Page:Some account of the town of Zanzibar.djvu/21

 town are always full of women going and coming with their water jars, round red earthen jars which hold two or three gallons, and their Katas, which are cocoanut shells at the end of a long stick, to scoop up the water out of the pits, which serve as wells.

There is a work of vast importance to be done amongst the women of Zanzibar, which only English women can do. They need instruction in every way, few only can read at all, or have any idea beyond the narrow limits of their own idle gossiping customs, the slave women being their great purveyors of news. This work would be the more important because the truest affection which exists in Zanzibar is that between a man and his mother. Children of the same mother are really brothers and sisters, and a man's home is generally with his mother, the tie of marriage counts for far less than that of kinship. A bride's father is bound to provide her a house, and her husband is bound to spend a certain portion of his time with her, and if he has several wives to give them each an equal share of attention. The wife always feels that she belongs to her father and brothers much more than to her husband, and, to secure a certain community of feeling, it is quite a rule to marry a first cousin if one is procurable.

I was three times allowed to see the ladies of the family, or, rather, I think, they were allowed to see me as a great curiosity, being an Mzungu who could even write and read off from a printed paper their own language. On one of these occasions there was a wedding in progress, the bride being about ten years old, at which age it is usual to marry.