-* The Languages of Liberia 



He expressed the curious opinion that this was most likely 

 the book of which the Mandingo (who are Muhammadans) 

 say that it is with God in heaven, and will one day be sent 

 down upon earth. He requested them to teach this new art 

 in Jondu, where they resided, and to make known his will 

 that all his subjects should be instructed by them. Accordingly, 

 they erected a large house in Jondu, provided it with benches 

 and wooden tablets, instead of slates, for the scholars, and then 

 kept a regular day school, in which not only boys and girls, 

 but also men, and even some women, learnt to write and read 

 their own language. So they went on prosperously for about 

 eighteen months, and even people from other towns came to 

 Jondu, to become acquainted with this ' new book.' But then 

 a war broke out with the Gora, in which Jondu was taken 

 by surprise, and committed to the flames, with all the goods 

 and books it contained. The destruction of Jondu forms a 

 crisis in the history of the Vai writing. By it the literary zeal 

 of the people was so much checked that they have never had 

 any schools since. After the destruction of Jondu the bookmen, 

 i.e. people who can read and write, were scattered throughout the • 

 country, and it was only about five years ago that many of them 

 collected together and built a new town, some miles distant from 

 the place where Jondu stood. " The name of this new town is 

 Bandakoro, literally cotton-tree ground, from the abundance of 

 cotton trees ' which are growing thereabouts. At the time I first 

 visited it, it appeared to me that a great proportion of the male 

 adults in Bandakoro were more or less able to read and write, 

 and that in most other Vai towns, near Cape Mount, there 

 were at least some men who could likewise spell their ' country- 

 book ' ; but a few days before my second visit, Bandakoro also 

 •was taken in war, burnt, and its population scattered. 



' Bombax. 

 1 III 



