34 REMARKS ON 



goods, the produce of their wages. The Fish- 

 men exact a tribute from the Kroomen when 

 passing their shores ; and if their demands be 

 not complied with, they will upset their canoes, 

 and from their superior agility in the water 

 generally manage to secure the greater portion 

 of the cargoes. In Sierra Leone they inhabit a 

 small village close^to Free Town, and keep them- 

 selves apart from the emancipated negroes, on 

 whom they look down with most sovereign con- 

 tempt. Their mode of life is very peculiar. 

 Their own country producing barely sufficient to 

 support them, every Krooman or Fishman leaves 

 home at the age of thirteen or fourteen, under 

 the care and patronage of a headman, who con- 

 ducts him to Sierra Leone and takes him on 

 board of any ship in which he may happen to be 

 employed on the coast, with the rest of the boys 

 who may have been placed under his manage- 

 ment, and who generally amount to eight or ten 

 in number. The headman receives their wages, 

 keeps them in order, flogs them when required 

 to do so, and after a certain period they are at 

 liberty to work on their own account. It is in 

 fact a regular system of apprenticeship. 



A collection of these headmen reside at Free 



