Page:A memoir of Granville Sharp.djvu/94

90 and galling oppression, was discovered in the woody mountains of Trelawny, in Jamaica; their number was nine men, eight women, and four children.

It appears that several years had elapsed, since the first of them had found shelter in those wild mountain glens, and that from time to time, one and another had been providentially added to their number. The evidence from which this account is taken, is that of their enemies, the slave gazettes of the island. They are accused of no crime, except the act of flying from oppression—fabricated, against all righteousness into a crime, by the mischief-making laws (Psalms xciv. 20—22.) of the nefarious slave-code. They seem to have lived soberly, industriously and affectionately together, hurting no one, unknown to the world, and all their wish, to remain unknown. They had cleared, of its heavy timber, and cultivated (part of it to great perfection,) about two hundred acres. They had "pigs and poultry," and were well supplied with clothing; for they sold or bartered their surplus productions, which were considerable, through their friends, amongst the slaves of the neighboring plantations; thus conducing to supply their vicinity with cheap and wholesome food. They had built a little village, containing a kind of council or meeting house of hewn cedar, and they called it "We no sen', you no come." The slave gazettes scoff at this title. To me, it is one of the most appropriate and affecting that my imagination could conceive. "We no sen', you no come"—as if they had said, "While we can remain concealed from you, white men, slave masters, you will not come like the hurricane, to sweep us to death—we know you, white men, slave masters; our only safety from you is concealment—if discovered, we are lost!" Such was the title which nature, writhing under recent outrage and with danger of death, growling all round, had taught them! How fearful and odious was the truth of the lesson!

In 1804, they were discovered. The white men came—their fields were destroyed—their village was burnt—and they were hunted to death or to bondage!!! Where is the man, with a man's heart, who would not have died with them, a thousand times rather than to have partaken of crowns of tyrant glory, or of mines of slaveholders' wealth, by aiding to verify the soul-moving title of their harmless hamlet, "We no sen', you no come."

Sierra Leone has now (1835) been in operation nearly fifty years (from 1787.) It has been in a flourishing condition about thirty years. Prior to the formation of "The African Institution," in 1807, the Sierra Leone