Sayyid Barghash bin Sa’id, the Prince of Zanzibar, Pemba, and the Zangian coast, is a man of about forty-five, as far as an Arab’s age may be guessed. He is tall, somewhat corpulent, and not unhandsome. Were it not that his face betrays the traces of a too uxorious life, and that he has for some reason lately cut off his moustache and trimmed his beard to resemble an English tradesman’s, he might even be called good-looking. His complexion is clear, his eyes large and fine, though faded with excesses, and his teeth white and perfect. The Sultan’s feet are just of that ideal type that Sir Frederick Leighton loves to paint, and which, until I saw them peeping from Sayyid Barghash’s sandals, I never believed to exist. The feet and hands of the Sultan of Zanzibar are the most beautifully formed I ever saw in a man, and he is justly proud of them; but alas! his symmetry ends at his ankles, for he is afflicted with elephantiasis—a not uncommon disease in Zanzibar, and his limbs are swollen and misshapen. Though he speaks no languages but Arabic and Swahili, he is a better-read man than many a contemporary Eastern Sovereign, and even aspires to the honours of an author. [Illustration: Fig. 11.—Zanzibar Orchids. ] One day four or five servants of the Sultan arrived at the Consulate, bearing about a dozen volumes of a work in Arabic. This was Part I. of a Digest of Mohammedan Jurisprudence written by the Sultan, and presented with his compliments to the British Agent. In conversation, Sayyid Barghash is often sprightly, and all that he says is marked by intelligence and good sense. He is simple in his diction, for an Arab, and sometimes baffles verbose flatterers by his curt replies. I may remind my readers here of a little incident commented on at the time of the Sayyid’s visit to England. At his first meeting with Lord Beaconsfield that statesman thought to set him at his ease by addressing him in somewhat high-flown Oriental parlance, and met him with the enigmatic question, “Which does your Highness prefer, flowers or jewels?” “I fail to see any connection between them,” replied Sayyid Barghash in all simplicity. [Illustration: Fig. 12.—Kigelia Africana. ] An interview with the Ruler of Zanzibar, then, is not of that _fade_ character which characterizes a ceremonial visit to most Oriental sovereigns. He poses you with many shrewd questions, and when the reception is over, the coffee and rose-sherbet drunk, and the Sayyid hands you down the well-like staircase, and you depart with the band playing “Rule Britannia,” you feel that you have met a man who, had he received anything like an education, and had been trained by civilized ideas of morality to conceal, if not to bridle, his unruly passions, would have made no mean figure among the world’s rulers and statesmen.