The N. E. monsoon is now (December) doing its duty well, and bringing various native craft from Madagascar, Mozambique, the minor islands of the Indian Ocean, Bombay and Guzerat, the Somali coast, the Red Sea, Maskat, and the Persian Gulf. Numbering 60 to 70, they anchor close in shore—O Semites and Hamites, wondrously apathetic!—where the least sea would bump them to bits. About half a mile outside the ‘country shipping,’ ride, in 5 to 6 fathoms, half a dozen square-rigged merchantmen—Americans, French, and Hamburgers; England is not represented. What with bad water, and worse liquor, the Briton finds it hard to live at Zanzibar. All are awaiting cargoes of copal and ivory, of hides, and of the cowries which we used to call ‘blackamoor’s teeth.’ The quaintest and freshest local build is to us the Mtepe, which the Arabs call Muntafiyah.[20] This lineal descendant of the Ploaria Rhapta (Naviculæ Consutæ, Periplus, chap. 16), that floated upon these seas 20 centuries ago, is a favourite from Lamu to Kilwa. The shell has a beam one-third of its length, and swims the tide buoyantly as a sea-bird. This breadth, combined with elasticity, enables it to stand any amount of grounding and bumping, nor is it ever beached for the S. W. monsoon. It is pegged together, not nailed, and mostly, as the old traveller says, ‘sewn, like clothes, with twine.’ The tapering mast, raking forwards, carries any amount of square matting, by no means air-tight, and the stern is long and projecting, as if amphisbænic. The swan-throat of the arched prow is the cheniscus of the classical galley-stem. Necklaced with strips of hide and bunches of talismans, it bears a red head; and the latter, as in the ark of Osiris and in the Chinese junk, has the round eyes painted white,—possibly, in the beginning holes for hawsers. The ‘Mtepe’ carries from 12 to 20 tons, and can go to windward of everything propelled by wind.