However energetic the small merchant may be, he can effect nothing permanent for the good of a country that has neither roads nor navigable rivers, whose climate is alike fatal to the starved hamal as it is to the beast of burthen. The maritime belt must first be crossed by an iron road, and another must tap the very centre of the rice-fields of the Rufiji valley, in order to insure cheap, nutritious food in abundance. To a company, however, which can raise the sum required to construct a tramway, East Africa holds out special advantages. The Sultan himself offers a handsome sum, five lakhs of dollars or, roughly, £100,000, and there are rich Hindis at Zanzibar who, no doubt, would invest large sums, and thus the company would become the principal merchants along the line. The Sultan has also poor subjects enough who would be only too glad of the opportunities thus afforded to work for reasonable pay, so that very little fear need be entertained of lack of labour. Besides, there are natives of the interior who, after two or three bold examples, would soon be induced to apply for employment along the line. Those whom we call the Arabs of Zanzibar are either natives of Muscat who have immigrated thither to seek their fortunes, or descendants of the conquerors of the Portuguese. As the present Sultan calls himself Barghash the son of Sayid, the son of Sultan, the son of Hamid, so all Arabs, from the highest to the lowest of his subjects, are known by their proper names—Ahmed, or Khamis, or Abdullah, as being the sons of Mussoud, of Mustapha, or of Mohammed. Some of them boast of unusually long pedigrees, and one or two I am acquainted with proclaimed themselves of purer and more aristocratic descent than even the Sultan.