The Mahadimu, or serviles, a word derived from the Arabic Makhadim, the ‘Mohaydin’ of Europeans, compose the mass of the Wasawahili race. They are popularly derived from the slaves left upon the Island by the Portuguese. It must, however, be observed that most of the great families in Eastern and Southern Africa have congener clients, or rather outcastes, who are probably, like the Spartan Helots, remnants of subjugated rivals. Thus, to quote but a few, there are the Midgans amongst the Somal, the Walangúlo or Ariangulo and Dahalo amongst the Southern Gallas,[104] and the Wandurobo amongst the Wakwafi. The Wasumbara have their Washenzi; the Hottentots their Bushmen, and the Kafirs their Fingos. In a former volume I have shown that even the Arabs of Oman and Yemen are mixed with Khadims, a system of race within race, as contrary to the spirit of El Islam as of Christianity. These servile castes are distinguished by swarthier skins, weaker frames, and other signs of inferior development. The Mahadímu of Zanzibar are evidently the ancient lords of the Island, reduced to a manner of servitude by northern conquerors. Though now free, and often slave-owners, these Helots are subject, at the Prince’s order, to an occasional corvée, and to a poll-tax. The amount of the latter affords a rude census; the adult males range between 10,000 and 12,000, and the women, it is said, are proportionally more numerous. The Wasawahili of the Island appear physically inferior to those of the seaboard: as in the days of Marco Polo, they are emphatically an ugly race. If the girls in early youth show traces of prettiness, it is a grotesque order of the beauté du diable. Some of the men have fine, large, strong, and muscular figures, without being able to use their strength, and as amongst uncivilized people generally, the reality falls short of the promise. The national peculiarity is the division of the face into two distinct types, and the contrast appears not a little singular. The upper, or intellectual part, though capped by woolly hair, is distinctly Semitic—with the suspicion of a caricature—as far as the nose-bridge, and the more ancient the family the more evident is the mixture. The lower, or animal half, especially the nostrils, lip, jaws, and chin is unmistakably African. There are a few Albinos with silk- cocoon-coloured hair, and tender-red eyes, their pinkish skins are cobwebbed by darker reticulations and rough from pellagrous disease. Leucosis, however, is rare; we saw only two cases, one on the Island, the other a youth near Tángá.