Page:Some account of the town of Zanzibar.djvu/8

 traders are so hampered by excessive customs duties, and vexatious government interference, that traders from Zanzibar actually pass round their settlements and supply the tribes which lie behind them. Traders from Zanzibar have even penetrated to the Atlantic coast, after traversing the whole interior. It is not unusual for men to go out with goods, and travel for many years, buying and selling in different places, until they have accumulated enough to enable them to return as comparatively rich men. I was asking once how far some districts I had heard of might be from the coast, the answer was an account of a trader who went there: his son was not born when he left Kilwa, where the march began, he was able to run alone by the time the place was reached, and was between twelve and thirteen when his father returned to Zanzibar.

Nor is the town less important in a political point of view. Its ruler has admitted authority over all the coast from Cape Guardafui to Cape Delgado. In the Somauli country it makes a great difference in practice whether he has a ship of war at hand or no, but still he is the one person to be looked to. From Lamoo to Kilwa his dominion is complete. His power in the interior is of a less determinate kind, but he has now a governor in authority in the Nyamwezi country, and even at Ujiji on the Tanganyika lake, beside which he can bend any tribe he pleases to his wishes by stopping their trade, which must start from, or pass through his coast dominions.

One result of all this is too important to be passed by in silence, it is that the language of Zanzibar—the