How I Found Livingstone | Page 4

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 kindly spirit always, though hidden under such a rugged
front; or I should have been obliged to pitch my double-clothed
American drill tent on the sandbeach of this tropical island, which was
by no means a desirable thing.
But Capt. Webb's opportune proposal to make his commodious and
comfortable house my own; to enjoy myself, with the request that I
would call for whatever I might require, obviated all unpleasant
alternatives.

One day's life at Zanzibar made me thoroughly conscious of my
ignorance respecting African people and things in general. I imagined I
had read Burton and Speke through, fairly well, and 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 information, were simply ridiculous, fanciful images
of African attractions were soon dissipated, anticipated pleasures
vanished, and all crude ideas began to resolve themselves into shape.
I strolled through the city. My general impressions are of crooked,
narrow lanes, white-washed houses, mortar-plastered streets, in the
clean quarter;--of seeing alcoves on each side, with deep recesses, with
a fore-ground of red-turbaned Banyans, and a back-ground of flimsy
cottons, prints, calicoes, domestics and what not; or of floors crowded
with ivory tusks; or of dark corners with a pile of unginned and loose
cotton; or of stores of crockery, nails, cheap Brummagem ware, tools,
&c., in what I call the Banyan quarter;--of streets smelling very
strong--in fact, exceedingly, malodorous, with steaming yellow and
black bodies, 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 wend on
evenings with most languid steps, to inhale the sweet air that glides
over the sea, while the day is dying and the red sun is sinking westward;
of a few graves of dead sailors, who paid the forfeit of their lives upon
arrival in this land; of a tall house wherein lives Dr. Tozer, "Missionary
Bishop of Central Africa," and his school of little Africans; and of
many other things, which got together into such a tangle, that I had to
go to sleep, lest I should never be able to separate the moving images,
the Arab from the African; the African from the Banyan; the Banyan
from the Hindi; the Hindi from the European, &c.
Zanzibar is the Bagdad, the Ispahan, the Stamboul, if you like, of East
Africa. It is the great mart which invites the ivory traders from the

African interior. To this market 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 traded
in jewels, Zanzibar trades in gum-copal; Stamboul imported Circassian
and Georgian slaves; Zanzibar imports black beauties from Uhiyow,
Ugindo, Ugogo, Unyamwezi and Galla.
The same mode of commerce obtains here as in all Mohammedan
countries--nay, the mode was in vogue long before Moses was born.
The Arab never changes. He brought the custom of his forefathers with
him when he came to live on this 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 the ridicule of the negroes can
make him change his modes of life. Yet the land has not become
Oriental; the Arab has not been able to change the atmosphere. The
land is semi-African in aspect; the city is but semi-Arabian.
To a new-comer into Africa, the Muscat Arabs of Zanzibar are studies.
There is a certain empressement about them which we must admire.
They are mostly all travellers. There are but few of them who have not
been in many 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; there is a calm, resolute, defiant, independent air about
them, which wins unconsciously one's respect. The stories that some of
these men could tell, I have