Note Note 27 — APPENDIX III.

The small-pox,—that scourge of the human race,—also often visits the natives of Zanzibar. We were told that about two years ago it made dreadful ravages all over the island: 15,000 (Note 27) are said to have perished in the town alone. This intelligence led me to hope they would receive with avidity any proposal to secure them from the effects of so dreadful a visitation. Though the vaccine matter brought from Bombay was now nearly eleven weeks old, and I consequently had great doubts of its power, I was resolved to let slip no opportunity of trying to introduce it among them. I therefore proposed it to the Hakim at our first interview, confident that it would be eagerly solicited by those who had children and young slaves belonging to them. In this, however, I was much disappointed; for though their interest and the safety of their offspring were at stake, I had the mortification to find their prejudices stronger than the sense of either, and it was with the utmost difficulty I could procure leave to 503try it on two children. They were inoculated twice over, without being able to produce the disease; but I had no great reason to regret my failure, for I afterwards heard that the French, who, on purchasing young slaves, always vaccinate them, had often introduced it among the inhabitants, but that it had been found impossible to propagate it. Is not this astonishing, that a people with whom self-interest is a stronger passion than any other, should be under the influence of motives which cause them to act in direct opposition to it? One person—he who had allowed me to inoculate his children—acknowledged he himself had lost no less than thirty young slaves during the late prevalence of the disease. Perhaps the indifference they show at the proposal of a preventative remedy arises from a want of faith in its efficacy.