From all the west coast of Africa, in 1874, there were imported 486,544 cwt. of palm oil and kernels, valued at £518,134, or over two-and-a-half million dollars; of India-rubber, 3,427 cwt. were imported, valued at £25,792; of coffee, 11,502 cwt., valued at £46,506; of spices and ginger, 8,803 cwt., valued at £20,908; and, noticeable fact to Americans, of raw cotton, 11,315 cwt., valued at £32,839.
The chief articles sent out to the islands and coasts were cottons, arms and ammunition, haberdashery, hardware and cutlery. Of these, cotton was king. The whole number of yards of cotton cloth, mostly prints, sold at these ports for that year, amounted to 47,217,966, or nearly forty-eight millions. Allowing thirty yards to a piece, and thirty pieces to a bale, there were over fifty thousand cases of calicoes, whose value was estimated at £745,179, or nearly four millions of dollars. Shall America utterly neglect so rich a field, with its hundreds of factories half idle, and not a few completely at rest?—African Repository.
—The colored Republic of Liberia has 3,500 voters, 116 officeholders, besides petty magistrates and constables, and taxes the people at the rate of twenty-nine dollars for every voter, besides the cost of maintaining schools and government buildings.
—Stanley is said to have agreed to make another exploring trip through the Continent of Africa, at the expense of the king of Belgium.
—Mr. Williams, who accompanied the Azor’s shipload of South Carolina negroes to Liberia, is unwilling to take the responsibility of advising the colored people of the United States to emigrate. It is a magnificent country, and money is to be made there; but the risks of fever and disease are great, and the climate is enervating. Thrift, patience and good management are essential to success. No emigrant should land at Monrovia without a six months’ stock of provisions, a supply of simple medicines, a little ready money, and all the bright calicoes, brass trinkets and notions he can lay his hands on. Salt is always valuable, too. In the interior, the natives lick visitors’ hands for the salty taste of the perspiration. Those who have from $200 to $300 over their passage-money will have a much better chance of becoming independent in Liberia than in America; but those who expect to find there a heaven on earth, where they will not have to work, and who are unprovided with means, will soon become disheartened, and be anxious to return to the United States.
The Indians.
—One fundamental principle in the management of the Indians should be, that they are not to be massed together, but separated in small communities, and as soon as may be, in homesteads. The more they mix with us the less they will disturb us.
—The solution of the Indian problem will be found whenever a policy founded upon justice shall be inaugurated, entrusted to a separate department of the Government, free from political or army interference, executed by men selected on account of fitness, who shall be exempt from the accursed political dogma, “that to the victors belong the spoils,” held to strictest accountability, and subject to removal only by impeachment. When this is done so that it cannot be undone, and the officers of the Department are clothed with power to protect the Indian under the civil law of the land, and the barriers to the citizenship of the Indian are removed, and he stands upon the same plane with every other man, alike responsible to law, and equally entitled to its protection, then, and not until then, may we hope for peace with our native tribes. When the army of the United States shall become what it ought ever to be, the executive servant of the people, called into requisition only when humane measures have failed, then it may fulfil its mission—never as a humane civilizing power.—Col. Meacham.
—The number of Roman Catholic missionaries and teachers among the Indian tribes in the United States is 117.
—Of the 8,000 youth of legal school age in the Indian Territory, over 5,000 are enrolled as attendants at the common schools, and an average daily attendance of over 3,000 is reported. There is a per capita expenditure upon the total school population of the Cherokees of twenty-five dollars, while New York State expends but six. The total expenditure in all the tribes is very nearly $200,000 a year. If money can make good schools, the Indians certainly ought to have them.