The population of Zanzibar is pretty evenly divided between Arabs and Swahilis, with a considerable sprinkling of East Indians, who play the same rôles of peddlers, petty tradesmen, and money-lenders in the Orient that the Jews and Armenians do in the Occident. The dress of the Swahili is as simple as it is striking: two lengths of cotton cloth, called _kanga_, one draped about the waist and the other about the shoulders, with an extra remnant twisted into a turban, form the costume of men and women alike, though the Swahili women, in addition to the _kanga_ proper, wear cotton pantalets resembling those in fashion in ante-bellum days, edged at the ankles with neat little frills, like those the chefs at fashionable restaurants put on lamb chops. These _kangas_ are crudely stamped in an endless variety of startling patterns, some of the more elaborate designs looking, from a little distance, as though embroidered. The inventiveness of the British, Belgian, and German designers must be sorely taxed, for the fashions in East Africa change as rapidly as they do in Paris and with as little warning, the _kangas_ stamped with card-pips—hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades—which were all the rage among Zanzibar's dusky leaders of fashion for a time, suddenly giving place to those bearing crude pictures of sailing-ships or Arabic quotations from the Koran. One negro dandy whom I saw paraded the streets, the envied of all his fellows, wearing a _kanga_ on which was printed, in endless repetition, the British coat of arms and the loyal motto “God Save the King!” while still another swaggered by in a garment sprinkled over with the legend in letters six inches high “Remember the Maine!” Though the important trade in cotton goods which we once had with East Africa has long since passed into British and German hands, there is a certain melancholy satisfaction in knowing that, so firmly does the reputation of our cottons endure, the natives of all this region still insist on the piece goods which they purchase, whether made in Manchester or Dresden, bearing the stamp “American,” and will take no other. The costumes of the Arabs, on the other hand, recall all the stories of pirates and slave-traders which one associates with this romantic coast, for the men, ignoring the law which prohibits the carrying of arms, swagger insolently through the streets with dagger-filled sashes and trailing scimiters, their white _jibbahs_ flapping about their sandalled feet and their snowy turbans cocked rakishly. The dress of the Arab women of Zanzibar resembles the costume of no other people, its characteristic features being the immense, doughnut-shaped turbans and the frilled, skin-tight trousers striped like barber-poles. [Illustration: ARAB WOMEN OF ZANZIBAR. “Their dress resembles the costume of no other people, its characteristic features being the immense, doughnut-shaped turbans and the frilled, skin-tight trousers striped like barber-poles.”]