^ President Roberts 



Liberian Government and the American Colonisation Society 

 to proceed to Liberia and report on the condition of the country 

 since its proclamation of independence. He left Baltimore on 

 August I St, 1849, and reached Cape Mount on September i8th. 

 As he approached the West African coast he commented in 

 his report on the gorgeous sunsets and sunrises of this region. 

 The present writer has noticed the same phenomenon at a 

 similar time of year. It has no doubt something to do with 

 the rainy season, though the full glory of these spectacles 

 is rather to be observed on the limits of the rain-belt than 

 within the area of drenching rain. Quoting Chateaubriand, he 

 writes : " It seemed as though all the purple of Rome's consuls 

 and Caesars were spread out under the last footsteps of the 

 God of Day." Gurley remained about a month in Liberia, 

 and returned to America, writing a very rose-coloured report 

 on the country and its possibilities, which was printed as a 

 State Paper in 1850 by the United States Congress. With this 

 act may be said to have ended the direct patronage of the 

 United States and the American colonisation societies, though 

 in 1877 a number of Negroes were sent from the Southern 

 States as colonists. But in various philanthropic circles the 

 interest in the Liberian experiment never died out. The 

 African Repository was the journal of these philanthropists. 

 Founded in 1832, it has continued to give regular reports on 

 Liberia down to the present day, though its name was changed 

 to Liberia in 1892.^ 



Not only did the Liberian Republic imitate the United 



' The American Colonisation Society still exists and still publishes this review, 

 Liberia. The President elected in 1905 is the Rev. Judson Smith, D.D. Mass. 

 Among the Vice-Presidents are the familiar names of Crozer (in remembrance of 

 whom Crozerville was founded in Liberia), Professor Edward W. Blyden, and 

 Bishop Joseph C. Hartzell, Methodist Bishop of Africa (see page 376). The 

 Chairman of the Executive Committee bears the honoured name of Gurley, and is 

 no doubt a son of Ashmun's biographer. 



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