Liberia '^ 



which enabled Liberian influence to be a good deal extended 

 up the St. Paul's River. In this treaty the Goras pledged 

 themselves to abolish slavery and trial by poison ordeal. In 

 December, 1843, on various dates in 1844, and in 1845, Roberts 

 concluded other and further arrangements, strengthening the 

 position of Liberia on the Junk River, at Grand Basa, at Sino, 

 on the Sanguin, and west of Cape Mount in the direction of 

 the Mano River; so that by 1845 the Liberian Colony could 

 claim something like direct government over the whole coast 

 between the Mafa River on the west and Grand Sesters River 

 on the east, where the territory of Maryland began. ^ 



Maryland had insisted on maintaining an existence inde- 

 pendent of Liberia proper. Founded in 1831, it numbered 

 about four hundred colonists in 1840. In 1843 i^s coast-line 

 extended for about ten miles west of Cape Palmas, but by the 

 year 1846 treaties with the various petty chiefs of the Kru 

 tribes on either side of Cape Palmas extended the Maryland 

 State from the Liberian frontier at the Grand Sesters River 

 on the west to the River San Pedro, sixty miles east of Cape 

 Palmas. This therefore was a coast-line of about one hundred 

 and twenty miles. In 1892 the French Government suddenly 

 annexed the fifty miles of coast between the San Pedro and the 

 Cavalla River, taking away the hinterland at the same time. 

 Thus the existing county of Maryland is but a fragment of 

 the State which was projected in the 'forties of the nineteenth 

 century. The administrative capital of Maryland was situated 

 at Cape Palmas, and named Harper, after Robert Goodloe 

 Harper of Baltimore, who had been one of the most active 

 members of the American Colonisation Society. The first 



' Considerable sums in cash were occasionally paid in these territorial 

 acquisitions, the money being furnished by the American and other Colonisation 

 Societies. 



188 



