LIBERIA." 



By Sir IIakuy Johnston. G. C. M. G., K. C. B. 



Liberia is a portion of the West African coast lands which may be 

 styled the end of Northern Guinea. Its southernmost promontory — 

 Cape Palmas — of all the Guinea coast projects farthest southward, to 

 scarcely more than 4" from the equator. The northern political 

 boundary of Liberia meets the coast at the mouth of the river Mano 

 in north latitude 7°. The actual boundary on the south, between 

 Liberia and the French possessions on the Ivory coast, is the course 

 of the river Kavalli, the mouth of which river lies about 13 miles to 

 the east of Cape Palmas, in latitude 4° 22'. The northernmost ex- 

 tremity of Liberian territory on the coast lies just to the south of that 

 marshy and densely forested i)ortion of the Sierra Leone colony — the 

 Sherbro district — which one might say, with a fairly accurate guess, 

 was the farthest point reached by the Carthaginian explorer Ilanno 

 in his celebrated voyage of discovery along the northwest coast of 

 Africa in about 520 B. C. It is probable that the " gorillas '' which 

 Hanno's expedition captured somewhere in the vicinity of the Sher- 

 bro River or of northern Liberia was the chimpanzees still found in 

 these regions. 



It will be seen on the nuip that Lil)eria occupies a most important 

 strategic position on the west coast of Africa. The general trend of 

 its coast is from northwest to southeast, })arallel to the course taken 

 by steamers plying across the Atlantic between Europe and South 

 Africa. It might, in fact, in the hands of a strong naval power, 

 exercise a very dominating influence over the eastern Atlantic, which 

 is one reason, among many others, why (Jreat Britain desires to see 

 the independence of the Liberian Re])ublic preserved and maintained. 



The country of Liberia as a whole is one dense forest. It is prac- 

 tically the culmination of the West African forest, the regions to the 

 north, east, and west having been more extensively cleared by man 

 in past times, or partaking more of the park-land, grass-grown char- 



« Read at the Royal Geographical Society, March 27, 1905. Reprinted, by per- 

 mission, from The Geoiiraiihical Journal. London. Vol. XXVI, No. 2. August, 

 1905. See also " Liberia," by Sir Harry Johnston, New York, 190(i. 2 vols., 8vo. 



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