Coming to the beach, we found no boat; and nearly half an hour passed before one arrived to take us on board. In the interim, I strolled along the shore, picking up the small shells, which the waves had thrown in abundance upon the sand. In the eye of a conchologist, they would have been of little value, as all of them were common, and none possessed more than a single valve. But the purple blush of the interior pleased me; and what is more, I was gathering these trifles for a lady whom I have never seen, yet whom I trust that I may venture to count among my friends. I know that she will be pleased with the poor offering and its giver; for each of these shells is linked with a thought that flew over the sea—from the sunset shore of Africa to a fireside in New England—and returned thence to the wanderer, bringing grateful fancies, reminiscences, and hopes. It was a smiling half-hour.
9.—Ashore, and in the council-chamber. It is a spacious apartment on the second floor of the stone building recently erected for the purposes of a Legislative Hall and Court-House. The Governor presided, sitting in a high backed rocking-chair; which, by the by, the natives call a "Missionary Horse." The colonial Secretary acted as chief-clerk, and Doctor Prout, in gold-bowed spectacles, as his assistant. An ungainly lad, with big feet and striped hose, seemed to engross in his own person the offices of door-keeper, sergeant-at-arms, and page. The council proper consisted of ten members, who sat at separate desks, arranged semi-circularly in front of the Governor. The spectators occupied rude benches in the rear of the members.
The question before the council related to the building of a market-house in Monrovia, at the expense of the commonwealth, as proposed in one of the sections of a bill to form a city government. This being a matter of some interest, each member expressed his views, but with such brevity that the whole debate occupied scarcely forty minutes, although several individuals spoke twice. This conciseness was less a virtue of choice than necessity, being attributable chiefly to the fact, that the presiding officer set his face against all vagaries of eloquence, and kept the speakers strictly to the point. If one wandered in the least, he was instantly called to order, and compelled to take his seat, upon the slightest deviation from the rules of the house. One of the members was a wilder specimen of humanity than even our legislative bodies at home have ever presented to an admiring world. He was a re-captured African, representing New Georgia, an uncouth figure of a man, who spoke very broken English, with great earnestness, and much to the amusement of his brother counsellors and the audience generally. I regret my inability to preserve either the matter or the manner of so original an orator.
Here, as in the various other situations in which I have seen him placed, Governor Roberts acquitted himself as a dignified, manly, and sensible person. Deriving his appointment from the Society at home, he can act with more independence, in an official capacity, than if indebted to the voices of the members for his position.
15.—At sea again, on our way to Gallenas.
17.—Fell in with the English brig-of-war Ferret. Our captain went on board, and was told that she had been engaged with a large slaver, four days ago. Previous to the action, the slave-ship went to Gallenas, where the Ferret's pinnace was at anchor. She ran alongside of the boat, with three guns out on a side, and her waist full of musketeers—a superiority of force in view of which the pinnace did not venture to attack her; and the ship took in nine hundred or a thousand slaves, and went off unmolested. At sea, she encountered the Ferret, and was fired into repeatedly by that vessel, during the night, but succeeded in making her escape. The slaver was under Portuguese colors, and is said to have been formerly the American ship Crawford, now owned by Spaniards, and bearing a Spanish name.
18.—Again came to an anchor at Monrovia.
19.—Just returned from an excursion up the St. Paul's river. Three officers, in company with Dr. Lugenbeel, left Monrovia seasonably in the forenoon, in one of our boats, rowed—and well rowed too—by five Kroomen. Near the village, we passed from the Mesurado river through Stockton's creek, seven or eight miles, to the St. Paul's. Our first landing was at the public farm, where the manufacture of sugar was going on. Twelve Kroomen (whose power, in this country, is applied to as great a variety of purposes as those of steam and water in our own) were turning the mill by two long levers, walking round and round in one interminable circle, like the horse in an old-fashioned bark-mill. Three or four boys fed the mill with cane, which about a score of colonists were employed in cutting and bringing in by small armsfull, from a field in the immediate vicinity. The overseer, Mr. Moore, and a few other persons, were occupied in boiling the cane-juice. Mr. Moore informed me that sixteen Kroomen were employed on the premises, at three dollars per month, and twenty-five colonists at sixty-two and a half cents a day, besides their food. This year, they make about thirty barrels of sugar (which will cost at least twenty-five cents per pound), and two pipes of molasses. The cane, now in process of manufacture, is very small and unprofitable, all of the larger kind having been already ground. The sugar-house is a wretched building, with a thatched roof, and the sides roughly boarded like a cow-shed. There were four boilers in full bubble, and ten thousand bees in full buzz about the establishment; the insects bidding fair to hoard up more profit than the sugar-manufacturers.
Mr. Moore had accompanied the Niger expedition in the capacity of farmer, and resided nine or ten months on the model farm, without undergoing the prevalent sickness. While almost every white man perished, the colored colonists all survived. A large amount of property was left in the charge of Mr. Moore, and he returned with the expedition to England. As superintendent of the public farm, he now receives from the Colonization Society a salary of three hundred dollars.
Leaving the farm, we soon entered the St. Paul's, a noble river, which comes rolling onward from the yet unexplored interior of the country. Following its course a mile or more towards the sea, we arrived at Maumee's Town, a village of thirty or forty huts, where a considerable slave-trade was carried on, until broken up by the colonists under Governor Ashman. Old Maumee still resides here, and cherishes a bitter hatred against the Liberians, and all Americans and Englishmen, as having caused the ruin of her profitable commerce. The old hag was not now at home, having obeyed the custom of the country by retiring to a more secluded spot, for the purpose of nursing a sick granddaughter. The persons who remained were quite uninteresting. The only noticeable group was composed of two women, one lying flat on her face, with her head in the other's lap. Her hair being combed out as straight as the tenacity of its curls would allow, her friend was arranging it in that fine braid with which it is customary to cover the head.