History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1

y.-The Sierra Leone Company.-Fever and Insubordination.-It becomes an

Table of

Atlantic Ocean, and on the east and north its boundaries are washed by the river and bay of Sierra Leone. A range of mountains, co-extensive with the peninsula,-forming its backbone,-rises between the bay of Sierra Leone and the Atlantic Ocean, from two to three thousand feet in altitude. Its outlines are as

nges, your gooseberry-bushes into bananas, your thrush which sings in its wicker cage into a gray parrot whistling on a rail;... sprinkle this with strange and powerful perfumes; place in the west a sun flaming among golden clouds in a prussian-blue sea, dotted with white s

ree air of the British metropolis. Many came to want, and wandered about the streets of London, strangers in a strange land. Granville Sharp, a man of great humanity, was deeply affected by the sad condition of these people. He consulted with Dr. Smeathman, who had spent considerable time in Africa; and they conceived the plan of transporting them to the west coast of Africa, to form a colony.[102] The matter was agitated in London by the friends of the blacks, and finally the government began to be interested. A district of about twenty square miles was purchased by the government of Naimbanna, king of Sierra Leone, on which t

the work of colonization. One hundred Europeans landed at Sierra Leone in the month of February, 1792, and were followed in March by eleven hundred and thirty-one Negroes. A large number of them had served in the British army during the Revolutionary War in America, and, accepting the offer of the British Government, took land in this colony as a reward for services performed in the army. Another fever did its hateful work; and fifty or sixty Europeans, and many blacks, fell under its parching and consuming touch.[104] Jealous feuds r

enterprise succeed: so they looked about for a master hand to guide the affair. On the 8th of August, 1807, the colony was surrendered into the hands of the Crown, and was made an English colony. During the same year in which this transfer was made, Parliament declared the slave-trade piracy; and a naval squadron was stationed along the coast for the purpose of suppressing it. At the first, many colored people of good circumstances, feeling that they would be safe under the English flag, moved from the United States to Sierra Leone. But the chief source of supply of population was the captured slaves, who were always unloaded at this place. Wh

proved; and with a vigorous policy of order and education enforced, Sierra Leone began to bloom and blos

lue of British and Irish produce and manufactures exported to the West Coa

ROM GREAT

3,408; or a yearly

. 4,314,752;

5,582,941; "

4,216,045; "

PO

West Coast into Great Britain have been as follows. The "official value"

1-55 . . . ￡4,154,7

e, 1856-60 . . 9,3

. . 5,284,61

onsequence of the discovery of the petroleum or rock-oil in America. In 1

as only ￡20,000 annually, and that now the amount of tonnage employed in carrying legal merchandise is greater than was ever engaged in carrying slaves.[105] W. Winwood Reade visited Sierra Leone

he colony may be divi

beef, under such names, as agedee, aballa, akalaray, and which are therefore

houses, sell nails, fish-hooks, tape, thread, ribbon

s, and within which one may see a sprinkling of mahogany, a small lib

es enclosed all around by spacious piazzas, the rooms furnished with gaudy richness;

me years before any great results were obtained. In 1832 this Church had 638 communicants, 294 candidates for baptism, 684 sabbath-school pupils, and 1,388 children in day-schools. This Church carried its missionary work beyond its borders to the tribes that were "sitting in darkness;" and in 1850 had built 54 seminaries and schools, had 6,600 pupils, 2,183 communicants, and 7,500 attendants on public worship. It is

eastward toward Cape Coast Castle, Badagry, Abbeokuta, and Kumasi; and in this connection, in 1850, had 44 houses of worship, 13 out-stations, 42 day-schools, 97 teachers, 4,500 pupils in day and sabba

h Parliament, gave special attention to this matter, and found not less than one hundred and fifty-one distinct languages, besides several dialects spoken in Sierra Leone. They were arranged under twenty-six groups, and yet fifty-

d an extended account of the situation there, which was widely circulated in England and America at the time. It i

ant to carry wood and water, grooms, house-servants, etc.; others cultivate vegetables, rear poultry and pigs, and supply eggs, for the Sierra Leone market. Great numbers are found offering for sale in the public market and elsewhere a vast quantity of cooked edible substances-rice, corn and cassava cakes; heterogeneous compounds of rice and corn-flower, yams, cassava, palm-oil, pepper, pieces of beef, mucilaginous vegetables, etc., etc., under names quite unintelligible to a str

s, sheep, bullocks, fowls, rice, etc., purchase the whole cargo at once at the water-side, and derive considerable profit from selling such articles by retail in the market and over the town. Many of this grade are also occupied in curing and drying fish, an article which always sells well in the market, and is in great request by peo

aps more than any thing else, bears evidence of the advanced state of intelligence at which they have arrived. This grade is nearly altogether occupied in shopkeeping, hawking, and other mercantile pursuits. At sales of prize goods, public auctions, and every other place affording a probability of cheap bargains, they are to be seen in great numbers, where they club together in numbers of from three to six, seven, or more, to purchase large lots or unbroken bales. And the scrupulous honesty with which the subdivis

e latter from fifty to one hundred per cent. The working of the retail trade in the hands of Europeans requires a considerable outlay in the shape of shop-rent, shopkeepers' and clerks'

xecute for them considerable orders on such unexceptionable terms of payment while, on the other hand, the liberated Af

s grade possess huge canoes, with which they trade in the upper part of the river, along shore, and in the neighbouring rivers, bringing down rice, palm-oil, cam-wood, ivory, hides, etc., etc., in exchange for British manufactures. They are all in easy circumstances, readily obtaining mercantile credits from sixty pounds to two hundred pounds. Persons of this and the grade next to be mentioned evince great anxiety to become possessed of houses and lots in old Freetown. These lots are desirable because of their proximity to the market-place and the great thoroughfares, and also for the superior advantages which they

urchase of the property in question, to offer as high as sixty pounds. The clergyman delegated for this purpose, at my recommendation, resolved, on his own responsibility, to offer, if necessary, as high as seventy pounds; but to the surprise and mortification of us all, the lot was knocked down at upward of n

hese houses are their own property and are built from the proceeds of their own industry. In several of them are to be seen mahogany chairs,

value, and their business is carried on with an external appearance of respectability commensurate with then superior pecuniary means: thus, instead of expos

is difficult to obtain a correct knowledge of the wealth of the class generally. The devices to which they have recourse in conducting a bargain are often exceedingly ingenious; and to be reputed rich might materially interfere with their success on such occasions. Th

rtly before my departure from the colony, stood on the debtor side of the books of one of the principal merchants to the amount of nineteen hundred pounds, to which sum it had been reduced from three thousand pounds during the preceding two months. A highly respectable female has now, and has had for several years, the government contract for the supplying of fresh beef to the troops and the naval squadron; and I have not heard that on a single occasion there has been cause of complaint for negligence or non-fulfilment of the terms of the contract. Fourth, many of them at the present moment have their children being educated in England at their own expense. There is at Sierra Leone a very fine regiment of colonial mi

renewed spot on the edge of the Dark Continent would be to the weary and battle-dimmed vision of Wilberforce, Sharp, and other friends of the colony! And if they still lived, beholding the wonderful results, would they not gladly say, "

TNO

age Afric

Colonies de Sierra Léona et de Boul

Essay on Coloni

ysicians, soldiers, clerks, overseers, artificers, settlers, and servants. Of this com

gstone's Zambes