Liberia 



«*-- 



and even compels his admiration if he has an artist's eye. Not 

 a few among the interior tribes — Buzi or Gora — are of fine 

 physique and comely lineaments, due no doubt to some ancient 

 infiltration of northern blood. 



The Americo-Liberians have a right to boast of their 

 civilisation. They are an intelligent, often well-educated, poHte 

 people, whose method of life is perhaps more akin to that of the 

 Englishman or New Englander than it is to habits of the African 

 Negro. Mentally, they are much more European than African. 

 Physically, their best friends cannot maintain that they are a 

 handsome race, taken as a race. Here and there a man or 

 woman of good physique and pleasing face announces Mandingo 

 descent or an origin from the more refined races of Dahome. 

 They are composed of the most diverse West African elements. 



Senegal and Senegambia sent handsome Wolofs, an occasional 

 aristocratic Fula, hideous Felups and Papels to Louisiana and 

 Haiti and the French West Indies. The Gold Coast sent slaves 

 to the Dutch possessions of Manhattan and New Amsterdam 

 in the State of New York. Other Gold Coast negroes and 

 natives of the coast of Dahome and of the Niger Delta were 

 dispatched to the Danish and Dutch West Indies. The British 

 West Indies recruited from all parts of the African coast, from 

 the Gambia to the Congo. The bulk of the slaves, however, 

 imported into what are now the United States of America when 

 they were British colonies came more from the Gambia, Sierra 

 Leone, and Northern Liberia. Add to this the permeating inter- 

 mixture of English, Scotch, Dutch, French, and Spanish blood, 

 and from this extraordinary amalgam you have the 12,000 civilised 

 Liberians who have been with some success and certainly no 

 excesses administering for eighty years a territory on the West 

 Coast of Africa not much smaller than England. Given their 

 pitifully small numbers, one may pronounce their achievements 



346 



