Liberia ^♦- 



narrow piece of cleared rocky ground, with dense, gloomy forest 

 on all sides but that which looked towards the sea, was dismal in 

 the extreme. For two months they were exposed to a downpour 

 of rain day after day. 



On November iith, at daybreak, the struggle with the 

 natives began. The settlement was attacked by the De, the 

 Mamba, and the Vai. The assault was at first so overwhelming 

 that many of the colonists fled in panic into the woods. Women 

 were wounded in their huts, and children killed or kidnapped. 

 If the enemy had been resolute they would have pushed on to 

 the palisade and overwhelmed the small band of resolute fighters 

 under Ashmun, Carey, and Johnson. But they stopped and 

 scattered to plunder the goods of the colonists. This gave 

 Ashmun his chance, and under his directions "common shot" was 

 fired from the five guns into the serried masses of the marauders.^ 

 Great execution was done, and the De fled precipitately down 

 the slopes of Mesurado promontory and away to their canoes. 



Ashmun ordered a day of thanksgiving ; but this first defeat 

 of the natives was not decisive. Soon the little colony found 

 itself living in a state of siege, and gradually they withdrew 

 from the larger area of the settlement to the restricted limits 

 of the palisade. Their case seemed desperate, for their supplies 

 of provisions and gunpowder were running out. Fortunately 

 a British trading ship from Liverpool arrived in the anchorage 

 on November 29th. Its commander, Captain H. Brassey, most 

 generously gave the colonists all the supplies he could spare, 

 and probably saved the situation for the time. 



' Ashmun writes in his diary : " Eight hundred men were here pressed shoulder 

 to shoulder in so compact a force that a child might easily walk upon their heads 

 from one end of the mass to the other. They presented in their rear a breadth of 

 rank equal to twenty or thirty men, and all exposed to a gun of great power, raised 

 on a platform at only thirty to sixty yards' distance. Every shot literally spent its 

 force in a solid mass of human flesh." 



138 



