While at Teneriffe, the war steamer San Jacinto, belonging to the American squadron, watching the African slave coast, came in port. She was proceeding to Cadiz for repairs, as her machinery was out of order, and the nearest point was Spain. Capt. Armstrong was in command. Several of the officers were from our state. They had been cruising eight months, and, as you can imagine, were pleased to meet with one who could give direct news from Europe and the United States.
CLVII.
Sierra Leone, West Coast of Africa, March 14, 1860.
Two days’ steaming brought us from Bathurst, Gambia river, to this, the oldest English settlement on the west coast of Africa. It is situated upon a broad bay at the entrance of the Sierra Leone river, with high hills and peaks in the distance. The soil looks reddish, like that of New Jersey, but is thoroughly charged with iron. The vegetation is decidedly tropical, producing palm oil, ginger, spices, gum, bread-fruit, oranges, bananas, pineapples, etc. The heat is oppressive.
The fever epidemic has destroyed fifty-eight out of ninety-eight white residents within thirty days. The Catholic mission is closed, the bishop and the priests under his charge having died. The other missions also suffered, but not to the same extent. One of the prominent colored missionaries of the English Episcopal church I found to be a native of Charleston, South Carolina. He had lost his white German wife by fever.
I visited the schools for the education of the young males and females, and found them getting on very well in their studies. The sons of negroes who have been slaves in other countries, and who are traders and general dealers, appreciate the importance of education; but those of the villages and in the suburbs live in that listless manner characteristic of the negro. They perform but little labor, sufficient only to procure rum and tobacco as luxuries, for nature furnishes yams and other necessaries of life without much effort, preferring to bask and sleep in the rays of the broiling sun, which are death to the white man.
The French consul, to whom I had a letter and with whom I dined, drove me to his villa on the shore, some miles from town, a beautiful spot, where nature appeared in all her loveliness; but the insidious fever had closed the mission edifice in the neighborhood. We drove through villages at different times and in different directions up and down the coast, among hedges of lime trees twenty feet high, filled with fruit, resembling the wild vegetation of Venezuela. The umbrella-topped palm grows in profusion. The oleander and other hot-house plants with us, standing fifteen feet high, in bloom, as in the West Indies; pine-apple bushes laden with fruit are growing in a wild state; and the wide-spreading branches of the mango offer opportunity for repose, but the threatened fever for the white man breaks the charm.
The African fever this year has carried off thousands of the negroes also. The present population, mostly black, is computed to be forty thousand. The garrison is English, but the officers only are white, the soldiery consisting of natives and captured slaves, who are apprenticed. The vessels in the harbor during the epidemic, a few months since, lost in some cases captains, officers, crews, and even the cats on board, leaving the vessel riding alone at anchor. We don’t sleep ashore as yet on any occasion.
The few white residents left are most hospitable, and my letters were such as to furnish all the civilities the settlement can afford. A wealthy German merchant, who has a native wife, as most persons have on the African coast, did all the honors for the Vaterland, a German missionary, whom I knew at Teneriffe, and who had left for his health, having given me letters.
The thermometer stands at from eighty-eight to ninety-seven in the shade, so that a piece of ice from the steamer, sent as a present by the officers of our ship to their friends and acquaintances, is esteemed a great luxury. White umbrellas are in vogue.