Page:Cole (1885) The Hope of Sherbro's Future Greatness.pdf/8

—4— “''Auri sacra fames! quid non morsalia pectora cogis''.” “O thou execrable desire for gold, what dost thou not compel mortal souls to do!”

In his dispatches in 1825, Major-general Turner, then governor of Sierra Leone, wrote that he entered into treaties with native chiefs on the Sherbro rivers, who agreed to cease from destructive internal warfare, to give up the slave-trade, and form a friendly alliance with England, for the benefit of protection, and of trade in the productions of Africa in exchange for European commodities. He recommended strongly that the Sherbro rivers should be blockaded, and that by so doing the government would be able to prevent an annual exportation of 30,000 slaves from Sherbro alone.

It is to be regretted that the governor died of fever while writing his letter. Hence his plan was not then executed.

A few years after the return of John Newton to England a vessel came laden with goods, with Messrs. Cleveland, Tucker, and Caulker. Mr Cleveland landed at the Bananas Island, and established himself at the slave-factory of John Newton. Mr. S. Caulker came to the Plantain Island, and Tucker sailed south-east and settled in the country of the Gbas.

The locality of the Plantain Island, and the prosperity of the Caulkers, raised a spirit of jealousy in the Clevelands. A great enmity soon arose between them, which ended in war. Mr. Cleveland collected a good army and suddenly attacked Mr. Caulker in the Plantain Island, so that he had to surrender. The island was then claimed by the Clevelands, and Mr. Caulker submitted to be employed by them, and was removed to their head-quarters in the Bananas Island. Whilst in his employment at the Bananas, Mr. Caulker appropriated all his income to the preparation of