“ Y o u Baluch there, rein in your tongue!” &c.
&c., cried out a wild mixture o f voices in a
strange mixture o f tongues, commanding, or
imploring, silence.
T h e Arab was requested to speak, and to
point out, if he knew them, the Wangwana guilty
o f provoking such astonishing disorder. In an
indignant and eloquent strain he rehearsed his
special complaint. A man named Mustapha had
come to his shop drunk, and had .abused him
like a low blackguard, and then, snatching up
a b olt o f cotton cloth, had run away with it,
but, being pursued and caught, had drawn a
knife, and was about to stab him when a friend
o f his opportunely clubbed the miscreant and
thus saved his life. B y the mouths o f several
witnesses the complaint was proved j and
Mustapha was therefore arrested, disarmed o f
his knife, and locked up in the dark strong-room,
to reflect on his crimes in solitude. Loud approval
greeted the sentence.
“ Who else?”
A score o f people o f both sexes advanced
towards me with their complaints, and it seemed
as though silence could never be restored, but
b y dint o f threatening to leave the burzah from
sheer despair, quietness was restored. It is
unnecessary to detail the several charges made
against them, or to describe the manner o f
conviction, but, after three hours, peace reigned
in Bagamoyo once more, and over twenty o f the
Wangwana had been secured and impounded in the
several rooms o f the house, with a dozen o f
their comrades standing guard over them.
T o avoid a repetition o f this terrible scene, I
despatched a messenger with a polite request
to the Governor, Sheikh Mansur bin Suliman, that
he would arrest and punish all disorderly W a ngwana
in my service, as justice should require,
but I am sorry to sa y that the Wali (governor)
to o k such advantage o f this request that few o f
the Wangwana who showed their faces in the
streets next day escaped violence. Acting on
the principle that desperate diseases require desperate
remedies, over thirty had been chained
and beaten, and many others had escaped abuse
o f power only b y desperate flight from the
myrmidons o f the now vengeful sheikh.
Another message was therefore sent to the
Governor, imploring him to be as lenient as
possible, consistent with equitable justice, and
explaining to him the nature and cause o f these
frantic moods and ebullitions o f temper on the
part o f the Wangwana. I attempted to define
to him what “ sprees” were, explaining that all
men, about to undergo a long absence from
their friends and country, thought th ey were
entitled to greater freedom at such a period,
but that some weak-headed men, with a natural
inclination to be vicious, had, in indulging this