Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/260





UPPER GUINEA.

HE "Land of Liberty" has not yet fulfilled all the promises made on its behalf by its founders. Hence, by an inevitable reaction, most travellers casually touching at some port of the republic allow themselves to indulge in severe censures, too often inspired by racial prejudice. But surely the very constitution itself of a society consisting exclusively of the children of slaves or freedmen, developed in a region where the slavers were wont to collect their gangs of captives, must be regarded as an event of supreme importance. In any case, far from being a weaker or worse organised state than the neighbouring European "colonies," Liberia has at least the advantage of being a colony in the true sense of the word. Its immigrant founders were not more passing travellers, but here took their permanent abode, and here their issue have continued the work begun by them. In speech, usages, and institutions they even represent European culture itself. Yet they are blacks like the natives, and, although too often keeping aloof from them in the fatal character of "civilised aristocrats," they have none the less, in the long run, exercised considerable influence on the tribes in whose domain they have taken up their abode. With their neighbours they have mostly dwelt in peace, and less by force of arms than by friendly treaties they have succeeded in acquiring the political supremacy over the extensive region at the western angle of the continent. Still the Liberians have also had their wars with the surrounding wild tribes, whom they have reduced by barbarous measures, cutting down their palm-groves and wasting their tilled lands.

In 1815 some forty American Negroes were brought over to Sierra-Leone by a Wealthy fellow-countryman of Massachusetts, and next year an American society was founded for settling emancipated slaves on the African seaboard, whence their ancestors had been carried off. But the first expedition under its auspices did not take place till 1820. It was directed to Furah Bay in the Sierra-Leone estuary; but having been badly received by the English, the settlement was removed in 1822 to a bay commanded by Cape Mensurado, 210 miles south-east of Freetown.