Dhow Chasing in Zanzibar Waters - The Search For Mecca

APPENDIX. 301
ill it. It is more than probable that a good
deal of tlie African trade, sucli
as it was, which
found its way to Tyre and Syria, was carried
on then, as now, by Indian merchants, who had
their houses of agency at African ports. The
earliest travellers, both those who came from
the north and those who came with the
Portuguese
round the Cape, found Indian traders at
every port along the coast, and a very considerable
Indian trade carried on between Africa
and India. And that trade was only crushed
for a time, or very much lessened, at all events,
by the action of European and Arab piracy.
All the novels of Defoe's time speak of piracy in
those seas very much as we refer to expeditions
into the Far-West of America ; and it is quite
clear, if you read the Memoirs of Captain
Singleton, or any books of that kind, that
active young men went into those seas and
plundered everybody, but especially the
Indian
merchants, almost without any sense that they
were doing wrong.
It was only when the trade
had got to be almost entirely confined to
large
ships that piracy came to be less profitable.
Of late years this trade has revived, and judging
from all
analogy, there can be no doubt that if
it were properly dealt with, and not impeded,
as it is impeded, by the slave-trade, it would
increase very rapidly. I may mention that