Outside the city there are long
and wonderful roads between groves of the bulky mango-tree of
richest darkest green and the bending palm, shading deserted palaces
of former Sultans, temples of the Indian worshippers, native huts,
and the white-walled country residences and curtained verandas of
the white exiles. It is absurd to write them down as exiles, for it
is a Mohammedan Paradise to which they have been exiled.
The exiles themselves will tell you that the reason you think
Zanzibar is a paradise, is because you have your steamer ticket in
your pocket. But that retort shows their lack of imagination, and a
vast ingratitude to those who have preceded them. For the charm of
Zanzibar lies in the fact that while the white men have made it
healthy and clean, have given it good roads, good laws, protection
for the slaves, quick punishment for the slave-dealers, and a firm
government under a benign and gentle Sultan, they have done all of
this without destroying one flash of its local color, or one throb
of its barbaric life, which is the showy, sunshiny, and sumptuous
life of the Far East. The good things of civilization are there, but
they are unobtrusive, and the evils of civilization appear not at
all, the native does not wear a derby hat with a kimona, as he does
in Japan, nor offer you souvenirs of Zanzibar manufactured in
Birmingham; Reuter's telegrams at the club and occasional steamers
alone connect his white masters with the outer world, and so
infrequent is the visiting stranger that the local phrase-book for
those who wish to converse in the native tongue is compiled chiefly
for the convenience of midshipmen when searching a slave-dhow.
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