The people of Tumbatu, like the Greeks, have their good points. They are skilful pilots and stout seamen, diligent in gathering their bread from the waters, and comparatively industrious, considering their enervating, prostrating climate. Their low, jungly ledge wants the sweet element, compelling them to fetch it from Zanzibar—their mainland; hence travellers have described the islet as uninhabited. The people are mentioned as Moslems by Yakut (early 13th century), and this island of ‘Tambat’ was made a refuge for the inhabitants of Languja or Zanzibar. We inquired in vain about the fort which the Arabs are said to have built there. The skins of Tumbatu are sooty, the effect, according to some, according to others the concomitant, of humid heat. The reader must not charge me with ‘trimming’ between the rival schools of ‘race _versus_ climate, the cause of complexion.’ Many peoples betray but a modicum of chromatic and typical change. On the other hand, I have found an approximation of colour as well as of form between the Anglo-American and the Luso-Brazilian; and I have enlarged upon this chromatic heresy, if heresy it be, in the Highlands of the Brazil (Vol. i. chap. xxxviii.). Finally, when speaking of the permanence of type, it is well to bear in mind that our poor observations hardly extend over 2500 years. The next morning placed us at the base of our operations, and we were on deck with Aurora. The stout ship ‘Elphinstone,’ urged by the cool land breeze, slid down the channel, the sea-river that separates the low- lying and evergreen Zanzibar Island from its reflection, the Mpoa-ni.[9] We were sensibly affected by the difference between the Sawáhil, this part of the East African sea-board which begins at the Juba River, and the grim physiognomy of Somaliland, Region of Fragrant Gums, with its sandy horrors of Berberah, and its granitic grandeurs of Guardafui, which popular apprehension refers to Garde à vous, and which Abyssinian Bruce, according to Ritter (Erdkunde, 2nd Division, § 8), altered, to Gardefan, the Straits of Burial.[10] We were in the depths of the ‘dries,’ as they are called in West Africa, in the local midwinter, yet this land was gorgeous in its vestment when others would be hybernating in more than semi-nudity.