Liberia *- 



Buzi section of the Kpwesi peoples are industrious, hard- 

 working and good-looking, but are also turbulent and inclined 

 to indulge in strife with their neighbours or amongst them- 

 selves. The Kpwesi to the east of the St. Paul's River are less 

 quarrelsome, but at present they represent the " great unknown " 

 of Liberia. 



The De are now so few in numbers that their mental 

 characteristics are obscured, a good many of them having been 

 absorbed by the Americo-Liberian community. The Basd 

 and Gibi people are fliirly placable, and on the coast have 

 settled down to a great degree of orderly self-government under 

 Liberian supervision. 



The Kru tribes are, on the other hand, still a noisy, 

 self-assertive race of bullies, who are cowards when boldly 

 faced or when placed in positions of danger. Away from 

 his own land, in the Kru settlements of Monrovia, Sierra Leone, 

 and other places on the West African coast, still more in 

 the service of European ships or at trading-stations on the 

 Niger Coast, the Kruman is docile and hard-working and as 

 a rule a faithful and even honest servant to his employer. 

 Those of them who still reside in the aboriginal Kru country 

 are passionately attached to their own land, and resolutely 

 return there after their term of foreign service. The Krumen 

 are a great deal given to drunkenness m their own country and 

 (if they can obtain the liquor) when abroad. On board British 

 men-of-war they take as readily to discipline as white men — 

 perhaps more so ; but in their own country they are cheeky, 

 almost hostile to Europeans, and still endeavour to set at 

 defiance the Americo-Liberian Administration. Not a few 

 of them have recently penetrated to the courts of the chiefs 

 in the far interior, where they become advisers in " foreign 

 affairs." In this capacity they are great nuisances sometimes 



948 



