or Wasawahili; the former are portrayed as a slight people, scantily armed, but clothed in fine cottons bought at Mombasah from merchants of Cambaya. Their women were adorned with jewels, with Sofalan gold, and with silver obtained in exchange for provisions, from the people of St Lawrence’s Island (Madagascar). And here we may remark that the Arab settlements in East Africa, visited by the Portuguese at the end of the 15th century, showed generally a civilization and a refinement fully equal to, if not higher than, the social state of the European voyagers. The latter, expecting to find savages like the naked Kafirs of the South, must not have been a little surprised to receive visits from the chiefs of Mozambique and Melinde, men clad in gold, embroidered silks, velvets, and ‘crimson damask, lined with green satin;’ armed with rich daggers and swords sheathed in silver scabbards, seated on arm-chairs, and attended by a suite of some 20 richly-dressed Arabs. The modest presents offered by the Europeans to these wealthy princelets, whose women adorned themselves with pearls and other precious stones, must have given a mean idea of Portuguese civilization. And even in the present day the dominions of the ‘barbarous Arab’ are superior in every way to the miserable colonies on the West African coast, which represent Christian and civilized Europe. Four years afterwards (1503) Ruy Lourenço Ravasco, a Cavalleiro da Casa d’ El Rey, sailing with D. Antonio de Saldanha, cruized off ‘Zemzibar,’ as his countrymen called Zanzibar, and in two months captured twenty rich ships, laden with ambergris, ivory, tortoiseshell, wax, honey, rice, coir, and silk and cotton stuffs. This captain appears, like most of his fellows, to have been a manner of pirate: he did not restore them till ransom was paid. ‘El Rey,’ still friendly to the Portuguese, sent a spirited remonstrance, when the insolence of the reply forced him to take hostile measures. The Arabs manned their canoes with some 4000 men; but two launches, well-armed with cannon, killed at the first discharge 34 men and put the rest to flight. Thus the Malik or Regulus was compelled by Ravasco to pay an annual tribute of 100 gold miskals in token of submission to the greedy and unprincipled Dom Manuel. ‘The conquered pays the conquest!’ exclaims with Christian emphasis the venerable Osorio. Portugal now began to gather gold from Sofala to Makdishu; ‘Wagerage,’ the chief of Melinde, contributed every year 1500 wedges (ingots) of the precious metal, and the insolence of the victors must have made the good old man deeply regret the welcome and the Godspeed which he had bestowed upon the exploratory expedition.