Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/261

 After tho first difficulties were surmounted the colony gradually expanded, strip after strip of territory being added year after your, and parcelled out in the American fashion in geometrical parallel lines at right angles with the coast, But the settlement did not yet constitute an independent state, and continued to be administered by delegates of the American society, whence arose frequent diplomatic difficulties, tho English traders on the coast refusing: to pay customs to a private company, At last the society surrendered its claims, and the revolutionary your, 1848, saw the birth of the new Negro Republic on African soil,

Most of the powers hastened to recognise the independence of Liberia, which at that time comprised about eight thousand "citizens," and three hundred and fifty thousand natives, In 1482 tho first had increased to eighteen thousand, while all the other inhabitants of the vassal states were approximately estimated at one million and fifty thousand; but from this number must he deducted the people of the coast between Manna Point, near Sherbro Island, and the river Manna near Cape Mount, which was definitely annexed to Sierra-Leone in 1883,

At present the aren of colonisation covers an extent of 15,000 square miles, But the State would be four times more extensive if be included all the territories