chinese dog. The so-called ‘Indian badger’ (Arctonyx collaris, Cuv.) digs into the graves and devours the dead. ”