Chapter XVII · (continued 5)

"Sir,—I am directed by the Right Honourable the Governor in Council to acknowledge the receipt of your letter dated the 26th April last, soliciting compensation on behalf of yourself and other members of the late Somalee Expedition, for losses sustained by you and them.

"2. In reply, I am desired to inform you, that under the opinion copied in the margin [here reproduced below], expressed by the late Governor-General of India, the Right Honourable the Governor in Council cannot accede to the application now preferred.

"I have, etc.,

"(Signed) H. L. Anderson,

"Secretary to Government."

[From margin.] "Having regard to the conduct of the Expedition, his Lordship cannot think that the officers who composed it have any just claims on the Government for their personal losses."

END OF FIRST CORRESPONDENCE.

[Here begins the Speke and Rigby cabal.]

Second Correspondence.

1.

"India Office, E.C., November 8th, 1859.

"Sir,—I am directed by the Secretary of State for India in Council to forward for your information, copy of a letter addressed by Captain Rigby, her Majesty's Consul and Agent at Zanzibar, to the Government of Bombay, respecting the non-payment of certain persons hired by you to accompany the Expedition under your command into Equatorial Africa, and to request that you will furnish me with any observations which you may have to make upon the statements contained in that letter.

"Sir Charles Wood especially desires to be informed why you took no steps to bring the services of the men who accompanied you, and your obligations to them, to the notice of the Bombay Government.

"I am, Sir,

"Your obedient servant,

"(Signed) T. Cosmo Melvill.

"Captain R. Burton."

2.

No. 70 of 1859. Political Department.

From Captain C. P. Rigby, her Majesty's Consul and British Agent, Zanzibar, to H. L. Anderson, Esquire, Secretary to Government, Bombay.

"Zanzibar, July 15th, 1859.

"Sir,—I have the honour to report, for the information of the Right Honourable the Governor in Council, the following circumstances connected with the late East African Expedition under the command of Captain Burton.

"2. Upon the return of Captain Burton to Zanzibar in March last, from the interior of Africa, he stated that, from the funds supplied him by the Royal Geographical Society for the expenses of the Expedition, he had only a sufficient sum left to defray the passage of himself and Captain Speke to England, and in consequence the persons who accompanied the Expedition from here, viz. the Kafila Bashi, the Belooch sepoys, and the porters, received nothing whatever from him on their return.

"3. On quitting Zanzibar for the interior of Africa, the Expedition was accompanied by a party of Belooch soldiers, consisting of a Jemadar and twelve armed men. I understand they were promised a monthly salary of five dollars each; they remained with the Expedition for twenty months, and as they received nothing from Captain Burton beyond a few dollars each before starting, his Highness the Sultan has generously distributed amongst them the sum of two thousand three hundred (2300) dollars.

"4. The head clerk of the Custom House here, a Banian, by name Ramjee, procured ten men, who accompanied the Expedition as porters. They were promised five dollars each per mensem, and received pay for six months, viz. thirty dollars each before starting for the interior. They were absent for twenty months, during three of which the Banian Ramjee states that they did not accompany the Expedition. He now claims eleven months' pay for each of these men, as they have not been paid anything beyond the advance before starting.

"5. The head clerk also states that, after the Expedition left Zanzibar, he sent two men to Captain Burton with supplies, one of whom was absent with the Expedition seventeen months, and received nothing whatever; the other, he states, was absent fifteen months, and received six months' pay, the pay for the remaining nine months being still due to him. Thus his claim amounts to the following sum:—

Dollars.

Ten men for eleven months, at five dollars per man per month 550

One man for seventeen ""85

One man for nine ""45

Total 680

"6. These men were slaves, belonging to 'deewans,' or petty chiefs, on the opposite mainland. They travel far into the interior to collect and carry down ivory to the coast, and are absent frequently for the space of two or three years. When hired out, the pay they receive is equally divided between the slave and the master. Captain Speke informs me, that when these men were hired, it was agreed that one-half of their hire should be paid to the men, and the other half to Ramjee on account of their owners. When Ramjee asked Captain Burton for their pay, on his return here, he declined to give him anything, saying that they had received thirty dollars each on starting, and that he could have bought them for a less sum.

"7. The Kafila Bashi, or chief Arab, who accompanied the Expedition, by name Said bin Salem, was twenty-two months with Captain Burton. He states that on the first journey to Pangany and Usumbara, he received fifty (50) dollars from Captain Burton; and that before starting on the last Expedition, to discover the Great Lake, the late Lieutenant-Colonel Hamerton presented him with five hundred dollars on behalf of Government for the maintenance of his family during his absence. He states that he did not stipulate for any monthly pay, as Colonel Hamerton told him that if he escorted the gentlemen to the Great Lake in the interior, and brought them in safety back to Zanzibar, he would be handsomely rewarded, and both Captain Speke and Mr. Apothecary Frost inform me that Colonel Hamerton frequently promised Said bin Salem that he should receive a thousand dollars and a gold watch if the Expedition were successful.

"8. As it appeared to me that Colonel Hamerton had received no authority from Government to defray any part of the expenses of this Expedition, and probably made these promises, thinking that if the exploration of the unknown interior were successful a great national object would be attained, and that the chief man who conducted the Expedition would be liberally rewarded, and as Captain Burton had been furnished with funds to defray the expenses, I told him that I did not feel authorized to make any payment without the previous sanction of Government, and Said bin Salem has therefore received nothing whatever since his return.

"9. Said bin Salem also states, that on the return of the Expedition from Lake Tanganyika, seventy (70) natives of the country were engaged as porters, and accompanied the Expedition for three months; and that on arriving at a place called 'Kootoo,' a few days' journey from the sea-coast, Captain Burton wished them to diverge from the correct route to the coast opposite Zanzibar, to accompany him south to Keelwa; but they refused to do so, saying that none of their people ever dared to venture to Keelwa, where the chief slave-trade on the east coast is carried on. No doubt their fears were well grounded. These men received nothing in payment for their three months' journey, and, as no white man had ever penetrated into their country previously, I fear that any future traveller will meet with much inconvenience in consequence of these poor people not having been paid.

"10. As I considered that my duty connected with the late Expedition was limited to affording it all the aid and support in my power, I have felt very reluctant to interfere with anything connected with the non-payment of these men; but Said bin Salem and Ramjee having appealed to me, and Captain Speke, since his departure from Zanzibar, having written me two private letters, pointing out so forcibly the claims of these men, the hardships they endured, and the fidelity and perseverance they showed, conducting them safely through unexplored countries, and stating also that the agreements with them were entered into at the British Consulate, and that they considered they were serving the British Government, that I deem it my duty to bring their claims to the notice of Government; for I feel that if these men remain unpaid, after all they have endured in the service of British officers, our name for good faith in these countries will suffer, and that any future traveller wishing to further explore the interesting countries of the interior will find no persons willing to accompany them from Zanzibar, or the opposite mainland.

"11. As there was no British agent at Zanzibar for thirteen months after the death of Colonel Hamerton, the Expedition was entirely dependent on Luddah Damha, the Custom-master here, for money and supplies. He advanced considerable sums of money without any security, forwarding all requisite supplies, and, Captain Speke says, afforded the Expedition every assistance in the most handsome manner. Should Government, therefore, be pleased to present him with a shawl, or some small mark of satisfaction, I am confident he is fully deserving of it, and it would gratify a very worthy man to find that his assistance to the Expedition is acknowledged.

"I have, etc.,

"(Signed) C. P. Rigby, Captain,

"H.M.'s Consul and British Agent, Zanzibar."

3.

"East India United Service Club, St. James's Square,

"November 11th, 1859.

"Sir,—I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your official letter, dated the 8th of November, 1859, forwarding for my information copy of a letter, addressed by Captain Rigby, her Majesty's Consul and Agent at Zanzibar, to the Government of Bombay, respecting the non-payment of certain persons hired by me to accompany the Expedition under my command into Equatorial Africa, and apprising me that Sir C. Wood especially desires to be informed why I took no steps to bring the services of the men who accompanied me, and my obligations to them, to the notice of the Bombay Government.

"In reply to Sir Charles Wood, I have the honour to state that, as the men alluded to rendered me no service, and as I felt in no way obliged to them, I would not report favourably of them. The Kafilah Bashi, the Jemadar, and the Beloch were servants of H.H. Sayyid Majid, in his pay and under his command. They were not hired by me, but by the late Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton, H.M.'s Consul and H.E.I.C.'s Agent at Zanzibar, and they marched under the Arab flag. On return to Zanzibar, I reported them as undeserving of reward to Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton's successor, Colonel Rigby, and after return to England, when my accounts were sent in to the Royal Geographical Society, I appended a memorandum, that as those persons had deserved no reward, no reward had been applied for.

"Before proceeding to reply to Captain Rigby's letter, paragraph by paragraph, I would briefly premise with the following remarks:—

"Being ordered to report myself to Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton, and having been placed under his direction, I admitted his friendly interference, and allowed him to apply to H.H. the Sultan for a guide and an escort. Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton offered to defray, from public funds, which he understood to be at his disposal, certain expenses of the Expedition, and he promised, as reward to the guide and escort, sums of money, to which, had I been unfettered, I should have objected as exorbitant. But in all cases the promises made by the late Consul were purely conditional, depending entirely upon the satisfactory conduct of those employed. These facts are wholly omitted in Captain Rigby's reports.

"2. Captain Rigby appears to mean that the Kafila Bashi, the Beloch sepoys, and the porters received nothing whatever on my return to Zanzibar, in March last, from the interior of Africa because the funds supplied to me by the Royal Geographical Society for the expenditure of the Expedition, had been exhausted, besides the sum of one thousand pounds (£1000) granted by the Foreign Office. I had expended from my own private resources nearly fourteen hundred pounds (£1400), and I was ready to expend more had the expenditure been called for. But, though prepared on these occasions to reward liberally for good service, I cannot see the necessity, or rather I see the unadvisability, of offering a premium to notorious misconduct. This was fully explained by me to Captain Rigby on my return to Zanzibar.

"3. Captain Rigby 'understands' that the party of Beloch sepoys, consisting of a Jemadar and twelve armed men, were promised a monthly salary of five dollars each. This was not the case. Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton advanced to the Jemadar twenty-five, and to each sepoy twenty dollars for an outfit; he agreed that I should provide them with daily rations, and he promised them an ample reward from the public funds in case of good behaviour. These men deserved nothing; I ignore their 'fidelity' and 'perseverance,' and I assert that if I passed safely through an unexplored country, it was in no wise by their efforts. On hearing of Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton's death, they mutinied in a body. At the Tanganyika Lake they refused to escort me during the period of navigation, a month of danger and difficulty. When Captain Speke proposed to explore the Nyanza Lake, they would not march without a present of a hundred dollars' worth of cloth. On every possible occasion they clamoured for bakshish, which, under pain of endangering the success of the Expedition, could not always be withheld. They were often warned by me that they were forfeiting all hopes of a future reward, and, indeed, they ended by thinking so themselves. They returned to Zanzibar with a number of slaves, purchased by them with money procured from the Expedition. I would not present either guide or escort to the Consul; but I did not think it my duty to oppose a large reward, said to be 2300 dollars, given to them by H.H. the Sultan, and I reported his liberality and other acts of kindness to the Bombay Government on my arrival at Aden. This fact will, I trust, exonerate me from any charge of wishing to suppress my obligations.

"4. The Banyan Ramjee, head clerk of the Custom House, did not, as is stated by Captain Rigby, procure me ten (10) men who accompanied the Expedition as porters; nor were these men, as is asserted (in par. 6), 'slaves belonging to deewans or petty chiefs on the opposite mainland.' It is a notorious fact that these men were private slaves, belonging to the Banyan Ramjee, who hired them to me direct, and received from me as their pay, for six months, thirty dollars each; a sum for which, as I told him, he might have bought them in the bazaar. At the end of six months I was obliged to dismiss these slaves, who, as is usually the case with the slaves of Indian subjects at Zanzibar, were mutinous in the extreme. At the same time, I supplied them with cloth, to enable them to rejoin their patron. On my return from the Tanganyika Lake, they requested leave to accompany me back to Zanzibar, which I permitted, with the express warning that they were not to consider themselves re-engaged. The Banyan, their proprietor, had, in fact, sent them on a trading trip into the interior under my escort, and I found them the most troublesome of the party. When Ramjee applied for additional pay, after my return to Zanzibar, I told him that I had engaged them for six months; that I had dismissed them at the end of six months, as was left optional to me; and that he had already received an unusual sum for their services. This conversation appears in a distorted form and improperly represented in the concluding sentence of Captain Rigby's 6th paragraph.

"5 and 6. With respect to the two men sent on with supplies after the Expedition had left Zanzibar, they were not paid, on account of the prodigious disappearance of the goods entrusted to their charge, as I am prepared to prove from the original journals in my possession. They were dismissed with their comrades, and never afterwards, to the best of my remembrance, did a day's work.

"7 and 8. The Kafilah Bashi received from me for the first journey to Usumbara fifty (50) dollars. Before my departure in the second Expedition he was presented by Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton with five hundred (500) dollars, almost double what he had expected. He was also promised, in case of good conduct, a gold watch, and an ample reward, which, however, was to be left to the discretion of his employers. I could not recommend him through Captain Rigby to the Government for remuneration. His only object seemed to be that of wasting our resources and of collecting slaves in return for the heavy presents made to the native chiefs by the Expedition, and the consequence of his carelessness or dishonesty was, that the expenditure on the whole march, until we had learnt sufficient to supervise him, was inordinate. When the Kafilah Bashi at last refused to accompany Captain Speke to the Nyanza Lake, he was warned that he also was forfeiting all claim to future reward, and when I mentioned this circumstance to Captain Rigby at Zanzibar, he then agreed with me that the 500 dollars originally advanced were sufficient.

"9. With regard to the statement of Said bin Salim concerning the non-payment of the seventy-three porters, I have to remark that it was mainly owing to his own fault. The men did not refuse to accompany me because I wished to diverge from the 'correct route,' nor was I so unreasonable as to expect them to venture into the jaws of the slave-trade. Several caravans that had accompanied us on the down-march, as well as the porters attached to the Expedition, were persuaded by the slaves of Ramjee (because Zanzibar was a nearer way to their homes) not to make Kilwa. The pretext of the porters was simply that they would be obliged to march back for three days. An extra remuneration was offered to them; they refused it, and left in a body. Shortly before their departure Captain Speke proposed to pay them for their services, but being convinced that they might be prevented from desertion, I did not judge it advisable by paying them, to do what would be virtually dismissing them. After they had proceeded a few miles, Said bin Salim was sent to recall them, on conditions which they would have accepted; he delayed, lost time, and ended by declaring that he could not travel without his dinner. Another party was instantly sent; they also loitered on the way, and thus the porters reached the coast and dispersed. Before their departure I rewarded the Kirangozi, or chief man of the caravan, who had behaved well in exhorting his followers to remain with us. I was delayed in a most unhealthy region for the arrival of some down porters, who consented to carry our goods to the coast; and to prove to them that money was not my object, I paid the newly engaged gang as if they had marched the whole way. Their willingness to accompany me is the best proof that I had not lost the confidence of the people. Finally, on arrival at the coast, I inquired concerning those porters who had deserted us, and was informed by the Diwan and headman of the village that they had returned to their homes in the interior, after a stay of a few days on the seaboard. This was a regrettable occurrence, but such events are common on the slave-path in Eastern Africa, and the established custom of the Arabs and other merchants, whom I had consulted upon the subject before leaving the interior, is not to encourage desertion by paying part of the hire, or by settling for porterage before arriving at the coasts. Of the seven gangs of porters engaged on this journey, only one, an unusually small proportion, left me without being fully satisfied.

"10. That Said bin Salim, and Ramjee, the Banyan, should have appealed to Captain Rigby, according to the fashion of Orientals, after my departure from Zanzibar, for claims which they should have advanced when I refused to admit them, I am not astonished. But I must express my extreme surprise that Captain Speke should have written two private letters, forcibly pointing out the claims of these men to Captain Rigby, without having communicated the circumstance in any way to me, the chief of the Expedition. I have been in continued correspondence with that officer since my departure from Zanzibar, and until this moment I have been impressed with the conviction that Captain Speke's opinion as to the claims of the guide and escort above alluded to was identical with my own.

"11. With respect to the last paragraph of Captain Rigby's letter, proposing that a shawl or some small mark of satisfaction should be presented by Government to Ladha Damha, the Custom-master at Zanzibar, for his assistance to the Expedition, I distinctly deny the gratuitous assertions that I was entirely dependent on him for money and supplies; that he advanced considerable sums of money without any security; that he forwarded all requisite supplies, or, as Captain Speke affirms, that he afforded the Expedition every assistance in the most handsome manner. Before quitting Zanzibar for inner Africa, I settled all accounts with him, and left a small balance in his hands, and I gave, for all subsequent supplies, an order upon Messrs. Forbes, my agent in Bombay. He, like the other Hindus at Zanzibar, utterly neglected me after the death of Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton; and Captain Rigby has probably seen some of the letters of complaint which were sent by me from the interior. In fact, my principal merit in having conducted the Expedition to a successful issue is in having contended against the utter neglect of the Hindus at Zanzibar (who had promised to Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton, in return for his many good offices, their interest and assistance), and against the carelessness and dishonesty, the mutinous spirit, and the active opposition of the guide and escort.

"I admit that I was careful that these men should suffer for their misconduct. On the other hand, I was equally determined that those who did their duty should be adequately rewarded—a fact which nowhere appears in Captain Rigby's letter. The Portuguese servants, the negro gun-carriers, the several African gangs of porters, with their leaders, and all other claimants, were fully satisfied. The bills drawn in the interior, from the Arab merchants, were duly paid at Zanzibar, and on departure I left orders that if anything had been neglected it should be forwarded to me in Europe. I regret that Captain Rigby, without thoroughly ascertaining the merits of the case (which he evidently has not done), should not have permitted me to record any remarks which I might wish to offer before making it a matter of appeal to the Bombay Government.

"Finally, I venture to hope that Captain Rigby has forwarded the complaints of those who have appealed to him without endorsing their validity; and I trust that these observations upon the statements were based upon no foundation of fact.

"I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

"R. F. Burton,

"Bombay Army."

4.

"India Office, E.C., 14th January, 1860.

"Sir,—I am directed by the Secretary of State for India in Council, to inform you that, having taken into consideration the explanations afforded by you in your letter of the 11th of November, together with the information on the same subject furnished by Captain Speke, he is of opinion that it was your duty, knowing, as you did, that demands for wages, on the part of certain Belochs and others who accompanied you into Equatorial Africa, existed against you, not to have left Zanzibar without bringing these claims before the Consul there, with a view to their being adjudicated on their own merits, the more especially as the men had been originally engaged through the intervention or the influence of the British authorities, whom, therefore, it was your duty to satisfy before leaving the country. Had this course been followed, the character of the British Government would not have suffered, and the adjustment of the dispute would, in all probability, have been effected at a comparatively small outlay.

"Your letter, and that of Captain Speke, will be forwarded to the Government of Bombay, with whom it will rest to determine whether you shall be held pecuniarily responsible for the amount which has been paid in liquidation of the claims against you.

"I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

"(Signed) J. Cosmo Melvill."

5.

"January, 1860.

"Sir,—I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your official letter of the 14th of January, 1860.

"In reply, I have the honour to observe that, not having been favoured with a copy of the information on the same subject furnished to you by Captain Speke, I am not in a position to understand on what grounds the Secretary of State for India in Council should have arrived at so unexpected a decision as regards the alleged non-payment of certain claims made by certain persons sent with me into the African interior.

"I have the honour to observe that I did not know that demands for wages existed against me on the part of those persons, and that I believed I had satisfactorily explained the circumstance of their dismissal without payment in my official letter of the 11th of November, 1859.

"Although impaired health and its consequence prevented me from proceeding in an official form to the adjudication of the supposed claims in the presence of the Consular authority, I represented the whole question to Captain Rigby, who, had he then—at that time—deemed it his duty to interfere, might have insisted upon adjudicating the affair with me, or with Captain Speke, before we left Zanzibar.

"I have the honour to remark that the character of the British Government has not, and cannot (in my humble opinion) have suffered in any way by my withholding a purely conditional reward when forfeited by gross neglect and misconduct; and I venture to suggest that by encouraging such abuses serious obstacles will be thrown in the way of future exploration, and that the liberality of the British Government will be more esteemed by the native than its character for sound sense.

"In conclusion, I venture to express my surprise, that all my labours and long services in the cause of African Exploration should have won for me no other reward than the prospect of being mulcted in a pecuniary liability incurred by my late lamented friend, Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton, and settled without reference to me by his successor, Captain Rigby.

"I have the honour, etc., etc.,

"Richard F. Burton,

"Capt. Bombay Army.

"The Under-Secretary of State for India."

6.

"14, St. James's Square, London,

"16th January, 1861.

"Sir,—I have been indebted to the kindness and consideration of my friend Dr. Shaw, for a sight of your letter addressed to him the 10th of October last from Zanzibar. I shall not attempt to characterize it in the terms that best befit it. To do so, indeed, I should be compelled to resort to language 'vile' and unseemly as your own. Nor can there be any necessity for this. A person who could act as you have acted must be held by every one to be beneath the notice of any honourable man. You have addressed a virulent attack on me, to a quarter in which you had hoped it would prove deeply injurious to me; and this not in the discharge of any public duty, but for the gratification of a long-standing private pique. You sent me no copy of this attack, you gave me no opportunity of meeting it; the slander was propagated, as slanders generally are, in secret and behind my back. You took a method of disseminating it which made the ordinary mode of dealing with such libels impossible, while your distance from England puts you in a position to be perfectly secure from any consequence of a nature personal to yourself. Such being the case, there remains to me but one manner of treating your letter, and that is with the contempt it merits. My qualifications as a traveller are, I hope, sufficiently established to render your criticisms innocuous, and the medals of the English and French Geographical Societies may console me for the non-appreciation of my labours by so eminent an authority as yourself. As regards my method of dealing with the natives, the complete success of all my explorations, except that which started under the auspices of Brigadier Coghlan, will perhaps be accepted as a better criterion of its correctness than the carpings of the wretched sycophants whom you make to pander to your malignity at Zanzibar. Where the question between us is one of personal veracity, I can hardly think that your statements will have much weight with those who are aware of the cognomen acquired by you at Addiscombe, and which, to judge from your letter now under notice, I think you most entirely, richly deserve. I have only to add, in conclusion, that I shall forward a copy of this letter to Dr. Shaw, as well as to my publishers, and to Government—you mention your intention of writing to them—and that I shall at all times, in all companies, even in print if it suits me, use the same freedom in discussing your character and conduct that you have presumed to exercise in discussing mine.

"I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

"Richard F. Burton.

"Captain C. P. Rigby."

7.

"India Office, 21st April, 1860.

"Sir,—I am directed by Sir Charles Wood to inform you that your letter of the 12th ultimo having been considered by him in Council, he cannot, with reference to the circumstances under which the expedition into Central Africa under your charge was undertaken, comply with your request to be reimbursed the amount of expenditure incurred by you over and above the Government allowance of £1000.

"I am, etc.,

"J. Cosmo Melvill.

"Captain R. Burton, 14, St. James's Square."

8.

[Here there was evidently another letter received during Richard's nine months' absence in N. America, but I have not yet found it amongst his papers.]

(In answer to J. Cosmo Melvill's letter.)

"Sir,—I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your official letter of the 18th of July, 1861, with enclosure.

"I am wholly at a loss to understand what may be the 'circumstances' ('under which the expedition into Central Africa under my charge was undertaken') that have prevented the Secretary of State for India in Council complying with my request to be refunded. Captain Speke and I have received the medals of the Geographical Societies of England and France for that expedition, and the Royal Geographical Society of London has officially expressed its opinion of the economy with which it was conducted by me.

"I can but conclude that the representations, or rather the misrepresentations of those whose interest it has been to prolong my absence from Zanzibar, have led to a conclusion by which I feel deeply aggrieved—namely, the non-recognition of my services by the Secretary of State for India in Council. And I venture to express a hope that when the Civil proceedings which are now being instituted by me against Captain (local Lieut.-Colonel) Rigby, British Consul at Zanzibar, come on for trial, this correspondence may be adduced to show how successfully this officer has exerted his malice against me.

"R. F. Burton."

APPENDIX G.

DESCRIPTION OF AFRICAN CHARACTER—THE RAW MATERIAL IN 1856-59.

"The East African, like other barbarians, is a strange mixture of good and evil: by the nature of barbarous society, however, the good element has not, whilst the evil has, been carefully cultured.

"As a rule, the civilized or highest type of man owns the sway of intellect, of reason; the semi-civilized—as are still the great nations of the East—are guided by sentiment and propensity in a degree incomprehensible to more advanced races; and the barbarian is the slave of impulse, passion, and instinct, faintly modified by sentiment, but ignorant of intellectual discipline. He appears, therefore, to the civilized man a paralogic being,—a mere mass of contradictions; his ways are not our ways, his reason is not our reason. He deduces effects from causes which we ignore; he compasses his ends by contrivances which we cannot comprehend; and his artifices and polity excite, by their shallowness and 'inconsequence,' our surprise and our contempt. Like that Hindú race that has puzzled the plain-witted Englishman for the century closing with the massacres of Delhi and Cawnpore, he is calculated to perplex those who make conscience an instinct which elevates man to the highest ground of human intelligence. He is at once very good-tempered and hard-hearted, combative and cautious; kind at one moment, cruel, pitiless, and violent at another; sociable and unaffectionate; superstitious and grossly irreverent; brave and cowardly, servile and oppressive; obstinate, yet fickle and fond of changes; with points of honour, but without a trace of honesty in word or in deed; a lover of life, though addicted to suicide; covetous and parsimonious, yet thoughtless and improvident; somewhat conscious of inferiority, withal unimprovable. In fact, he appears an embryo of the two superior races. He is inferior to the active-minded and objective, and analytic and perceptive European, and to the ideal and subjective, the synthetic and reflective Asiatic. He partakes largely of the worst characteristics of the lower Oriental types—stagnation of mind, indolence of body, moral deficiency, superstition, and childish passion; hence the Egyptians aptly termed the Berbers and negroes the 'perverse race of Kush.'

"The main characteristic of this people is the selfishness which the civilized man strives to conceal, because publishing it would obstruct its gratification. The barbarian, on the other hand, displays his inordinate egotism openly and recklessly; his every action discloses those unworthy traits which in more polished races chiefly appear on public occasions, when each man thinks solely of self-gratification. Gratitude with him is not even a sense of prospective favours; he looks upon a benefit as the weakness of his benefactor and as his own strength; consequently, he will not recognize even the hand that feeds him. He will, perhaps, lament for a night the death of a parent or of a child, but the morrow will find him thoroughly comforted. The name of hospitality, except for interested motives, is unknown to him. 'What will you give me?' is his first question. To a stranger entering a village the worst hut is assigned, and, if he complains, the answer is that he can find encamping ground outside. Instead of treating him like a guest, which the Arab Bedouin would hold to be a point of pride, of honour, his host compels him to pay and prepay every article, otherwise he might starve in the midst of plenty. Nothing, in fact, renders the stranger's life safe in this land, except the timid shrinking of the natives from the 'hot-mouthed weapon' and the necessity of trade, which induces the chiefs to restrain the atrocities of their subjects. To travellers the African is, of course, less civil than to merchants, from whom he expects to gain something. He will refuse a mouthful of water out of his abundance to a man dying of thirst; utterly unsympathizing, he will not stretch out a hand to save another's goods, though worth thousands of dollars. Of his own property, if a ragged cloth or a lame slave be lost, his violent excitement is ridiculous to behold. His egotism renders him parsimonious even in self-gratification; the wretched curs, which he loves as much as his children, seldom receive a mouthful of food, and the sight of an Arab's ass feeding on grain elicits a prolonged 'Hi! hi!' of extreme surprise. He is exceedingly improvident, taking no thought for the morrow—not from faith, but rather from carelessness as to what may betide him; yet so greedy of gain is he that he will refuse information about a country or about the direction of a path without a present of beads. He also invariably demands prepayment: no one keeps a promise or adheres to an agreement, and, if credit be demanded for an hour, his answer would be, 'There is nothing in my hand.' Yet even greed of gain cannot overcome the levity and laxity of his mind. Despite his best interests, he will indulge the mania for desertion caused by that mischievous love of change and whimsical desire for novelty that characterize the European sailor. Nor can even lucre prevail against the ingrained indolence of the race—an indolence the more hopeless as it is the growth of the climate. In these temperate and abundant lands Nature has cursed mankind with the abundance of her gifts; his wants still await creation, and he is contented with such necessaries as roots and herbs, game, and a few handfuls of grain—consequently improvement has no hold upon him.

"In this stage of society truth is no virtue. The 'mixture of a lie' may 'add to pleasure' amongst Europeans; in Africa it enters where neither pleasure nor profit can arise from the deception. If a Mnyamwezi guide informs the traveller that the stage is short, he may make up his mind for a long and weary march, and vice versâ. Of course, falsehood is used as a defence by the weak and oppressed; but beyond that, the African desires to be lied to, and one of his proverbs is, ''Tis better to be deceived than to be undeceived.' The European thus qualifies the assertion—

'For sure the pleasure is as great In being cheated as to cheat.'

Like the generality of barbarous races, the East Africans are wilful, headstrong, and undisciplinable; in point of stubbornness and restiveness they resemble the lower animals. If they cannot obtain the very article of barter upon which they have set their mind, they will carry home things useless to them; any attempt at bargaining is settled by the seller turning his back, and they ask according to their wants and wishes, without regard to the value of goods. Grumbling and dissatisfied, they never do business without a grievance. Revenge is a ruling passion, as the many rancorous fratricidal wars that have prevailed between kindred clans, even for a generation, prove. Retaliation and vengeance are, in fact, their great agents of moral control. Judged by the test of death, the East African is a hard-hearted man, who seems to ignore all the charities of father, son, and brother. A tear is rarely shed, except by the women, for departed parent, relative, or friend, and the voice of the mourner is seldom heard in their abodes. It is most painful to witness the complete inhumanity with which a porter seized with small-pox is allowed by his friends, comrades, and brethren to fall behind in the jungle, with several days' life in him. No inducement—even beads—can persuade a soul to attend him. Every village will drive him from its doors; no one will risk taking, at any price, death into his bosom. If strong enough, the sufferer builds a little bough-hut away from the camp, and, provided with his rations—a pound of grain and a gourdful of water—he quietly expects his doom,—to feed the hyæna and the raven of the wild. The people are remarkable for the readiness with which they yield to fits of sudden fury; on these occasions they will, like children, vent their rage upon any object, animate or inanimate, that presents itself. Their temper is characterized by a nervous, futile impatience; under delay or disappointment they become madmen. In their own country, where such displays are safe, they are remarkable for a presumptuousness and a violence of manner which elsewhere disappear. As the Arabs say, there they are lions, here they become curs. Their squabbling and clamour pass description; they are never happy except when in dispute. After a rapid plunge into excitement, the brawlers alternately advance and recede, pointing the finger of threat, howling and screaming, cursing and using terms of insult which an inferior ingenuity—not want of will—causes to fall short of the Asiatic's model vituperation. After abusing each other to their fill, both 'parties' usually burst into a loud laugh or a burst of sobs. Their tears lie high: they weep like Goanese. After a cuff, a man will cover his face with his hands and cry as if his heart would break. More furious shrews than the women are nowhere met with. Here it is a great truth that 'the tongues of women cannot be governed.' They work off excitement by scolding, and they weep little compared with the men. Both sexes delight in 'argument,' which here, as elsewhere, means two fools talking foolishly. They will weary out of patience the most loquacious of the Arabs. This development is characteristic of the East African race, and 'maneno marefu!'—long words!—will occur as a useless reproof half a dozen times in the course of a single conversation. When drunk, the East African is easily irritated; with the screams and excited gestures of a maniac he strides about, frantically flourishing his spear and agitating his bow, probably with notched arrow; the spear-point and the arrow-head are often brought perilously near, but rarely allowed to draw blood. The real combat is by pushing, pulling hair, and slapping with a will, and a pair thus engaged require to be torn asunder by half a dozen friends. The settled tribes are, for the most part, feeble and unwarlike barbarians; even the bravest East African, though, like all men, a combative entity, has a valour tempered by discretion and cooled by a high development of cautiousness. His tactics are of the Fabian order: he loves surprises and safe ambuscades; and in common frays and forays the loss of one per cent. justifies a sauve qui peut. This people, childlike, is ever in extremes. A man will hang himself from a rafter in his tent, and kick away from under him the large wooden mortar upon which he has stood at the beginning of the operation, with as much sang-froid as an Anglo-Saxon in the gloomy month of November; yet he regards annihilation, as all savages do, with loathing and ineffable horror. 'He fears death,' to quote Bacon, 'as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.' The African mind must change radically before it can 'think upon death, and find it the least of all evils.' All the thoughts of these negroids are connected with this life. 'Ah!' they exclaim, 'it is bad to die; to leave off eating and drinking; to wear a fine cloth!' As in the negro race generally, their destructiveness is prominent; a slave never breaks a thing without an instinctive laugh of pleasure; and however careful he may be of his own life, he does not value that of another, even of a relative, at the price of a goat. During fires in the town of Zanzibar, the blacks have been seen adding fuel, and singing and dancing, wild with delight. On such occasions they are shot down by the Arabs like dogs.

"It is difficult to explain the state of society in which the civilized 'social evil' is not recognized as an evil. In the economy of the affections and the intercourse between the sexes, reappears that rude stage of society in which ethics were new to the mind of now enlightened man. Marriage with these people, as amongst all barbarians, and even the lower classes of civilized races, is a mere affair of buying and selling. A man must marry because it is necessary to his comfort; consequently the woman becomes a marketable commodity. Her father demands for her as many cows, cloths, and brasswire bracelets as the suitor can afford. He thus virtually sells her, and she belongs to the buyer, ranking with his other live stock. The husband may sell his wife, or, if she be taken from him by another man, he claims her value, which is ruled by what she would fetch in the slave-market. A strong inducement to marriage amongst the Africans, as with the poor in Europe, is the prospective benefit to be derived from an adult family; a large progeny enriches them. The African, like all barbarians, and, indeed, semi-civilized people, ignores the dowry by which, inverting nature's order, the wife buys the husband, instead of the husband buying the wife. Marriage, which is an epoch amongst Christians, and an event with Moslems, is with these people an incident of frequent recurrence. Polygamy is unlimited, and the chiefs pride themselves upon the number of their wives, varying from twelve to three hundred. It is no disgrace for an unmarried woman to become a mother of a family; after marriage there is somewhat less laxity. The mgoni, or adulterer, if detected, is punishable by a fine of cattle, or, if poor and weak, he is sold into slavery. Husbands seldom, however, resort to such severities; the offence, which is considered to be against vested property, being held to be lighter than petty larceny. Under the influence of jealousy, murders and mutilations have been committed; but they are rare and exceptional. Divorce is readily effected by turning the spouse out of doors, and the children become the father's property. Attachment to home is powerful in the African race; but it regards rather the comforts and pleasures of the house, and the unity of relations and friends, than the fondness of the family. Husband, wife, and children have through life divided interests, and live together with scant appearance of affection. Love of offspring can have but little power amongst a people who have no preventive for illegitimacy, and whose progeny may be sold at any time. The children appear undemonstrative and unaffectionate, as those of the Somal. Some attachment to their mothers breaks out, not in outward indications, but by surprise, as it were. 'Mamá! mamá!'—'Mother! mother!'—is a common exclamation in fear or wonder. When childhood is passed, the father and son become natural enemies, after the manner of wild beasts. Yet they are a sociable race, and the sudden loss of relatives sometimes, but rarely, leads from grief to hypochondria and insanity, resulting from the inability of their minds to bear any unusual strain. It is probable that a little learning would make them mad, like the Widad, or priest of the Somal, who, after mastering the reading of the Koran, becomes unfit for any exertion of judgment or common sense. To this over-development of sociability must be ascribed the anxiety always shown to shift, evade, or answer blame. The 'ukosa,' or transgression, is never accepted; any number of words will be wasted in proving the worse the better cause. Hence also the favourite phrase, 'Mbáyá we!'—'Thou art bad!'—a pet mode of reproof which sounds simple and uneffective to European ears.

"The social position of the women—the unerring test of progress towards civilization—is not so high in East Africa as amongst the more highly organized tribes of the South. Few of the country own the rule of female chiefs. The people, especially the Wanyamwezi, consult their wives; but the opinion of a brother or a friend usually prevail over that of a woman.

"The deficiency of the East African in constructive power has already been remarked. Contented with his haystack or beehive hut, his hemisphere of boughs, or his hide-acting tent, he hates, and has a truly savage horror of stone walls. He has the conception of the 'Madeleine,' but he has never been enabled to be delivered of it. Many Wanyamwezi, when visiting Zanzibar, cannot be prevailed upon to enter a house.

"The East African is greedy and voracious. He seems, however, to prefer light and frequent to a few regular and copious meals. Even the civilized Kisawahili has no terms to express the breakfast, dinner, and supper of other languages. Like most barbarians, the East African can exist and work with a small quantity of food; but he is unaccustomed, and therefore unable, to bear thirst. The daily ration of a porter is one kubabah (= 1.5 lbs.) of grain. He can, with the assistance of edible herbs and roots, which he is skilful in discovering in the least likely places, eke out this allowance for several days, though generally, upon the barbarian's impulsive principles of mortgaging the future for the present, he recklessly consumes his stores. With him the grand end of life is eating. His love of feeding is inferior only to his propensity for intoxication. He drinks till he can no longer stand, lies down to sleep, and awakes to drink again. Drinking-bouts are solemn things, to which the most important business must yield precedence. They celebrate with beer every event—the traveller's return, the birth of a child, and the death of an elephant. A labourer will not work unless beer is provided for him. The highest order rejoice in drink, and pride themselves upon powers of imbibing. The proper diet for a king is much beer and little meat. If a Wanyamwezi be asked, after eating, whether he is hungry, he will reply 'Yea,' meaning that he is not drunk. Intoxication excuses crime in these lands. The East African, when in his cups, must issue from his hut to sing, dance, or quarrel, and the frequent and terrible outrages which occur on these occasions are passed over on the plea that he has drunk beer. The favourite hour for drinking is after dawn—a time as distasteful to the European as agreeable to the African and Asiatic. This might be proved by a host of quotations from the poets, Arab, Persian, and Hindu. The civilized man avoids early potations, because they incapacitate him for necessary labour, and he attempts to relieve the headache caused by stimulants. The barbarian and the semi-civilized, on the other hand, prefer them, because they relieve the tedium of his monotonous day; and they cherish the headache because they can sleep the longer, and, when they awake, they have something to think of. The habit, once acquired, is never broken; it attaches itself to the heartstrings of the idle and unoccupied barbarian.

"In morality, according to the more extended sense of the word, the East African is markedly deficient. He has no benevolence, but little veneration—the negro race is ever irreverent—and, though his cranium rises high in the region of firmness, his futility prevents his being firm. The outlines of law are faintly traced upon his heart. The authoritative standard of morality fixed by a revelation is in him represented by a vague and varying custom, derived traditionally from his ancestors; he follows in their track for old-sake's sake. The accusing conscience is unknown to him. His only fear after committing a treacherous murder is that of being haunted by the angry ghost of the dead; he robs as one doing a good deed, and he begs as if it were his calling. His depravity is of the grossest: intrigue fills up all the moments not devoted to intoxication.

"The want of veneration produces a savage rudeness in the East African. The body politic consists of two great members—masters and slaves. Ignoring distinction of society, he treats all men, except his chief, as his equals. He has no rules for visiting: if the door be open, he enters a stranger's house uninvited; his harsh, barking voice is ever the loudest; he is never happy except when hearing himself speak; his address is imperious, his demeanour is rough and peremptory, and his look bold. He deposits his unwashed person, in his greasy and tattered goatskin or cloth, upon rug or bedding, disdaining to stand for a moment, and he always chooses the best place in the room. When travelling, he will push forward to secure the most comfortable hut: the chief of a caravan may sleep in rain or dew, but, if he attempts to dislodge his porters, they lie down with the settled purpose of mules—as the Arabs say, they 'have no shame.' The curiosity of these people is at times most troublesome. A stranger must be stared at; total apathy is the only remedy: if the victim lose his temper, or attempt to dislodge them, he will find it like disturbing a swarm of bees. They will come for miles to 'sow gape-seed:' if the tent-fly be closed, they will peer and peep from below, complaining loudly against the occupant, and, if further prevented, they may proceed to violence. On the road hosts of idlers, especially women, boys, and girls—will follow the caravan for hours; it is a truly offensive spectacle—these uncouth figures, running at a 'gymnastic pace,' half clothed except with grease, with pendant bosoms shaking in the air, and cries that resemble the howls of beasts more than any effort of human articulation. This offensive ignorance of the first principles of social intercourse has been fostered in the races most visited by the Arabs, whose national tendency, like the Italian and the Greek, is ever and essentially republican. When strangers first appeared in the country they were received with respect and deference. They soon, however, lost this vantage-ground: they sat and chatted with the people, exchanged pleasantries, and suffered slights, till the Africans found themselves on an equality with their visitors. The evil has become inveterate, and no greater contrast can be imagined than that between the manners of an Indian ryot and an East African Mshenzi.

"In intellect the East African is sterile and incult, apparently unprogressive and unfit for change. Like the uncivilized generally, he observes well, but he can deduce nothing profitable from his perceptions. His intelligence is surprising when compared with that of an uneducated English peasant; but it has a narrow bound, beyond which apparently no man may pass. Like the Asiatic, in fact, he is stationary, but at a much lower level. Devotedly fond of music, his love of tune has invented nothing but whistling and the whistle: his instruments are all borrowed from the coast people. He delights in singing, yet he has no metrical songs: he contents himself with improvising a few words without sense or rhyme, and repeats them till they nauseate: the long, drawling recitative generally ends in 'Ah! ha!' or some such strongly nasalized sound. Like the Somal, he has tunes appropriated to particular occasions, as the elephant-hunt or the harvest-home. When mourning, the love of music assumes a peculiar form: women weeping or sobbing, especially after chastisement, will break into a protracted threne or dirge, every period of which concludes with its own particular groan or wail: after venting a little distress in a natural sound, the long, long improvisation, in the highest falsetto key, continues as before. As in Europe the 'laughing-song' is an imitation of hilarity somewhat distressing to the spirits of the audience, so the 'weeping-song' of the African only tends to risibility. His wonderful loquacity and volubility of tongue have produced no tales, poetry, nor display of eloquence; though, like most barbarians, somewhat sententious, he will content himself with squabbling with his companions, or with repeating some meaningless word in every different tone of voice during the weary length of a day's march. His language is highly artificial and musical: the reader will have observed that the names which occur often consist entirely of liquids and vowels, that consonants are unknown at the end of a word, and that they never are double except at the beginning. Yet the idea of a syllabarium seems not to have occurred to the negroid mind. Finally, though the East African delights in the dance, and is an excellent timist—a thousand heels striking the ground simultaneously sound like one—his performance is as uncouth as perhaps was ever devised by man. He delights in a joke, which manages him like a Neapolitan; yet his efforts in wit are of the feeblest that can be conceived.

"'Use savages justly and graciously, with sufficient guard nevertheless.' They must be held as foes; and the prudent stranger will never put himself in their power, especially where life is concerned. The safety of a caravan will often depend upon the barbarian's fear of beginning the fray: if the onset takes place, the numbers, the fierce looks, the violent gestures, and the confidence of the assailants upon their own ground will probably prevail.

"They may be managed as the Indian saw directs, by a judicious mixture of the Narm and Garm—the soft and hot. Thus the old traders remarked in Guinea, that the best way to treat a black man was to hold out one hand to shake with him, while the other is doubled ready to knock him down. In trading with, or even when dwelling amongst these people, all display of wealth must be avoided. A man who would purchase the smallest article avoids showing anything beyond its equivalent.

"Much of this moral degradation must be attributed to the working, through centuries, of the slave-trade: the tribes are no longer as nature made them; and from their connection with strangers they have derived nothing but corruption. Though of savage and barbarous type, they have been varnished with the semi-civilization of trade and commerce, which sits ridiculously upon their minds as a rich garment would upon their persons.

"Nature, in these regions really sublime or beautiful, more often terrible and desolate, with the gloomy forest, the impervious jungle, the tangled hill, and the dread uniform waste tenanted by deadly inhabitants, arouses in his mind a sensation of utter feebleness, a vague and nameless awe. Untaught to recommend himself for protection to a Superior Being, he addresses himself directly to the objects of his reverence and awe: he prostrates himself before the sentiment within him, hoping to propitiate it as he would satisfy a fellow-man. The grand mysteries of life and death, to him unrevealed and unexplained, the want of a true interpretation of the admirable phenomena of creation, and the vagaries and misconceptions of his own degraded imagination, awaken in him ideas of horror, and people the invisible world with ghost and goblin, demon and spectrum, the incarnations, as it were, of his own childish fears. Deepened by the dread of destruction, ever strong in the barbarian breast, his terror causes him to look with suspicion upon all around him: 'How,' inquires the dying African, 'can I alone be ill when others are well, unless I have been bewitched?'

"Some missionaries have detected in the habit, which prevails throughout Eastern and Western Africa, of burying slaves with the deceased, of carrying provisions to graves, and of lighting fires on cold nights near the last resting-places of the departed, a continuation of relations between the quick and the dead which points to a belief in a future state of existence. The wish is father to that thought: the doctrine of the soul, of immortality, belongs to a superior order of mind, to a more advanced stage of society. The belief, as its operations show, is in presentity, materialism, not in futurity, spiritualism.

"When the savage and the barbarian are asked what has become of the 'old people' (their ancestors), they only smile and reply, 'They are ended.' It proves the inferior organization of the race. Some races have decided that man hath a future, since even Indian corn is vivified and rises again. The East African has created of his fears a ghost which never attains the perfect form of a soul.

"The East African's Credenda are based upon two main articles. The first is demonology, or rather, the spectra of the dead; the second, witchcraft or black magic. Few, and only the tribes adjacent to the maritime regions, have derived from El Islam a faint conception of the One Supreme.

"He has not, like the Kafir, a holiday at the epoch of new moon: like the Moslem, however, on first seeing it, he raises and claps his hands in token of obeisance. In his Fetish hut upon the ground, or suspended from the roof, are handfuls of grain and small pots full of beer, placed there to propitiate the ghosts, and to defend the crops from injury.

"The African temperament has strong susceptibilities, combined with what appears to be a weakness of brain, and great excitability of the nervous system, as is proved by the prevalence of epilepsy, convulsions, and hysteric disease.

"The negroid is, therefore, peculiarly liable to the epidemical mania called 'Phantasmata,' which, according to history, has at times of great mental agitation and popular disturbance broken out in different parts of Europe, and which, even in this our day, forms the basework of 'revivals.'

"Salim bin Rashíd, a half-caste merchant, well known at Zanzibar, avers, and his companions bear witness to his words, that on one occasion, when travelling northwards from Unyanyembe, the possession occurred to himself. During the night two female slaves, his companions, of whom one was a child, fell, without apparent cause, into fits which denote the approach of a spirit. Simultaneously, the master became as one intoxicated; a dark mass, material, not spiritual, entered the tent, and he felt himself pulled and pushed by a number of black figures, whom he had never seen before. He called aloud to his companions and slaves, who, vainly attempting to enter the tent, threw it down, and presently found him in a state of stupor, from which he did not recover till the morning. The same merchant circumstantially related, and called witnesses to prove, that a small slave-boy, who was produced on the occasion, had been frequently carried off by possession even when confined in a windowless room, with a heavy door carefully bolted and padlocked. Next morning the victim was not found, although the chamber remained closed. A few days afterwards he was met in the jungle, wandering absently like an idiot, and with speech too incoherent to explain what had happened to him.

"For ordeal the people of Usumbara thrust a red-hot hatchet into the mouth of the accused. Among the south-eastern tribes a heated iron spike, driven into some tender part of the person, is twice struck with a log of wood. The Wazaramo dip the hand into boiling water, the Waganda into seething oil, and the Wazegura prick the ear with the stiffest bristle of a gnu's tail. The Wakwafi have an ordeal of meat that chokes the guilty. The Wanyamwezi pound with water between two stones, and infuse a poisonous bark called 'Mwavi:' it is first administered by the Mganga to a hen, who, for the nonce, represents the suspected. If, however, all parties be not satisfied with such trial, it is duly adhibited to the accused.

"The Mganga (medicine man) aids his tribe by magical arts in wars, by catching a bee, reciting over it certain incantations, and loosing it in the direction of the foe, when the insect will instantly summon an army of its fellows and disperse a host, however numerous. This belief well illustrates the easy passage of the natural into the supernatural. The land being full of swarms, and man's body being wholly exposed, many a caravan has been dispersed like chaff before the wind by a bevy of swarming bees. Similarly, in South Africa the magician kicks an ant-hill and starts wasps which put the enemy to flight. And in the Books of the Hebrews we read that the hornet sent before the children of Israel against the Amorite was more terrible than sword or bow (Joshua xxiv.).

"On the coast and in the island of Zanzibar the slaves are of two kinds—the Muwallid or domestic, born in captivity, and the wild slave imported from the interior.

"In the former case the slave is treated as one of the family, because the master's comfort depends upon the man being contented; often also his sister occupies the dignified position of concubine to the head of the house. These slaves vary greatly in conduct.

"The Arabs spoil them by kinder usage; few employ the stick, the salib, or cross—a forked pole to which the neck and ankles are lashed—and the makantale, or stocks, for fear or desertion. Yet the slave, if dissatisfied, silently leaves the house, lets himself to another master, and returns after perhaps two years' absence as if nothing had occurred. Thus he combines the advantages of freedom and slavery.

"Full-grown serfs are bought for predial purposes; they continue indocile, and alter little by domestication. When not used by the master they are left to plunder or let themselves out for food and raiment, and when dead they are cast into the sea or into the nearest pit. These men are the scourge of society; no one is safe from their violence; and to preserve a garden or an orchard from the depredations of the half-starved wretches, a guard of musketeers would be required. They are never armed, yet, as has been recounted, they have caused at Zanzibar servile wars, deadly and lasting as those of ancient Rome.

"Arabs declare that the barbarians are improved by captivity—a partial theory open to doubt. The servum pecus retain in thraldom that wildness and obstinacy which distinguish the people and the lower animals of their native lands; they are trapped, but not tamed; they become captives, but not civilized. However trained, they are probably the worst servants in the world; a slave-household is a model of discomfort.

"The old definition of a slave still holds good—'an animal that eats as much and does as little as possible.' A whole gang will barely do the work of a single servant. He must deceive, for fraud and foxship are his force; when detected in some prodigious act of rascality, he pathetically pleads, 'Am I not a slave?' He will run away from the semblance of danger; yet on a journey he will tie his pipe to a leaky keg of gunpowder, and smoke it in that position rather than take the trouble to undo it. A slave belonging to Musa, the Indian merchant at Kazeh, unwilling to rise and fetch a pipe, opened the pan of his musket, filled it with tobacco and fire, and beginning to inhale it from the muzzle blew out his brains. Growing confident and impudent from the knowledge of how far he may safely go, the slave presumes to the utmost. He steals instinctively, like a magpie: a case is quoted in which the gold spangles were stripped from an officer's sword-belt whilst dining with the Prince of Zanzibar.

"The brutishness of negroid nature is brought out by the cheap and readily attainable pleasures of semi-civilization. Whenever on moonlight nights the tapping of the tomtom responds to the vile squeaking of the fife, it is impossible to keep either male or female slave within doors. All rendezvous at the place, and, having howled and danced themselves into happiness, conclude with a singularly disorderly scene.

"The negroid slaves greatly improve by exportation: they lose much of the surliness and violence which distinguish them at Zanzibar, and are disciplined into a kind of respect for superiors.

"In the present day the Persians and other Asiatics are careful, when bound on distant or dangerous journeys, to mix white servants with black slaves; they hold the African to be full of strange caprices, and to be ever at heart a treacherous and bloodthirsty barbarian.

"According to the Arabs there is another servile republic about Gulwen, near Brava. Travellers speak with horror of the rudeness, violence, and cruelty of these self-emancipated slaves; they are said to be more dangerous even than the Somal, who for wanton mischief and malice can be compared with nothing but the naughtiest schoolboys in England.

"The serviles at Zanzibar have played their Arab masters some notable tricks. Many a severe lord has perished by the hand of a slave. Several have lost their eyes by the dagger's point during sleep. Curious tales are told of ingenious servile conspiracy. Mohammed bin Sayf, a Zanzibar Arab, remarkable for household discipline, was brought to grief by Kombo, his slave, who stole a basket of nutmegs from the Prince, and, hiding them in his master's house, denounced him of theft. Fahl bin Nasr, a travelling merchant, when passing through Ugogo, nearly lost his life in consequence of a slave having privily informed the people that his patron had been killing crocodiles and preserving their fat for poison. In both these cases the slaves were not punished; they had acted, it was believed, according to the true instincts of servile nature, and chastisement would have caused desertion, not improvement.

"Prices of slaves range from six feet of unbleached domestics, or a few pounds of grain in time of famine, to seventy dollars, equal to £15. The slaves are cheapest in the interior, on account of the frequency of desertion: about Unyamwezi they are dearer, and most expensive in the island of Zanzibar.

"At Zanzibar the price of a boy under puberty is from fifteen to thirty dollars. A youth till the age of fifteen is worth a little less. A man in the prime of life, from twenty-five to forty, fetches from thirteen to twenty dollars; after that age he may be bought from ten to thirteen. Educated slaves, fitted for the work of factors, are sold from twenty-five to seventy dollars and at fancy prices. The price of females is everywhere about one-third higher than that of males. At Zanzibar the ushur, or custom-dues, vary according to the race of the slave: the Wahiao, Wangindo, and other serviles imported from Kilwa pay one dollar per head, from the Mrima or maritime regions two dollars, and from Unyamwezi, Ujiji, and the rest of the interior three dollars. At the central depôt, Unyanyembe, where slaves are considered neither cheap nor dear, the value of a boy ranges between eight and ten doti, or double cloths; a youth, from nine to eleven; a man in prime, from five to ten, and past his prime from four to six. In some parts of the interior men are dearer than children under puberty. In the cheapest places, as in Karagwah and Urori, a boy costs three shukkahs of cloth, and three fundo or thirty strings of coral beads; a youth, from ten to fifteen fundo; a man in prime, from eight to ten; and no one will purchase an old man. These general notes must not, however, be applied to particular tribes: as with ivory and other valuable commodities, the amount and the description of the circulating medium vary at almost every march.

"The average of yearly import into the island of Zanzibar was fourteen thousand head of slaves, the extremes being nine thousand and twenty thousand. The loss by mortality and desertion is thirty per cent. per annum; thus, the whole gang must be renewed between the third and fourth year.

"By a stretch of power slavery might readily be abolished in the island of Zanzibar, and in due time, after the first confusion, the measure would doubtless be found as profitable as it is now unpalatable to the landed proprietors and to the commercial body. A 'sentimental squadron,' like the West African, would easily, by means of steam, prevent any regular exportation to the Asiatic continent. But these measures would deal only with effects, leaving the causes in full vigour; they would strike at the bole and branches, the root retaining sufficient vitality to resume its functions as soon as relieved of the pressure from without. Neither treaty nor fleet would avail permanently to arrest the course of slavery upon the seaboard, much less would it act in the far realms of the interior. At present the African will not work; the purchase of predial slaves to till the harvest for him, is the great aim of his life. When a more extensive intercourse with the maritime regions shall beget wants which compel the barbarian, now contented with doing nothing and having nothing, to that individual exertion and that mutual dependency which render serfdom a moral impossibility in the more advanced stages of human society—when man, now valueless except to himself, shall become more precious by his labour than by his sale, in fact an article so expensive that strangers cannot afford to buy him—then we may expect to witness the extinction of the evil. Thus, and thus only, can 'Rachel, still weeping for her children,' in the evening of her days, be made happy.

"Meanwhile, the philanthropist, who after sowing the good seed has sense and patience to consign the gathering of the crop to posterity, will hear with pleasure that the extinction of slavery would be hailed with delight by the great mass throughout the length and breadth of Eastern Africa. This people, 'robbed and spoiled' by their oppressors, who are legionary, call themselves 'the meat,' and the slave-dealers 'the knife:' they hate and fear their own demon Moloch, but they lack unanimity to free their necks from his yoke. Africa still 'lies in her blood,' but the progress of human society, and the straiter bonds which unite man with man, shall eventually rescue her from her old pitiable fate."

APPENDIX H.

REPORT AFTER GOING TO SEARCH FOR PALMER.

"It is said to be generally believed in official quarters that the whole of the troops forming the army of occupation in Egypt will have been withdrawn by the end of the financial year (Daily Papers).

"'Many will consider the following statement sensational and exaggerated, while it is distinctly, confessedly realistic. There is no second opinion upon the subject amongst foreigners in Egypt, whatever Egyptians may say, not think. When the last English soldier leaves Alexandria, the last European had better embark with him. Shortly after the final eclipse of our Redcoats and our Bluejackets the Nile Valley will witness a human hurricane which its lively annals have not yet chronicled. As we are here so here we must perforce rest. It is our second conquest of the glorious land which—all know—was offered in gift to England some years before its final fall. We honestly declined the "Protectorate," or whatever it may be called. Now, the tyranny of circumstance forces—nay! has forced—it upon us.'

"These lines were written in early 1883, and time has brought with it no change. Our occupation of Egypt is compulsory as ever. We only have made matters worse by those 'extra-parliamentary utterances,' those pledges for withdrawal which have kept the Nile Valley in a state of chronic excitement. As for our newly raised 'Army' and Police force, these men would be the first to turn upon Europeans and to rend them.

"A few words concerning the voyage.

"Nothing can be pleasanter, if aught of the kind can please, than a steamer-trip from Trieste to Alexandria. This, too, despite the visages patibulaires of a First Class which should travel Second Class, of a Second which ever intrudes into the domains and dominions of a First Class, and despite the terrible infantry which makes an irritable Italian exclaim aloud, 'Sancte Herode ora pro nobis!' The weather is sometimes perfect even in gloomy November, boisterous December, and roaring January. The scene-shifting of the five days, which may be six, is ever various and ever picturesque. The first, which begins at noon, is the Trieste-Dalmatian, showing the many-featured and historic shores of Trieste, vice-queen of the Adriatic and the Istrian coasts, which want only a secret something to make them thoroughly classical and Italian. It ends as morning rises splendid over the snowy crest and the bold seafront of the Dinarian Alps; and forenoon and afternoon are spent in gazing at the grey archipelago sharply thrown out from the Mediterranean blue; the rock-stuck Pomo; 'piscous' Sant' Andrea; romantic Lissa, whose Egypto-Greek art-remains make the fortune of the Spalato Museum; Cazza, the 'spoon' with bulging handle and bowl; broken Lagosta; the Sabbion cello Promontory, tossed and towering in azure air; and Pelagosa, the last remnant of a volcanic rim where lightning is deadly and where wind-storms are unknown.

"No. 2, the Albanian-Corfu day, opens with a near prospect of the grand and grandly named Akrokeraunian (Cimariot) Rocks. Whatever gales, Tramontana or Scirocco, may roar outside, the basin of Korkyra, forty-eight hours from Trieste and seventy-two from Alexandria, is a haven of rest tranquil as a dry dock. We have time to land and to note that transfer from England to Greece has by no means ruined the city, and to hear Mr. Gladstone roundly abused for what was done by Lord Palmerston.

"At Corfu we shipped for Egypt 245 Arnauts, the sweepings of the Albanian hills. These men, who were popularly described as 'Bathmen (Hammámjís) in Stambul and Pharaohs in Cairo,' are now returning to Nile-land, whence they were expelled by Said Pasha. We know them a mile off by their broad brows and long straight uncombed locks; their cats' moustachios and peaky chins; their felt caps and 'shaggy capotes;' their foul fustanella-skirts, girt with leather-belts for the nonce void of weapons; their archaic leggings (knemides) and their barbarous hide-sandals, the Slav upanke. These savages would doubtless train to good light infantry; but they are engaged as police. Set a thief to catch a thief may be true, but when the latter is caught how does the former occupy himself?

"Six hours beyond Corfu we draw inshore, but not too near on account of a lately found shoal, the deposit of a supposed submarine volcano. Hard by us to port a tall white precipice, Leucatos, in inverted bow-window-shape, breaks the seaward front of Leukadia Island, alias Sta. Maura; and a long red streak shows 'Sappho's Leap.' Like Abel, whose slaughter-place is near Damascus, the poetess must have contained more 'curious juice' than a school of whales. A narrow strait separates Leukadia from Theaki (Ithaca), and we see distinctly the cause why Ulysses could not rest from travel. A double lump of grey-red limestone patched with dwarf evergreens, a few olives, and fewer cypresses; here and there a slip of field-slope no larger than a courtyard; sundry windmills on the hill-tops and rude tenements on the lower levels; a road gashed on the scaur-side leading to a 'port,' that consists of a covelet and one house and the general look of a place fit only for convicts, could have offered few charms to the crafty one who had seen the manners of many men and their cities. Cefalonia, the opposite feature, shows more fertility, because we see her landward face, and her tall cones Georgio and Elato, which make sunset about three p.m., condense the vapours and water her with 'Scotch mist.'

"Then comes the Zante-Morea day, the fair island fronted by the Skopo block with its white-walled monastery. Its huge old citadel overhanging the town, which stretches herself lazily upon the sunny slope, is still desert; not so the inner valley, 'O Kampos,' bounded by a hill-range which Zantiotes compare with the Jura line. On the fronting mainland south of grey Cape Glarenza (Clarence?) rises the once doughty pile Kastro Tornesi. Leaving the Zante-Channel we run near enough to distinguish the features of Pylus Bay, now Navarino ('of the Avars'), with its natural breakwater, Sphacteria, hodie Sphagia, Island, where the Spartans were made captives. Then Methone (Modon) Port and Town, sister of Pylus,[1] whence the Mekhitaris Fathers spread through Upper Italy and Lower Austria; Cervera Islet, with its lighthouse; and Matapan, where Southern Europe ends. A very bad name has this terminal point, Tænorum, the Matapan (forehead) amongst Moderns as amongst Ancients, despite the good auspices of Poseidon, Herakles, and Orion. A western in-draught through the Sicilian and Gibraltar Straits or the return current of the same blows up high side-seas. The Corinth cut is intended for a cure, but will it ever be cut? Dim in haze beyond Matapan we see the long outlines of Malta or St. Angelo Promontory, distinguished only by a hermitage which is never vacant.

"Despite frequent disillusions we open our eyes at the sight of Cerigo and Cerigotto. What dull, commonplace, miserable lumps of limestone to represent poetic Cythera! Did Greek fancy go mad when it chose such a home for lovely Cytheræa? During the night we run by Candia, Crete, a huge front of calcareous wall, with green-flecked sides and copings snow-powdered and mist-feathered. The last land we shall see (thirty-six hours from Corfu) is the Gavdo or Gozzo Islet, distinguished only by its French lighthouse. And now patience after Gavdo day (No. 4); we shall have nothing in view but air and water, and look forward to Alexandria on the morrow.

"At length a passenger, with eyes glued to his binoculars, screams that he sees le Phare or Eunostus light. All crowd around him, striving to see as much. Presently it stands up distinct, a white thimble-top capping the sheet of indigo. Running in we note the effects of the bombardment. Far to starboard rise the Marabút works, all knocked to pieces. Meks, over the bow, shows as much light through it as the shell of bulbous palace which it guarded: only one high flank now stands upright. Eastward lie the battered mainland batteries, between the harbour and Mareotis, the lake basin which we attempted, and this time failed, to flood. On the seaward side of the port are the works of Ras el-Tín, the headland (not 'of figs,' but) of clay, where rude potteries were once made. The walls are smashed, the big guns point wildly in all directions, and a white patch upon the tall light-tower marks where one of the heaviest bolts struck. The interior was found in fragments, but the sailors soon rigged up the apparatus. Further east Adda stands disconsolate, a series of breaches. Towered Fort Pharos, traditional site of the World's Wonder, at the heel of the Alexandrian sock, also shows huge chasms in the masonry. Picnics visit the ruins, but the artists of the various 'Illustrateds' have made the scene perfectly familiar to us. There has, however, been treasure-trove among the débris, such as stones with hieroglyphs, and a Latin inscription built up in the ashlar.

"A good result of this 'knocking about' will be to abolish the Alexandrian bar, which has kept thousands of tall ships rolling in the dangerous offing through livelong nights. The City of Zu'l-Karnayu (Alexander of the Two Horns) has built for herself a fine house, neglecting only the doorway, even as Balzac forgot only his villa staircase. The object of retaining the obstacle was to prevent the entrance of a fleet in war-time—incredible; but such was the policy of modern Egypt's short-sighted sons! The Bughaz, or Central Passage, flanked by Corvette Passage east, and west by Marabút Passage, is the main line, marked by buoys invisible at night—hence the delays. The scattered reefs of coralline must be blown up and the fragments removed, otherwise bad will wax worse. The work should be entrusted to an English contractor of repute, say Sir G. Elliot: a host of Levantines, Greeks and others, are proposing to do the job cheaply and badly. I heard £40,000 as the inadequate sum proposed.

"Very gay and lively is the glorious new Harbour, where warships of all nations, even Turkish, are alive with martial sounds. Steamers are puffing in and out, tugs are plying, and small craft under sail and oar are dotting the broad expanse. Three transports embark homeward-bound. The much-abused hospital ship Carthage, a whited sepulchre, lies apart, sulking as it were. Colliers and merchantmen line the landing-places, and even the Dry Dock is at work. Near the inner Mole stand the old Egyptian men-of-war, suggesting Greenwich pensioners; the sooner they are sold and broken up for building material the better. Presently appears the ubiquitous Cook's boat, as we learn from white calico letters sewn upon raiment red as the mediæval Headsman's. We surrender at discretion, leave a card at the custom-house, and take carriage at the Marina or quay.

"The burnings begin at once in the Darb el-Gumruk (Custom-house Street). A 'house of refreshment' was fired by the mob because frequented by the hated Frank, and the flames spread, but not far. Reaching the Darb Ras el-Tín, which connects the sea-palace with the main square, the ruins show in force, and extend in lines and patches through the Place to the walls that defend the city on the south and east.

"The Place des Consuls, or de Mahomet Ali, now shows its third phase. That of utter bareness and barrenness was described by the Pilgrim in 1852.[2] Then came the polished epoch of tall trees, round tanks and flower-plots, heavy chains, band-stand, and gravelled walks, which attracted hosts of nursery-maids and their sallow charges. The Great Old Man of Cavala still sits his bronze steed, but since 1882 he looks upon a Fair, a Kermesse, or rather a brand-new mining city in the Far West, set in a framework of ruins, an unburied Pompeii.

"On the west side of the square the huge Okem (Wakálat) Gharbi and its large café have bodily disappeared. Its northern neighbour, the Palazzo Zizinia, is reduced to a mere shell eight feet high. The northern houses between the main square and the old or eastern harbour are burnt in blocks, but the Club and Penasson's Library show no damage: the English church also escaped; and, as a rule, little harm was done to places of worship, Giaour or Moslem. More 'loot' was to be had out of the laity. The fire began, they say, with the English and French Consulates, a kind of poetic justice for the Condominium. At the east end of the square the large building labelled 'Tribunal and Police Office' is wholly unhurt, and the Redcoats on guard are good to see. The long block to the south of the square, and dividing it from Place Sainte Cathérine, formerly the fine property of Prince Ibrahim Pasha, displays the typical scene of destruction. The bases have been piled up to clear the thoroughfares. The midway heights show shells of painted and papered chambers, with here and there a scorched chair or bedstead still standing on the airy edge of the precipice; there are débris of archways and balconies, charred timbers and fragments of furniture, windows, doors, and shutters; iron work curiously twisted by the fire, toasted inscriptions and blistered advertisements, and fallen blocks of limestone burnt to lime. The sky-line of broken and blackened wall forms points and pinnacles of chimney and coping, thrown well out by the gold and azure of sun and air; many of these frets have fallen, and the first high wind after the first heavy rains will bring down showers of stones upon workmen's heads. The latter, however, are few. Little or nothing has been done, or will be done, till 'indemnity' is forthcoming. But—

'Wait: my faith is large—in Fire,'

as in Time. Cities gain by being burnt. Several companies have submitted plans for rebuilding; and now the only want is a Town-architect to regulate the façades, and to see that the masonry is good and solid. Only let him avoid arcades which shelter damp and Greek coffee-houses.

"A stroll through the Place des Consuls shows a parallel line of board-booths along the northern and southern faces. Gaps were left where men caught red-handed had been carefully shot and carelessly buried. Now tables are spread, and people dine merrily over the dead. This is essentially Egyptian, the mummy at the feast. The booths supply everything, from a needle to a ready-made suit: the staples, however, are bad liquor and worse women. The names mostly appeal to the fighting class; for instance, 'Admiral Seymour's Bazar,' 'Crocforde's,' 'Duke of Connaught's Rest,' and the 'Hole in the Wall.' Here and there are Birrerie, generally next door to the coiffeur's; καφφενεῑα, a cucina economica alla Triestina, and unclean card-tables, domino-tables, and billiard-tables. The number of tobacco-shops is a study.

"During my thirty years' experience I never saw Alexandria look so picturesque or so happy. The magic word Indemnity has much to do with her high spirits, and the indemnistists jauntily fixed their figure somewhere between four and five millions sterling. Life swarms and surges through the burnt thoroughfares. All are bustling about, busy as bees, except those who are eating and drinking, smoking and fighting. It is a Pays de Cocagne, where money seems to be a drug. About mid-September, 1882, not a carriage was to be seen; before the year ended they were everywhere; and the 'bus, a new introduction, heralds the advent of the tramway. Donkey-boys, never more free and easy than now, group, grin, and chatter at every corner. Cheeky shoeblacks, here the unerring test of well-doing, assail you like swarms of Nile-flies. The Redcoats give points of light, and riders in brown with M.P. (military police) on the arm afford a sense of security. The topboot-and-revolver period of invasion soon passed away, but the military tailor soon came well to the fore; and not a few uniforms reminded old hands of a Volunteer Review in London after the Crimean War.

"Alexandria is ordered to be in bed before twelve, but she enjoys her evenings. The Café Paradiso offers a hall full of billiard-tables ('balyards far unfit'), like bagatelle-boards, and music in the normal shape of a masculine and feminine Austrian band. The demoiselles-violinists are bound by contract to the best of behaviour during engagements. In descending scale is the Café Bel Ain, and a host of estaminets, groggeries, and beereries, till you touch bottom at depôts for Greek dancing and native music. Of the Teatro Rossini the less we say the better. The Theatre Zizinia opened with an Anglo-American troupe, distinguished by Le Cabinet infernal, Le Negre Paganini, and Le Jolly Coons, excentriques et high Kickers. It finally rose to Madame Angot in Italian.

"Standing before the ruins, we ponder over the events of June and July 11th, which confounded all 'old Egyptians'—myself included. The universal belief was that Alexandria had everything to fear, not from her Moslems, but from her mean white Christians—Italians, Greeks, and Levantines. Numerically they had the advantage, and all were more or less armed with long pistols and longer knives.

"How then came they to show such utter poltroonery? The only explanation is that they were surprised, scared, demoralized, by the soldiery and the murderous police taking part with a mob, dastardly, fanatic, and bloodthirsty as it was in the days of Hypatia. Whenever and wherever a knot of Europeans combined to defend themselves against the canaille, they fled like a flock of sheep. It is well to note and remember the fact, especially in the country parts of Egypt, where bad days may still be coming. Men who run are rarely merciful; after order was restored they would be cruel as they were cowardly. It was a sight to see their hangdog looks when they learnt that Arábi and Co. were not to be sus. per coll., or even shot.[3]

"For the English garrison of Alexandria much remained to be done. Of two thousand men (round numbers), four were buried per diem, at the yearly rate of 1460, and at an expense of £20,000, against £3200 per mensem. This excessive mortality of last autumn did not extend to the officers. The men died because fed with over-driven beef where mutton should have been preferred, and the horses were killed by rations of heating oats, where the natives use only cooling barley. The chief scourge, enteric fever, was attributed to 'bad water,' for which I should read 'strong waters.' It was the same in the time of Abercrombie. Men of both services might be seen at midday 'half-seas over' amongst the poison-selling booths. A Maltese lately convicted of 'hocussing' (vending drugged coffee) was let off without a flogging—-pour encourager les autres. It is to be feared that in a land where the rod only is respected, we shall govern too little, and thus distinguish ourselves from our French 'friends' who govern too much. The prime want was a Soldiers' Home in addition to canteens, where good liquor is to be bought. Men must leave their barracks for change of air and scene, but they should be ordered to walk about in knots, not singly, and they should be under agreement to drink nothing stronger than tea or coffee in the booths.

"The Police has been another serious consideration. The new 'Gendarmerie,' as it was called, consisted of a mongrel lot—jödelling Swiss, chestnut-sellers from Friuli, veteran soldiers from Dalmatia and Bosnia, Albanian shepherd-brigands, and a scatter of cosmopolitan mongrels. Far better to raise a brigade of three thousand 'Bobbies,' officered, drilled, and dressed (with due modification) after our London fashion. These men, who would not speak a word of any language but English, should be stationed in the port and capital, with detachments, relieved every quarter, at the six important towns, Damanhúr and Tantah, Zagázíg and Mansúrah, Port Said and Suez. Those who object forget that Swiss and Italians, Dalmatians and Arnauts, are as ignorant of Arabic as Englishmen are. The difference is, the latter are to be trusted; the former proved that they were not: some mutinied, others deserted, and all were dismissed.

"The environs of Alexandria had escaped any damage. The fair gardens and villas on 'the Canal' are as they were. Sídi Gábir was presently altered for better and for worse. The race-course served only to tether mules: the grand stand stood nodding to its fall, and 'Effendina's' palace and outhouses afforded shelter to the 18th Royal Irish. The fane of the old Maroccan Saint looks fresher and more flourishing than before. On the other side of the city the Boulevard de Ramleh suffered severely as its neighbours, Sherif Pasha and Tewfík[4] Streets: the station however remains, and the rails were not injured. As we issue from the land-fortifications we see them still crested by sand-bags. At that ticklish time, when Alexandria was left defended by few men and fewer cannon, Arábi might have attacked, and, aided by the half-cowed mob inside, might have driven us to extremes. Fortunately for Egypt, nothing less heroic than this hero. Ramleh, the 'Sand-heap' suburb, had nothing to complain of save the felling of trees and the plundering of gardens. The only changes we note there are the field-works near the water-tower thrown up to exchange long shots with the Rebels at Kafr Dawár. Here Abercrombie had his head-quarters before he was carried dying into the nearest mosque. Also the gypsy-like Bedawi who claimed the land have struck their foul black tents; and it will be the fault of the Ramleyites if the mean thieves are allowed to return.

"Leaving picturesque Alexandria behind us, we take the rail to Cairo. This, the main artery as well as the minor veins, so far from progressing under English management, of late years has distinctly retrograded. The rails are looser, the carriages dirtier, the employés less civil and obliging; the prices higher and the danger greater than under Egyptian direction. All that can be said for this trunk line is that it appears somewhat less risky than its dependents. One of Egypt's latest curses is the rule of superannuated Anglo-Indian officials, who, with some notable exceptions, draw large salaries for doing little work. Their early training is worse than useless, as we saw in the Crimea, where Sepoy officers were sent to command Turks, because, forsooth, they had commanded Hindí Moslems and Hindú Pagans. For the Egyptian services I should prefer to these seniors, juveniles, even clerks, fresh and direct from England.

"The main interest of the railway-trip is the aspect of Kafr Dawár, the 'village of tent-encampments,' which I last saw in the guise of a sleepy little hamlet-station. The outer and inner lines of Rebel-earthworks, with rude batteries commanding the iron road, and resting upon Lake Mareotis and the Mahmudiyah Canal, contrast with the heap of beehive huts and the white villas embosomed in tree-mottes. The framework of the picture is a glorious sky and a flat fatiguing to the eyes as the South American Pampas. The reason for our declining this line of attack is obvious: the land is a bog, cut moreover by deep ditches and drains. Here Arábi made his first fatal mistake. Instead of keeping his half-disciplined troops well in hand, and cuddling their courage for the decisive day, he separated them and allowed detachments to be beaten in detail. But he had neglected the studies of a military college, and his staff did not contain a single officer versed in strategic science. It was a child playing against a master of chess. May the British Army enjoy few such easy triumphs; similar Algerian victories spoilt the French soldiers for European service.