From the change which has taken place in those villages since I saw them in 1817, I am satisfied, that a little time is alone necessary to enable the colony of Sierra Leone to vie with many of the West India islands, in all the productions of tropical climates, but particularly in the article of coffee, which has been already raised there, and proved by its being in demand in the English market to be of as good (if not superior) quality to that imported from our other colonies. That the soil on the mountains is well adapted to the growth of that valuable berry has been too well proved by the flourishing state of some of the plantations in the immediate vicinity of Free-town to need any comment of mine. Arrow-root has also been cultivated with advantage on some of the farms belonging to private individuals, and there can be no doubt of the capability of the soil to produce the sugar-cane, as some is already grown there, but whether it is of as good a description as that of the West Indies I cannot pretend to say, as the experiment had never been tried at Sierra Leone, at least to my knowledge. The cultivation of all these with the cotton, indigo, and ginger, could here be carried on under advantages which our West India islands do not enjoy, namely, the labour of free people, who would relieve the Mother Country from the apprehensions which are at present entertained for the safety of property in some of those islands, by revolt and insurrection amongst the slaves, and from the deplorable consequences of such a state of civil confusion; those people would, by receiving the benefits arising from their industry, be excited to exertions that must prove beneficial to all concerned in the trade, and conducive to the prosperity of the colony itself.
The capital of the peninsula (Free-town) is of considerable extent, and is beautifully situate, on an inclined plane, at the foot of some hills on which stand the fort and other public buildings that overlook it, and the roads, from whence there is a delightful prospect of the town rising in the form of an amphitheatre from the water’s edge, above which it is elevated about seventy feet. It is regularly laid out into fine wide streets, intersected by others parallel with the river, and at right angles. The houses, which a few years since were for the most part built of timber, many of them of the worst description, and thatched with leaves or grass, are now replaced by commodious and substantial stone buildings, that both contribute to the health and comfort of the inhabitants, and add to the beauty of the place, which is rendered peculiarly picturesque by the numbers of cocoa-nut, orange, lime, and banana trees, which are scattered over the whole town, and afford, in addition to the pine-apple and gouava that grow wild in the woods, an abundant supply of fruit. The Madeira and Teneriffe vines flourish uncommonly well in the gardens of some private individuals, and give in the season a large crop of grapes.
Nearly all our garden vegetables are raised there, and what with yams, cassada, and pompions, there is seldom any want of one or other of those agreeable and almost necessary requisites for the table. There are good meat, poultry, and fish markets, and almost every article in the house-keeping line can be procured at the shops of the British merchants.
FOOTNOTES:
[32]See Appendix, [Article 20.]
[33]This event took place on the 4th August, by a smart cannonade from the French brig, and an assault by the Bondoo army (amounting to nearly three thousand men), a spirited sortie made by about one hundred of the besieged, put the whole army of Bondoo to flight and took several prisoners, whom they immediately butchered in front of the brig, which, although moored within musket shot of the shore, was not fired on by the people of the town, with whom the French commandant found it necessary to make peace in a few days afterwards.
CONCLUSION.
Having now finished my narrative, it remains for me to fulfil my obligations to the reader and the public, by briefly stating the result of my experience, not only upon the habits and manners of the people of Western Africa, but also as to the progress they have made towards civilization, as to their political institutions and religious improvement. In doing this I shall cautiously abstain from entering into abstruse calculations, and religiously confine myself to what my best judgement enables me to declare from practical observation. I must here however state, that it has been too long the custom to set little value on the African Negro, to consider him as a being mid-way placed between the mere brute and man; as impervious to every ray of intellectual light; and, in a word, as incapable of enjoying the blessings of civil or religious liberty. This custom is, to say the least of it, erroneous, and the notion on which it is founded unjust. The Spaniards, after the discovery of South America, affected to believe the South Americans of a species inferior to themselves. They ruinously acted on that belief for centuries, and the descendants of those Spaniards have lived to see the day, when long observation has taught them, at a large expense, a very different lesson. It is not however denied, that slaves must and will be slaves, with all the cunning and treachery which their condition engenders, and perhaps it may still be a question, if persons enfranchised from a state of slavery can, by the fact of such an enfranchisement, become at once, or even very speedily, fit and useful members of a free and enlightened community. At the first blush of the question the answer would be in the negative, but that negative should not be left unqualified. The people amongst whom I have travelled, and of whom only I would now be understood to write, are illiterate and consequently superstitious; but the former arises not from want of capacity or genius so much as from the want of means to cultivate them; their mechanical like their agricultural knowledge is extremely limited, but why from that argue their incapacity to meet improvement, if improvement were happily thrown in their way? They have beside, a civil polity and a diplomatic chicane in their intercourse with each other, which is not usually to be found in merely savage life. Like most half taught people their cunning generally supersedes their wisdom, but then I am still prepared to argue, that if you allow them the full exercise of their industry; if you improve and protect it; if, by wise and judicious policy, you lift the Negro in his own esteem, and teach his Chief, that what is good was intended for all, though not in the same proportion, for the servant as the master; if you abate their superstition by the careful introduction of evangelical truths; if, in a word, you realize those things, the condition of Africa will soon assume the appearance of health, longevity, and happiness.
Their wants are, generally speaking, few and easily satisfied; and their soil, though barren, yields a sufficiency of those common necessaries of life which are required in tropical climates. They have not, unfortunately, any common language to knit them together in society, hence must their intercourse with each other be extremely limited; their curiosity is not awakened by the contemplation of new and remote objects, they know few artificial necessities to induce the visits of strangers to supply them, and hence, except in war, they seldom pass the boundaries of the hut that shelters, and the field of rice or corn that feeds them. Nor are these the only disadvantages, or, more properly speaking, difficulties to their general improvement. It is a melancholy truth, that some of the white men who were in the first instances sent ostensibly to instruct them, were often actuated by different motives to suffer the lust of interest and power to tempt them from the useful discharge of the functions entrusted to them;—they, too, often meet cunning by cunning, treachery by treachery, and rapine by rapine: and while they thus conducted themselves,—why expect the Negro to view them in the light of friends and Christian regenerators? The Negro absurdly thinks the white man his enemy, and in how many thousand instances has not the white man realised this absurdity into positive and melancholy fact? The white inculcates principles whose practice he violates, and then he turns round and smiles at the incredulity, or affectedly weeps over the folly of those who will not yield to the happy influence which, forsooth! he was destined to spread amongst them. That this has been too much the case cannot be denied. That a different conduct now prevails, I can with pleasure assert, and I hope for the sake of mankind, that it may improve in proportion as the field of our enquiries shall enlarge. This misconduct was the beginning of all the evil which followed, and those erroneous views destroyed the best intentioned labours. We as Englishmen should consider that the prejudices of ages cannot be eradicated in an hour, nor the light of truth communicated by instruction at the mere will of man. To benefit our fellow creatures, we must expend time, patience, money, resources and sedulous instruction, because we know that cupidity, bigotry, and revenge, and all the bad passions which spring from ignorance, are not to be destroyed by any other effectual means. Many incidents have been stated in the course of my narrative, which justify these remarks, exclusive of those more prominent instances which are to appear in the sequel.