In the centre of the square, opposite the palace, stands the Sayyid’s flag-staff, where the ‘Bákúr’ is administered, where executions take place, and where, according to an American traveller,[66] distinguished criminals are fastened to a pole, and are tied from the ankles to the throat, ‘till the soul of the dying man is literally squeezed out of its earthly tenement.’ The author, who visited Zanzibar in ‘the mercanteel,’ was grievously hoaxed by some kind friend. Under Sayyid Said torture was unknown, death was inflicted according to Koranic law, and only one mutilation is recorded. I may remark, en passant, that in this part of the world the two master romancers, Ignorance and Interest, have been busily at work; and that many a slander rests upon the slenderest foundation of fact. Adventurers have circulated the most ridiculous tales. We hear, or rather we have heard, of 300,000 Arab cavalry, and hordes of steel-clad negroes, possibly a tradition of the ‘Zeng’ (Zanzibarians), who, in the days of the Caliphs, plundered Basrah. We read of brilliant troops of horse artillery, whose only existence was in the brain of some unprincipled speculator; and yet this report sent a battery from Woolwich as a present for the late Sayyid. To the same category belong the Amazons bestriding war-bul locks, doubtless a revival of El Masudi, who in our tenth century reported that the ‘King of Zeng’ commanded, Dahoman-like, an army of soldieresses, mounted, as are the Kafirs, upon oxen—the Portuguese ‘boi-cavallos.’ Some travellers have asserted that the Cape tribes learned cattle-riding from Europeans: but Camoens, making his hero land at the Aguada de S. Braz, after sailing from the Angra de Santa Elena, expressly states— ‘Embrown’d the women by the burning clime, On slow-paced oxen riding came along.’—Canto V. 63.