I continued on my way to Zanzibar, to confer with Sir John Kirk, and to engage a certain number of men. Accordingly, one day in the middle of April, 1884, I awoke in the early sunshine, and looked forth on a crescent of white buildings rising above an irregular line of black shipping and black mud, and later on in the day landed at Zanzibar, and found myself in that busy mart of East African trade, whence so many expeditions and explorers have started for the conquest of Africa's secrets. Here I was soon enjoying the kind hospitality of Sir John Kirk, and feeling in the contemplation of the strange, varied life around me that the first chapter of my experiences in East Africa had pleasantly begun.

CHAPTER II.

SIR JOHN KIRK AT HOME.

Fig. 1.-Sir John Kirk.

ANZIBAR, an island lying about twenty miles off the East Coast of Africa, under the sixth parallel south of the equator (I feel bound to furnish this information in the prevailing state of ignorance respecting African geography), has long been a nucleus of foreign rule along the eastern seaboard of the Dark Continent. Without going into the questions of its remote history, and considering whether it was or whether it was not distinctly known to the hazy geographers of classical days, we can feel pretty certain that, for nearly as many centuries as form the Christian Era, Zanzibar has been a place of resort for the Arab and Persian traders and slave-dealers of the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the coasts of Sind and Gujerat. There was at one time a distinct Persian colonization of the East African littoral to the north of Zanzibar, and apparently also in Zanzibar itself, though here the intermixture of Persian blood in the local race is in no way as evident as in places on the mainland, such as Lamu, Malindi, or Magdishu. However, even in

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Zanzibar, distinct traces of Fire Worship remain engrafted on the African Mohammedanism of the inhabitants. After several centuries of quasi Arab rule, Zanzibar in the beginning of the sixteenth century came under the dominion of the Portuguese, whose language has left its traces in the Swahili vocabulary. When Portugal fell into the power of Spain, and her hold on Abyssinia and the Eastern Horn of Africa waned and faded, the Arabs reasserted their independence in Zanzibar, and the island remained in the possession of various Arab chiefs till the end of the last century, when the Imam of Maskat proclaimed and maintained his suzerainty over Pemba, Zanzibar, and the neighbouring coast.

In 1841, the East India Company first established relations with the ruler of Zanzibar, who had assumed the title of "Sayyid," or Lord of the Island. He was at the same time Sovereign of 'Oman, that East Arabian principality of which Maskat is the capital. Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton, the first British representative at the Court of Zanzibar, remained many years at his post, and was still in East Africa when Burton undertook his pioneer journey to the Lake regions. On his death General Rigby succeeded him as ConsulGeneral and Political Agent, and was in turn followed by several officials whose residence in the island was of short duration. At length, in 1873, Sir John Kirk, who had first come to Zanzibar as Vice-Consul in 1866, and who had for some years acted in a superior capacity, received his formal appointment to the post of Consul-General, and later on attained the further office of Political Agent. Sir John Kirk, who comes of an old Forfarshire family, was educated primarily as a doctor, and served as a physician to the British

hospital at Renkioi, Dardanelles, during the Crimean War; but already, both at the University and during his service abroad, his taste and aptitude for natural history had so developed that he little cared to make the medical profession his ultimate career. In 1858 he accepted the post of naturalist to Dr. Livingstone's expedition to the Zambesi. When he arrived at the mouth of this river, the circumstances of the expedition were such that it became necessary for Dr. Kirk (as he then was) to lay his studies of natural history aside, and assume the arduous position of second in command, and direct personally the conduct of the land party. It was largely owing to his exertions and untiring labour that the unfortunate Zambesi Expedition was not an even costlier experiment than it eventually proved; and Dr. Livingstone found in his colleague and second in command a mainstay and help in several critical emergencies wherein the rest of his staff were of little service.

Shortly after his return from the Zambesi Dr. Kirk was offered the post of Vice-Consul at Zanzibar, and thus entered the service in which he rose successively to the ranks of Consul, Consul-General, and Political Agent. In 1878 he was made C.M.G., and in 1881 he was knighted.

There is no one living or dead who has so profoundly influenced the condition of Eastern Africa as Sir John Kirk. To him more than to any one else is owing the effective repression of slave-trading; and it is only quite recently that the full consequences of his steady anti-slavery policy began to appear and develop themselves into a healthy and beneficent solution of a difficult African problem. When Sir John first arrived in Zanzibar the Arab ruler of the island, the so-called

Sultan, was little more than primus inter pares. He was recognized as "Sayyid," or Lord, of Zanzibar, by the Arab nobles and traders, but his authority was most uncertain. Many of his subjects thought themselves superior to him in purity of blood and ancient genealogy, and whenever the wishes of their nominal ruler-merely one of themselves deputed to transact the Government business-clashed with their personal interests or predilections, they openly bade him defiance, and put their fortress-houses into a state of siege. The standing army was composed of a few miserable, beggarly Baluch mercenaries-ill-clothed, unpaid, and as cowardly as they were rapacious. Slaves were openly sold in Zanzibar, and the Sayyid was too weak to incur the displeasure of his Arab subjects by the suppression of a lucrative and easy trade. When Sayyid Majid died and the present "Sultan," Barghash bin Sa'id, succeeded him, Sir John Kirk set himself resolutely to acquire the confidence and friendship of the young Arab ruler, and, aided by his great knowledge of Arabic and Ki-Swahili, was able to converse with the Sayyid in strict intimacy, without the medium of an interpreter, so that he was enabled often to weld the will of Barghash to conformity with his own wishes by means of an earnest expostulation and half-playful sarcasm which would have sounded ill through the intermediary of some wily Goanese. So great was the influence already exercised over the Prince of Zanzibar after two years of personal intercourse that Sir John Kirk was able to exact from him as a favour and concession to friendship that which Sir Bartle Frere, with all his personal prestige and position, and with a fleet of ironclads behind him, failed to extort, namely, the