The Mrima is peopled by two distantly connected families, the half-caste Arabs and the Coast-Clans. The former are generally of Bayazi or Khariji persuasion; the latter follow the school of el Shafei; both, though the most imperfect of Moslems, are fanatical enough to be dangerous. They own a nominal allegiance to the suzerain of Zanzibar, yet they are autonomous and free-spoken as Bedouins, when removed a few miles from the coast, and they have a rooted aversion to the officials of the local government, whom they consider their personal enemies. Between them and the pure Arabs of Oman, who often traverse, but who now never settle upon the Mrima, there is a repugnance increased by commercial jealousy; they resent the presence of these strangers as an intrusion, and they lose no opportunity of thwarting and discouraging them from travelling into the interior. Like their ancestors, they dislike Europeans personally, and especially fear the Beni Nar, or Sons of Fire,--the English--“hot as the Ingrez,” is in these lands a proverb. In their many Riwayat, Hadisi, and Ngoma--tales, traditions, and songs--they predict the eventual conquest of the country that has once felt the white man’s foot. The half-caste Arab is degenerate in body and mind; the third generation becomes as truly negroid as the inner heathen. Even Creoles of pure blood, born upon the island and the coast of Zanzibar, lose the high nervous temperament that characterises their ancestors, and become, like Banyans, pulpy and lymphatic. These mestiços, appearing in the land of their grandsires, have incurred the risk of being sold as slaves. The peculiarity of their physiognomy is the fine Semitic development of the upper face, including the nose and nostrils, whilst the jaw is prognathous, the lips are tumid and everted, and the chin is weak and retreating. The cranium is somewhat rounded, and it wants the length of the Negroid’s skull. Idle and dissolute, though intelligent and cunning, the coast-Arab has little education. He is sent at the age of seven to school, where in two or three years he accomplishes the Khitmah, or perlection of the Koran, and he learns to write a note in an antiquated character, somewhat more imperfect than the Cufic. This he applies to the Kisawahili, and as nothing can be less fitted for the Semitic tongues than the Arabic syllabarium, so admirably adapted to its proper sphere, his compositions require the deciphering of an expert. A few prayers and hymns conclude the list of his acquirements. His mother-tongue knows no books except short treatises on Bao, or geomancy, and specimens of African proverbial wisdom. He then begins life by aiding his father in the shop or plantation, and by giving himself up to intoxication and intrigue. After suffering severely from his excesses--in this climate no constitution can bear up against over-indulgence long continued--at the age of seventeen or eighteen, he takes unto himself a wife.