ABSTRACT
Pemba, the smaller island, is about forty-five miles long and fourteen miles broad, with an area of 380 square miles, separated from Africa by a channel of between thirty-five and forty miles. Fewer vessels visited the Green Island, since it lacked satisfactory deep-water harbours, but it none the less attracted visitors because it shared many of the advantages possessed by Zanzibar. Temperatures in both islands range between the mid-70s and 80s°F., living conditions being made even more pleasant by the prevailing ocean winds. The southwest monsoon winds blow from
March or April to September; those of the northeast monsoon blow from November or December to March. The islands’ abundant vegetation is ensured by two rainy seasons: the greater rains, or masika, falling from about mid-March to the end of May in the period before the commencement of the southwest monsoon; while the lesser rains, or mvuli, fall before the beginning of the northeast monsoon, from October to December, both giving Zanzibar an annual average of from sixty to seventy inches and Pemba one of over seventy inches. This typical humid monsoon climate, normally lacking any sharp extremes of temperature or unusual variations in rainfall, naturally attracted immigrants from less-favoured regions; by the nineteenth century it provided an environment making both islands the principal source of the world’s supply of cloves.
