sometimes necessary, though chastisement is on the whole wild and unfrequent. Zanzibar town is subject to fires, originating with the slaves, often in drunkenness, more often for plunder; and this induced the late Sayyid to forbid the building of cajan ‘tabernacles’ (Makuti or Banda-ni) upon the house-tops. His orders were obeyed for four months, an unusually long time; and at last Europeans, in consequence of the danger which threatened them, were compelled personally to interfere with the severest preventive treatment. The Prince alone has the power of pronouncing a capital sentence; and, as usual in Moslem countries, where murder is a private, not a public, offence, the criminal is despatched by the relatives of the slain. Death may be inflicted by the master of the house upon a violator of domicile, gallant, or thief; the sword is drawn, and the intruder is at once cut down. Fines and confiscations, which have taken the place of the Koranic mutilation, are somewhat common, especially when impudent frauds are practised upon the Prince’s property. Confinement in the fort, I have said, is severe, but not so much feared as at Maskat, whose rock dungeon is an Aceldama; I saw something of the kind at Fernando Po. Criminals have a wholesome horror of being the ruler’s guest, yet they sometimes escape by the silver key, and, once upon the mainland, they may laugh at justice. I heard of a Banyan who, despite being double-ironed, managed to ‘make tracks.’ The military force of Zanzibar is not imposing. In 1846, throughout the African possessions of the Sayyid, the permanent force was only 400 men, namely, about 80 at Zanzibar, 250 at Mombasah, 30 at Lamu, 25 at Patta, 6 to 10 at Kilwa, and sundry pairs at Makdishu and other places; after that time they were doubled and even trebled. The ‘regulars’ consist of a guard of honour, a ‘guardia nobile’ of a dozen serviles habited in cast-off Sepoy uniforms, collected from different corps of the Bombay army: one musket carries a bayonet, the other a stick. The cost of new equipments was once asked by the late Sayyid; after glancing at the total, he exclaimed that the guard itself would not fetch half that sum. The irregular force is more considerable, and represents the Hayduques of old Eastern Turkey, the Arnauts or Albanians of Egypt, the Bashi- Buzuks of El Hejaz, and the Sayyáreh and Zabtiyyeh of modern Syria. The so-called Baloch are vagrants and freebooters collected from Northern Arabia and from the southern seaboard of Persia, Mekran, and Kilat: when the Prince required extra levies he rigged out a vessel and recruited at Guadel or at Makallah. He preferred the Aryan,[67] as being more amenable to discipline than the Semite: moreover, the Arab clansman, like the Highlander of old, though feudally bound to follow his suzerain, requires the order of his immediate chief, and the latter, when most wanted, is uncommonly likely to rat or to revolt. The