If you look from the verandah of the Consulate towards the town of Zanzibar you have a scene of much picturesqueness and colour, and one which, focussed and framed by the lattice-work that is hung with creeping plants, becomes a real picture. You see the ships in the harbour, the canoes and rowing-boats skimming in and out among the large vessels, 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 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. [Illustration: Fig. 10.—A View over the Housetops. ] 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 elegance 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 cocopalms or the flags of the Sultan’s palace and the different Consulates. [Illustration: ZANZIBAR HARBOUR FROM THE CONSULATE. To face page 29. ]