After proper deliberation, however, I resolved to take the plough for my device; and before Christmas, I had already ordered from England a large supply of agricultural implements and of every thing requisite for elaborate husbandry. After this, I purchased forty youths to be employed on a coffee plantation, and to drag my ploughs till I obtained animals to replace them. In a short time I had abundance of land cleared, and an over-seer’s house erected for an old barracoonier, who, I am grieved to say, turned out but a sorry farmer. He had no idea of systematic labor or discipline save by the lash, so that in a month, four of his gang were on the sick list, and five had deserted. I replaced the Spaniard by an American colored man, who, in turn, made too free with my people and neglected the plantations. My own knowledge of agriculture was so limited, that unless I fortified every enterprise by constant reference to books, I was unable to direct my hands with skill; and, accordingly, with all these mishaps to my commerce and tillage, I became satisfied that it was easier to plough the ocean than the land.
Still I was not disheartened. My trade, on a large scale, with the interior, and my agriculture had both failed; yet I resolved to try the effect of traffic in a humble way, combined with such mechanical pursuits as would be profitable on the coast. Accordingly, I divided a gang of forty well-drilled negroes into two sections, retaining the least intelligent on the farm, while the brighter youths were brought to the landing. Here I laid out a ship-yard, blacksmith’s shop, and sawpit, placing at the head of each, a Monrovian colonist to instruct my slaves. In the mean time the neighboring natives, as well as the people some distance in the interior, were apprised by my runners of the new factory I was forming at Cape Mount.
By the return of the dry season our establishment gave signs of renewed vitality. Within the fences of New Florence there were already twenty-five buildings and a population of one hundred, and nothing was wanting but a stock of cattle, which I soon procured from the Kroo country.
Thus, for a long time all things went on satisfactorily, not only with the natives, but with foreign traders and cruisers, till a native war embarrassed my enterprise, and brought me in contact with the enemies of King Fana-Toro, of whose realm and deportment I must give some account.
CHAPTER LXXI.
The Africans who cluster about the bold headland of Cape Mount,—which, in fair weather, greets the mariner full thirty miles at sea,—belong to the Vey tribe, and are in no way inferior to the best classes of natives along the coast. Forty or fifty families constitute “a town,” the government of which is generally in the hands of the oldest man, who administers justice by a “palaver” held in public, wherein the seniors of the settlement are alone consulted. These villages subject themselves voluntarily to the protectorate of larger towns, whose chief arbitrates as sovereign without appeal in all disputes among towns under his wardship; yet, as his judgments are not always pleasing, the dissatisfied desert their huts, and, emigrating to another jurisdiction, build their village anew within its limits.
The Veys of both sexes are well-built, erect, and somewhat stately. Their faith differs but little from that prevalent among the Soosoos of the Rio Pongo. They believe in a superior power that may be successfully invoked through gree-grees and fetiches, but which is generally obstinate or mischievous. It is their idea that the good are rewarded after death by transformation into some favorite animal; yet their entire creed is not subject to any definite description, for they blend the absurdities of Mahometanism with those of paganism, and mellow the whole by an acknowledgment of a supreme deity.
The Vey, like other uncontaminated Ethiopians, is brought up in savage neglect by his parents, crawling in perfect nakedness about the villages, till imitation teaches him the use of raiment, which, in all likelihood, he first of all obtains by theft. There is no difference between the sexes during their early years. A sense of shame or modesty seems altogether unknown or disregarded; nor is it unusual to find ten or a dozen of both genders huddled promiscuously beneath a roof whose walls are not more than fifteen feet square.