How I Found Livingstone - Henry M. Stanley (best ereader for comics txt) 📗
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if good ivory, is worth about $60 per frasilah at Zanzibar.
The merchant thus finds that he has realized $10,500 net profit!
Arab traders have often done better than this, but they almost
always have come back with an enormous margin of profit.
The next people to the Banyans_in power in Zanzibar are the
Mohammedan Hindis. Really it has been a debateable subject in my
mind whether the Hindis are not as wickedly determined to cheat in
trade as the Banyans. But, if I have conceded the palm to the
latter, it has been done very reluctantly. This tribe of Indians
can produce scores of unconscionable rascals where they can show
but one honest merchant. One of the honestest among men, white or
black, red or yellow, is a Mohammedan Hindi called Tarya Topan.
Among the Europeans at Zanzibar, he has become a proverb for
honesty, and strict business integrity. He is enormously wealthy,
owns several ships and dhows, and is a prominent man in the
councils of Seyd Burghash. Tarya has many children, two or three
of whom are grown-up sons, whom he has reared up even as he is
himself. But Tarya is but a representative of an exceedingly
small minority.
The Arabs, the Banyans, and the Mohammedan Hindis, represent the
higher and the middle classes. These classes own the estates,
the ships, and the trade. To these classes bow the half-caste
and the negro.
The next most important people who go to make up the mixed
population of this island are the negroes. They consist of the
aborigines, Wasawahili, Somalis, Comorines, Wanyamwezi, and a host
of tribal representatives of Inner Africa.
To a white stranger about penetrating Africa, it is a most
interesting walk through the negro quarters of the Wanyamwezi and
the Wasawahili. For here he begins to learn the necessity of
admitting that negroes are men, like himself, though of a different
colour; that they have passions and prejudices, likes and
dislikes, sympathies and antipathies, tastes and feelings, in
common with all human nature. The sooner he perceives this fact,
and adapts himself accordingly, the easier will be his journey
among the several races of the interior. The more plastic his
nature, the more prosperous will be his travels.
Though I had lived some time among the negroes of our Southern
States, my education was Northern, and I had met in the United
States black men whom I was proud to call friends. I was thus
prepared to admit any black man, possessing the attributes of true
manhood or any good qualities, to my friendship, even to a
brotherhood with myself; and to respect him for such, as much as
if he were of my own colour and race. Neither his colour, nor any
peculiarities of physiognomy should debar him with me from any
rights he could fairly claim as a man. “Have these men—these
black savages from pagan Africa,” I asked myself, “the qualities
which make man loveable among his fellows? Can these men—these
barbarians—appreciate kindness or feel resentment like myself?”
was my mental question as I travelled through their quarters
and observed their actions. Need I say, that I was much comforted
in observing that they were as ready to be influenced by passions,
by loves and hates, as I was myself; that the keenest observation
failed to detect any great difference between their nature and my
own?
The negroes of the island probably number two-thirds of the entire
population. They compose the working-class, whether enslaved or
free. Those enslaved perform the work required on the plantations,
the estates, and gardens of the landed proprietors, or perform the
work of carriers, whether in the country or in the city. Outside
the city they may be seen carrying huge loads on their heads, as
happy as possible, not because they are kindly treated or that
their work is light, but because it is their nature to be gay and
lighthearted, because they, have conceived neither joys nor hopes
which may not be gratified at will, nor cherished any ambition
beyond their reach, and therefore have not been baffled in their
hopes nor known disappointment.
Within the city, negro carriers may be heard at all hours, in
couples, engaged in the transportation of clove-bags, boxes of
merchandise, &c., from store to “godown” and from “go-down” to
the beach, singing a kind of monotone chant for the encouragement
of each other, and for the guiding of their pace as they shuffle
through the streets with bare feet. You may recognise these men
readily, before long, as old acquaintances, by the consistency
with which they sing the tunes they have adopted. Several times
during a day have I heard the same couple pass beneath the windows
of the Consulate, delivering themselves of the same invariable tune
and words. Some might possibly deem the songs foolish and silly,
but they had a certain attraction for me, and I considered that
they were as useful as anything else for the purposes they were
intended.
The town of Zanzibar, situate on the south-western shore of the
island, contains a population of nearly one hundred thousand
inhabitants; that of the island altogether I would estimate at not
more than two hundred thousand inhabitants, including all races.
The greatest number of foreign vessels trading with this port are
American, principally from New York and Salem. After the American
come the German, then come the French and English. They arrive
loaded with American sheeting, brandy, gunpowder, muskets, beads,
English cottons, brass-wire, china-ware, and other notions, and
depart with ivory, gum-copal, cloves, hides, cowries, sesamum,
pepper, and cocoa-nut oil.
The value of the exports from this port is estimated at $3,000,000,
and the imports from all countries at $3,500,000.
The Europeans and Americans residing in the town of Zanzibar are
either Government officials, independent merchants, or agents for a
few great mercantile houses in Europe and America.
The climate of Zanzibar is not the most agreeable in the world. I
have heard Americans and Europeans condemn it most heartily. I
have also seen nearly one-half of the white colony laid up in one
day from sickness. A noxious malaria is exhaled from the shallow
inlet of Malagash, and the undrained filth, the garbage, offal,
dead mollusks, dead pariah dogs, dead cats, all species of carrion,
remains of men and beasts unburied, assist to make Zanzibar a most
unhealthy city; and considering that it it ought to be most healthy,
nature having pointed out to man the means, and having assisted him
so far, it is most wonderful that the ruling prince does not obey
the dictates of reason.
The bay of Zanzibar is in the form of a crescent, and on the
south-western horn of it is built the city. On the east Zanzibar
is bounded almost entirely by the Malagash Lagoon, an inlet of
the sea. It penetrates to at least two hundred and fifty yards of
the sea behind or south of Shangani Point. Were these two hundred
and fifty yards cut through by a ten foot ditch, and the inlet
deepened slightly, Zanzibar would become an island of itself, and
what wonders would it not effect as to health and salubrity! I
have never heard this suggestion made, but it struck me that the
foreign consuls resident at Zanzibar might suggest this work to the
Sultan, and so get the credit of having made it as healthy a place
to live in as any near the equator. But apropos of this, I
remember what Capt. Webb, the American Consul, told me on my
first arrival, when I expressed to him my wonder at the apathy
and inertness of men born with the indomitable energy which
characterises Europeans and Americans, of men imbued with the
progressive and stirring instincts of the white people, who yet
allow themselves to dwindle into pallid phantoms of their kind,
into hypochondriacal invalids, into hopeless believers in the
deadliness of the climate, with hardly a trace of that daring
and invincible spirit which rules the world.
“Oh,” said Capt. Webb, “it is all very well for you to talk
about energy and all that kind of thing, but I assure you that a
residence of four or five years on this island, among such people
as are here, would make you feel that it was a hopeless task to
resist the influence of the example by which the most energetic
spirits are subdued, and to which they must submit in time, sooner
or later. We were all terribly energetic when we first came here,
and struggled bravely to make things go on as we were accustomed
to have them at home, but we have found that we were knocking our
heads against granite walls to no purpose whatever. These fellows—
the Arabs, the Banyans, and the Hindis—you can’t make them go
faster by ever so much scolding and praying, and in a very short
time you see the folly of fighting against the unconquerable.
Be patient, and don’t fret, that is my advice, or you won’t live
long here.”
There were three or four intensely busy men, though, at Zanzibar,
who were out at all hours of the day. I know one, an American; I
fancy I hear the quick pit-pat of his feet on the pavement beneath
the Consulate, his cheery voice ringing the salutation, “Yambo!”
to every one he met; and he had lived at Zanzibar twelve years.
I know another, one of the sturdiest of Scotchmen, a most
pleasant-mannered and unaffected man, sincere in whatever he did
or said, who has lived at Zanzibar several years, subject to the
infructuosities of the business he has been engaged in, as well as
to the calor and ennui of the climate, who yet presents as formidable
a front as ever to the apathetic native of Zanzibar. No man can
charge Capt. H. C. Fraser, formerly of the Indian Navy, with being
apathetic.
I might with ease give evidence of the industry of others, but
they are all my friends, and they are all good. The American,
English, German, and French residents have ever treated me with a
courtesy and kindness I am not disposed to forget. Taken as a
body, it would be hard to find a more generous or hospitable colony
of white men in any part of the world.
CHAPTER III. ORGANIZATION OF THE EXPEDITION.
I was totally ignorant of the interior, and it was difficult at
first to know, what I needed, in order to take an Expedition into
Central Africa. Time was precious, also, and much of it could not
be devoted to inquiry and investigation. In a case like this, it
would have been a godsend, I thought, had either of the three
gentlemen, Captains Burton, Speke, or Grant, given some information
on these points; had they devoted a chapter upon, “How to get
ready an Expedition for Central Africa.” The purpose of this
chapter, then, is to relate how I set about it, that other
travellers coming after me may have the benefit of my experience.
These are some of the questions I asked myself, as I tossed on my
bed at night:—
“How much money is required?”
“How many pagazis, or carriers?
“How many soldiers?”
“How much cloth?”
“How many beads?”
“How much wire?”
“What kinds of cloth are required for the different tribes?”
Ever so many questions to myself brought me no clearer the exact
point I wished to arrive at. I scribbled over scores of sheets
of paper, made estimates, drew out lists of material, calculated
the cost of keeping one hundred men for one year, at so many yards
of different kinds of cloth, etc. I studied Burton, Speke, and
Grant in vain. A good deal of geographical, ethnological, and other
information
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