‘So coy a dame is Sleep to him, That all the weary courtship of his thoughts Can’t win her to his bed.’ After the disaster in Somali-land, I was pledged, at all risks and under all circumstances, to succeed; and now St Julian, host and patron of travellers, had begun to show me the rough side of his temper. The Consul was evidently unfit for the least exertion. He had in his ‘godowns’ dozens of chests and cases which he had not the energy to open. H. H. Sayyid Said had left affairs in a most unsatisfactory state. His eldest son, the now murdered Sayyid Suwayni, heir to Maskat, and famous as an anglophobe, had threatened to attack Zanzibar; a menace which, as will afterwards appear, he attempted to carry out. The cadet Sayyid Majid, installed by his father chief of the African possessions, was engrossed in preparations for defence. Moreover, this amiable young prince having lately recovered from confluent small-pox, an African endemic which had during the last few years decimated the islanders, was ashamed to display a pock-marked face to the ‘public,’ ourselves included. The mainland of Northern Zanzibar about Lamu was, as usual on such occasions, in a state of anarchy. Every man seized the opportunity of slaying his enemy, or of refusing to pay his taxes. An exceptionally severe drought had reduced the southern coast of Zanzibar to a state of famine. Briefly, the gist of the whole was that I had better return to Bombay. But rather than return to Bombay, I would have gone to Hades on that 20th of December, 1856. NOTE. Since these pages were penned the _Bombay Gazette_ of November 11, 1870, announced the death of H. H. Sayyid Majid, Sultan of Zanzibar, and the succession of his brother—Sayyid Burghush. ----- Footnote 7: Somewhat boisterous, but true. (Note 14 years afterwards.) Footnote 8: Literally rock, rocky ground. Hence the Arabs are called Wámánga. Mr Cooley (‘Inner Africa Laid Open,’ p. 61) blunders pitiably about this word. Footnote 9: