206 Notes of the Month on [FEB. 



this : for the business of Colonies and remote dependencies, is generally 

 left as it is found; and in the present instance, the principal ministers 

 have long since exhibited as Sierra Leonists, or protectors of the king- 

 dom of Macauley, as some of the wits term this sepulchral region. 



The Colonists, and the machinery of government, are to be removed 

 to Fernando Po. But this new empire labours under a bad name 

 already. One of the papers tells us, with the aid of a comparison,, more 

 expressive than poetical : 



" Accounts from Fernando Po describe the mortality there to be dreadful. 

 The removal from Sierra Leone to that island is like jumping out of the 

 frying-pan into the fire." 



By all accounts, there never was a finer spot for terminating all the 

 crimes and troubles of our criminal and troubled world. There con- 

 spiracy conspires no more ; but is reconciled to all things within a week, 

 or, at the farthest, ten days. There ambition burns in no man's breast, 

 longer than he has time to write his will. There litigation loses its chief 

 terror, its length for all the parties are out of court before the proceed- 

 ings can be indorsed. There war is unheard of, or never flourishes beyond 

 the first half-dozen drills ; there corn-laws, excisemen, assessed-taxes, 

 vested interests, and the other plagues of a long-lived community, perplex 

 no man, but life escapes from the fangs of all, and the dweller of Fer- 

 nando Po soon defies alike the taxman, the judge, and the jail. 



But why, we must ask, unless such settlements are reserved for the 

 younger sons of nobility, half-pay subalterns of the Guards, or ex-mem- 

 bers of Parliament, should Fernando Po be settled at all ? Have we 

 not the West Indies ? The name is enough. The only intelligible 

 purpose would be the discovery of some entrance into Central Africa, by 

 some great river. For this, possibly, Fernando Po might be a favour- 

 able point. But we see no attempt made towards such discovery. From 

 time to time, some beggarly German, or half-mad Frenchman^or English 

 rambler, eager for employment at all chances, makes the attempt by land ; 

 thus setting out alone for a walk of five thousand miles a head, through 

 countries of savages, epidemics, tigers, slave-traders, and sand as hot as 

 a baker's oven. He begs his way a few hundred miles, writes a jour- 

 nal, to tell the world that he has been buffeted, dungeoned, detected in 

 his mispronunciation of the Moorish, is starved, and is dying. The next 

 post, in the shape of some grim son of blackness, who had run him 

 through with his lance, and robbed him of his rescript and rags, comes 

 to say that he is dead ; and claim the reward for his news. Thus have 

 gone, and thus will go all the African travellers : all of whom might with 

 equal profit to the nation, and much more comfortably for themselves, 

 have jumped off the centre arch of London Bridge, at high water, and 

 so have gone straight to the mermaids. 



But the only discovery worth making would be that of a great river 

 from the interior to the coast ; and the only mode by which that disco- 

 very will ever be made, will be by the steam-boat. Of the half dozen 

 rivers which fall into the great Bay of Benin, how many have been 

 ever explored by us half a dozen leagues up ? The old Portuguese 

 mariners talked of having sailed up some of them for slaves 300 miles, 

 and found them still navigable. The steam-boat would make the trial 

 swiftly, securely, and effectually. And Africa, brutal and burning as it 

 is, may be well worth the trial. Its principal region is still altogether 



