No spot of the earth labours under a worse reputation than our little anti-slave colony on the western side of the mighty African continent. Misery and mortality, swamps and savages, hot winds, miasmata, tombstones, fogs in which pestilence covers the soil like a perpetual shroud, and the yellow fever slaying at every season of the year, form the picture in the brains of Europe. Yet Sierra Leone may still say something for itself. Not that we have the slightest desire to palliate the slightest of its actual evils, nor the least imaginable wish to try whether its climate might act with greater effect on the cuticle of the King of Ashantee, or our own. As to other points, we look with as much disrespect as the matter can deserve, upon all efforts, if such have been made, to raise a mercantile profit out of a religious illusion. But let justice be done even to Sierra Leone. Black as it may be, it may have here and there a tinge of white. Providence has done few things on this earth in which the evil is not relieved by some evidence of good; and now forgetting all that has been said by those who have seen Africa only in a map, and known its qualities only in a newspaper, we shall give a few sketches of it from one who has trod the soil, looked about him with common sense eyes, and after eating, drinking, and sojourning there, has actually returned to tell the tale-a tale that he has told truly, pleasantly, and picturesquely.

It must be owned that the author's introduction to this settlement was inauspicious. In the first pages of his volumes he acknowledges that the whole crew, with but a single exception, and that one not himself, felt singularly depressed at their near approach to the African shore; that the atmosphere, which had been clear, seemed suddenly to thicken into mist; that the sea had grown sluggish, the dolphins and tropic birds had fled; that the passengers moped, the sailors grew silent, and the captain often for

sook his chart for reading books of grave meditation. In fact, the stories of the "White Man's Grave" had laid their heavy hand upon the ship; and while no man suffered himself to think that his own fate was to be decided, every man looked with a sinister eye upon the fate of his friend. The first sight of the shore was in keeping. It was a "low, shelvy land, extending beyond all view in an uniformly dead level." Upon that shore the captain of the British surveying ship had been destroyed the year before by savages. At length the scene improved. shot up in the distance; when the sun set, which it did with rapidity new to the European eye, the mountains became visible again by the multitude of their fires, the flames of burning forests! At length, dashes of phosphoric light along the waters nounced the coming of a boat, and in a few minutes more the pilot sprang up the side; a black, with the freedom of an Englishman, the tone of a Yankee, and the cunning of a negro. The dialogue was characteristic.

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Pray, is the colony considered healthy at present?

"More or less, I expect." "Have there been many deaths among the white residents lately?" "Can't ye clew up the mainsail?" was the sole reply.

The Captain, thus foiled, and superseded in his command, quietly descended into the cabin, opened his book, and appeared no more upon the deck.

On reaching the shore in the pilotboat, all Sierra Leone seemed to have gone to bed. Not a light was to be seen from the windows. All was still. The forest-fires were hidden by

an intervening hill. All was silent, dark, and stifling. The heat, even at sea, had for some days been most relaxing. The sailors had walked the deck nearly naked; the passengers longed to follow their example, and the chief comfort was derived from a hope that it might be cooler on land. This, however, was a grand mistake. "I had no sooner landed," says the narrative," than a furnace seemed to have opened its parching breath on me. The first feeling was that of suffocation, succeeded by a sudden faintness which had nearly caused a fall; a volume of heat rushed from the ground, and some moments elapsed before I could proceed, leaning on the muscular arm of my guide.' But even night in Africa is all alive. The air above and the earth beneath teemed with sound. The buz of innumerable insects filled the ear. All was the whiz and hum of these swarming and creeping things. On reaching the house of the chief justice, bells and knockers being unknown, the krooman, his guide, gave notice of his coming by a loud cry. A crowd of servants with lanterns and torches instantly rushed out. But they made a totally different display from "the negroes, with flat noses and rouleau lips, whom we see begging through the streets in London. As well might we attempt to study the Arabian horse from the jade that moans in the shafts of a sand cart." The slaves who find their way from the West Indies are wholly unlike the majority of the free natives of Africa, and are chiefly the offspring of despised tribes. While among the free natives, "as noble features, as lofty an expression, and as fine countenances may be discovered, as Europe could offer." The group which thus poured forth were chiefly youths, all dressed alike, in the simplest of liveries. Loose white trowsers, and a white shirt, very full and open, contrasting strongly with the jet of head and chest, arms and feet. "I never saw a body of servants picturesque before. Those certainly were

So.

Morning came, and the African landscape burst on his eye in all the richness of its unrivalled vegetation. "Immediately in front rose the Barrack hill, Leicester mountain, and the Sugar Loaf beyond; a peak of nearly three thousand feet in height, clothed

to the summit with forests of palm, locust, and wild cotton-trees, whose lofty and rich foliage brought the view apparently close to the eye. Wide streets presented an assemblage of houses and huts of every shape, material, and style of architecture; each generally surrounded by gardens, crowded with the dark orange and lime-trees, the soft green banana and plantain with their broad leaf, and the gorgeous papan, whose slender shaft, graced by a handful of leaves and a cluster of green and orange fruit, creates the idea of a vegetable beau of refined lankness sumptuously equipped with thick ringlets and luscious whiskers."

The population was equally new to the European eye. Groups of girls came down the mountain's side, carrying on their heads calabashes filled with red and black opines, bananas, water-melons, and the other southern fruits; with them came matrons carrying their black piccaninies. Men followed, bringing bundles of coarse grass, fresh cut, for the Freetown horses. Strings of convicts, fettered together by clanking chains, dragged themselves to their compulsory labours. All was bustle and activity. The market-place, the general focus of all, was naturally an extraordinary spectacle, at least so far as variety of clothing and colour could make it such. It presented a moving mass of screaming, quarrelling, and bartering personages. Blacks, browns, siennas, bistres, sepias, umbers, jet, ebony, and carbonated; such as might have arisen from the ashes of Pompeii or Herculaneum after being charred.

A large portion of the western coast of Africa always wears a repulsive look. It is almost a flat from Senegal in 16 deg. north, to Cape Patmos in 4 deg. south, the noble promontory of Sierra Leone rising to break this monotony, like the Pyramids in the desert. The peninsula is nearly triangular, extending from Cape Sierra Leone on the west, in latitude 8 deg. and 30 min. north and south, 13 deg. 40 min. west. The river Bunæ forms its eastern boundary; the ocean washes it from the Cape to Kote's river. Two sides and the centre on mountains and valleys, filled with evergreen forest. It was discovered in 1442 by the Portuguese, and in 1793, an English trading company purchased a few acres

from the natives; the settlement has been since increased by treaty. The unhealthiness of the peninsula to Europeans has often been brought before the public; but the knowledge of this painful fact has produced a beneficial change in the general residence. Instead of crowding the settlement with European troops and functionaries, the whole number of whites, carrying on the various clerkships, does not exceed eighty, in a population upwards of 30,000 blacks.

It is an old European custom to deride the negro understanding, and undoubtedly there are tribes which exhibit but little intellectual vigour. But there are others which show in a remarkable degree the qualities of steadiness, determination, and industry. Among those are the Kroomen of Sierra Leone. Their nation lies about 400 miles to the south of the peninsula. The Krooman, in Africa, is what the Gallego is in Spain; the man who travels for work does the hardest work with the most indefatigable perseverance, and does it all simply to obtain a sum of money sufficient finally to establish him in his own country. Paddling his shallow canoe, the solitary Krooman commits himself to the long voyage on his stormy ocean. The canoe is peculiarly liable to upset. He swims like a porpoise by its side, rights it, bales out the water, paddles through the waves again; and if he can but escape the pirates of his own colour, who seize all whom they can passing along shore, he arrives at the colony where he is to begin the labours of fortune-making. On his arrival, he generally enters as a sort of apprentice under a master of his own tribe, and after two or three years sets up for himself. He takes apprentices in his turn, and receives their wages. Of twenty shillings amonth earned by himself, he probably does not spend one. He is sparing in his expenses, frugal in his diet, and pays no tailor's bills. At the age of forty, he has generally come within sight of the grand object. He has amassed about thirty pounds sterling; but he does not carry the coin away with him. Its use is nearly unknown in Kroo-land. He lays it out in marketable articles, and returns to dwell with his people as a gentleman.

Another remarkable circumstance is, their dwelling without females while

they continue in the state of labourers. "There are no Kroo-women," says Mr Rankin, "in Sierra Leone. It would answer no good purpose to bring them. The Kroos are practical political economists of the modern school, and do not wed until mature age and adequate income justify matrimony. Kroo-town, therefore, presents the unrivalled instance of a bachellor village. I have strolled through the clusters of the square, loosely wattled sheds ranged without order, unfurnished and comfortless, which constitute this most strange suburb of Freetown, and thought of monasteries. Groups of naked men were seen, busy in low-voiced gossip-palaver, or lying drowsily on the bare ground, courting sleep, before huts without windows, and scarcely of sufficient size to permit a tall man to extend his limbs. But no woman could be espied! Hut after hut presents the same dull scene; the earth, the hovel, and the inhabitant, alike motionless, and of similar tint. About a thousand males are congregated in this community of bachelors. The silence which broods over this quarter of the unmarried suggests reflections."

The Kroos even venture to try their strength in logic. "Kas argued cleverly on the existence of Satan, which he disbelieved. His arguments hinged on want of personal evidence, the balance of probabilities, and the opposition of experience. Now, faith in Satan is the keystone of African theology. So that Kas's hardihood in denying it was not so marvellous as his daring to allow himself at first to speculate on such mysteries." European knowledge, especially in the shape of reading, is not popular among the Kroo nation, and the learned in books, on their return, are put in Coventry. But with some the passion is so strong, that it has actually induced them to forsake their countrymen and return to Freetown. "I have seen such busily employed with slate and pencil working multiplication sums of gigantic dimensions for sheer amusement." More than this, he is a musician, and plays a little native lyre, with grass for strings, and a calabash for sounding board, not in the usual eternal twang of the African, but to pretty melodies. More than this, he is an athlete of the first quality, and the only one of his colour who ever

takes exercise for amusement. He delights in wrestling matches; makes a preliminary pantomime for the sport; wrestles in a regular ring, and after exhibiting the most extraordinary agility in bounding round this ring, and displaying his fine proportions, rushes on his antagonist, and finishes the game by throwing him over his head. Yet this rough treatment produces no ill blood. If the neck of the vanquished is not broken, he takes his defeat as a matter of fortune; cherishes hopes of future victory; returns to the lists on the first opportunity, and, as chance happens to all men, sometimes transfers the laurel to his own black brow. The Kroomen are philosophers too; and Diogenes himself might envy the composure with which they bear the scorn of the idle Negroes and Maroons, while they are daily gathering the circulating medium of the colony into their pouches. In another point, too, they show a sense which ought to be an example to many an European. Sierra Leone has it politics, and as intricate ones as the Cabinet of St Petersburg. The Krooman alone sees all the affairs of state pass without giving himself a moment's trouble on the subject. His business is to make money and begone. He leaves the idlers to make themselves busy, if they will, in matters of Government. On one point still more trying he displays the most perfect calmness. As their determined bachelorship is known, the Kroos are, of course, remarkably unpopular with the ladies. The name of Krooman is never pronounced from female lips but with the utmost contempt.-" Were a sable Juliet to forget herself so far as to look with equanimity upon a Kroo Romeo, she would lose grade at once.' Happily for the Kroomen, they are not ordered by their masters to love. "Hard work, wrestling, and sleep fill up their time; they are ungallant, without doubt; but they please themselves." On the whole, we cannot but regard them as very sensible fellows.

Africa has abundant luxuries, but the European appetite is disqualified by the heat from enjoying them. There are other and worse drawbacks. The insects are innumerable: they would be enough, in our apprehension, to turn any banquet into the banquet of Tantalus. The profusion of viands, fruits, and wines, at the European

tables, and the most hospitable reception, are not enough for happiness, where they have such accompaniments as these "The variegated locust, painted purple, red, and green, leaping into the soup plate, the large black cricket plunging into the wine glass, the fat-bodied mantis plumping into the hot spiced pepper pot." As to temperature, " every contrivance to create a cool sensation fails. In vain the refreshing orange and lime flower float in the finger glass; in vain the water in its porous redware jar evaporates, and sprinkles the globular surface with dew; in vain the claret, Madeira, and Sauterne, have been for hours exposed to the sea breeze, the bottles encased in wet cotton, and standing in a cooler. Heat reigns triumphant, favoured by the cloth clothing ceremoniously worn at such times.'

The Governor set out on a tour of inspection, and Mr Rankin was invited to accompany him. They embarked in one of the vessels appointed for hunting the slave ships into the creeks, a Kasée, mounting two carronades and a long eighteen gun. The view, as the vessel moved out from the shore under the influence of a scarcely perceptible breeze, had all the lustre of tropical scenery. The coast was a succession of amphitheatres of mountains sheeted with forest. The sea was instinct with life; fleets of the purple and golden nautilus floated by; and troops of the flying fish darted through the air, like troops of swallows, till they dropped into the side of a wave, or, with the fin refreshed by merely touching the crest of the surge, swept onwards again in a new course. The power of the sun was excessive. One of the officers who threw a hook into the water, and thus exposed his hand for half an hour, had it blistered and swollen. The night was passed on deck, under an awning. The magnificence of the tropical night is proverbial. The darkness of the heaven seems solid. The stars imbedded in it have the lustre of gems, they burn by reflection in the smooth waters; those waters themselves often burning with the blue phosphoric light of the medusæ. As the vessel slowly floated on, the mountains showed their successive fires. This is the mode of clearing the wilderness for cultivation. The forest is set on flames, the jungle

blazes, the whole fearful population of both are put to the instant rout, or consumed, the leopards and snakes are exiled, and man settles in their room. York, the present boundary of the voyage, was reached, and preparations were made to receive the high functionary. A company of negro militia came down to the beach, suffering under the accumulated evils of discipline, dust, and heat. The negroes abhor our broad cloths, our caps, belts, and all the parapharnalia of regu lar soldiership. But, whether in India, Africa, or the West Indies, we button up, tie down, brace and belt men, to whom nakedness is second nature, and this too in climates where the human skin seems almost too much to carry. But this is all according to the law of the Horse Guards; and the etiquette of the temperate zone establishes the absurdity at the line. But the happier race beyond the law of the Horse Guards were in all their original delight. Millions of huge crimson ants were gathering on the sand, apparently to join in the review. Wild parrots were screaming. Shoals of fish were leaping out of the waters, as if for joy. The naked population of York were full of gratulation at the coming of "de Gobbernan man." All was glee, but the unlucky company of negro warriors, "who stood stiff and erect in their uniform, wearing the look of a devoted band, standing in the furnace-flame of the sun.

But the subject assumes a more important aspect when the colony is regarded as an outlet for that vast swelling of population which is yearly propelled from Britain to the ends of the earth. The general objection is, the unhealthiness of the soil.

But

this, Mr Rankin observes, "has been idly magnified by the love of the terrific, and the report has been maintained by policy on the one hand and ignorance on the other." There can be no doubt, that a good deal of mystification on this head has been long sustained. There can be as little doubt, that the insalubrity of any land is to be but imperfectly calculated from the deaths of European captains of ships, military officers, and high salaried civilians. Those classes invariably live under the tropic as they would live in the London Tavern; practise no restraint in eating, drinking, or any indulgence of home; are

And

destitute of all exercise; and thus, feasting and fattening, suddenly drop into the grave, to the surprise of nobody who sees their habits on the spot, and to the terror of all who hear nothing but that they have been killed by Sierra Leone. Temperance, regimen, attention to the changes of climate, and moderate but regular exertion, would disarm the evil, and the triumph would be repaid by the possession of the richest territory perhaps on the surface of the globe. The spontaneous produce of the ground, the very weeds of this region, are among the most important articles of cultivation and commerce in all other parts of the earth; palm-oil, vanilla, coffee, indigo, gums of various kinds, Indian rubber, jesuits' bark, jalap, and a whole host of drugs and dye-woods, covering the ground in the wild luxuriance of nature. Sugar, cinnamon, spices, and tobacco, are easily the result of culture. in this land, where large farms may be purchased for scarcely more than the expense of registering, the wages of the labourer are eightpence or tenpence a-day. "I could not help," says this animated and intelligent writer, "indulging in the vision of a white settlement at York. The mind's eye beheld the comfortable home of an industrious farmer speedily raised by the willing exertions of black labourers; sheltered by the orange and lime trees of this evergeen land; the farmyard well stocked with the diminutive poultry and the stately Muscovy duck; the small Foulah cattle, exactly similar to the best Alderney breed; and those glossy piebald sheep which seem to partake of the nature of the antelope, as well in flavour as in form; with the granary filled with maize, millet, and corn. Beyond, the homestead fields of sugar-cane and indigo, and plantations of cotton; while the hill-sides bristled with the stiff but generous coffee tree." Even the present limits of the settlement by no means include its capabilities. Large tracts of neighbouring territory have been offered to the English Government for purchase, which, though refused for the time, would be available for any increase of population.

But the extension of a British colony in this quarter of the world, would have more important results than commercial opulence. Slavery seems to have been the original impulse of