LIBERIA. 



415 



" down poured 

 The Maccabean clan, who sang 



Their battle anthem to the Lord. 

 Five heroes lead, and following, see, 

 Ten thousand,rubh to victory ! 



" Oh for Jerusalem's trumpet now, 



To blow a blast of shattering power, 

 To wake the sleepers high and low, 



And rouse them to the urgent hour ! 

 No hand for vengeance but to save, 

 A million naked swords should wave." 



These poems, with others in the same vein, 

 are contained in Miss Lazarus's last volume, 

 "Songs of a Semite," in which is also her trage- 

 dy in five acts, " The Dance to Death," founded 

 on the burning of thousands of Jews in a Ger- 

 man ghetto during the middle ages. Apart 

 from championship of her race through the 

 press, Miss Lazarus labored personally among 

 the refugees in New York, and helped to estab- 

 lish them in manual occupations. Her pen was 

 now devoted solely to Jewish subjects. She 

 learned Hebrew so as to read the Psalms and 

 Isaiah in the original, and studied the poets 

 Solomon Ben Judah Gabirol, Moses Ben Ezra, 

 and Abou Hassan Ben Ha-levi, who, under the 

 mild rule of the Moors, flourished on the Ibe- 

 rian peninsula during the " dark ages " of 

 Christianity. Some of her translations from 

 the Hebrew, from these sources, have been in- 

 corporated in the ritual of the New York 

 Temple Emmanuel Congregation. "By the 

 Waters of Babylon," the last of her contribu- 

 tions to the periodical press, appeared in "The 

 Century " during the summer of 1887. It is 

 a series of exquisite little prose poems, recapit- 

 ulating the persecutions of the Jews from the 

 expulsion from Spain on the day that Colum- 

 bus discovered America up to the present 

 time. A memorial number of "The Ameri- 

 can Hebrew," to which she had been a con- 

 tributor, containing tributes to her memory, 

 was issued shortly after her death. 



LIBERIA, the Americo-African republic, on 

 the western coast of Africa, occupying what is 

 known as the Grain Coast. It was founded in 

 1822 by enfranchised negroes from the United 

 States. 



Area and Population. The boundary begins on 

 the north, at the south bank of Manna river, 

 about 6 80' north latitude, and runs as far 

 south as San Pedro river, about 4 20' south 

 latitude, a distance of about 600 miles. It ex- 

 tends into the interior about 200 miles. The 

 area is about 14,300 square miles. The total 

 population is estimated at 1,068,000, all of the 

 African race, of which number 18,000 are 

 Americo-Liberians, and the remaining aborigi- 

 nal inhabitants. Monrovia, the capital, had an 

 estimated population in 1884 of 3,400. Other 

 towns are Robertsport, 1,200; Buchanan and 

 Edma, 5,000 ; and Harper, 3,000, with suburbs, 

 8,550. 



Rnanees. For 1883 the revenue was officially 

 returned at 34,802, and expenditure at 31,- 

 493; for 1884, revenue 

 32,500; and for 1885, 



expenditure, 32,500. The principal part of 

 the revenue is derived from customs duties, 

 while the expenditure is chiefly the cost of the 

 general administration. In August, 1871, the 

 republic laid the foundation of a public debt by 

 contracting a loan of $500,000 at 7 per cent, 

 interest, to be redeemed in fifteen years. The 

 loan was issued in England, but no interest has 

 been paid on it since 1874, the Government of 

 the republic being bankrupt. 



Commerce. The exports for 1883 were valued 

 at 200,000, and the imports at 150,000. In 

 18S3, 325 vessels, of 260,427 tons, entered and 

 cleared Liberian ports. There are no statistics 

 regarding the extent of the commercial rela- 

 tions of the republic with the United Kingdom, 

 the annual statement of trade and navigation 

 issued by the Board of Trade not mentioning 

 Liberia but only " western coast of Africa (ex- 

 cluding the British and other colonies)." The 

 value of the exports and British imports thus 

 designated was as follows in the five years 

 from 1881 to 1885: 



The chief articles of export from Western 

 Africa to Great Britain in 1885 were palm-oil, 

 of the value of 649,147; nuts, 190,988: 

 caoutchouc, 143,297; ivory, 117,824. The 

 British imports into Western Africa consist 

 mainly of cotton manufactures, which were 

 valued at 299,808 in 1885. 



New Territoryt The extent of the new terri- 

 tory of Medina is not yet known. The popula- 

 tion of Liberia within its former boundaries 

 was estimated at 718,000, and that of Medina 

 at 700,000. The National Legislature in 1884 

 opened three new ports of entry, San Pedro, 

 Manna, and Niffou. Foreigners have the right 

 to trade at them. 



Government, The Constitution of the republic 

 is modeled on that of the United States. The 

 executive is vested in a president, and the legis- 

 lative power in a parliament of two houses 

 called the Senate and the House of Represen- 

 tatives. The president and the House of 

 Representatives are elected for two years, and 

 the Senate for four years. There are thirteen 

 members of the lower house and eight of the 

 upper. The president must be thirty-five 

 years of age and have real property to the 

 value of 600. The President in 1884~'86 was 

 Hilary-Richard-Wright Johnson ; Vice-Presi- 

 dent, James M. Thompson. The President's 

 Cabinet was as follows: Secretary of State, 

 E. J. Barclay ; Secretary of the Treasury, M. 

 T. Worrell ; Secretary of the Interior, B. J. K. 

 Anderson; Postmaster-General, J. Th. Wiles; 

 Attorney-General, W. M. Davis; the com- 



ander of the military forces is Brigadier- Gen- 



