Andrea Ferrara, the gift of an old friend, Archibald McLaren, and one young fellow volunteered to accompany us up country. The Wasawahili were the least civil; they heard that certain Muzungu Kafirs had visited their town, and came to stare accordingly. The good Pisu sent for our casks, and had them filled from the Mto-ni, behind the fort. This streamlet, some 15 feet broad and armpit deep, supplies water far superior to that of the wells and the brackish produce of the sands near the anchorage ground. Finally, he accompanied us, with the chief notables, to the landing-place, and sent us off in his own boat, which he had loaded with rice and fruits. Pemba is an irregular coralline bank, composed of some 15 or 20 smaller items, covered with the richest vegetable humus. It is, in fact, an archipelago growing up into an island. Like Zanzibar, it is a low bank perched upon the summits of submarine mountains, which rise from depths not yet fathomed. Its extreme length is 42 miles, from Ra’as Kigomathe (Kegomatchy of Owen), the N. West point in S. lat. 4° 47′, and Ra’as Msuka (Said Point), in S. lat. 5° 29′ 30″. The long narrow steep varies in breadth from 2 to 10 miles (Owen), between E. long. (G.) 39° 39′, and 39° 48′, to which 5′ must be added since Bombay[1] and the Cape of Good Hope have been found to be placed that much too far west. Ra’as Kigomathe, the point nearest the mainland, is separated from it by Pemba Channel, here 19 to 20 miles broad, and the greatest width is 35 miles. The western sea-board, where calmer waters under a lea land favour the labours of the polypus, is evidently advancing rapidly, and here the coast-line is notably broken compared with that of Zanzibar and with its own eastern or windward coast. In this point it resembles Jutland, Iceland, and Norway, where the S. West, a prevalent wind, tears to pieces the occidental shores, and deposits the débris upon the leeward half. The reefs and shoals, branching in all directions, but especially westward, are still unexplored, and every ship that sounds does new work. The height of the Island nowhere exceeds 180 feet, and the soil is purely vegetable. The streamlets are not worth mentioning, and the general unimportance of the long narrow bank unfits it for representing the Menouthian depôt.