When my purchases were completed, and I beheld them piled up, tier after tier, row upon row, here a mass of cooking-utensils, there bundles of rope, tents, saddles, a pile of portmanteaus and boxes, containing every imaginable thing, I confess I was rather abashed at my own temerity.  Here were at least six tons of material!  “How will it ever be possible,” I thought, “to move all this inert mass across the wilderness stretching between the sea, and the great lakes of Africa?  Bah, cast all doubts away, man, and have at them! `Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof,’ without borrowing from the morrow.”

The traveller must needs make his way into the African interior after a fashion very different from that to which he has been accustomed in other countries.  He requires to take with him just what a ship must have when about to sail on a long voyage.  He must have his slop chest, his little store of canned dainties, and his medicines, besides which, he must have enough guns, powder, and ball to be able to make a series of good fights if necessary.  He must have men to convey these miscellaneous articles; and as a man’s maximum load does not exceed 70 lbs., to convey 11,000 lbs. requires nearly 160 men.

Europe and the Orient, even Arabia and Turkestan, have royal ways of travelling compared to Africa.  Specie is received in all those countries, by which a traveller may carry his means about with him on his own person.  Eastern and Central Africa, however, demand a necklace, instead of a cent; two yards of American sheeting, instead of half a dollar, or a florin, and a kitindi of thick brass-wire, in place of a gold piece.

The African traveller can hire neither wagons nor camels, neither horses nor mules, to proceed with him into the interior.  His means of conveyance are limited to black and naked men, who demand at least $15 a head for every 70 lbs. weight carried only as far as Unyanyembe.

One thing amongst others my predecessors omitted to inform men bound for Africa, which is of importance, and that is, that no traveller should ever think of coming to Zanzibar with his money in any other shape than gold coin.  Letters of credit, circular notes, and such civilized things I have found to be a century ahead of Zanzibar people.

Twenty and twenty-five cents deducted out of every dollar I drew on paper is one of the unpleasant, if not unpleasantest things I have committed to lasting memory.  For Zanzibar is a spot far removed from all avenues of European commerce, and coin is at a high premium.  A man may talk and entreat, but though he may have drafts, cheques, circular notes, letters of credit, a carte blanche to get what he wants, out of every dollar must, be deducted twenty, twenty-five and thirty cents, so I was told, and so was my experience.  What a pity there is no branch-bank here!

I had intended to have gone into Africa incognito.  But the fact that a white man, even an American, was about to enter Africa was soon known all over Zanzibar.  This fact was repeated a thousand times in the streets, proclaimed in all shop alcoves, and at the custom-house.  The native bazaar laid hold of it, and agitated it day and night until my departure.  The foreigners, including the Europeans, wished to know the pros and cons of my coming in and going out.