Chapter X: Section 4: Notes on the Fauna of Zanzibar

The list of Zanzibarian Fauna and Flora is not extensive. In the plantations the Komba or Galago abounds, and there is a small and pretty long-tailed monkey (cercopithecus griseo-viridis) with black face, green back, and grey belly: it is playful and easily tamed. This, as well as a large species of bat, is pronounced delicious by curious gourmands. The French ‘tigre’ and the English ‘panther’ (Felis Serval) is a leopard about 18 inches high, and of disproportionate length, with a strong large arm; the upper part of the skull vanishes as in the cheeta, and the throat is so thick that no collar will keep its place. This felis is destructive in the interior of the Island; and in parts of the Continent the people fear it more than they do the lion: it is trapped in the normal cage, and is speared without mercy. Two kinds of civets (Viverra civetta, and V. genetta),[ one small, the other bigger than a Persian (Angora) cat, are kept confined, and are scraped once a week for their produce. As in all Arab towns, the common cat abounds; it has a long tail and ears, a wild look, and a savage temper. This Asiatic importation is never thoroughly domesticated in Africa, and seems always aspiring to become a ‘cat o’ mountain’: on the West coast it is difficult to keep cats in the house after kittening. The feline preserves its fur in Zanzibar Island: at Mombasah there is or was a breed more grotesque than the Manx, and completely bald like the Chinese dog. The so-called ‘Indian badger’ (Arctonyx collaris, Cuv.) digs into the graves and devours the dead. The rodents are grey squirrels, small rabbits (?), large rats, some of peculiar but not of unknown species, and mice, probably imported by the shipping. The ‘wild boars’ are pigs left by the Portuguese: strangers mistaking the tusks often describe them as ‘horned’ (chœropotamus). The Saltiana antelope is common: it smells strongly of musk, and its flesh resembles the rat’s.

A fine large fish-hawk, with gold-fringed eye and yellow legs, bluish- black plume, and grey neck-feathers, haunts the Island and the coast: the other raptores are the brown kites (F. chilla), the scavengers of Asia and Africa. As at Aden, so here, there are no common crows or sparrows; the place of the former is taken by the African species (corvus scapulatus), with white waistcoat, popularly called the ‘parson crow,’ and the latter appears in the shape of the Java variety, which, introduced about thirty years ago (1857) by Captain Ward, a Salem ship- captain, has multiplied prodigiously. Green birds, like Amedavats, muscicapæ of sorts, especially the ‘king-crow’ of India, here called ‘Drongo,’ abound; and visitors, like the French savant on the Dead Sea, speak of a humming-bird, a purely New World genus, probably mistaking for it a large hawk-moth. The parroquet resembles the small green species of India: it is tamed and taught to talk. Zanzibar cannot boast of the Madagascar parrot, a plain, brown, thick-bodied bird, celebrated for distinct articulation.[48] Martens do not build at Zanzibar (?): they halt at the Island in their migrations; and one kind, it has been remarked, never remains longer than four to five days. After the rains the lagoons are covered with wild-duck, mallard, and widgeon. The snipe (jack, common, and solitary), a bird which everywhere preserves its fine game flavour, is found on the Island and in the central Continent. Sandpipers (charadrius hiaticula) run on the beach, and the waters support various kinds of cranes, gulls, and terns.

When fewer ships visited the port, the sand-spit projecting from ‘Frenchman’s Island’ was covered with bay-turtle[49] (chelone esculenta or Midas), which the negroes were too indolent or ignorant to catch. The iguanas or harmless crocodiles (οὐδένα δὲ ἀνθρώπων ἀδικοῦσιν) of the Periplus, have not yet been killed out of Zanzibar—and there are several species.[50] Until lately the true crocodile was found in a small sweet stream about eight miles south of the town, and the monsters swarm in every river of the mainland.

Snakes are neither numerous nor deadly: possibly the climate, as in Ireland and Bermuda, is too damp for them. I heard of a python[51] resembling that of Madagascar and India; it is 13 feet long, and thick as a man’s thigh. Its favourite habitat is in sugar-cane patches near water, and it is occasionally fatal to a dog. There are water-snakes in the harbour, like those once supposed to be peculiar to Western India. The people speak of a green ‘whip-snake’—vaguest of terms—whose vertebræ appear through the skin, and there are the usual legends of a venomous tree-serpent which can shoot itself like an arrow. The pagan Mganga or Medicine-man ties above the snake-wound a circle of wire with two small bits of wood strung upon it. This, he says, prevents the venom ascending; and doubtless the ligature is for half an hour or so effective. The people have ‘Fiss’ or serpent-stones, which suggest the Irish murrain-stones. Englishmen of undoubted character have recounted cures effected by this remedy, which was so mysterious before capillary attraction robbed it of its marvel.

There is a variety of small tiliquæ, and of large black earth-lizards. One species, with melancholy chirrup and unpleasant aspect, supplies the people with Herodotean tales. It is, they say, a hermaphrodite, and its flanks are torn by its young during parturition. The chameleon also suffers from the popular belief that it kills men with its breath. Scorpions are small, and not so common as in the interior: the animal is mashed and applied as a poultice to its own wound, which may derive some benefit from the moisture. Centipedes haunt houses that are not cleaned and whitewashed, and millipedes abound in every plantation.

The fish supply is variable[52] as the climate. Sometimes it is excellent; at other times none but the poorest will eat it, and there are many species considered always poisonous.[53] It is most abundant in the S. West monsoon, when small fry may be caught in the still waters of the harbour. Sharks are large and numerous, especially near Chumbi (La Passe) Island, where all the best fish is netted; hut these tigers of the sea do not injure the bathers on the beach. Though the shark is easily hooked in the very harbour, many cargoes of its salted meat are annually imported from Oman. The liver-oil is used to anoint the body: and when Europe requires a succadeneum for huile de morue, I shall recommend to her this shark-oil as an article of superior nauseousness.

The whale fishery reminds us of what it was on the Brazilian coast a century ago. The mammals are sometimes found in soundings, and a wounded sperm-whale lately entered Zanzibar harbour. In May, June, and July, ships of 200 to 600 tons visit the waters south of Mafiyah Island; if the capricious leviathan be not found there and then, it is waste time to cruise about. In July, and at the beginning of the N. East monsoon, schools migrate up the coast in search of food as far as the Red Sea. From 30 to 60 lbs. of ambergris have been brought in one year to the island, and a little of it is exported to Europe. This high-priced article (1 lb. = £14) is taken from the rectum of the spermaceti whale: it seems to have caused constipation and disease, and the oil drawn from these fish is yellow and bad. The Arabs burn it in pastiles, and use it not only internally but externally like musk. Old travellers report that the Somal taught camels to hunt for it by the scent, in the same way as pigs learn to find truffles; and the tale has been told to modern travellers. The main virtue of ambergris is probably its heavy price.

The celebrated ‘Sir’ (Seer) fish, a corruption from Shir Mahi (شير ماهی) or ‘tiger fish,’ so called on account of its armature, known to the Arabs as Kunad (کناد) and in parts of India termed ‘Surmá,’ appears, for about a fortnight, at Zanzibar during its period of migration northwards in May and June. There are also ‘pomfrets,’ scates, soles which are small and not prized, and red and gدrey mullet, excellent in July, August, and September. The remora and the flying-fish enter the harbour; the hippocampus is known; there are mangrove-oysters, ‘oysters growing on trees’—a favourite subject with all old and with many new African travellers—and a small well-flavoured, rock oyster, a favourite relish with Europeans, caught about Chumbi Island. I saw no lobsters, so common in the Camaroons river of Western Africa. The sands abound in Medusæ, or jelly-fish, and in a large cray-fish, which the Arabs consider wholesome for invalids: it makes a rather insipid salad, but it is excellent when dressed after the fashion of the Slave Coast. The receipt is worth giving, and may be found useful in England. The meat, taken out after boiling, is pounded and mixed with peppers and seasoning. It is then restored to the shell, the whole is baked in the oven, and, served up piping hot, it forms an admirable ‘whet.’ Another kind of shell-fish is indeed a ‘soft crab;’ when cooked it seems to melt away, no meat remaining within: a third, also soft, is red even before being boiled. On every unfrequented strip of sand or weed small crabs gather in thousands; most of them have only one large claw, and their colours are a brilliant pink, pearly white, violet, and tender red.

The seas are little explored (1857), and there are legends of ichthyological marvels which remind us of European romantic zoology. I was told by Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton of a fish, possibly one of the Murænidæ, measuring nine feet long by three in diameter: the shape was somewhat like a leech, both extremities being similar; the _ribs_ resembled, but were rather flatter than, those of a bullock, and the flesh had the appearance of beef. A specimen, he said, had lately been brought from Kipombui, a small harbour opposite Zanzibar; the prey, however, is always cut up as soon as caught. This reminds us of the ‘full-sized devil-fish’ of the West Indian seas. The Arabs describe a monstrous polypus, with huge eyes and arms 10 feet long: they declare that it has entangled bathers and pulled them down close to shore. It is, in fact, the ‘piuvre,’ so famed of late; and since I left Zanzibar a French illustrated newspaper showed one of these horrors grappling with a man of war’s gig. Thus Oppian described a fish that smothered mariners with its monstrous wings, and drew them under water wrapped in a lethal embrace. Nieuhoff (Brazil, 1640) mentions a ‘lamprey’ at Pernambuco that ‘snatched all that fell in this way (both men and dogs that swam sometimes after the boat) into the water.’ Finally, Carsten Niebuhr (Arabia, chap. i. p. 140. 1762) declares that ‘the cuttle-fish is dangerous to swimmers and divers, of whom it lays hold with its long claws; these do not wound, but produce swelling, internal pains, and often an incipient paralysis.’

Sponge is found in abundance, but when dry it decays. Fine conchological collections were chiefly made in former years. The merchants spoiled the market by supplying whole cargos for watch-dials and for polishing porcelain. Slaves still fasten their canoes to the several banks in the roadstead, and find in the transparent waters the murex and other prized specimens. The harp-shell and ‘double-harp’ are found upon the softer sands enveloped in the folds of their owners; thus parasites cannot ruin their beautiful and brilliant hues. The ‘Kheti,’ or common cowrie, is picked up when the tide is out in vast quantities by the coast people, from Ra’as Hafun to Mozambique. Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton was fortunate enough in those early days to obtain two specimens of the Cypræa Broderipii, or orange-cowrie, with a stripe down the dorsum. Exaggerated ideas of its value had been spread, and it was reported that £500 had been offered for a single shell. The cowrie trade of Zanzibar was begun by M. E. P. Herz, of Hamburg. He made a daring speculation, and supplanted in Western Africa the rare and expensive Hindostan shell by the coarse, cheap Cypræa of this coast. During the last century the Portuguese used to export cowries for Angola from the Rio das Caravelhas, in Brazilian Porto Seguro. The success of M. Herz’s investment opened a mine of wealth. M. Oswald (senior), afterwards Prussian Consul-general at Hamburg, commenced as half-owner of a small vessel which shipped cowries at Zanzibar, and traded with them for palm- oil at Appi Vista, Whydah, Porto Novo, and lastly Lagos, on the Slave Coast. As the sack was bought for $O.50 to $1.44, and sold for $8 to $9, the trip cleared $24,000 (£4800), paid half in coin, half in ‘oil;’ and the single vessel soon increased to three. The owner was an excellent ship-master, who carefully supplied his employées with maps, charts, and sailing directions. He died in 1859, leaving a self-insuring fleet of 18 sail. In 1863 his sons had raised the number to 24, and they kept up large establishments at Lagos and Zanzibar.

The retail cowrie trade was solely in the hands of Moslems; the Banyans would not sanction the murder of their possible grandmothers. On the Continent, as on the Island, the shells are sunned till the fish dies and decays, spreading a noxious fœtor through the villages. The collection is then stored in holes till exported to Zanzibar. There the European wholesale merchant garbles, washes, and stows away the shells in bags for shipment. They are sold by the ‘Jizleh,’ a weight varying according to the size of the shell: from 3 to 3.50 sacks would be the average. The price of the Jizleh presently rose to $7, to $8, and in 1859 it was about $9. Seven vessels were then annually engaged in carrying cargoes from Zanzibar to Lagos and its vicinity. This rude money finds its way to Tinbuktu (Timbuctoo) and throughout Central Africa, extending from the East to places as yet unvisited by Europeans. Of late years, however, the increased metallic currency has caused the cowrie trade to fall off, and the steady rate of decrease shows that shell money is doomed.

Here, as in Western India, the rains bring forth a multitude of pests. The rooms when lighted at night are visited by cockroaches and flying ants; scarabæi and various mantidæ; moths and ‘death’s heads’ of marvellous hideousness. Giant snails (achatinæ), millepedes, and beetles crawl over the country, and the firefly glances through the shade. Mosquitos are said not to be troublesome, but in an inner room I found curtains necessary; the house-fly is a torment to irritable skins. Fleas, and the rest of the ‘piquante population,’ are most numerous during the north-east monsoon. The bug, which was held to be an importation, is now thoroughly naturalized upon the Island; in the interior it is as common as in the cities of Egypt and of Syria, where a broken rafter will discharge a living shower. I could not, however, hear anything of the ‘Pási bug,’ which, according to Dr Krapf, causes burnings, chills, and fever. He made it to rival the celebrated Meeanee (Muganaj) bug, the Acarus Persicus, whose exceedingly poisonous bite was supposed to be fatal. In the Lake Regions of Central Africa (1.371) I have conjectured that the word is a corruption for Papazi, a carrapato, or tick. So Dr Krapf writes in the German way ‘Sansibar’ for Zanzibar.

The ants in Zanzibar, as in the Brazil, require especial study, and almost every kind of tree appears to have its peculiar tenantry. Upon the clove there is a huge black pismire whose nip burns like fire; as it has a peculiarly evil savour, tainting even the unaromatic ‘bush,’ it is mashed and stuffed up the nostrils as a cure for snake-bites. The Copal is colonized by a semi-transparent ginger-coloured formica, whose every bite draws blood, and the mango-leaf is doubled up by a smaller variety into the semblance of a bird’s nest. The horrible odour in parts of the bush, which young African travellers attribute to malaria and which often leads them to suspect the presence of carrion, generally proceeds from ants: I remarked this especially when visiting Abeokuta and other places in West Africa. Throughout the interior ‘drivers,’ as they are sensibly termed on the Guinea Coast, visit the huts in armies, and soon clear them of all offal. A small black ant attacks meat, and the best way to procure a clean skeleton is to expose the body near its haunt; beware, however, of cats and dogs. As in Africa generally, the termite is a plague; this small animal greatly obstructs civilization by the ravages which it commits upon books and manuscripts.

Few, if any, domestic animals are aborigines of the Island, and of those imported none thrive save Bozal negroes and asses. Cattle brought to Zanzibar die after the first fortnight, unless protected from sun, rain, and dew, and fed with dry fodder. The fatality resulting from the use of green meat leads here, as in the Concan and at Cape Coast Castle, to the impression that the grass is poisonous. At some places in the mainland, Pangani for instance, cattle will not live—this is certainly the effect of tsetse. At Cape Coast Castle horses always die; at Accra they survive, if not taken away from the sea-board: in 1863, during a short march through the country, I found an abundance of the tsetse, or ‘spear-fly.’ The specimens sent by me to England were lost with other collections in the ill-fated ‘Cleopatra.’ As has lately been shown, the tsaltsal of Bruce is mentioned in Deut, xxviii. 42, in Isa. xviii. 5, and in Job xli. 7. The word is translated fish-spear, harpoon, locust; but it is not proved that tsaltsal and tsetse are the same fly, and the similarity of the two words may be the merest coincidence. The Banyans of Zanzibar, who, having no local deity like their more favoured brethren of Aden and Maskat, keep cattle for religious purposes, never sell their beasts, and energetically oppose their being slaughtered. Bullocks cost from $8 to $16, and are generally to be bought.

Sheep are principally the black-faced Somali, with short round knotted tails, which lose fat from rich grazing: in their own desert country they thrive upon an occasional blade of grass growing between the stones. The excessive purity of the air doubtless favours assimilation and digestion, and as the diet of the desert Arabs proves, life under such circumstances can be supported by a minimum of food. I believe that in early times the Persians introduced this animal into Somali and Galla-land. The Wakwafi, who are rich in black cattle, contemptuously call their Galla neighbours ‘Esikirieshi,’ or short-tailed sheep,’ from the article forming their only wealth. The Somali muttons are the cheapest, averaging from $1 to $3. There is also a ‘Mrima’ race, with rufous ginger-coloured, hairy coats, and lank tails like dogs: others, again, have a long, massive caudal appendage like Syrian or Cape wethers. These cost $2 to $5, and are considered a superior article. The most expensive are from the Island of Angazíjah, or Great Comoro, and they are often worth from $8 to $9. As a rule, Zanzibar mutton, like that of the Brazil, is much inferior to beef, and presents a great contrast with the celebrated gram-feds’ of India.

Caponized goats in these regions are larger, fatter, and cent. per cent, dearer than sheep: I have heard of $15 to $16 being paid for the Comoro animal. The meat is preferred to mutton: my objection to it is the want of distinct flavour. Yet goats are always offered as presents in the interior. Some of the bucks brought from the Continent have a peculiarly ungoatly appearance, with black points and dark crosses upon their tan- coloured backs and shoulders, and with long flowing jetty manes like the breast hair of a Bukhti or Bactrian camel. They must be kept out of the sun, and fed on vetches as well as grass, otherwise they will die during the rains from an incurable nasal running.

A stunted Pariah dog is found upon the Island and the Continent: here, as in Western Africa, it is held, when fattened, to be a dish fit for a (Negro) king. Some missionaries have tasted puppy stew—perhaps puppy pie—and have pronounced the flesh to be sweet, glutinous, and palatable. The horse is now a recognized article of consumption in Europe; the cat has long served its turn, as civet de lapin, without the honours of publicity; and the day may come when ‘dog-meat’ will appear regularly in the market. I have often marvelled at the prejudices and squeamishness of those races who will eat the uncleanest things, such as pigs, ducks, and fowls, to which they are accustomed, and yet who feel disgust at the idea of touching the purest feeders, simply because the food is new. It is indeed time to enlarge the antiquated dietary attributed to the Hebrew lawgiver, and practically to recognize the fact that, in the temperates at least, almost all flesh is wholesome meat for man.

European dogs at Zanzibar require as much attention as white babies, but these die whilst those live. They must be guarded from heat and cold, sun and rain, dew and wind. Their meals must be light and regular, soup taking the place of meat. They must be bathed in warm water, their coats should be carefully dried, they are sent to bed early, and their smallest ailments require the promptest treatment with sulphur, ‘oil,’ and other specifics, otherwise they will never live to enjoy the honourable status of pères et mères de familles. The great object is to breed from them as soon as possible, and the Creoles thrive far better than even the acclimatized strangers. Arabs have been known to pay $50 for a good foreign watch-dog, hoping thus to escape the nightly depredations of the half-starved slaves. They are kind masters, great contrasts to the brutally cruel Negro, whose approximation to the lower animals causes him to tyrannize over them. On the West Coast of Africa the black chiefs often offer considerable sums for English dogs; but none save the lowest ‘palm-oil rough’ would condemn the ‘friend of man’ to this life of vile African slavery. It is really pathetic to meet one of these unfortunate exiles in the interior, where a white face is rarely seen: the frantic display of joy, and the evident horror at being left behind, have more than once made me a dog-stealer.

At Zanzibar, as upon the Continent, fowls may be bought in every village, the rate being 6 to 12 for the dollar, which a few years ago procured 36. They are lean, for want of proper food; ill flavoured, from pecking fish; and miserably small, the result of breeding in—the eggs are like those of pigeons. Yet they might be greatly improved; the central regions of Africa show splendid birds, with huge bodies and the shortest possible legs. This variety is found in the Brazil; and at Zanzibar the mixture of blood has produced a kind of bantam with a large foot. The black-boned variety of poultry, and that with the upright feathers—the ‘frizzly fowl’ of the United States—are also bred here. Capons are manufactured by the blacks of Mayotte and Nosi-béh (Great Island). How is it that the modern English will eat hens, when their great grandfathers knew how to combine the flavour of the male with the tenderness of the female bird?

Peacocks are brought, as in the days of the Ophir trade, from Cutch. Madagascar sends hard, tasteless geese and common ducks, and Mozambique supplies turkeys which are here eaten by Arabs. A local superstition prevents pigeon-breeding in the house: the birds are found wild on the opposite coast, but Moslems will not use them as food. The Muscovy duck, an aborigine of the Platine Valley, has of late years been naturalized— it is a favourite with Africans, who delight in food which gives their teeth and masticatory apparatus the hardest and the longest labour. The only gallinaceous bird which Africa has contributed to civilization, the Guinea-hen, here called the ‘Abyssinian cock,’ is trapped by slaves upon the mainland, and is brought to the Island for sale. As might be expected so near their mother-country, there are seven or eight varieties of this valuable fowl, and until late years some of the rarest and the most curious have been unwittingly used for the table. In every part of the Arab world the Guinea-fowl has a different name: in Syria, for instance, it is called Dik el Rumi (not Dik el Habash) or Roman (Greek) cock, a term generally given to the turkey. It is curious on a coast of estuaries and great river-mouths that the flamingo was not seen by us.