comfortable house my own; to enjoy myself, with the request that
I would call for whatever I might require, obviated all unpleasant
alternatives.

One day's life at Zanzibar made me thoroughly conscious of my
ignorance respecting African people and things in general. I
imagined I had read Burton and Speke through, fairly well, and
that consequently I had penetrated the meaning, the full
importance and grandeur, of the work I was about to be engaged upon.
But my estimates, for instance, based upon book information,
were simply ridiculous, fanciful images of African attractions
were soon dissipated, anticipated pleasures vanished, and all
crude ideas began to resolve themselves into shape.

I strolled through the city. My general impressions are of
crooked, narrow lanes, white-washed houses, mortar-plastered
streets, in the clean quarter;--of seeing alcoves on each side,
with deep recesses, with a fore-ground of red-turbaned Banyans,
and a back-ground of flimsy cottons, prints, calicoes, domestics
and what not; or of floors crowded with ivory tusks; or of dark
corners with a pile of unginned and loose cotton; or of stores of
crockery, nails, cheap Brummagem ware, tools, &c., in what I call
the Banyan quarter;--of streets smelling very strong--in fact,
exceedingly, malodorous, with steaming yellow and black bodies, and
woolly heads, sitting at the doors of miserable huts, chatting,
laughing, bargaining, scolding, with a compound smell of hides,
tar, filth, and vegetable refuse, in the negro quarter;--of streets
lined with tall, solid-looking houses, flat roofed, of great carved
doors with large brass knockers, with baabs sitting cross-legged
watching the dark entrance to their masters' houses; of a shallow