Liberia ^ 



steamers were formerly the slowest boats of the line, uncertain 

 and unpunctual, and not always very comfortable.^ Therefore 

 the Woermann service, which provided an express boat once 

 a month from Hamburg and Southampton to Monrovia, and 

 which placed on the line modern steamers of fair speed and 

 thoroughly comfortable accommodation, proved most beneficial 

 to European intercourse with Liberia, and naturally these efforts 

 by the Woermann firm provoked similar improvements in the 

 steamers of their English rivals. 



During the last decades of the nineteenth century Liberia 

 acquired an added importance in the eyes of Europe as being 

 the home of the Kruboys. This race had for nearly a century 

 been the seamen of West Africa. Refusing ever to be enslaved, 

 though quite willing to assist in the enslavement of other tribes, 

 they were the first free labourers to engage themselves voluntarily 

 for employment with Europeans on the West Coast of Africa. 

 They entered willingly the service of the British Navy, in 

 which large numbers of them continue to the present day in 

 ships of the Cape and West African Squadron. As British 

 sailors they might be seen up and down the coasc of West 

 Africa, from the Gambia to the Cape of Good Hope. They 

 engaged in service with all the commercial houses — British, 

 German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Belgian, and Portuguese — 

 along the coast of West Africa from Sierra Leone to Mossa- 

 medes. It was soon found that they were of little use as porters 

 in inland expeditions ; but they were invaluable in any service 

 connected with the water or the waterside. They formed the 

 universal boats' crews up and down the coast. 



This race accepted the settlement by the Americo-Liberians 

 on either side of their country with good-humoured tolerance 

 until attempts were made to maintain law and order within 



^ I am writing of course of the state of affairs which prevailed twenty years ago. 



294 



