The Last Frontier

elytism; 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 rail

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

y 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

dred 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

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

lains, 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 des

nd packages alike being disembarked in small boats and car

d dim bazaars, hemmed in with tiny shops and wretched dwellings, with

by DeLord

AY TO EAS

e 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

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 ca

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; p

rriors 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 d

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

f 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 con

stomed 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

mpregnable 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 o

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 prod

hefs 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, th

f 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 o

MEN OF

acteristic features being the immense, doughnut-shaped turbans

s 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,

tness 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

ng 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 hur

f 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 entirel

Ali bin Hamoud has abdicated in fa

ment 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

n 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 in

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