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HAREM IN THE HOUSE OF SILLAMUN BEN ALI, SECRETARY TO THE KING OF ZANZIBAR.

and in addition to the wedding there was an eclipse of the moon. Nearly the whole population was in the streets, singing, screaming, beating drums, etc., to frighten away the serpent who, as they believe, keeps back the moon and covers it, preventing its revolution. They called to prayers, saying the old formula, "There is but one God, and Mohammed is his Prophet." Unless they can frighten away the serpent they apprehend that some awful calamity will befall the world.

Two or three days later we again visited the Bazar. We saw Hindoo and African women in their stalls seated upon low stools, some of them holding children in their arms with no other covering than a bead necklace or an armlet; herbalists' stalls, where were baskets filled with dried rose-leaves, odorous gums, and beans, and blocks of fragrant woods; stalls that reminded me of little chandlers' stores, with their balls of cotton, strings of beads, and buttons, mixed up with all kinds of eatables; stalls where cheese, salted or smoked meat, fish, beans, and pease were for sale; vegetable and fruit stalls. The Banyans were the chief cloth and clothes dealers, their stalls were piled up with ready-made clothing of gay colors-with the exception of the gown

SALIE BEN BAMBAMBA.

worn by Arab women, which is generally of black cloth, edged, or rather seamed, with gold braid or yellow cloth. The Banyans do not bring their wives to this country, and some do not even return to them for twenty years or more. Their youths have very handsome, regular features; the whites of their eyes are so blue that they have the effect of dark blue eyes, but their skin is of a bright buff color. When well dressed they wear a rich crimson turban, shaped somewhat like a Roman helmet; a short white gown, and an under-skirt, which, looped up, forms the short drawers. A scarf or sash is twisted about their shoulders and waists. Half of the head is shaved.

The people of Zanzibar, on visiting a house, leave their sandals without in the court-yard or on the threshold of the room which they are about to enter. They regard a woman with contempt, never making her a companion or friend.

Bibi Ayshe determined to keep up an acquaintance. I saw her one day at her window making a variety of signs that I could not comprehend, until one of her slaves appeared at my room door and ushered in a lamb and its dam -a present to Baby. I felt as though I had won an elephant in a lottery. Between Baby and the sheep there was an unlimited amount of baaing and trotting about the room for an hour or two. Our friend Mr. R was kind enough to let the animals remain with his goats and gazelles until they should be taken on board. His gazelle was very timid and often ate roses from the hands of his servant, Salie Ben Bambamba, a native of Comoro Island. This servant wore a silver ring of a Byzantine pattern, in which was set a carnelian bearing some Arabic inscription from the Koran. The Zanzibar sheep is peculiar; it has no wool, but a tan-colored coat like a dog's, with ears like a mastiff's but rather narrower, and a tail very broad at the top but narrowing abruptly; it has the prettiest and most innocent of sheep's faces.

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bies.

Soon we paid a visit to Shamboa, the newly married bride to whom I have already alluded. I was accompanied by Mrs. and our respective baLittle Honora on beholding such an assemblage of dark ladies gave vent to her feelings in a succession of screams. The Arab ladies made quite as much noise in their unsuccessful attempts to pacify her, while, with the same end in view, an old bent-up negress performed some dance, noisily clapping her hands. The Princess Shamboa would not move from her chair, being afraid of Mrs. J-, who was occupied in vainly attempting to converse with Bibi Ayshe, through the medium of Afrani. She left before I did, for, as she afterward said, she was completely extinguished by this bevy of ladies. Ethel during our visit was on her dignity. Bibi Salha had to take out her nose jewels and (for safety I suppose) hook them on to her turban before the child would receive a kiss, though she did not hesitate to accept a goblet of orange-flower sherbet. The bride was not looking to advantage, having been painted without taste. Her eyebrows were made to meet and were surmounted by a row of small black

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stars. Several smudges of black graced her | Afrani told me that the children of blacks are cheeks. She wore a black velvet paletot (which not born with that color, but acquire it gradis the fashion here), and a light green gauze tur- ually! ban and veil that did not suit her complexion, which rejecting the aid of saffron had resumed its primitive brown sienna. Nor was she in good spirits; she received my congratulations with a lift of her eyebrows and a shrug of her shoulders that were meant to convey to me the idea that she was any thing but happy; but her husband being present she could not enter into details. When I asked Afrani if the bride was happy, her reply was: "Oh, he marry plenty gold-much money-very rich. He want to come back here, but him brother away she must stay where he have husband." She afterward told me of the grossness and want of sensibility or genuine affection of the Arab husbands. I remained until six o'clock, which is their prayer time. I noticed a gilt basin and ewer in a door-way, and I supposed that ablutions were then about to be performed.

Afrani afterward came to see me with her boy. Her husband is a Sepoy. All her children except the last had died from pressure on the brain; and this one had a singular formation of the head, and was very precocious.

The 19th of October was a great day with the Banyans-being the Feast of the Eclipse of the Sun; they had music, singing, and dancing. When they see the eclipse all the earthen-ware utensils in their houses are broken, and they use copper ones. They borrow on this occasion all the musical instruments they can procure, and pictures to adorn their houses and shops. In the morning I heard sounds that resembled those of a venerable and feeble old barrel organ, and on looking out I descried the rounded form of Bibi Ayshe standing at an open window, and turning "for dear life" at one of those instruments which might have been a 'prentice experiment of Gavioli's. Perhaps it was because she had not the knack of shifting the instrument to change the tune; but certain it is that she steadfastly adhered to the first air with a perseverance worthy of a better cause. told that the way in which an Arab enjoys music is to put one musical box on the top of another and set them both playing at once. In the evening the streets were enlivened by a display of lights and pictures, and guns and squibs

I was

were let off; then there was a "Nautch dance" | kneeling down before one of these humble domiciles, peeped through the door and said, "How are you, old lady?" I looked in and saw a black woman with her children. There was a sort of trough or bunk on one side, where I suppose they slept. The interior was quite dark, there being no window.

at the house of one of the Banyans. I should have gone to the Bazar to see the "goings on ;" but it was represented to me that, what with the mud after the rain, and the filth and bad odor of the crowd, it would not be fit for me to go-so I staid at home. Two gentlemen went, accompanied by the Consul; they nearly spoiled their clothes against the newly-painted doors of the house where the Nautch dance was being performed; they were nearly ready to faint on account of the ill-odored, disagreeable crowd that almost crushed them, and were glad at length to get away. They said that the Nautch girl seemed like one possessed, and that it was amusing in the extreme to see some of the men watching her in open-mouthed astonishment. They brought me as a souvenir one of the grass flag fans that are handed about the streets on these occasions.

We left Zanzibar about the end of October. I will conclude this sketch of our life there with a description of our visit to Kinain just before our departure. As we passed through a mahogo (cassava) plantation we saw a negro girl about thirteen years of age (evidently newly imported) whose bones seemed ready to pierce through her skin. She was squatting down as though too weak to stand. Our friend, the Consul, gave her a piece of money, at which she looked in a vacant manner that showed her to be unacquainted with its use or value; but a black boy, younger than herself, soon came forward to instruct her, and perhaps helped her to practically illustrate the use of the money at some fruit-stall in the village. We observed several huts that, at the apex of their standing roofs, were not six feet in height. My husband,

Soon after we came upon a party of black people performing a native dance. You must imagine a glowing sunset; luxuriant tropical vegetation; low huts with cocoa-nut thatching; the fragrance of burning incense; and negroes bearing on their heads earthen vases, and holding staves, to which were attached cocoa-nut shells with which to scoop up water from the wells. And then the dance! A man was standing by the stump of a tree which contained in its hollowed top a drum. Around him, at the distance of a few yards, moved a circle of dancers, who could hardly be said to dance, their step consisting of a mock-tragedy stride followed by a pause. It was impossible to restrain our laughter at the sight of the two quite aged women who led the dance, dressed in gaudy tartan wrappers, and extremely comical in their ugliness blended with pomposity. There were those who, walking backward, beating small drums or gourds, advanced and withdrew them constantly before the faces of the next in succession. We remained long enough to see them all advance toward the drum in the centre, upon which they deposited their pessas, or copper coins, as contributions toward a supper. I was told that they will leap and fling themselves until, after a time, they appear demented, frequently continuing these wild movements all night. Under these circumstances I must say that I pity the old ladies!

A TIME of stately stepping on the shore,
A time of glorious triumph on the main,
And centuries of nothingness-what more

Is in the book of Spain?

SPAIN.

Life-death-the world has read the frightful book
With blinded eyes; death-life-were better read:
When the proud-stepping Moor and Inca shook
The heart of Spain was dead.

And when the unsearched ocean wide unrolled
Its awful mysteries before her ships,
Whose magnet and whose polar star were gold,
Death closed her yellow lips.

Pride, greed, intolerance, are forms of death

In men and nations: pulseless corses tread
The streets; and thousands yield their human breath
Years after they are dead.

And grand, historic names of states yet hold
Place on wide tracts where death's galvanic strife-
Hideous contortions of a rank corse cold—

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Such was Spain's history. Put the false thing by. Shame masked her degradation. Vineyards grew To deeper blushes while the unweary sky

Watched the life breaking through.

Dumb motions, blind as night; uncaptained bands
Of forces, scattered and without a name:
And unfelt impulses in unstirred hands

Beneath their shroud of shame.

Lower and lower yet the dead weight pressed
Upon the under-motions, dull and slow,
Until spasmodic heavings of the breast
Showed something stirred below.

A throb of life. The life of buried states
Draws slowly! Spain's was but a deathly gloom
Three centuries before it reached the gates
That stood before her tomb.

But hark with sudden blow snaps every band;
Forth bursts a risen people, strong aud free.
Spain Spain! the nations grasp thy living hand,
And welcome give to thee!

A

from the loins of Noah.

THE EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND SEALS. BELIEF prevails that all knowledge of | of "the land of Ham." If we may believe the the origin of the seal of our National Catalogue, that signet - ring-the jus annuli Treasury Department is lost. This is a mis- aurei of the old Romans-bearing a seal in take. Inquiries have been made along a line the form of what the French call a cartouche, of search extending back only to the period of with hieroglyphics exquisitely wrought in inthe formation of the Constitution, or about taglio all over its surface, may have belonged eighty years ago, when the imperfect Confed- to Arphaxad, the first patriarch after the flood, eration or League of States was developed or even to either Shem, Ham, or Japheth, princes into a perfect National Government. Stopping there, without desired results, inquirers have concluded that the end of hopeful search had been reached, and that no man could tell when and how the device and legend of the Treasury seal that is impressed on the millions of notes and coupons appended to our National bonds originated. Even Dr. Francis Lieber, the careful explorer of the hidden things of history and its relations, after patient search, was compelled to rest upon the inference that the seal was devised by Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the National Treasury. In his recently published tract, entitled "Nationalism and Inter-nationalism," Dr. Lieber says: "If this seal is not of Hamilton's devising it must come from Robert Morris; but Morris was Superintendent of the Finances;' there was no Treasury before the year 1789, and it was in 1781 that the office of the 'Superintendent of the Finances' was created." Had such painstaking inquirers gone back a little further they might have discovered that not only our Treasury seal, but that of our War Department also, in device and legend, is older than the National Government-older, possibly, than the Great Seal of the Republic, which existed six years before the Constitution became the "supreme law of the land."

The Roman emperors, like the Egyptian Pharaohs, used the signets of their rings as seals of state- emblems of supreme authority - and from their time until now, seals in the various forms of stamps have been the symbols of the sovereignty and authority of all civilized nations. On the day when the representatives of the Anglo-American colonies, in council assembled at Philadelphia, declared those colonies to be free and independent States, they also felt the necessity of a symbol of sovereignty, and resolved "that Dr. Franklin, Mr. J. Adams, and Mr. Jefferson be a committee to prepare a device for a seal for the United States of America." There were delays. Other delegates took the matter in hand. It was considered occasionally; but for six years the colonists fought for independence without the usual token of sovereignty for the use of the new empire their grand Declaration had decreed, unless the little oval signet of the President of the Continental Congress, here delineated, bearing thirteen stars in the midst of breaking clouds, as an emblem of Union, with the National motto, E PLURIBUS UNUM, may be regarded as such symbol. How early this little seal was used we may not now exactly determine. The impression from which the The subject of seals in general offers a very writer made the sketch tempting field of research and speculation, in- here given was upon a volving developments in chronology, history, document signed by President Mifflin in 1784. jurisprudence, social changes, and epochs of The Great Seal had been adopted by Concivilization. We may not enter it now any gress two years earlier. It, too, has the motfurther than we may be led in searches con- to, E PLURIBUS UNUM, which, in our colonial cerning the specific subject of this paper. It days, formed a portion of the epigraph on the seems relevant, however, to say that seals have title-page of the Gentleman's Magazine, a work been used as emblems of assent, confirmation, with which the leaders of the Revolution were and authority, supreme or secondary, from pre- familiar. The attention of the writer has been historic times. If you doubt it, go to Abbott's called to this fact by Dr. Lieber, who believes, collection of Egyptian antiquities in possession with good reason, that the appearance of the of the New York Historical Society, and there motto on that magazine suggested its use on you may look upon a signet-ring used, accord- our National seal.* ing to the Catalogue, six hundred years before the grateful Pharaoh "took off his ring from his hand and put it upon Joseph's hand, and arrayed him in vestures of fine linen, and put a gold chain about his neck, and made him to ride in the second chariot;" in other words, gave to the Hebrew slave his seal-ring in token of the delegation of royal authority to him as viceroy

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I propose in this paper to give a brief historical sketch of the origin and organization of our National Executive Departments, and of the official seals of those departments.

PRESIDENT'S SEAL.

Dr. Lieber, in a note to the writer, says: "The the oneness of our country, and of the many colonies Committee on the Great Seal, to whom the idea of forming one nation, was plainly and constantly present, as you well know, was doubtless familiar with the motto, E Pluribus Unum, from the title-page of the American colonies. When, some ten or twelve the Gentleman's Magazine, a periodical read all over years ago, I was looking, in the Yale College Libra

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