At an early period the merchants and traders of Yemen frequented the Island, and exchanged, as we read in the Periplus and Ptolemy, their homes of barren rock and sand for the luxuriant wastes of Eastern Africa. If tradition be credible, their primitive settlements were Patta (Bette), Lamu, and the Mrima fronting these islets; and here to the present day the dialect of their descendants has remained the purest. Themselves pagans, they lived amongst the heathenry, borrowed their language, as the Arabs and the Baloch still do, intermarried with them, and begot the half-caste Wasawahili, or coast population. In proof that these were the lords of the land, the late Sultan Ahmad, chief of the Shirazi, or free tribe of the mulattoes, received annual presents from the Arab Sayyid of Zanzibar. When the former died Muigni Mku, his wazir, or brother—here all fellow-countrymen are brothers—succeeded, in default of other heirs, to the position of monarch retired from business. He is a common-looking negroid, who lives upon the proceeds of a plantation and periodical presents: he is not permitted to appear as an equal at the Sayyid’s Darbar, and it is highly improbable that he will ever come to his own again. The Sawáhil or Azania continued to acknowledge Arab and Persian supremacy till the appearance of the Portuguese upon the coast. D. Vasco da Gama passed Zanzibar Island without sighting it when first bound Indiawards, and authors differ upon the subject of his return voyage. The historian Toão de Barros (i. 4, 11) relates that the expedition made its land-fall from India below Magadoxo (Makdishu or Maka’ad el Shaat, ‘the sitting-place of the sheep’),[73] beat off a boat attack from ‘Pató’ (Patta), visited Melinde, Mozambique, and the Aguada de S. Braz, and doubled the Cape of Storms on March 20, 1499. Goes[74] declares that da Gama, after touching at Makdishu and Melinde, arrived at Zanzibar on February 28, and was supplied by its ruler with provisions, presents, and specimens of country produce. The island is described as large and fertile, with groves of fine trees, producing good fruit, two others, ‘Pomba’ (Pemba) and ‘Mofia’ (our Monfia and the Arab Mafiyah), lying in its vicinity. These settlements were governed by Moorish princes ‘of the same caste as the King of Melinde’—doubtless hereditary Moslem Shaykhs and Sayyids. The population is represented as being in ‘no great force, but carrying on a good trade with Mombassa for Guzerat calicoes and with Sofala for gold.’ The ‘King of Melinde’ made a name in Europe. Rabelais commemorates Hans Carvel, the King of Melinda’s jeweller, and (in Book I. chap. v.) we read, ‘thus did Bacchus conquer Ind; thus philosophy, Melinde,’—meaning that the Portuguese taught their African friends more drinking than wisdom. João de Barros (ii. 4. 2) informs us that the Chief of Zanzibar was ‘da linhagem dos Reys de Mombaça, nossos imigos.’ The inhabitants were ‘white Moors’ (Arabs from Arabia) and black Moors