then lines of daus all drawn up along the shore of white sand, with busy crowds of men working round

and about them, some unloading, some repairing, some looking idly on, others stripping for a bathe and playing at a peculiar game in the water, round the hulls of the half-floated daus, which consists in turning a somersault and bringing your legs down with a smack on your companions' backs. Indeed, the

Fig 8.-A Saracenic Doorway.

absence of all social restraint on the shore at Zanzibar might occasionally ruffle the sensibilities of those of our weaker sex who are supposed to be shocked at seeing life under somewhat primitive conditions. There are no "bathing regulations at Zanzibar, and the beach immediately below the Consular windows is the favourite resort of "natives," who in complete nudity gaily chase each other along the silver strand, or plunge into the tiny billows and the black ooze of the nether shore. Indeed, the number of Indians who seem to choose the purlieus of the British Consulate for performing their ablutions (doubtless because they look upon it as a right of British subjects to bathe under their Consul's eye) render it necessary sometimes to despatch a Sikari for the purpose of driving the nude Hindoos to remoter shores, for should the Consul be entertaining the lady residents of Zanzibar

at afternoon tea on the balcony, it is somewhat embarrassing for their gaze continually to encounter, not the black glistening forms of the burly negroes on whom nakedness sits with decency, but the yellow and obese Hindoos, who, with the figures and demeanour of middle-aged aldermen, are paddling up to their ankles with the innocence and unconcern of early childhood.

The buildings of Zanzibar along the shore-line are gifted with an adventitious beauty which is derived

from contrasts of colour, and light, and shade. The Sultan's clock-tower, which rises like a minaret above the flat-roofed houses, is in reality a structure of vulgar, tasteless design, but seen from a distance with its ugliness softened down, it lends considerable point to the harbour view of Zanzibar. The other

buildings are little remarkable for ele

gance of exterior shape, but, being all whitewashed or of light-coloured stone, they form under the sun's rays a snowy, irregular mass, the outline of which tells out effectively against a deep blue or a storm-grey sky, and is here and there relieved by the green coco

palms or the flags of the Sultan's palace and the different Consulates.

This view at sunset becomes really beautiful. The eastern sky is a sombre blue-grey, and the water of the harbour reflects the same tint, unvaried in the evening stillness by a ripple. The long headland of dark green forest, which stretches out into the sea, lends a deepening tone to the darkened water and sky, and forms with them an effective foil, a neutral background to the white tower and the mass of white buildings which, turned towards the west, reflect on their sympathetic surfaces the warm glow of the sunset. In the daytime, under the blaze of a vertical sun, these houses of Zanzibar are disagreeably dazzling, but now, in this one quiet half-hour of the short evening, they glow with a soft pink radiance, and their tender blush-colour is heightened by its background of strangely-coloured eastern sky which, first becoming sombre blue with the sinking sun, for a brief while grows green with jealousy of the west and partial reflection of the sunset, and offers a complementary contrast to the houses at their pinkest. Then, along the shore, and on the blue bay, the shipping, turned towards the warm light of evening, loses its blackness and distinct outlines, and fuses into dusky brown, the mazes of masts and rigging seeming to part with their perspective and to stick together in one indistinct mass. As the shadows deepen and the rose-tinted houses fade into dull grey, the stages of the Sultan's tower are picked out with yellow lamps, and suddenly from the summit gleams out in cold radiance a star of more than first magnitude-Sayyid Barghash has fitted up his clock-tower with the electric light.

Any one visiting Sir John Kirk at home will hardly