68a- 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [March 2, 1885. 



THE LIBERIAN REPUBLIC. 



" THE REPUBLIC " — PRODUCE — NEGROES— SETTLEMENT — PRO- 

 UK ESS. 



(Froii a Boving Correspondent of the "Timcs of 

 India.") 

 Harper. Libkria, 3rd Nov. — I informed you in my last 

 letter that I was about to visit the " Black Bepublic," and 

 then anticipated some interest from the trip, au expectation 

 v. Inch lias been completely realized. The negro is necessari- 

 ly an object of interest in whatever part of the world he 

 may be found, of amusement when he claims au equality, 

 intellectual, social and physical, with his white brother ; and 

 certainly of interest and amusement combined and infor- 

 ming! >d when he sets up a republic of his own. founded 

 upon principles of freedom and perfect equality, and admin- 

 istered upon principles of oppression and injustice to the 

 aborigines of toe soil. I suppose most people know that 

 Liberia was purchased by the Americans trorn the native 

 chiefs who possessed that portion of it which adjoins the 

 sea about forty years ago as a colony for emancipated slaves 

 from the States, and the Government was almost immediate- 

 ly handed ovor to the negroes themselves, our -Yankee 

 Mends being too wise in their generation to saddle them- 

 selves with a Liberian protectorate. I was,'therefore, anxi- 

 ous to visit this " Yankee Doodle " state to arrive at 

 some satisfactory conclusion ou the much-vexed question 

 as to the capacity of the nigger for self-Governmeut, and 

 also to investigate the manner iu which these descendants of 

 slaves and exiles from slavery treated the native races whose 

 soil was bought or taken from them, and whose territory they 

 were colonizing. Ou the passage to Liberia along the 

 shores of the " no man's land," which intervenes between 

 the Gold Coast Colony and the Black Bepublic, I was much 

 interested in seeing twelve or fifteen English merchant 

 barques at anchor at different points along the coast, and 

 learning that they were verily and indeed the lineal de- 

 scendants of the British slave ships which a century or so 

 ago used to make sad havoc among the inhabitants of 

 these parts. These vessels are owned by the same firm 

 who were at that period most largely engaged in the slave 

 trade, and are still the survival of a peculiar and antique 

 sort of trade quite refreshing to come across in these days 

 of coftiu steamers and civilized commerce. These floating 

 warehouses fill up in England with a mixed cargo of cloth 

 and beads, rum, gin, salt, tobacco, guupowder and firearms ; 

 the ship then sails for the West African Coast, where these 

 articles are bartered for gold-dust, palm oil, ivory, kernels, 

 and any other small articles which can he obtained from 

 the natives. This produce is sent home, as obtained, by 

 the mail steamers, until the original cargo is exhausted, 

 when the vessel departs for Bristol to fill up afresh. .Steam- 

 ing along the Liberian coast, as monotonous with its 

 densely covered bush, eternal green and flatness as is the 

 G 'Id Coast, I proceeded first of all to the port of Grand 

 Bassa, one of the principal in the Bepublic and in close 

 contiguity to Monrovia, the capital, and called after the 

 American statesman of that name. Grand Bassa possesses a 

 fine bay, but an extremely shallow one, with rocks spring ng 

 up here and there all over it, and, consequently, intricate 

 in the extreme aud difficult to navigate. There are three 

 settlements or '-towns" at Grand Bassa parr ed by narrow 

 walls of jungle, called, respectively, Edina, Upper Buchanan, 

 and Lower Buchanan. If the former was named alter the 

 abode of our first parents, the explorer or builder, or 

 whatever he was who so christened it, must have been 

 of a decidedly facetious and sarcastic turn of mind and 

 fond of his little joke. A fairly wide and deep river, 

 the St. John, navigable, as far as regards depth is con- 

 cerned for some distance inland, runs into the sea at 

 Lpper Buchanan, hut it has a bar famous for surf and 

 sharks, over which it is impossible for eveu a boat, to pass 

 except at the very highest tides. This is the great draw- 

 bark of all the West African rivers. For hundreds, nay 

 thousands, of miles along this coast there are innumer- 

 able wide and deep rivers rendered utterly impotent for 

 navigation or trade by the impassable bars at their 

 mouths. All these towns occupy holes in a curtain of 

 the densest and tallest greenery. They are compose.! of 

 groups of scattered white-washed houses, half of them 

 looking like chapels and the other half resembling toys, 

 in close adjunct to which are the brown huts of the 

 natives, or "the heathen," as they are charitably, frat- 



ernally, and amusingly dubbed by the " Liberians." What- 

 ever these latter have done for their adopted country— 

 and I am sceptical as to either the auiouut or value of 

 their work— it is quite evident they have not succeeded 

 in ingratiating themselves with the aborigines of the 

 territory they inhabit, who openly despise them, and dis- 

 pute their authority successfully over the whole of Liberia 

 except at the ports, where there are a few soldiers or 

 policemen to restrain their propensities in this respect. 

 The rulers of this contemptible State claim no less than 

 twenty-six parallelograms stretching inland at various 

 angles with the shore, ami stated to have been 

 acquired by conquest or purchase between 1822 

 and 1827; but the natives complain that having 

 in the first instance welcomed their brothers in 

 blood amongst them, the latter have despoiled them of 

 their possessions, aud that, when possible, from having 

 been once lords of the soil, they have sunk to the pos- 

 ition of mere serfs. It is uot, therefore, difficult to under- 

 stand why bad blood exists between these two classes 

 of negroes, and why outbreaks and " revolutions " are a 

 constant occurence. There are no Englishmen in Grand 

 Bassa, nor, as far as that goes, in the whole of the 

 Liberian Bepublic, with the exception of a solitary individ- 

 ual at a place jcalled Labori, who is a regular thorn in the 

 side of Liberian officials, and of whom I shall have occasion 

 tospeak later on, The British Government do not even main- 

 tain a minister, consul, or agent of any kind in the country. 

 The nominal duties of consul are performed, or supposed 

 to be, by the Governor of Sierra Leone. There are some 

 British subjects resident within Liberia, black men from 

 Sierra Leone, both at Grand Bassa aud the other parts of 

 the Republic, but I believe they do not find that they 

 are quite as free in this free country as they are under 

 monarchical rule at Sierra Leone. They complain bitterly 

 aud loudly of the unrepresented state of the country, of 

 which they are subjects iu this Bepublic, and aver, that 

 in consequence thereof, they are unable to make their 

 legitimate grievances fully and fairly known, aud that the 

 Liberian officials take advantage of the fact. I do not 

 suppose it is very generally known that at the present time 

 Lib-ria is a closed country to foreigners quite as close as 

 China. There are only five ports in it now open to trade, 

 aod foreigners are forbidden to erect factories for trading 

 purposes in the interior or even to proceed outside the 

 immediate^ neighbourhood of these ports. What the object 

 of the Liberian authorities in carrying out this rigorous 

 policy of exclusion maybe I know not, but there can be 

 but little doubt that by so doing they are preventing any 

 advancement iu the material progress of the country. At 

 the present time the revenue of the whole of Liberia only 

 amounts to £25,0011 per annum, most of which is levied 

 by extortionate taxes on the foreign community at the 

 trading ports. As the country has a coast line of 

 about 300 miles, and possesses much internal wealth, the 

 paltriness of this revenue is at once apparent. As a natural 

 consequence of this the Liberian " army " consists of 

 merely three or four hundred men, who can only by the 

 exercise of the most vivid imagination be termed " soldiers," 

 as they are badly armed, badly drilled, badly disciplined, 

 and badly— exceedingly badly— officered. Liberia as 

 claimed extends an hundred miles or so inland. Liberia, 

 where Liberian authority runs, is a very vague country, 

 extends but a very few miles from the coast, and is by no 

 means continuous along that. And yet Liberia, like some 

 other countries similarly situated, is everlastingly en- 

 deavouring to extend the nominal limits of her territory, 

 and claims both her northern and southern boundary to 

 stretch beyond the limits that Great Britain recognizes. 



There are only two Europeans at Grand Bassa. both 

 Germans, the representatives of a Hamburg firm. They 

 complained exceedingly of the extortionate taxes levied by 

 the Liberian officials, one item of which was an impost of 

 £400 before permission could be granted to open a trading 

 factory, while every article imported is liable to a heavy 

 and practically prohibitive duty. The exports from Gtand 

 Bassa at the present time are almost entirely confined to 

 palm-oil and kernels. And yet the whole country teems 

 with productions of every kind, and might be made to 

 grow anything. In the neighbourhood of Monrovia coffee 

 and Iudiarubber are grown and exported to a certain 

 extent, and Liberian coffee has obtained such a high 

 name in the Engliah and American markets that there 



