Mr. Griffith further informs us that the Colonial Government is desirous of fostering and encouraging agriculture; that it proposes to establish, or rather to re-establish, a model farm; that lands have been granted at a trifling sum to Mr. William Grant on condition of his devoting capital and labour to the development of agriculture; that Mr. Thomas Bright has laid out a coffee and cocoa farm at Murray Town; and that Mr. Samuel Lewis, a barrister-at-law, universally well spoken of, is engaged in cultivation, with a view of studying the best methods and of influencing his fellow-countrymen in favour of agricultural pursuits. Major Bolton also is working the land seventeen miles down coast, and planting cocoa-nuts, chocolate, and Kola-trees. The latter, when ten years old, are said each to fetch 15l. per annum. Here, therefore, we have at least a beginning.
During the discussion on Mr. Griffith's lecture, some home-truths were told by the Hon. Mr. Grant, [Footnote: This 'eminent African,' who had gone to England with the view of buying agricultural implements and an ice-machine, died in London on January 28, 1881. His speech, therefore, was delivered only a week or so before his death. Much fulsome praise of him followed in the press, which seemed completely surprised that a black man could talk common sense.] a full-blooded negro, of the Ibo tribe, and a member of the Sierra Leone Legislative Council. He objected to the term 'white man's Grave.' He bravely and truly told his audience that if the French held possession of Sá Leone they would have made it a 'different thing.' After praising the present Governor's instruction-ordinance he spoke these remarkable words:—
'But education from the point I allude to is that practical education which develops the man and makes him what he is, not the education which makes him simply the blind imitator of what he is not. Of course the education, as originally introduced into the colony, was an experiment, and a grand experiment it was. They said, "There are these people, and we will educate them as ourselves." It was a good idea, but it was defective, because there is as great a difference between the negro and the white man as there can be. He is capable of doing anything that the white man can do; but then, to get him to do that, you must educate him in himself. You must bring him out by himself: you must not educate him otherwise. He must be educated to carry out a proper and distinct course for himself. The complaint has been general of the want of success in the education of the negro; but it is not his fault: the fault is from the defect of his education. He fancies, by the sort of education which you give him, that he must imitate you in everything—act like you, dress in broadcloth like you, and have his tall black hat like you. Then you see the result is that he is not himself; he confuses himself, and when he comes to act within himself as a man he is confused, and you find fault that he has not improved as he ought to do. But if he is properly educated you will find him of far greater assistance to you than you have any idea of.'
The remarks on agriculture and on capital were equally apposite; and Captain Cameron remarked that these were the 'truest words of wisdom about Africa that it ever was his lot to hear.' They will leave a sweet savour in the reader's mouth after a somewhat acid chapter.
But the ingrained idleness of generations is not so easily cleared away. The real cure for Sá Leone will be an immigration of Chinese or of Indian coolies, that will cheapen labour and enable men of capital to farm on a large scale. It may be years before agriculture supplants trade with its light work and ready profits; but the supplanting process itself will do good. At present Sá Leone finds it cheaper to import salt from England than to lay out a salina, and to make an article of commerce which finds its way into the furthest interior. Immigration, I repeat, is the sole panacea for the evils which afflict the Lioness Range.
CHAPTER XIII. — FROM SÁ LEONE TO CAPE PALMAS.
Frowsy old Sá Leone bestowed on us a parting smile. After a roaring tornado at night and its terminal deluge, the morning of January 19 broke clear and fine. We could easily trace, amongst the curious series of volcanic cones, the three several sanitary steps on the Leicester or Lioness Hill. These are, first the hospice of the French Jesuits, now officers' quarters; then a long white shed, the soldiers' hospital; and highest (1,700 feet) the box which lodges their commandant. Even the seldom-seen 'Sugarloaf' was fairly outlined against the mild blue vault. Although the withering hand of summer was on the scene, the old charnel-house looked lovely; even the low lines of the Bullom shore borrowed a kind of beauty from the air. The hues were those of Heligoland set in frames of lapis lazuli above and of sapphire below; golden sand, green strand of silky Bermuda-grass, and red land showing chiefly in banks and thready paths. Again we admired the dainty and delicate beauties of the shore about Pirate Bay and other ill-named sites. Then bidding adieu to the white man's Red Grave and steering south-west, we gave a wide berth to the redoubted 'Carpenter,' upon which the waves played; to the shoals of St. Anne, and to a multitude of others which line the coast as far as that treacherous False Cape and lumpy Cape Shelling or Shilling, whose prolongation is the Banana group.
Sherbro, fifty miles distant, was passed at night. Then (sixty miles) came the Gallinas River, a great centre of export, which has not forgotten Pedro Blanco. This prince of slavers, whose establishment appears on the charts of 1836-38, imported no goods; he bought cargoes offered to him and he paid them by bills on England, drawing, says the Coast scandal, upon two Quaker brothers at Liverpool. Not a little curious that our country supplied the money both to carry on the traite and to put it down. Three miles south of the Gallinas the Sulaymá River flows in. Here the scenery suggests a child's first attempt at colouring in horizontal lines; a dangerous surf ever foams white upon the yellow shore, bearing an eternal growth of green. Two holes in the bush and a few thatched roofs, separated by a few miles, showed the Harris factories, which caused frequent teapot-storms between 1865 and 1878. The authorities of Liberia, model claimants with a touch of savage mendicancy, demanded the land and back-dues from time immemorial. 'Palaver' was at last 'set' by the late lamented David Hopkins, consul for the Bights, in the presence of a British cruiser and two American ships of war.