Both speak what seem to be mutually unintelligible languages, but which have an undoubted[36] relationship to each other, and to the numerous Mandingo dialects as well. It is this which induces me to place them in the same section with the more civilized Africans of the Gambia.
It is safe to say that they are amongst the rudest members of the stock; indeed it is only in the eyes of the etymologist that they are Mandingo at all. Practically, they, and several tribes like them, are Mandingo, in the way that a wolf is a dog, or a goat a sheep.
The Bullom and Timmani are the frontagers to Sierra Leone; and it was with Bullom and Timmani potentates that the land of the settlement was bargained for. The settlers themselves are of different origin. Mixed beyond all other populations of Africa, the occupants of Free Town are in the same category with the Negroes of Jamaica and St. Domingo; concerning whom we can only predicate that they have dark skins, and that they come from Africa. The analysis of their several origins, and their distribution amongst the separate branches of the African family, would be one of the most difficult feats in minute ethnology; and this would be but a fraction of the investigation. When the several countries which supplied the several victims of the slave-trade had been ascertained, the complicated question of intermixture would stand over; and there we should find lineages of every degree of hybridism—children,[37] whose ancestors originated on different sides of Africa, themselves the parents of a lighter-coloured offspring, the effect of European intercourse.
At present it is sufficient to state that the nucleus of the Free Town population consists of what is called the Maroon Negroes. These were slaves of Jamaica, who, having recovered their freedom during the Spanish dominion in the island, were removed, by the English, in the first instance to Nova Scotia, and afterwards to their present locality.
Round this has collected an equally miscellaneous population of rescued slaves; and, besides these, there are immigrants, labourers, and barterers from all the neighbouring parts of the Continent—Krumen more especially.
A writer who, when we come to the Negroes of the Gold Coast, will be freely quoted, calls the Krumen the Scotchmen of Africa, since, with unusual industry, enterprise, and perseverance, they leave, without reluctance, their own country to push their fortunes wherever they can find a wider field. They are ready for any employment which may enable them to increase their means, and ensure a return to their own country in a state of improved prosperity. There the Kruman's ambition is to purchase one or two head of cattle, and one or two head of wives, to enjoy the[38] luxuries of rum and tobacco, and pass the remainder of his days as
"A gentleman of Africa who sits at home at ease."
Half the Africans that we see in Liverpool are Krumen, who have left their own country when young, and taken employment on board a ship, where they exhibit a natural aptitude for the sea. Without being nice as to the destination of the vessel in which they engage, they return home as soon as they can; and rarely or never contract matrimony before their return. In Cape Coast Town, as well as in Sierra Leone, they form a bachelor community—quiet and orderly; and in that respect stand in strong contrast to the other tribes around them. Besides which, with all their blackness, and all their typical Negro character, they are distinguishable from most other western Africans; having the advantage of them in make, features, and industry.
A Kruman is pre-eminently the free labourer of Africa. In the slave trade he has engaged less than any of his neighbours, attaches himself readily to the whites, and, in his native country, as well as in Sierra Leone, Coast Town, and other places of his temporary denizenship, is quick of perception and amenable to instruction. His language is the Grebo tongue, and it has been reduced to writing by the American missionaries[39] of Cape Palmas. It has decided affinities with those of the Mandingo tongues to the north, the Fanti dialects of the Gold Coast, and, in all probability, still closer ones with those of the Ivory coast. These last, however, are but imperfectly known; indeed, a single vocabulary of the Avekvom language, in the "American Oriental Journal," furnishes nine-tenths of our philological data for the parts between Cape Palmas and Cape Apollonia.
The best measure of the heterogeneousness of the Sierra Leone population is to be found in Mrs. Kilham's vocabularies. That lady collected, at Free Town, specimens of thirty-one African tongues, from Negroes then and there resident. Of these—