Entering the coral reef which defends this great store-house of Eastern Intertropical Africa, I remarked that the lucent amethyst of the waters was streaked and patched with verdigris green; the ‘light of the waves’ being caused by shoals, whose golden sands blended with the blue of heaven. The ‘Passes of Zanzibar’ reminded me in colouration of the ‘Gateways of Jeddah,’ and as the coral reefs cut like razors, they must be threaded with equal care. So smooth was the surface within the walls, that each ship, based upon a thread of light, seemed to hover over its own reflected image. And now we could distinguish the normal straight line of Arab town, extending about a mile and a half in length, facing north, and standing out in bold relief, from the varied tints and the grandeur of forest that lay behind. A Puritanical plainness characterized the scene— cathedrals without the graceful minarets of Jeddah, mosques without the cloisters of Cairo, turrets without the domes and monuments of Syria; and the straight stiff sky-line was unrelieved except by a few straggling palms. In the centre, and commanding the anchorage, was a square-curtained artless fort, conspicuous withal, and fronted by a still more contemptible battery. To its right and left the Imam’s palace, the various Consulates, and the large parallelogrammic buildings of the great, a tabular line of flat roofs, glaring and dazzling like freshly white-washed sepulchres, detached themselves from the mass, and did their best to conceal the dingy matted hovels of the inner town. Zanzibar city, to become either picturesque or pleasing, must be viewed, like Stambul, from afar. We floated past the guard-ship, an old 50-gun frigate of Dutch form and Bombay build, belonging to ‘His Highness the Sayyid;’ it was modestly named Shah Allum (Alam), or ‘King of the World.’ The few dark faces on board bawled out information unintelligible to our pilot, and showed no colours, as is customary when a foreign cruizer enters the port. We set this down to the fact of their being blacks—‘careless Ethiopians.’ But flags being absent from all the masts, and here, as in West Africa and in the Brazil, every ‘house’ flies its own bunting, we decided that there must be some cause for the omission, and we became anxious accordingly.