The Société Royale des Antiquaires du Nord sent him their diploma: he declared that he would not belong to a body of grave-robbers and corpse- snatchers. The census of Zanzibar having been proposed to him, unlike King David, he took refuge with Allah from the sin of numbering his people. When tide-gauges were supplied by the Geographical Society of Bombay, he observed that the Creator had bidden the ocean to ebb and to flow—‘what else did man want to know about it?’ Such was his incapacity for understanding European affairs, that until death’s-day he believed Louis Philippe to have carried into exile, as he himself would have done, all the fleet and the public treasure of the realm. And he never could comprehend a Republic—‘who administers the stick?’ Of this enterprising man, the Mohammed Ali Pasha of the further East, I may say, Extinctus amabitur idem. Shrewd and sensible, highly religious though untainted by fanaticism; affable and courteous, he was as dignified in sentiments as distinguished in presence and demeanour. He is accused of grasping covetousness and treachery—but what Arab ruler is not covetous and treacherous? He was a prince after the heart of his subjects; prouder of his lineage than fond of ostentation or display, an amateur conqueror on a small scale, mild in punishment, and principally remarkable as the chief merchant, cultivator, and ship-builder in his dominions. An epitaph may be borrowed for him from a man of very different character—first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his fellow-countrymen. Peace be to his manes! Sayyid Said’s territory at the time of his death extended in Oman from the Ra’as el Jebel (Cape Musseldom) to Sohar. In Mekran the seaboard between Ra’as Jask and Guadel belonged to him: in the Persian Gulf he had Khishm, Larak, and Hormuz, and he farmed from the Shah, Bandar Abbas and its dependency, Mina. His African possessions were far the most extensive and important. He ruled, to speak roughly, the whole Eastern Coast from N. lat. 5°, and even from Cape Guardafui, where the maritime Somal were to a certain extent his dependents, to Cape Delgado (S. lat. 11°), where the Arab met the Portuguese rule—an extent of 16° = 960 geographical miles. The small republics of Makdishu (Magadoxo, in N. lat. 2° 1′ 4″), of Brava (N. lat. 1° 6′ 48″), of Patta or Bette (S. lat. 2° 9′ 12″), and of Lamu (S. lat. 2° 15′ 42″), owned his protectorate, and in April, 1865, Marka received from him a garrison. The whole Zanzibarian Archipelago was his, and he claimed Bahrayn, Zayla, Aden, and Berberah, the first-mentioned with, the last three without, a shadow of right. His Arab subjects declared that they, and not the Portuguese, ceded Bombay to the British: the foundation of the story is a mosque built in ancient times by the Omanis, somewhat near the present Boree Bandar.