The stranger, of course, is intensely interested in this life existing near the African Equator, now first revealed to him, and all that he sees and hears of figures and faces and sounds is being freshly impressed on his memory. Figures and faces are picturesque enough. Happy, pleased-looking men of black, yellow, or tawny colour, with long white cotton shirts, move about with quick, active motion, and cry out, regardless of order, to their friends or mates in the Swahili or Arabic language, and their friends or mates respond with equally loud voice and lively gesture, until, with fresh arrivals, there appears to be a Babel created, wherein English, French, Swahili, and Arabic accents mix with Hindi, and, perhaps, Persian. In the midst of such a scene I stepped into a boat to be rowed to the house of my old friend, Mr. Augustus Sparhawk, of the Bertram Agency. At this low-built, massive-looking house near Shangani Point, I was welcomed with all the friendliness and hospitality of my first visit, when, three years and a half previously, I arrived at Zanzibar to set out for the discovery of Livingstone. With Mr. Sparhawk’s aid I soon succeeded in housing comfortably my three young Englishmen, Francis John and Edward Pocock and Frederick Barker, and my five dogs, and in stowing safely on shore the yawl _Wave_, bought for me at Yarmouth by Mr. Edwin Arnold, the gig, and the tons of goods, provisions, and stores I had brought. Life at Zanzibar is a busy one to the intending explorer. Time flies rapidly, and each moment of daylight must be employed in the selection and purchase of the various kinds of cloth, beads, and wire, in demand by the different tribes of the mainland through whose countries he purposes journeying. Strong, half-naked porters come in with great bales of unbleached cottons, striped and coloured fabrics, handkerchiefs and red caps, bags of blue, green, red, white and amber-coloured beads, small and large, round and oval, and coils upon coils of thick brass wire. These have to be inspected, assorted, arranged, and numbered separately, have to be packed in portable bales, sacks, or packages, or boxed according to their character and value. The house-floors are littered with cast-off wrappings and covers, box-lids, and a medley of rejected paper, cloth, zinc covers and broken boards, sawdust and other débris. Porters and servants and masters, employés and employers, pass backwards and forwards, to and fro, amid all this litter, roll bales over, or tumble about boxes; and a rending of cloth or paper, clattering of hammers, demands for the marking-pots, or the number of bale and box, with quick, hurried breathing and shouting, are heard from early morning until night.