starvation, and he wound up his effective picture by asking the “Sultan” what he would do _then_? “Why,” said Sayyid Barghash, “I should just come and live with you, Consul.” [Illustration: SIR JOHN KIRK AT HOME. To face page 21. ] It is owing to our present representative in Zanzibar that the Sultan has gradually assured and strengthened his hold over the East African coast between the Portuguese northern boundary and the No-man’s Land of the Somali Deserts, thus keeping in hands friendly to England the richest coast-lands of East Africa and the trade-routes to the Central Basin. Sir John Kirk has little disguised his views about English influence in the Indian Ocean, and he steadfastly bears in mind that nearly the entire commerce of Eastern Africa is in the hands of British subjects, and that, to uphold our influence in the country, we should encourage to the utmost the thrifty settlers from Western India. He also feels, as any observant politician must, that much as we may admire and sympathize with the promptings to colonization which, like the desire for offspring late in life, are now animating so many old European nations, there is no reason why England should act as a political midwife, and assist in bringing to birth their late-born children, or neglect the wants of her own large family in order that her neighbours’ weaklings may not die of inanition. [Illustration: Fig. 3.—Mtépé (with mat sail). ] One of the firmest resolves of Sir John Kirk has been to keep Eastern Africa between 10° N. and 10° S. clear of foreign influences, and so to hold this littoral through our nominee, the present Sayyid, that whenever the cold fit shall be off and the hot wave of further colonization flow on again—whenever the irresistible spreading of the English people compels it to look towards fresh fields of enterprise—Zanzibar, city, island, and coast, may not be found in hands hostile to British trade. To Sir John Kirk alone we owe it that the Government of Portugal has not now included the important Rovuma river in its East African possessions; and the same person is responsible for having, with one English frigate, driven away the whole Egyptian fleet under McGillup Pasha, when, acting under secret orders from the Egyptian Government, the Khedive’s East African Expedition proceeded to annex, occupy, and fortify the principal ports in the Sayyid’s continental dominions. About the manifold checks that French ambition and “protecting” zeal[6] have received in these Zangian regions I need not dilate, as they are questions involving political feelings of some acerbity at the present time, and would therefore be out of place in this book. But I might further recall to my readers that it is to the personal exertions of the British Agent and Consul-General that Zanzibar owes its line of telegraph, its mail service, its hospital, its observatory, its standing army (officered and commanded by Englishmen),