[Illustration: H.S.H. Hamud bin Muhamad bin Said, the Late Sultan
of Zanzibar.]
Zanzibar is an "Arabian Nights" city, a comic-opera capital, a most
difficult city to take seriously. There is not a street, or any
house in any street, that does not suggest in its architecture and
decoration the untrammelled fancy of the scenic artist. You feel
sure that the latticed balconies are canvas, that the white adobe
walls are supported from behind by braces, that the sunshine is a
carbon light, that the chorus of boatmen who hail you on landing
will reappear immediately costumed as the Sultan's body-guard, that
the women bearing water-jars on their shoulders will come on in the
next scene as slaves of the harem, and that the national anthem will
prove to be Sousa's Typical Tune of Zanzibar.
Several hundred years ago the Sultans of Zanzibar grew powerful and
wealthy through exporting slaves and ivory from the mainland. These
were not two separate industries, but one was developed by the other
and was dependent upon it. The procedure was brutally simple. A
slave-trader, having first paid his tribute to the Sultan, crossed
to the mainland, and marching into the interior made his bargain
with one of the local chiefs for so much ivory, and for so many men
to carry it down to the coast. Without some such means of transport
there could have been no bargain, so the chief who was anxious to
sell would select a village which had not paid him the taxes due
him, and bid the trader help himself to what men he found there.
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