How I Found Livingstone, Henry M. Stanley [best fantasy books to read txt] 📗

to collect 175 frasilahs, which,

if good ivory, is worth about $60 per frasilah at Zanzibar.

The merchant thus finds that he has realized $10,500 net profit!

Arab traders have often done better than this, but they almost

always have come back with an enormous margin of profit.

 

The next people to the Banyans_in power in Zanzibar are the

Mohammedan Hindis. Really it has been a debateable subject in my

mind whether the Hindis are not as wickedly determined to cheat in

trade as the Banyans. But, if I have conceded the palm to the

latter, it has been done very reluctantly. This 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 business integrity. He is enormously wealthy,

owns several ships and dhows, and is a prominent man in the

councils of Seyd Burghash. Tarya has many children, two or three

of whom are grown-up sons, whom he has reared up even as he is

himself. But Tarya is but a representative of an exceedingly

small minority.

 

The Arabs, the Banyans, and the Mohammedan Hindis, represent the

higher and the middle classes. These classes own the estates,

the ships, and the trade. To these classes bow the half-caste

and the negro.

 

The next most important people who go to make up the mixed

population of this island are the negroes. They consist of the

aborigines, Wasawahili, Somalis, Comorines, Wanyamwezi, and a host

of tribal representatives of Inner Africa.

 

To a white stranger about penetrating Africa, it is a most

interesting walk through the negro quarters of the Wanyamwezi and

the Wasawahili. For here he begins to learn the necessity of

admitting that negroes 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 sooner he perceives this fact,

and adapts himself accordingly, the easier will be his journey

among the several races of the interior. The more plastic his

nature, the more prosperous will be his travels.

 

Though I had lived some time among the negroes of our Southern

States, my education was Northern, and I had met in the United

States black men whom I was proud to call friends. I was thus

prepared to admit any black man, possessing the attributes of true

manhood or any good qualities, to my friendship, even to a

brotherhood with myself; and to respect him for such, 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 kindness or feel resentment like myself?”

was my mental question as I travelled through their quarters

and observed their actions. Need I say, that I was much comforted

in observing that they were as ready to be influenced by passions,

by loves and hates, as I was myself; that the keenest observation

failed to detect any great difference between their nature and my

own?

 

The negroes of the island probably number two-thirds of the entire

population. They compose the working-class, whether enslaved or

free. Those enslaved perform the work required on the plantations,

the estates, and gardens of the landed proprietors, 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 their nature to be gay and

lighthearted, because they, have conceived neither joys nor hopes

which may not be gratified at will, nor cherished any ambition

beyond their reach, and therefore have not been baffled in their

hopes nor known disappointment.

 

Within the city, negro carriers may be heard at all hours, in

couples, engaged in the transportation of clove-bags, boxes of

merchandise, &c., from store to “godown” and from “go-down” to

the beach, singing a kind of monotone chant for the encouragement

of each other, and for the guiding 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 the windows

of the Consulate, delivering themselves of the same invariable tune

and words. Some might possibly deem the songs foolish and silly,

but they had a certain attraction for me, and I considered that

they were as useful as anything else for the purposes they were

intended.

 

The town of Zanzibar, situate on the south-western shore of the

island, contains a population of nearly one hundred thousand

inhabitants; that of the island altogether I would estimate at not

more than two hundred thousand inhabitants, including all races.

 

The greatest number of foreign vessels trading with this port are

American, principally from New York and Salem. After the American

come the German, then come the French and English. They arrive

loaded with American sheeting, brandy, gunpowder, muskets, beads,

English cottons, brass-wire, china-ware, and other notions, and

depart with ivory, gum-copal, cloves, hides, cowries, sesamum,

pepper, and cocoa-nut oil.

 

The value of the exports from this port is estimated at $3,000,000,

and the imports from all countries at $3,500,000.

 

The Europeans and Americans residing in the town of Zanzibar are

either Government officials, independent merchants, or agents for a

few great mercantile houses in Europe and America.

 

The climate of Zanzibar is not the most agreeable in the world. I

have heard Americans and Europeans condemn it most heartily. I

have also seen nearly one-half of the white colony laid up in one

day from sickness. A noxious malaria 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 most

unhealthy city; and considering that it it ought to be most healthy,

nature having pointed out to man the means, and having assisted him

so far, it is most wonderful that the ruling prince does not obey

the dictates of reason.

 

The bay of Zanzibar is in the form of a crescent, and on the

south-western horn of it is built the city. On the east Zanzibar

is bounded almost entirely by the Malagash Lagoon, an inlet of

the sea. It penetrates to at least two hundred and fifty yards of

the sea behind or south of Shangani Point. Were these two hundred

and fifty yards cut through by a ten foot ditch, and the inlet

deepened slightly, Zanzibar would become an island of 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 wonder at the apathy

and inertness of men born with the indomitable energy which

characterises Europeans and Americans, of men imbued with the

progressive and stirring instincts of the white people, who yet

allow themselves to dwindle into pallid phantoms of their kind,

into hypochondriacal invalids, into hopeless believers in the

deadliness of the climate, with hardly a trace of that daring

and invincible spirit which rules the world.

 

“Oh,” said Capt. Webb, “it is all very well for you to talk

about energy and all that kind of thing, but I assure you that a

residence of four or five years on this island, among such people

as are here, would make you feel that it was a hopeless task to

resist the influence of the example by which the 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 walls to no purpose whatever. These fellows—

the Arabs, the Banyans, and the Hindis—you can’t make them go

faster by ever so much scolding and praying, and in a very short

time you see the folly of fighting against the unconquerable.

Be patient, and don’t fret, that is my advice, or you won’t live

long here.”

 

There were three or four intensely busy men, though, at Zanzibar,

who were out at all hours of the day. I know one, an American; I

fancy I hear the quick pit-pat of his feet on the pavement beneath

the Consulate, his cheery voice ringing the salutation, “Yambo!”

to every one he met; and he had lived at Zanzibar twelve years.

 

I know another, one of the sturdiest of Scotchmen, a most

pleasant-mannered and unaffected man, sincere in whatever he did

or said, who has lived at Zanzibar 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 as formidable

a front as ever to the apathetic native of Zanzibar. No man can

charge Capt. H. C. Fraser, formerly of the Indian Navy, with being

apathetic.

 

I might with ease give evidence of the industry of others, but

they are all my friends, and they are all good. The American,

English, German, and French residents have ever treated me with a

courtesy and kindness I am not disposed to forget. Taken as a

body, it would be hard to find a more generous or hospitable colony

of white men in any part of the world.

 

CHAPTER III. ORGANIZATION OF THE EXPEDITION.

 

I was totally ignorant of the interior, and it was difficult at

first to know, what I needed, in order to take an Expedition into

Central Africa. Time was precious, also, and much of it could not

be devoted to inquiry and investigation. In a case like this, it

would have been a godsend, I thought, had either of the three

gentlemen, Captains Burton, Speke, or Grant, given some information

on these points; had they devoted a chapter upon, “How to get

ready an Expedition for Central Africa.” The purpose of this

chapter, then, is to relate how I set about it, that other

travellers coming after me may have the benefit of my experience.

 

These are some of the questions I asked myself, as I tossed on my

bed at night:—

 

“How much money is required?”

 

“How many pagazis, or carriers?

 

“How many soldiers?”

 

“How much cloth?”

 

“How many beads?”

 

“How much wire?”

 

“What kinds of cloth are required for the different tribes?”

 

Ever so many questions to myself brought me no clearer the exact

point I wished to arrive at. I scribbled over scores of sheets

of paper, made estimates, drew out lists of material, calculated

the cost of keeping one hundred men for one year, at so many yards

of different kinds of cloth, etc. I studied Burton, Speke, and

Grant in vain. A good deal of geographical, ethnological, and other

information