6599. Do you recollect the distance?—I am not quite sure; 200 miles, I should think.
6600. Sir T. D. Acland.] Would you have this colony dependent upon the Government of Sierra Leone?—Yes, I think decidedly.
6601. Mr. Forster.] Tn preference to its being attached to the Gambia?—It depends upon the facility of communication between the two; whichever the communication is most easy with, I should say it should be connected with. I am not prepared to say at this moment with which the communication is most easy.
6602. Sir T. D. Acland.] But at all events you think it should be dependent upon one or the other, not separate?—I think so.
6603. Mr. Forster.] You were understood to say that the country up the River Nunez, and the River Pongas, is swampy in the interior?—The mouths of the rivers are swampy, but up the Nunez there is good rising ground; the Pongas is a succession of creeks joining each other.
6604. Did you become acquainted with the fact up the Nunez of the growth of coffee on the mountains?—I became aware of the fact of coffee growing in whole forests, which have been hitherto neglected in consequence of the duties amounting to a prohibition.
6605. Is it your opinion that the slave trade is carried on in the Nunez to any material extent?—The Portuguese settlement of Bissao has small boats and canoes collecting slaves, together with produce, as far down as the north bank of the Sierra Leone river; there are many of those boats and canoes employed in the Nunez, but to the best of my belief no vessel has carried slaves from thence for several years, except in one instance, where, under the plea of recruits, the French took away a cargo.
6606. Chairman.] The canoes go about picking up a few at a time, and collecting them into a store, as it were, at Bissao and Cacheo?—At Bissao and Cacheo; I have no doubt that there are also barracoons upon the Bissagos islands, but I had no opportunity to examine as to the fact.
6607. Mr. Forster.] You do not consider the British factories in Rio as at all responsible for those proceedings?—Decidedly not; I have no reason to suppose that they are.
6608. How do you account for so few cruizers having generally visited that part of the coast hitherto?—Because the station which I had charge of has generally been very short of cruizers; the only means of communication was by boats, and owing to the long exposure, and the fatigue it occasioned, it invariably cost the lives of about a fourth of the people employed, whereas a steamer might do in one day what boats take four or five days to do.