male slaves, to bury with him. From || of the best extant. "The negroes,' he says, "are all, without exception, crafty, villainous, and fraudulent, and very seldom to be trusted; being sure to slip no opportunity of cheating a European, nor indeed one another." The mulattoes, he says, are "a parcel of profligate villains, neither true to the negroes nor us; nor indeed dare they trust one another; so that you rarely see them agree together. Whatever is in its own nature worst in the Europeans and negroes, is united in them." At some place, probably beyond Cape Palmas, he saw eleven human sacrifices at one funeral. Phillips,* in 1693, at Grand Sesters, thought it unsafe to go up the river eight miles to visit king Peter, Marchais was at Cape Mesurado hearing that the natives were very in 1724. He says that the English, treacherous and bloody. The peo-Dutch and Portuguese writers all ple whom he saw were surly, and looked like villains. Though his ship carried 36 guns, on learning the temper of the people, he immediately cleared for action and left the river. Snoek was at Cape Mesurado in 1701. Only one negro came on board, and he saw but a few on shore. Two English ships had two months before ravaged their country, destroyed their canoes, plundered their houses, and carried off some of their people. Bosman was on the coast about the same time. His description of Guinea, written in Dutch and translated into several languages, is one 66 unite in representing the natives there as faithless, cunning, revengeful and cruel to the last degree; and he assents to the description. He adds, that formerly they offered human sacrifices; but this custom has ceased since they found the profit of selling their prisoners of war to foreigners." He gives a map of the Cape, and the plan of a proposed. fort on its summit; and thinks it might yield 1,500 or 2,000 slaves annually, besides a large amount of ivory. At the river Sestos, Marchias witnessed a negro funeral. "The captain or chief of a village dying of a * Phillips sailed in the employment of the English African Company, and was evidently one of the most humane, conscienticus and intelligent voyagers to that coast. He found the people of the Quaqua coast, a little beyond Cape Palmas, to be cannibals, as most who visited them also testify. At Secondee, Johnson, the English factor, had been surprised in the night, cut in pieces, and his goods plundered by the negroes, at the instigation of the Dutch. At Whidah, Phillips bought for his two ships, 1,300 slaves. Twelve of them wilfully drowned themselves, and others starved themselves to death. He was advised to cut off the legs and arms of a few, to terrify the rest, as other captains had done; but he could not think of treating with such barbarity, poor creatures, who, being equally the work of God's hands, are doubtless as dear to Him as the whites. He saw the bodies of several eaten by the sharks which followed his ship. On arriving at Barbadoes, the ship under his immediate command, had lost “ 14 men and 320 negroes." On each dead negro, the African Company lost £10, and the ship lost the freight, £10 10s. He delivered alive 372, who sold, on an average, at about £19. Such was the slave trade, in its least horrible aspect, in 1693. Smith was sent out by the African Company to survey the coast, in 1726. At Gallinas, in December, he found Benjamin Cross, whom the natives had seized and kept three months, in reprisal for some of their people, who had been seized by the English. Such seizures, he says, were too often practiced by Bristol and Liverpool ships. Cross was Mount, he found the natives cautious of intercourse, for fear of being seized. At Cape Mesurado, in January, 1727, he saw many of the natives, but not liking to venture on shore, had no discourse with them. In 1730, Snelgrave, who had been captured by pirates nine years before, was again on the coast. There was then not a single European factory on the whole Windward Coast, and Europeans were "shy of trusting themselves on shore, the natives being very barbarous and uncivilized." He never met a white man who durst venture himself up the country. He mentions the suspicions and revengeful feelings of the natives, occasioned by seizing them for slaves, as a cause of the danger. He, too, witnessed human sacrifices. hard drinking bout of brandy, the cries of his wives immediately spread the news through the town. All the women ran there and howled like furies. The favorite wife distinguished herself by her grief, and not without cause." She was watched by the other women, to prevent her escape. The marbut, or priest, examined the body, and pronounced the death natural-not the effect of witch-ransomed for about £50. At Cape craft. Then followed washing the body, and carrying it in procession through the village, with tearing of the hair, howling, and other frantic expressions of grief. "During this, the marbut made a grave, deep and large enough to hold two bodies. He also stripped and skinned a goat. The pluck served to make a ragout, of which he and the assistants ate. He also caused the favorite wife to eat some; who had no great inclination to taste it, knowing it was to be her last. She ate some, however; and during the repast, the body of the goat was divided in small pieces, broiled and eaten. The lamentations began again; and when the marbut thought it was time to end the ceremony, he took the favorite wife by the arms, and delivered her to two stout negroes. These, seizing her roughly, tied her hands and feet behind her, and laying her on her back, placed a piece of wood on her breast. Then, holding each other with their hands on their shoulders, they stamped with their feet on the piece of wood, till they had broken the woman's breast. Having thus at least half despatched her, they threw her into the grave, with the remainder of the goat, casting her husband's body over her, and filling up the grave with earth and stones. Immediately, the cries ceasing, a quick silence sueceeded the noise, and every one retired home as quietly as if nothing had happened." Such was the character of what is now Liberia, after 268 years of intercourse with slave traders and pirates. Meanwhile, nations were treating with each other for the extension of the slave trade. The Genoese at first had the privilege of furnishing the Spanish colonies with negro slaves. The French next obtained it, and kept it till, according to Spanish official returns, it had yielded them $204,000,000. In 1713, the British government, by the famous Assiento treaty, secured it for the South Sea Company for thirty years. In 1739, Spain was desirous to take the business into her own hands, and fact, that it had a name by which it England sold out the remaining four | practice may be inferred from the years for £100,000, to be paid in London in three months.* From this time to 1791, when the British Parliament began to collect testimony concerning the slave trade, there seems to have been no important change in the influences operating on the coast, or in the character of its inhabitants. The collection and publication of testimony was continued till the passage, in 1807, of the act abolishing the trade. From this testimony, it appeared that nearly all the masters of English ships engaged in that trade, were of the most abandoned character, none too good to be pirates. Their cruelty to their own men was so excessive and so notorious, that crews could never be obtained without great difficulty, and seldom without fraud. Exciting the native tribes to make war on each other for the purpose of obtaining slaves, was a common practice. The Windward Coast, especially, was fast becoming depopulated. The Bassa country, and that on the Mesurado and Junk rivers, were particularly mentioned, as regions which had suffered in these wars; where the witnesses had seen the ruins of villages, lately surprised and burned in the night, and rice fields unharvested, because their owners had been seized and sold. On other parts of the coast, the slaves were collected, and kept for embarkation, in factories; but on the Windward Coast, แ every tree was a factory," and when the negroes had any thing to sell, they signified it by kindling a fire. Here, also, was the principal scene of "panyaring; " that is, of enticing a negro into a canoe, or other defenceless situation, and then seizing him. The extent of this Factories, however, were gradually re-established and fortified; but not till the slave trade had nearly depopulated the coast, and thus diminished the danger. Two British subjects, Bostock and McQuinn, had one at Cape Mesurado. In June, 1813, His Majesty's ship Thais sent forty men on shore, who, after a battle in which one of their number was killed, entered the factory and captured its owners. French, and especially Spanish factories, had become numerous. A large proportion, both of the slave ships and factories, were piratical. By the laws of several nations, the trade was prohibited, and ships engaged in it liable to capture. They therefore prepared to defend themselves. The general peace which followed the downfall of Napoleon, left many privateers and their crews out of employment, and they engaged at once in piracy and the slave trade. In 1818, Lord Castlereagh communicated to the ambassadors of the leading powers of Eu * Rees' Cyclopedia, Art. Assiento. The statement may be slightly inaccurate. The treaty, or "convention," with Spain in 1739, stipulated for the payment of £95,000, and the settlement of certain other claims, the amount of which was still to be ascertained. rope, a list of eighteen armed slavers lately on the coast, of five vessels taken and destroyed by them, and of several battles with others; and these were mentioned only as specimens. slight culture which obtains among the natives of this country. But the population has been wasted by the rage for trading in slaves, with which the constant presence of slaving vesThe natives, notwithstanding the sels and the introduction of foreign evils which the slave trade inflicted luxuries have inspired them. The upon them, were infatuated with it. south bank of this river, and all the In 1821, the agents of the Coloniza- intervening country between it and tion Society attempted to purchase a the Mesurado, have been, from this tract for their first settlement at cause, nearly desolated of inhabitants. Grand Bassa. The only obstacle A few detached and solitary plantawas, the refusal of the people to make tions, scattered at long intervals any concession towards an abandon- through the tract, just serve to inment of that traffic. In December terrupt the silence and relieve the of that year, a contract with that in-gloom which reigns over the whole dispensable condition was made for region." Cape Mesurado. The first colonists took possession, January 7, 1822. In November of the same year, and again in December, the natives attacked the colony in great numbers, and with an obstinate determination to exterminate the settlers, and renew the trade at that accustomed spot. In April and May, 1823, Mr. Ash-ed, all moral virtue has been extinmun, governor of the colony, went on business along the coast about 150 miles, to Settra Kroo. "One century ago," he remarks, "a great part of this line of coast was populous, cleared of trees, and under cultivation. It is now covered with a dense and almost continuous forest. This is almost wholly a second growth; commonly distinguished from the original by the profusion of brambles and brushwood, which abounds amongst the larger trees, and renders the woods entirely impervious, even to the natives, until paths are opened by the bill-hook." In May, 1825, Mr. Ashmun purchased for the colony, a fine tract on the St. Paul's. Of this he says: "Along this beautiful river were formerly scattered, in Africa's better days, innumerable native hamlets; and till within the last twenty years, nearly the whole river-board, for one or two miles back, was under that The moral desolation, he found to be still more complete. He writes: "The two slaving stations of Cape Mount and Cape Mesurado have, for several ages, desolated, of every thing valuable, the intervening very fertile and beautiful tract of country. The forests have remained untouch guished in the people, and their industry annihilated, by this one ruinous cause." "Polygamy and domestic slavery, it is well known, are as universal as the scanty means of the people will permit. And a licentiousness of practice which nonenot the worst part of any civilized community on earth-can parallel, gives a hellish consummation to the frightful deformity imparted by sin to the moral aspect of these tribes." "The emigrants, from the hour of their arrival in Africa, are acted upon by the vitiating example of the natives of this country. The amount and effects of this influence, I fear, are generally and egregiously underrated. It is not known to every one, how little difference can be perceived in the measure of intellect possessed by an ignorant rustic from the United States, and a sprightly native of the coast. It may not be easily credited, but the fact certainly is, and of the African character. The following incident I relate, not for its singularity, for similar events take place, perhaps, every month in the year; but because it has fallen under my own observation, and I can vouch for its authenticity. King Boatswain received a quantity of goods in trade from a French slaver, for which he stipulated to pay young slaves. He makes it a point of honor to be punctual to his engagements. The time was at hand when he expected the return of the slaver. He had not the slaves. Looking round on the peace-. able tribes about him, for her victims, he singled out the Queahs, a small agricultural and trading people, of most inoffensive character. His warriors were skillfully distributed to the different hamlets, and making a simultaneous assault on the sleeping occupants, in the dead of night, accomplished, without difficulty or that the advantage is, oftenest, on the side of the latter. The sameness of color, and the corresponding characteristics to be expected in different portions of the same race, give to the example of the natives a power and influence over the colonists, as extensive as it is corrupting. For it must not be suppressed, however the the fact may be at variance with the first impressions from which most African journalists have allowed themselves to sketch the character of the natives, that it is vicious and contaminating in the last degree. I have often expressed my doubt, whether the simple idea of moral justice, as we conceive it from the early dawn of reason, has a place in the thoughts of a pagan African. As a principle of practical morality, I am sure that no such sentiment obtains in the breast of five Africans within my acquaintance. A selfishness which prostrates every consid-resistance, the annihilation, with the eration of another's good; a habit of dishonest dealing, of which nothing short of unceasing, untiring vigilance can avert the consequences; an unlimited indulgence of the appetites; and the labored excitement*, and unbounded gratification of lust the most unbridled and beastly-these are the ingredients of the African character. And however revolting, however, on occasion, concealed by an assumed decency of demeanor; such is the common character of all." This last extract was dated May 20, 1827, when Mr. Ashmun had been nearly five years in Africa, and in the most favorable circumstances for learning the truth. exception of a few towns, of the whole tribe. Every adult man and woman was murdered; very young children generally shared the fate of their parents; the boys and girls alone were reserved to pay the Frenchman.' King Boatswain was not such an untaught barbarian as some may suppose. He began life without hereditary rank, served in the British Navy till he attained the rank of boatswain, and gradually arose among his own people by his superior intelligence and force of character. In September, 1824, he seized 86 more of the Queahs. In August, 1825, the Clarida, a And this horrid work was still Spanish slaver connected with the going on. In August, 1823, Mr. factory at Digby, a little north of the Ashmun wrote:-"I wish to afford St. Paul's, plundered an English the Board a full view of our situation, || brig at anchor in Monrovia harbor. * Of this, in respect to both sexes, we might have produced disgusting testimony more than a century old, relating especially to this part of the coast. In this, as in other things, their character had evidently undergone no essential change. |