Though I had lived some time among the negroes of our Southern States, my education was Northern, and I had met in the United States black men whom I was proud to call friends.  I was thus prepared to admit any black man, possessing the attributes of true manhood or any good qualities, to my friendship, even to a brotherhood with myself; and to respect him for such, as much as if he were of my own colour and race.  Neither his colour, nor any peculiarities of physiognomy should debar him with me from any rights he could fairly claim as a man.  “Have these men—­these black savages from pagan Africa,” I asked myself, “the qualities which make man loveable among his fellows?  Can these men—­these barbarians—­appreciate kindness or feel resentment like myself?” was my mental question as I travelled through their quarters and observed their actions.  Need I say, that I was much comforted in observing that they were as ready to be influenced by passions, by loves and hates, as I was myself; that the keenest observation failed to detect any great difference between their nature and my own?

The negroes of the island probably number two-thirds of the entire population.  They compose the working-class, whether enslaved or free.  Those enslaved perform the work required on the plantations, the estates, and gardens of the landed proprietors, or perform the work of carriers, whether in the country or in the city.  Outside the city they may be seen carrying huge loads on their heads, as happy as possible, not because they are kindly treated or that their work is light, but because it is their nature to be gay and light-hearted, because they, have conceived neither joys nor hopes which may not be gratified at will, nor cherished any ambition beyond their reach, and therefore have not been baffled in their hopes nor known disappointment.

Within the city, negro carriers may be heard at all hours, in couples, engaged in the transportation of clove-bags, boxes of merchandise, &c., from store to “godown” and from “go-down” to the beach, singing a kind of monotone chant for the encouragement of each other, and for the guiding of their pace as they shuffle through the streets with bare feet.  You may recognise these men readily, before long, as old acquaintances, by the consistency with which they sing the tunes they have adopted.  Several times during a day have I heard the same couple pass beneath the windows of the Consulate, delivering themselves of the same invariable tune and words.  Some might possibly deem the songs foolish and silly, but they had a certain attraction for me, and I considered that they were as useful as anything else for the purposes they were intended.

The town of Zanzibar, situate on the south-western shore of the island, contains a population of nearly one hundred thousand inhabitants; that of the island altogether I would estimate at not more than two hundred thousand inhabitants, including all races.