A strong current runs between Zanzibar and Pemba, carrying ships northwards sometimes at the rate of 50 miles per diem. The principal settlement, Chak-Chak, is built upon a deep inlet on the western coast, where the Island is narrowest. The distance is some 17 direct geographical miles (or 25 by course) north with easting from the southern Cape, and the approach is winding and difficult. The most objectionable part of the Green Isle is its climate. No man here is in rude health, laming ulcers on the legs exactly resembling syphilitic sores, stomach pains, and violent indigestions afflict new comers: hydrocele is a plague, and the population is decimated by small-pox, dumb agues, and bilious fevers. In its palmy day many Portuguese, merchants and soldiers, settled at Pemba upon large plantations, and with the abundance of water and provisions, amongst which cattle are specified, consoled themselves for the insalubrity of the atmosphere. At the end of the sixteenth century, when that celebrated corsair the Amir Ali Bey had raised the coast, the ‘Moors’ of Pemba revolted against their Shaykh, and murdered the foreign settlers—men, women, and children. The chief, with a few fugitives, took refuge in Melinde, and was speedily restored to his own by the Captain-Major Thomé de Souza Coutinho, brother of the Viceroy of India. He was again expelled shortly after A.D. 1594; and this time he retired to Mombasah, became a Christian, and married a Portuguese orphan: he eventually visited India with D. Francisco da Gama, who also promised to restore him, and the promise seems to have been kept. In December, 1608, the Island was visited by Capt. Sharpey, en route to India, and the treacherous Europeans persuaded the ‘Moors’ to attack his crew, after inveigling them on shore by a show of hospitality. Hence the ‘villanies of Pemba’ became a proverb on the coast.