-^ Preface 



flurry them or worry them by expecting fifteen thousand, twenty 

 thousand, twenty-five thousand Americanised Negroes to effect 

 in a hundred years as much as France and England could do 

 in other portions of Negro Africa with unlimited resources 

 in arms, men, and money, during the same period of tin'iC. 

 Let us claim for Liberia at least another half-century of trial 

 before the world in congress pronounces decisively upon the 

 success or failure of the experiment. 



The author of this book first visited the coast of Liberia in 

 1882; again in 1885 and 1888 he landed at one place and another 

 on its shores, collected in its forests, and took sketches or 

 photographs of its people, animals, or plants. After a consider- 

 able interval of time, he re-visited Liberia in the summer of 

 1904 and the winter of 1905-6, and during these visits took 

 a considerable proportion of the photographs which illustrate 

 this book, besides painting numerous studies in colour. On 

 these last occasions the author compiled most of the vocabu- 

 laries printed in this work, and acquired a good deal of the 

 information — such as it is— which is here given. For portions 

 of this book he is greatly indebted to the help of other people. 

 In the first place. Dr. Otto Stapf of the Botanical staff at the 

 Royal Gardens, Kew, has, with the consent of Sir WilHam 

 Thiselton Dyer, prepared a most valuable annotated list of the 

 known flora of Liberia. A good deal of his information is 

 acquired from the collections made on behalf of the Liberian 

 Development Chartered Company and the Liberian Rubber 



