Liberia ^ 



stated by Canot that as soon as he reached the beach he was 

 murdered by the Basa boatmen for the money that he carried 

 with him. Canot writes that his body was discovered seriously 

 mutilated on the beach, and that in consequence of this outrage 

 he co-operated with the forces of the Liberian Colony just 

 established at Upper Buchanan, and with the crews of several 

 vessels, in a punitive attack on the people of Grand Basa. 

 This fight was little more than a drawn battle, Canot himself 

 retiring with a wound which disabled him for some time.^ 



After this he paid a visit to his sub-station at Digbi, 

 where an attempt to set up a second store with a rival chief 

 was the cause of a furious native civil war. The chief, whose 

 jealousy was stirred, called in the interior people to his aid, and 

 Canot's new friends not only lost their town but their lives. 

 The scene of frightful barbarity that followed is given in his 

 own words : 



" Each female leaped on the body of a wounded prisoner. 

 They passed from body to body, digging out eyes, wrenching 

 off" lips, and slicing the flesh from the quivering bones, while 

 the queen of the harpies crept amid the butchery, gathering 

 the brains of each severed skull as a bonne-bouche for the ap- 

 proaching feast. After the last victim had yielded his life, it 

 did not require long to kindle a fire and fill the air with the 

 odour of human flesh. A pole was borne into the apartment 

 on which was impaled the living body of the conquered chieftain's 

 wife. A hole was dug, the staff" planted, and fagots supplied. . . . 

 The bushmen packed in plantain leaves whatever flesh was 



' By an odd coincidence the contemporaneous Governor of Sierra Leone 

 was named Findiay ! Canot, deceived by this similarity of names, asserts in his 

 memoirs that his unwilHng guest, afterwards murdered by the Basa. Negroes, was 

 the British Governor of Sierra Leone. This was not so : General Findiay was for 

 long Governor of Sierra Leone, and died in England in 1853. Canot's guest was the 

 American "governor'' of a small Liberian settlement at Sino. 



168 



