Intelligence resj)ecting Africa. 287 



AFRICA. 



Portsmouth, Sept. 24. — On Monday the Nassau, Tremayne, 

 arrived from Sierra Leone with a cargo of timber, being one 

 of the last ships of the season. She left the colony on the 

 25th of July, just as the rainy season commenced. The 

 colony was generally healthy. New barrack apartments have 

 been completed for the troops. The trade of the colony had 

 greatly increased. Not less than 20,000 tons of shipping, 

 trading in timber and gum, had left the colony this season. 

 Since the Ashantee war, the traders in gold-dust in the inte- 

 rior had taken a new course to Sago (the capital of Bambarra, 

 about a month's journey from Sierra Leone), thence to Tim- 

 boo (the capital of the Fulla country), and down to Sierra 

 Leone : the trade is now very considerable by this route. 

 General Turner had returned from his first visit to the settle- 

 ments on the gold coast, made with a view principally to the 

 extension of trade. 



An English establishment has been formed in the island of 

 Mombass, on the east coast of Africa, where a trade in ivory 

 and gum copal is extensively carried on. It appears that 

 Capt. W. F. Owen, of the Leven, who has two surveying 

 ships under his orders, put in there in February 1824 for 

 water, when he found the place under strict blockade by the 

 Imauni of Muscat's vessels. On his landing, the chiefs and 

 principal inhabitants of the place escorted him to the castle, 

 when they solicited from him permission to put themselves 

 under the flag and paternal government of His Majesty 

 George the Fourth ; with which request Captain Owen com- 

 plied (until His Majesty's pleasure should be known), as a mea- 

 sure most likely to conduce to the total suppression of the 

 slave-trade on the coast, where it had been carried on to a 

 most lamentable excess. Lieut. Emery, R.N., with a party of 

 men, was left in command, since which several dovvs have 

 been captured, the poor slaves released, and the cargoes of the 

 vessels, consisting of grain, cocoa-nuts, and ivory, restored to 

 the owners. The following account of this new establishment 

 (extracted from a private letter just received) must prove ac- 

 ceptable to our readers : — 



" Mombassa is an island in 4° 3' South Lat, and 39° 41' 

 East Long, about 14 miles in circumference, situate at the 

 mouth of two rivers, distance from the nearest part of the 

 main about two hundred yards; at low water you are able to 

 walk across: it is very fertile and very high. It was at one 

 time in the possession of the Portuguese, who fortified the 



place 



