Liberia ^ 



and Liberia. The French ship Regina Cceli arrived on the 

 Kru coast, and the captain treated with various Kru chiefs 

 for a number of their men to be shipped as labourers. These 

 Krumen of course beheved when they voluntarily came on 

 board that they were to be taken to various parts of the 

 West Coast of Africa — a practice to which they had long been 

 accustomed — to serve for a year in the estabhshments of 

 merchants or possibly as seamen on board French ships. But 

 when they heard their destination was to be the West Indies 

 they took alarm and believed that the long conversations 

 between the captain of the ship and the various headmen on 

 the shore indicated their having been sold as slaves. With 

 their horror of slavery, they lost their heads, and whilst the 

 captain was still on shore they mutinied, took possession of 

 the ship, and killed all the white crew with the exception of 

 the doctor (who had already become a favourite with them, 

 owing to some attention which he had paid to sick men 

 amongst their number). The Krumen having returned to 

 the shore, the ship was adrift, without a crew, and might 

 have become a wreck had it not been noticed by a passing 

 English steamer, which took it in and brought it to a Liberian 

 port. The French Government instituted an inquiry, in which 

 it was shown that the Liberian Government was in no way to 

 blame for this unfortunate incident, due no doubt to a complete 

 misunderstanding. 



Benson was anxious to open up relations with the interior 

 of his country. When a young man he had engaged In trade up 

 the St. Paul's River and had been taken prisoner by a boisterous 

 native chief and kept in the interior for some time as a captive. 

 Soon after he became President he sought for men who might 

 be dispatched on journeys of discovery to the utterly unknown 

 regions beyond the forest. Two Liberians seemed to him 



238 



