Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/387

 tracks for the jungle. Roberts marched his men upon the barracoons. The defense was abandoned and the buildings fired. The slaves were liberated and New Sestos annexed.

In the north, along the Gallinas river, the slave-trade lingered. President Roberts, by the aid of Mr. Gurney, Lord Ashley, and benevolent individuals in the United States and England, purchased the territory for nine thousand dollars. By the annexation of this territory, and in May, 1852, of the Cassa territory, Liberia virtually extends its dominion over six hundred miles of sea coast, exterminating the slave-trade from near Cape Palmas to Sierra Leone.

Liberia is well watered, and its natural resources are immense. Cotton is indigenous, and yields two crops a year. Coffee thrives well; a single tree at Monrovia yielding thirty pounds at one gathering. Sugar-cane grows in unrivaled luxuriance, and cam-wood in unlimited quantities; red-wood, bar-wood, and other dyes, are likewise plentiful; the oil-palm is abundant; and indigo, caoutchouc, ginger, arrow-root, cocoa, cocoa-nuts, pine-apples, castor-nuts, yams, plantains, bananas, figs, olives, tamarinds, limes, oranges, lemons, &c., may be added to the list of vegetable products, many of which are exported to a greater or less extent. Ivory is easily obtainable; and rich metallic veins also exist. An important export and import trade is now carried on; and a large number of the inhabitants of the interior depend upon Liberia for their supplies of imported goods.

The exports amount to about eight hundred thousand dollars per annum, and are on the increase. The soil is capable of sustaining an immense population, but the want of agricultural industry has been felt. As the country becomes settled, and the character of its diseases better understood, the acclimating fever is less dreaded, and now rarely proves fatal. This having been passed through, the colored emigrants enjoy far better health than they did in most parts of the United States. The statistics of President Roberts exhibit about three per cent, less number of deaths than among the same class of people in Canada and New England. The thermometer ranges from 10° to 85°; seldom higher or lower.

A thirst for education has been awakened among the surrounding aborigines of Liberia, many of whom send their children 400 and 500 miles, to be educated in the republic. The Liberians have built for themselves above thirty churches of brick and stone; and possess numerous schools, and a considerable lumber of printing-presses. More than 20,000 natives have requested to be taken under the protection of the state, while not less than 100,000 live on its territory, and 350,000 are bound to it by treaties to abolish the slave-trade. At different times, ten buildings, erected by slave-traders for the storage of slaves, have been burned down by the Liberians, and hundreds of their fellow-creatures, therein confined, liberated; and they at all times afford refuge to the weak and the oppressed. Monrovia, the capital and port of the colony, is situated on Cape Mesurado. There are, besides, above twenty towns and villages in the territory. The government of the country is precisely on the American model; consisting of a president, a vice-president, a senate, and a