, were no more seen. Now, I ask,
is it not at least possible that the Zu-Vendi people are the
descendants of these 'sun and fire worshippers' who broke through
the Arabs and vanished? As a matter of fact, there is a good
deal in their characters and customs that tallies with the somewhat
vague ideas that I have of Persians. Of course we have no books
of reference here, but Sir Henry says that if his memory does
not fail him, there was a tremendous revolt in Babylon about
500 BC, whereon a vast multitude were expelled from the city.
Anyhow, it is a well-established fact that there have been many
separate emigrations of Persians from the Persian Gulf to the
east coast of Africa up to as lately as seven hundred years ago.
There are Persian tombs at Kilwa, on the east coast, still in
good repair, which bear dates showing them to be just seven hundred
years old. {Endnote 12}

In addition to being an agricultural people, the Zu-Vendi are,
oddly enough, excessively warlike, and as they cannot from the
exigencies of their position make war upon other nations, they
fight among each other like the famed Kilkenny cats, with the
happy result that the population never outgrows the power of
the country to support it. This habit of theirs is largely fostered
by the political condition of the country. The monarchy is nominally
an absolute one, save in so far as it is tempered by the power
of the priests and the informal council of the great lords; but,
as in many other institutions, the king's writ does not run unquestioned
throughout the length and breadth of the land. In short, the
whole system is a purely feudal one (though absolute serfdom
or slavery is unknown), all the great lords holding nominally
from the throne, but a number of them being practically independent,
having the power of life and death, waging war against and making
peace with their neighbours as the whim or their interests lead
them, and even on occasion rising in open rebellion against their
royal master or mistress, and, safely shut up in their castles
and fenced cities, as far from the seat of government, successfully
defying them for years.

Zu-Vendis has had its king-makers as well as England, a fact
that will be well appreciated when I state that eight different
dynasties have sat upon the throne in the last one thousand years,
every one of which took its rise from some noble family that
succeeded in grasping the purple after a sanguinary struggle.