Liberia ^ 



no doubt, assisted the Des to defend themselves. The Boporo 

 chieftain, Gatumba, was the successor of " King " Boatswain or 

 Bosan, who, as already related, had built up a heterogeneous 

 confederacy of peoples in the hilly country round Boporo, 

 Boatswain had been a steady friend of the young Liberian 

 Government, but his successor Gatumba disliked them because 

 of their interference with the slave traffic. 



Buchanan had been suffering from a violent attack of fever 

 towards the close of 1839 when he heard of Gatumba's advance 

 down the St. Paul's River. He dispatched a message to this 

 chief, warning him that he would be held answerable for any 

 attack on Liberian settlements. Gatumba sent an insulting 

 reply. The destruction of Millsburg decided Buchanan (though 

 still very ill) that the time for energetic action had arrived. 

 He therefore organised a force of three hundred Liberian Militia 

 with several field guns, and appointed a young octoroon trader, 

 Joseph Jenkins Roberts, to command the expedition. Gatumba 

 had a ferocious ally named Gotora, supposed, like many other 

 natives of the interior, to be a professing cannibal. With seven 

 hundred men Gotora attacked the little Liberian mission station 

 of Heddington on the St. Paul's River ; but although Hedding- 

 ton was only inhabited by a handful of American settlers, they 

 were well armed, and offered such a determined resistance that 

 Gotora was killed and his men desisted from attack. Buchanan 

 accompanied the little army which he had placed under General 

 Roberts's command. He resolved to carry the war into the 

 enemy's country, and so the three hundred Liberians marched 

 through the dense forest on Gatumba's stronghold, which is said 

 to have been a walled town about twenty miles from Millsburg. 

 They were obliged to leave their cannons behind, owing to the 

 great difficulty of transporting heavy loads through the forest 

 and occasional swamps. But they made up for the lack of 



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