'About sunrise we again made sail, and, guided by that excellent landmark, the Peaks of Wasin...we entered, after three hours, the narrow channel...which, running nearly due east and west, separates Wasin Island from the continent...The Island, which does a little cultivation, belongs to Zanzibar, and the only settlement, about the centre of its length, is on the northern shore, fronting Wanga Bandar on the Continent. Wasin contains three Mosques, long flat-roofed rooms of coral rag and lime ranged obliquely to face Meccah, and scattered amongst little huts and large houses of 'bordi' or Mangrove timber...' (Zanzibar, II, pp. 107-8)

'Jack [John Hanning Speke] and I landed at Wasin, and found the shore crowded with a mob of unarmed gazers, who did not even return our salaams...Abd-el-Karím led us to his house, seated us in chairs upon a terrace and mixed a cooling drink...In the evening we quitted the squalid settlement without a single regret.' (I. Burton, The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton, London, 1893, I, p. 261)