there is no name between the covers of the atlas more redolent of romance and adventure. ever since livingstone entered the african jungle on his mission of proselytism; ever since stanley entered the same jungle on his quest of livingstone; and ever since the railway-builders began to run their levels and lay their rails along the trail blazed by them both, zanzibar has been the chief gateway through which christianity, civilisation, and commerce have entered the dark continent. though its area has been steadily lessened by spoliation, treaty, and purchase, until the sultanate, which once extended from cape guardafui to delagoa bay and inland to the great lakes, has dwindled to two coastwise islands in the indian ocean, zanzibar the capital is still the most important place, politically and commercially, in all east africa, and one of the most picturesque and interesting cities in the world.
it bears the impress of the many kinds of men of many nationalities—arab sultans, slave-traders and pirates, portuguese merchants, european explorers, and ivory-hunters—who have swaggered across the pages of its history. four hundred years ago vasco da gama's exploring caravels dropped anchor in its harbour, and the architecture of the city is still portuguese; [pg 144] a century later the dhows of the piratical sultans of muskat swooped down, giving to zanzibar an arab dynasty, a lucrative slave trade and the arabic tongue; then a british war-ship came, bringing with it british law and order and decency, and, under the mask of a “protectorate,” british rule. though its golden age ended with the extermination of the trade in “black ivory,” it is still a place of considerable importance: the end of several submarine cables, a port of call for many steamship lines, a naval base within easy striking distance of the german and portuguese colonies on the east coast and guarding the lines of communication between the cape and the canal, and the place of export for the major portion of the world's supply of copra, cloves, and ivory.
seen from the harbour, zanzibar has little to commend it. so uninviting, indeed, is the face that it turns seaward, that the story is told of an american politician sent there as consul, who, after taking one look from the steamer's deck at the sun-baked town, with its treeless, yellow beach and its flat-roofed, whitewashed houses, refused to go ashore at all, from the next port at which the steamer called cabling his resignation to washington. though a city of something over one hundred thousand people, with the major portion of the trade of east africa in its hands, zanzibar has neither dock, jetty, nor wharf, passengers and packages alike being disembarked in small boats and carried through the surf on the shoulders of swahili boatmen. there are no words in the language adequate to describe the scene [pg 145] which takes place on the beach bordering the harbour when a mail steamer comes in. the passengers—white-helmeted tourists; pompous, drill-clad officials; sallow-faced parsee merchants; chattering hindoo artisans; haughty, hawk-nosed arabs; and cotton-clad swahilis from the mainland—are unceremoniously dumped with their belongings on the sand, where they instantly become the centres of shouting, pleading, cursing, struggling, gesticulating, perspiring mobs of porters and hotel-runners, from whose rough importunities they are rescued only by the efforts of a dozen askaris, who lay their rhinoceros-hide whips about them indiscriminately.
when a poor imitation of order has been restored and the luggage has been rescued and sorted, you start for the hotel—there is only one deserving of the name—with a voluble hotel-runner clinging to your arm as though afraid you would break away, and followed by a miniature safari of porters balancing trunks, hat-boxes, kit-bags, gun-cases, bath-tubs, and the other impedimenta of an african traveller on their turbaned heads. returning the ostentatious salute of the tan-coloured sentry at the head of the water-stairs, you follow your guide through a series of tortuous and narrow alleys, plunge into the darkness of an ill-smelling tunnel, and suddenly emerge, blinded with the sun-glare, into a thoroughfare lined on either side with tiny, fascinating, hole-in-the-wall shops, whose owners rush out and offer you their silver, ivory, and ostrich-feather wares vociferously.
quite unexpectedly the procession halts under a swinging sign bearing the legend “afrika hotel.” the proprietor, a rotund, red-cheeked german who looks as if he had stepped straight out of a munich beer-garden, escorts you pantingly up two—three—four flights of stone stairs, lined on either side with strange native weapons and east coast curios, to a brick-floored cell under the roof, there being more likelihood of catching an occasional breeze, he explains, near the top. wind in any form is as scarce in zanzibar as rain is in the sahara, and when they do get a breath of air strong enough to stir the window curtains it is as much of an event as a cyclone is in kansas. the furniture of the room, monastic in its simplicity, consists of an iron bed, an iron table, an iron chair, and an iron washstand supporting a tin bowl and pitcher, for anything which is not of metal stands an excellent chance of destruction by the devastating swarms of red ants. the bed is draped with a double thickness of mosquito netting of so fine a mesh that the air within feels strained and unnourishing, like milk that has been skimmed and watered, and the heavy shutters are closed in a fruitless attempt to keep out some of the stifling mid-day heat, though the proprietor, after glancing at the thermometer, remarks that it isn't so hot after all, being only 120 in the shade.
“zanzibar has neither dock, jetty, nor wharf, passengers and packages alike being disembarked in small boats and carried through the surf on the shoulders of swahili boatmen.”
the business portion of zanzibar is a wilderness of narrow streets and dim bazaars, hemmed in with tiny shops and wretched dwellings, with here and there an ancient house dating from the portuguese occupation.
photograph by delord, zanzibar.
the gateway to east africa.
you are advised to go to bed in the dark, as a light would attract the mosquitoes, and never, never, under any circumstances, to get into bed until you have assured yourself that there are no mosquitoes inside the [pg 147] curtains, though the proprietor cheerfully adds: “but you can only get fever from the black-and-white-striped ones.” likewise, you are solemnly warned never to go out of doors during the day without a topée lest you die from sunstroke (i knew one man who took off his helmet long enough to wave good-bye to a departing friend and was dead in an hour in consequence); never to drink other than bottled water (at two rupees the bottle) lest you die from typhoid; never to stay out of doors after nightfall lest you contract malaria; never to put on your boots without first shaking them out lest a snake or scorpion have chosen them to spend the night in; never to return late at night from the club without getting a policeman to escort you, lest a native thug run a knife between your shoulder-blades; and never to put your revolver under your pillow, where it cannot be reached without attracting attention, but to keep it beside you in the bed, so that you can shoot through the bedclothes without warning if you should wake up to find an intruder in your room.
the best and most interesting thing about the afrika hotel is its bath, a forbidding, stone-floored room, totally devoid of furniture or tub. it is separated from the sleeping-room by the hotel parlour, so that lady callers unaccustomed to zanzibar ways are sometimes a trifle startled to see a gentleman whose only garment is a bath-towel pass through the parlour with a hop-skip-and-jump on his way to the bath. you clap your hands, which is the east coast equivalent for pressing a button, and in prompt response appears an [pg 148] ebony-skinned domestic bearing on his head a standard oil can filled with water. running through a staple in the ceiling is a rope, and to the end of this rope he attaches the can, hoisting it until it swings a dozen feet above your head. hanging from a hole in the side of the can is a cord. when you are ready for your bath you stand underneath the can, jerk the cord sharply, and the can empties itself over you like a cloudburst. then you clap your hands and wait until the swahili brings more water, when you do it all over again.
the first thing the new arrival in zanzibar does is to bathe and put on a fresh suit of white linen, for to appear presentable in the terrible humidity of the east coast requires at least four white suits a day; and the second thing he does is to call upon the consul, a very homesick young gentleman, who is so glad to see any one from “god's country” that he is only too eager to spend his meagre salary in entertaining him. if it is drawing toward sunset you will probably find him just starting for the golf club, which is the rendezvous at nightfall for zanzibar's european society, whose chief recreations, so far as i could see, are golf, gambling, and gossip. with a sturdy, khaki-clad swahili, a brass american eagle on the front of his fez, trotting between the shafts of the consular 'rickshaw (the department of state refuses to appropriate enough money to provide our representative with a carriage), and another pushing behind, you whirl down the bright red highway which leads to the suburb of bububu; past the white residency from which the british consul-general gives [pg 149] his orders to the little brown man who is permitted to play at ruling zanzibar; past the police barracks, where, at sight of the eagle on the 'rickshaw coolies' fezes, the sentry on duty shouts some unintelligible jargon, a bugle blares, and a group of native constables spring into line and bring their hands smartly to the salute as you pass; past the marconi station on the cliff, where the wireless chatters ceaselessly with bagamoyo and kilindini and dar-es-salam; until you come to a sudden halt before a bungalow, almost hidden in a wonderful tropic garden, whose broad verandas overlook an emerald velvet golf course which stretches from the highway to the sea.
playing golf in zanzibar always struck me as one of the most incongruous things i ever did. it seems as though one ought to devote his energies to pirating or pearl-fishing or slave-trading in a place with such a name. moreover, there is such a continuous circus procession passing along the highway—natives in kangas of every pattern and colour; masai and swahili warriors from the mainland; parsee bankers in victorias and hindoo merchants in 'rickshaws; giant privates of the king's african rifles in bottle-green tunics and blue puttees; veiled women of the sultan's zenana out for an airing in cumbersome, gaudily painted barouches, preceded and followed by red-jacketed lancers on white horses; perhaps his highness himself, a dapper, discontented-looking young mulatto, whirling by in a big gray racing-car—that it is quite out of the question to keep your eye on the ball, and you play very bad golf [pg 150] in consequence. another trouble is that the caddies are all natives, and golf is discouraging enough in itself without having to shout “fore!” or ask for a mashie or a putter in swahili.
after a perfunctory round or two you go back to the club-house veranda, where the european society of zanzibar is seated in cane chairs, with the english illustrated weeklies, and tall glasses with ice tinkling in them. the talk is the talk of exiled white folk everywhere: the news contained in the reuter's despatches which are posted each evening on the club bulletin-board; the condition of the ivory market; the prospects for big game-shooting under the new german game laws; the favourites for the next day's cricket match, the next week's polo game, or the next month's race meet; the latest books, the newest plays—as gathered from the illustrated weeklies; what is going to become of smyth-cunninghame's widow, whose husband has just died of fever; is it true that major buffington has been transferred from the “k. a. r.” to a line regiment; and is germany really looking for war?
that night the consul gives a dinner for you at the zanzibar club, where you are served by bare-footed servants immaculate in crimson turbans and white linen, and eat with solid silver from irreproachable china, in a room made almost comfortable by many swinging punkahs. after dinner you sit on the terrace in the dark, somewhere between the ocean and the stars, and over the coffee and cigars you listen to strange stories of “the coast,” told by men who themselves played a [pg 151] part in them. one man tells you what stanley really said when, after months in the jungle without seeing a white man's face, he finally stumbled on the camp of livingstone, and how, instead of rushing up and throwing his arms around him and crying, “saved at last, old fellow; saved at last!” he lifted his helmet at sight of the gaunt, fever-stricken man sitting in front of the tent, and said very politely, just as he would if accosting a stranger on fifth avenue or piccadilly, “doctor livingstone, i believe?” another, a wiry, bright-eyed frenchman, with a face tanned to the colour of mahogany, tells of the days when the route from tanganyika to the coast was marked by the bleaching skeletons of slaves, and he points out to you, across the house-tops, the squalid dwelling in which tippoo tib, the greatest of all the slave-traders, died. a british commissioner, the glow of his cigar lighting up his ruddy face, his scarlet cummerbund, and his white mess jacket, relates in strictest confidence a chapter of secret diplomatic history, and you learn how the german foreign office shattered the british dream of an all-red cape-to-cairo railway, and why england is so desirous of the congo being placed under international control. a captain of the king's african rifles holds you spellbound with a recital of the amazing exploits of the american elephant poacher, rogers, who, jeering at the attempts of three governments to capture him, made himself, single-handed, the uncrowned king of equatoria. then a danish ivory-hunter breaks in, and you hear all sorts of wild tales of life on safari, of ivory-trading in the [pg 152] lado enclave, of brushes with the uganda police south of gondokoro, and of strange tribal customs practised in the hinterland. when the dawn begins to creep up out of the east, the englishmen tell the drowsy steward to bring them scotch and sodas and the frenchmen order absinthes; then every one shakes hands with every one else and you make your way back to your hotel through the narrow, silent streets, returning the salute of the night constable sleepily.
no visitor leaves zanzibar without going to the cemetery. like the palace, and the stone ship built by a former sultan, it is one of the show places of the city. i saw it under the guidance of a gloomy english resident, who said that he always walked there every evening “so as to get accustomed to the place before staying in it permanently.” leading me across the well-kept grass to two newly dug graves, he waved his hand in a “take-your-choice; they're-both-ready” gesture. “two deaths to-day?” i queried. “not yet,” said he, “but we always keep a couple of graves ready-dug for europeans. in this climate, you know, we have to bury very quickly.” for in zanzibar, as all along the east coast, the white man's hardest fight is with a foe he can feel only as a poison in his burning veins, and can see only in the dreams of his delirium—the deadly black-water fever.
though the streets in the outskirts of zanzibar are wide, well shaded, and excellently macadamised with some kind of bright-red soil which recalls the roads outside of colombo, in ceylon, the business portion of the [pg 153] town, where the natives chiefly live, is a labyrinth of narrow streets and dim bazaars, hemmed in with tiny shops and wretched dwellings, with here and there an ancient house dating from the portuguese occupation, impregnable as a feudal castle, its massive doorways of exquisitely carved teakwood in sharp contrast to the surrounding squalor. every shop is open to the street, and half of them, it seemed to me, are devoted to the sale of ivory carvings, ostrich feathers, brassware, and silver-work, though the arab workmanship is in all cases poorly executed and crude in design. the most typical things to be bought in zanzibar are the quaint images of african animals which the natives carve from the coarser grades of ivory and which make charming, though costly, souvenirs. nothing is cheap in zanzibar, or, for that matter, anywhere else in africa, and every purchase is a matter of prolonged and wearisome negotiation, the seller fixing a fantastic price and lowering it gradually, as he thinks discreet, his rock-bottom figure depending upon the behaviour and appearance of the customer.
zanzibar is still the chief ivory market of the world, the supplies of both elephant and rhino ivory, so i was assured by british officials, steadily increasing rather than diminishing. a few years ago it was feared that the supply of ivory would soon run out, but the indiscriminate slaughter of elephants has been checked, at least in british territory, by strict game laws rigidly enforced. whether from the laxity of its laws or the indifference of its officials, german east africa is still [pg 154] the ivory-hunter's paradise, the extermination of elephants in that colony proceeding almost unchecked. when one remembers that african ivory brings all the way from fifty dollars to five hundred dollars per hundredweight in the open market, and that the tusks of a full-grown elephant weigh anywhere from one hundred to five hundred pounds, it will be seen that the ivory-hunter's trade is a profitable though a hazardous one. other ivory-hunters, instead of going after the elephants themselves, spend their time in journeying from village to village and bartering with the natives for the stores of ivory—some of them the produce of centuries—which most of them possess. unless the trader knows his business, however, the simple-minded natives will sell him the so-called “dead” ivory from the bottom of the pile rather than the “live” ivory of elephants recently killed, which, because of its greater elasticity and better colour, commands a much higher price, and, i might add, forms but a small part of the supply. somewhere in the neighbourhood of half a million pounds of ivory are shipped from zanzibar each year to make the toilet-articles and billiard-balls and piano-keys of the world.
the population of zanzibar is pretty evenly divided between arabs and swahilis, with a considerable sprinkling of east indians, who play the same r?les of peddlers, petty tradesmen, and money-lenders in the orient that the jews and armenians do in the occident. the dress of the swahili is as simple as it is striking: two lengths of cotton cloth, called kanga, one draped about the waist and the other about the shoulders, with [pg 155] an extra remnant twisted into a turban, form the costume of men and women alike, though the swahili women, in addition to the kanga proper, wear cotton pantalets resembling those in fashion in ante-bellum days, edged at the ankles with neat little frills, like those the chefs at fashionable restaurants put on lamb chops. these kangas are crudely stamped in an endless variety of startling patterns, some of the more elaborate designs looking, from a little distance, as though embroidered. the inventiveness of the british, belgian, and german designers must be sorely taxed, for the fashions in east africa change as rapidly as they do in paris and with as little warning, the kangas stamped with card-pips—hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades—which were all the rage among zanzibar's dusky leaders of fashion for a time, suddenly giving place to those bearing crude pictures of sailing-ships or arabic quotations from the koran. one negro dandy whom i saw paraded the streets, the envied of all his fellows, wearing a kanga on which was printed, in endless repetition, the british coat of arms and the loyal motto “god save the king!” while still another swaggered by in a garment sprinkled over with the legend in letters six inches high “remember the maine!” though the important trade in cotton goods which we once had with east africa has long since passed into british and german hands, there is a certain melancholy satisfaction in knowing that, so firmly does the reputation of our cottons endure, the natives of all this region still insist on the piece goods which they purchase, whether made in [pg 156] manchester or dresden, bearing the stamp “american,” and will take no other.
the costumes of the arabs, on the other hand, recall all the stories of pirates and slave-traders which one associates with this romantic coast, for the men, ignoring the law which prohibits the carrying of arms, swagger insolently through the streets with dagger-filled sashes and trailing scimiters, their white jibbahs flapping about their sandalled feet and their snowy turbans cocked rakishly. the dress of the arab women of zanzibar resembles the costume of no other people, its characteristic features being the immense, doughnut-shaped turbans and the frilled, skin-tight trousers striped like barber-poles.
arab women of zanzibar.
“their dress resembles the costume of no other people, its characteristic features being the immense, doughnut-shaped turbans and the frilled, skin-tight trousers striped like barber-poles.”
the universal medium of communication in zanzibar and along the east coast is swahili, this lingua franca being generally used not only between arabs and natives, and between natives and europeans, but between europeans themselves, the english, french, and portuguese traders who do business in german east africa depending entirely upon this mutually understood tongue for conversing with the germans. i remember once, in dar-es-salam, listening to an englishman who knew no french and a frenchman who knew no english hold an animated political argument, and later on bargain with the german hotel-keeper for accommodations in the same outlandish tongue.
i have always found that the farther people dwell from civilisation, the more punctilious they are about observing its usages. that is why english officials [pg 157] at remote and lonely stations in india invariably put on evening clothes before they sit down to their solitary dinners, and why the question of precedence is not taken nearly as seriously in london or paris or new york as it is in entebbe or sierra leone. one would quite naturally suppose that the europeans dwelling in those sun-scorched, fever-ridden, god-forsaken countries along the east coast would adopt the careless attitude of kipling's homesick soldier, who longed for a land “where there ain't no ten commandments and a man can raise a thirst”; but, strangely enough, the exact opposite is the case. there is plenty of drinking throughout africa, it is true, for the white men dwelling there will assure you that to exist in such a climate a man must “keep his liver afloat,” but, though heavy drinking is the rule, the man who so far loses control of himself as to step beyond the bounds of decency is ostracised with a promptness and completeness unheard of in more civilised places. this respect for the social conventions was graphically illustrated by an unpleasant little episode which occurred during my stay in zanzibar. a young englishman, who had been rubber-prospecting in the wilds of the back country for nearly a year, celebrated his return to civilisation, or what stands out there for civilisation, by giving a stag dinner at the club. it was rather a hilarious affair, as such things go, and when it broke up at dawn every one had had quite as much to drink as was good for him, while the youthful host had had entirely too much. in fact, he insisted on winding up the jollification by smashing all the crockery and [pg 158] glassware in sight, and, when the native steward remonstrated, he tripped him up very neatly and sat on him. some hours later, being sober and very much ashamed of himself, he sent a check for the damage he had done, together with a manly letter of apology, to the board of governors, which promptly responded by demanding his resignation. now, to drop a man from a club in east africa is equivalent to marooning him on a desert island, for out there the club is invariably the rendezvous of the respectable european society, the only place where one can get a european book or newspaper to read or a well-cooked meal to eat, and the scene of those dinners, dances, card parties, charades, and other forms of amusement which help to make existence in that region endurable. not content with demanding his resignation and thus closing to him the gateway to every decent form of recreation in zanzibar, the virtuous board of governors notified every other club on the coast of its action, so that when business called the youngster to mombasa or dar-es-salam or louren?o marques, he found himself barred from the privileges of the clubs in those places as well. but his punishment did not end there, for, a few days after his escapade, two club members to whom he nodded upon the street cut him dead, while another, a man whom he had known intimately for years, answered his greeting by remarking, as he raised his eyebrows, “really, sir, i don't think i have the pleasure of your acquaintance.”
in the happy-go-lucky days before the reorganisation of our consular service a profane and uncouth [pg 159] lumberman named mulligan—the name will do as well as another—was rewarded for certain political services by being appointed consul at zanzibar. at that time the american consulate was in a building on the edge of the harbour and almost next door to the sultan's palace. mulligan had not been in zanzibar a week before he began to complain that he was being robbed of his sleep by the women of the royal harem, who chose the comparatively cool hour just before sunrise in which to bathe on the sandy beach below the consulate windows. mulligan, after making numerous complaints without receiving any satisfaction, openly announced that the next morning he was disturbed he would take the law into his own hands. he did not have to wait long for an opportunity, for, returning a few nights later from an unusually late séance at the club, he had scarcely fallen asleep when he was aroused by the shrieks of laughter of native women bathing beneath his window. springing out of bed, he caught up a shot-gun standing in the corner, slipped in a shell loaded with bird-shot, and, pushing the muzzle out of the window, fired at random. the roar of the discharge was echoed by a chorus of piercing screams and arabic ejaculations of pain and terror, whereupon the consul, satisfied that he had effectually frightened the disturbers of his rest, returned to bed and to sleep. an hour later he was reawakened by his excited vice-consul, who burst into the bedroom exclaiming, “you'll have to get out of here quick, mr. consul! it won't be healthy for you in zanzibar after what happened this [pg 160] morning. there's a german boat in the harbour and if you hurry you'll just about catch her! but there's no time to spare.” “now, what the devil have i got to get out of here for, confound you?” demanded the consul, now thoroughly awake and thoroughly angry. “certainly not because i frightened a lot of nigger wenches who were waking me up at four o'clock every morning with their damned hullabaloo?” “nigger wenches nothing!” exclaimed the vice-consul, as he began to throw his chief's belongings into a trunk. “when you let off that load of bird-shot this morning you peppered the sultan's favourite wife, and now the old man's fairly hopping with rage and swears that he'll have your life even if you are the american consul.” forty minutes later ex-consul mulligan ascended the gangway of a homeward-bound steamer, for those were the days before the british protectorate, when the tyrannical sultans of zanzibar were laws unto themselves.
the morning before i left i went with the consul to call on his highness seyyid ali bin hamoud bin mohammed, the sultan of zanzibar. [3] the 'rickshaw stopped with a jerk in front of the handsome iron gates of the palace; the guard turned out and presented arms, while a negro bugler sounded a barbaric fanfare; an official in white linen and much gold lace met us at the entrance and escorted us up flight after flight of heavily carpeted stairs, until we emerged, breathless and perspiring, [pg 161] on the breeze-swept upper veranda of the four-story building, which, with its long piazzas and its uncompromising architecture, looks more than anything else like an american summer hotel. after a quarter of an hour spent in smoking highly perfumed cigarettes, another official announced that his highness would receive us, and we were ushered into a small room furnished like an office, where a pleasant-looking young negro of twenty-six or so was sitting at an american roll-top desk dictating letters to an english secretary. like every one else, he was dressed entirely in white linen, with a red tarboosh, gold shoulder-straps, and pumps of white buckskin. motioning us to be seated, he offered us more of the perfumed cigarettes, inquiring, with an eton accent, as to the state of my health, when i arrived, what were my impressions of zanzibar, when i intended to leave, and where i was going. as we were bowing ourselves out, after ten minutes of perfunctory conversation, the sultan's secretary sidled up and whispered: “his highness expects that you will give him the pleasure of staying to luncheon.”
[3] since this was written sultan ali bin hamoud has abdicated in favour of his cousin, seyyid khalifa.
the luncheon was very much the same as one would get at sherry's or claridge's or the café de paris, except that for our special benefit a few native dishes with strange names and still stranger flavours had been added to the menu. the wines were irreproachable and the hodeidah coffee and aleppo cigarettes could have been had nowhere west of suez. my eye was caught by the magnificence of the jewel-monogrammed cigarette-case which the sultan constantly passed to me, and i ventured [pg 162] to comment on it admiringly. “do you like it?” said he, with a pleased smile. “it is only a trifle that i picked up last spring in paris. accept it from me as a little souvenir of your visit to zanzibar—really—please do.” quite naturally i hesitated, as who would not at accepting offhand a thing worth a couple of thousand rupees. the sultan looked disappointed. “it is not worthy of you,” he remarked. “some day i shall send you something more fitting,” and he put it back in his pocket. all the rest of my stay in zanzibar i kept thinking how near i came to getting that magnificent case, and what a story it would have made to tell at dinner tables over the camembert and coffee; and it almost spoiled my visit. as i was leaving the palace the military secretary inquired: “why on earth didn't you take the cigarette case when the sultan offered it?” “polite hesitation,” i replied. “i was going to accept it in just a minute.” “in the east you should accept first and hesitate afterward,” he answered.
after luncheon i played billiards with the sultan. he is a good player, and it was no trouble at all to let royalty win gracefully. the conversation turned on america. it seemed that the two americans whom his highness most admired were theodore roosevelt and john philip sousa; the one because he had visited africa and proved himself a real shikari; the other because he had immortalised the sultan's dominions in his a typical tune of zanzibar. (it happened that a month or so later i dined with mr. sousa in johannesburg and told him this incident, whereupon he offered to send the [pg 163] sultan an autographed copy of el capitan. if he has forgotten to do it, this will serve to remind him that the sultan's address is still “the palace, zanzibar.”) incidentally his highness mentioned that he was about to be married. later on the english secretary supplemented this by explaining that his latest bride—he already had three wives—was the fifteen-year-old daughter of a well-to-do merchant in the bazaars, with whom the sultan had been haggling regarding the price to be paid for the girl for a year or more. after a time we strolled out on the breeze-swept veranda. as i leaned over the railing i noticed something sticking up out of the harbour and i pointed to it. “what is that, your highness?” i inquired. “a wreck,” he answered shortly. “a wreck! a wreck of what?” i persisted. “the wreck of the zanzibar navy,” he said, turning away—and i suddenly recalled the story of the little gun-boat with its negro crew that stood up to the great british cruiser and banged away with its toy guns until it was sent to the bottom with every man on board, and all at once i felt very sorry for this youth, whose fathers held sway over a dominion as large as all that part of the united states lying west of the rocky mountains, but which, thanks to the insatiable land hunger of the european nations, has dwindled to a territory scarcely larger than rhode island.
that in the not far-distant future zanzibar will again play a part in the drama of international politics there is but little doubt. the island's position adjacent to the mainland, from which it is separated by a channel [pg 164] less than thirty miles wide, combined with the advantages of its deep and roomy harbour, mark it naturally as the chief entrep?t of all east africa, and the gate through which the interior of the continent is destined to be opened up to european settlement and exploitation. being almost equidistant—some two thousand four hundred miles—from india, the cape, and the canal, and controlling the lines of cable communication with madagascar and mauritius, it affords a strategic position of immense importance as a naval base in the contingency of closing the suez canal in time of war. germany has long had a greedy eye on zanzibar, for the nation that holds it controls, both strategically and commercially, germany's east african possessions and their capital of dar-es-salam. that england would be willing to turn zanzibar over to germany in return for the cession of a strip of territory through german east africa which would permit the completion of her long-dreamed-of, and at present indefinitely interrupted, cape-to-cairo trunk line, there is every reason to believe. so i trust that the little brown man in the white-and-gold uniform will enjoy playing at sovereignty while he may, for if that day ever comes to pass when the red banner on his palace flagstaff is replaced with the standard of germany, there will pass into the pleasant oblivion of the paris boulevards the last of a long line of one-time powerful, oftentimes piratical, but always picturesque rulers, the sultans of zanzibar.
