Fatal example! Mombasah thus learned that Europeans were easily conquered. The wasted island was re-occupied by the Portuguese, and the citadel was repaired in A.D. 1635. But after Hormuz and Maskat had fallen into the hands of the Persians and the Arabs, the Yurabi Imam of Oman, Sultan bin Sayf, besieged Mombasah about A.D. 1660, and, after five years’ investment, captured only the fort. His son and successor, Sayf bin Sultan, whose squadron was aided by the noble Arab tribe Mazrui, and by the dependent Wasawahili, again attacked the Portuguese, recovered the fort, massacred its defendants, and established an Arab governor. This decisive event took place on the 9th of Jemadi el Akhir, A. H. 1100 (December 14, 1698), a date celebrated in many a local ballad. I have sketched the modern history of Mombasah when chronicling that of Zanzibar. Sayyid Said, wiser than the Portuguese, secured his conquest by the Tarquinian operation of striking down all the tallest growth. For our temporary protectorate Capt. Boteler is the best authority, and since A.D. 1837 the place has no name in the annals of the coast. The traveller, as well as merchant, must lament that we abandoned its cause; had England retained it, the interior would long ago have been opened to us. This lament may seem strange in the days when we propose to give up Gibraltar, as we have given up Java, Sicily, and the Ionian Islands—conquests hard won by blood and gold, and parted with for a song. The harbour of Mombasah is spacious and land-locked; without exception, the best on the Zanzibar coast. Its magnificent basin is formed by one of those small coralline islands which, from Suez to Cape Corrientes, have long been the centres of commerce with peoples who, brutalized by barbarism, and incapable of civilization, would have converted mainland depôts into scenes of rapine and bloodshed. Of this chain the principal links, the Tyre, the Alexandria, and the Araduses of East Africa, are Masawah, old Zayla, Berberah—in the 16th century an islet—Makdishu, Lamu, Wasin, ancient Mtanga, Pemba, Zanzibar, Mafiyah, the original Kilwa, and Mozambique. The island is a mass of coralline, that forms scarps and dwarf cliffs, 45 to 60 feet high, everywhere except on the west, where there is a tongue of sand, and where the level ground is covered with the fertile humus of decayed vegetation; the shape is an irregular oval, about 3 miles long by 2½ broad, and this flat surface is capable of growing the richest produce. The soil, excessively permeable and bone-dry after a few hours following the heaviest downfalls, allows neither swamp nor bog. Eastward, or outside, there is good riding-ground defended on both sides by reefs; inside a double sea-arm moats the islet in every direction from the coast. This channel of coral-rag and oyster-rock, about 280 yards wide at the mouth, broadens northwards into a deep and secure basin, Captain Owen’s[8] Port Tudor, so called from