We presently catch sight, on our right, of the entrance to the fort at which sit on guard a few lazy Baluchis and dingy-looking Arabs. On our left is the saluting battery, which does frequent service for the ignition of much powder, an antique mode of exchanging compliments with ships of war, and of paying respect to Government officials. The customs sheds are close by, and directly in front of us rises the lofty house and harem of Prince Barghash. It is a respectable-looking building of the Arab architecture which finds favour at Muscat, three stories high and whitewashed—as all houses here appear to be. It is connected by a covered gangway, about 30 feet above our heads, with a large house on the opposite side of the lane, and possesses an ambitious doorway raised 3 feet above the street, and reached by four or five broad and circular-steps. Within the lower hall are some soldiers of the same pattern as those at the fort, armed with the Henry-Martini rifle, or matchlock, sword, and targe. A very short time takes us into a still narrower lane, where the whitewash is not so white as at Shangani, the European quarter. We are in the neighbourhood of Melindi now, where the European who has not been able to locate himself at Shangani is obliged to put up with neighbours of East Indian race or Arabs. Past and beyond Melindi is a medley of tall white houses and low sheds, where wealth and squalor jostle side by side, and then we find ourselves at the bridge over the inlet of Malagash, which extends from the bay up to Mnazi-Moya, or the One Cocoa-nut, behind Shangani. The banks on either side are in view as we pass over the bridge, and we note a dense mass of sheds and poor buildings, amid hills of garbage and heaps of refuse, and numbers of half-naked negroes, or people in white clothes, giving the whole an appearance somewhat resembling the more sordid village of Boulak, near Cairo.