III.] THE AFRICAN NEGRO: I. SUDANESE. 53 



in 1898*, and the central administration, modelled on that of 

 the United States, has hitherto shown itself strong enough to 

 maintain some degree of order amongst the surrounding 

 aborigines, estimated at over one million within the limits of 

 the Republic. 



But these aborigines have not benefited perceptibly by contact 

 with their " civilised " neighbours, who themselves stand at much 

 the same level intellectually and morally as their repatriated fore- 

 fathers. Since 1874 no interest has been paid on a debt of 

 ^100,000 contracted in 1871; the budget generally shows a 

 deficit on the ordinary revenue 2 , and no railways or other useful 

 public works have yet been projected. Instead of attending to 

 these matters the "Weegee," as they are called, have constituted 

 themselves into two factions, the " coloured " or half-breeds, and 

 the full-blood negroes who, like the "Blancos" and "Neros" 

 of some South American States, spend most of their time in a 

 perpetual struggle for office. All are of course intensely patriotic, 

 but their patriotism takes a wrong direction, being chiefly 

 manifested in their insolence towards the English and other 

 European traders on the coast, and in their supreme contempt 

 for the "stinking bush-niggers," as they call the surrounding 

 aborigines. 



Yet some of these aborigines are both physically and morally 

 scarcely inferior to the free citizens themselves. 



Tlip 



The Krus (Kroomen, Krooboys 3 ), whose numerous K rumen. 

 hamlets are scattered along the coast from below 

 Monrovia nearly to Cape Palmas, are assuredly one of the most 

 interesting people in the whole of Africa. Originally from the 

 interior, they have developed in their new homes a most un- 

 African love of the sea, hence are regularly engaged as crews 

 by the European skippers plying along those insalubrious coast- 

 lands. 



1 This increase, however, appears to be due to a steady immigration from 

 the Southern States, but for which the Liberians proper would die out, or 

 become absorbed in the surrounding native populations. 



2 Statesman 's Year Book, 1898, p. 735-6. 



3 Possibly the English word "crew," but more probably an extension of 

 Kraoh, the name of a tribe near Settra-kru, to the whole group. 



