From our easy-chairs on the roof we can see the massive building occupied formerly by the Universities Mission, and now the residence of Captain Prideaux, Acting British Consul and Political Resident, whose acquaintance I first made soon after his release from Magdala in 1868. This building stands upon the extremity of Shangani Point, and the first line of houses which fronts the beach extends northerly in a gentle sweep, almost up to Livingstone’s old residence on the other side of Malagash inlet. During the day the beach throughout its length is alive with the moving figures of hamals, bearing clove and cinnamon bags, ivory, copal and other gums, and hides, to be shipped in the lighters waiting along the water’s edge, with sailors from the shipping, and black boatmen discharging the various imports on the sand. In the evening the beach is crowded with the naked forms of workmen and boys from the “go-downs,” preparing to bathe and wash the dust of copal and hides off their bodies in the surf. Some of the Arab merchants have ordered chairs on the piers, or bunders, to chat sociably until the sun sets, and prayer time has come. Boats hurry by with their masters and sailors returning to their respective vessels. Dhows move sluggishly past, hoisting as they go the creaking yards of their lateen sails, bound for the mainland ports. Zanzibar canoes and “matepes” are arriving with wood and produce, and others of the same native form and make are squaring their mat sails, outward bound. Sunset approaches, and after sunset silence follows soon. For as there are no wheeled carriages with the eternal rumble of their traffic in Zanzibar, with the early evening comes early peace and rest. The intending explorer, however, bound for that dark edge of the continent which he can just see lying low along the west as he looks from Zanzibar, has thoughts at this hour which the resident cannot share. As little as his eyes can pierce and define the details in that gloomy streak on the horizon, so little can he tell whether weal or woe lies before him. The whole is buried in mystery, over which he ponders, certain of nothing but the uncertainty of life. Yet will he learn to sketch out a comparison between what he sees at sunset and his own future. Dark, indeed, is the gloom of the fast-coming night over the continent, but does he not see that there are still bright flushes of colour, and rosy bars, and crimson tints, amidst what otherwise would be universal blackness? And may he not therefore say—“As those colours now brighten the darkening west, so my hopes brighten my dark future”? [Illustration: A HOUSE AT ZANZIBAR.] ----- # 3: Wangwana (freed negroes). CHAPTER II.