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 topsails for another week. This was a rough time for all on board. At last the wind changed, and we this time succeeded in clearing the Bay of Biscay and then had a fairly fine run until we reached St. Antonia, one of the Cape de Verde Islands. This we sighted early one morning, and in the brilliant tropical sunshine it appeared to me almost a heavenly sight. We soon passed on, the little island disappeared, and once more our bark seemed to be alone on the mighty ocean. After a week or so we sighted the mainland of that great and wonderful continent Africa—wonderful, I say, because it has been left as if it were unknown for centuries, while countries not nearly its equal in any way have had millions spent upon them. Our first land fall was a port of Liberia. Liberia, I must tell you, is part of the western continent with a seaboard of some miles. It was taken over by the American Republic and made a free country for all those slaves that were liberated in the time of the great emancipation brought about by that good man William E. Channing. Here, on their own land, these people, who years before had been kidnapped from their homes, were once more free.

After a week's buffeting about with cross currents and very little wind we at last reached the noted headland of Cape Palmas, a port of Liberia; we anchored here for one night and next morning were under way again. This time, having a fair wind and the currents with us, we soon made our next stopping place, which was a little village on the coast-line called Beraby. Here we had our first glimpse of African life. Directly we dropped anchor a sight almost indescribable met the eye of what appeared to be hundreds of large blackbirds in the water. We had not long to wait before we knew it was something more than black