Selected Travel Works of Henry Morton Stanley

But a great change has taken place. As he passes close to the deeply verdant shores of Zanzibar Island, he views nature robed in the greenest verdure, with a delightful freshness of leaf, exhaling fragrance to the incoming wanderer. He is wearied with the natural deep-blue of the ocean, and eager for any change. He remembers the unconquerable aridity and the dry bleached heights he last saw, and lo! what a change! Responding to his half formed wish, the earth rises before him verdant, prolific, bursting with fatness. Palms raise their feathery heads and mangoes their great globes of dark green foliage; banana plantations with impenetrable shade, groves of orange, fragrant cinnamon, and spreading bushy clove, diversify and enrich the landscape. Jack-fruit trees loom up with great massive crowns of leaf and branch, while between the trees and in every open space succulent grasses and plants cover the soil with a thick garment of verdure. There is nothing grand or sublime in the view before him, and his gaze is not attracted to any special feature, because all is toned down to a uniform softness by the exhalation rising from the warm heaving bosom of the island. His imagination is therefore caught and exercised, his mind loses its restless activity, and reposes under the influence of the eternal summer atmosphere.

Presently on the horizon there rises the thin upright shadows of ships’ masts, and to the left begins to glimmer a pale white mass which, we are told, is the capital of the island of Zanzibar. Still steaming southward, we come within rifle-shot of the low green shores, and now begin to be able to define the capital. It consists of a number of square massive structures, with little variety of height and all whitewashed, standing on a point of low land, separated by a broad margin of sand beach from the sea, with a bay curving gently from the point, inwards to the left towards us.

Within two hours from the time we first caught sight of the town, we have dropped anchor about 700 yards from the beach. The arrival of the British India Company’s steamer causes a sensation. It is the monthly “mail” from Aden and Europe! A number of boats break away from the beach and come towards the vessel. Europeans sit at the stern, the rowers are white-shirted Wangwana with red caps. The former are anxious to hear the news, to get newspapers and letters, and to receive the small parcels sent by friendly hands “per favour of captain.”

The stranger, of course, is intensely interested in this life existing near the African Equator, now first revealed to him, and all that he sees and hears of figures and faces and sounds is being freshly impressed on his memory. Figures and faces are picturesque enough. Happy, pleased-looking men of black, yellow, or tawny colour, with long white cotton shirts, move about with quick, active motion, and cry out, regardless of order, to their friends or mates in the Swahili or Arabic language, and their friends or mates respond with equally loud voice and lively gesture, until, with fresh arrivals, there appears to be a Babel created, wherein English, French, Swahili, and Arabic accents mix with Hindi, and, perhaps, Persian.

In the midst of such a scene I stepped into a boat to be rowed to the house of my old friend, Mr. Augustus Sparhawk, of the Bertram Agency. At this low-built, massive-looking house near Shangani Point, I was welcomed with all the friendliness and hospitality of my first visit, when, three years and a half previously, I arrived at Zanzibar to set out for the discovery of Livingstone.

With Mr. Sparhawk’s aid I soon succeeded in housing comfortably my three young Englishmen, Francis John and Edward Pocock and Frederick Barker, and my five dogs, and in stowing safely on shore the yawlWave, bought for me at Yarmouth by Mr. Edwin Arnold, the gig, and the tons of goods, provisions, and stores I had brought.