OF LIBERIA. 43 



been invaluable to us in the interior; and I 

 strongly recommend, in any future expeditions 

 of this kind, that the crews be completed here 

 in preference to taking Europeans as sailors and 

 engineers. 



It is needless to say, that the foregoing remarks 

 are not meant to reflect on the motives of those 

 gentlemen both in America and England who 

 advocate the cause of a free negro settlement. 

 No doubt they acted on the information they re- 

 ceived ; but I am not aware that any of them 

 have personally witnessed the actual working of 

 the system. The principle of negro colonisation 

 is admirable ; and if the money and life that have 

 been expended on Liberia had been properly ap- 

 plied, the results would, ere now, have been very 

 different. I have no hesitation in affirming, that 

 if the Americans had formed Liberia either at the 

 mouth of the Rio Ponga, the Rio Nunez, or the 

 Rio Grande on the windward coast, or on Fer- 

 nando Po, Corisco, or Cameroons on the leeward 

 coast, it would have been a thriving and inde- 

 pendent colony by this time : there never was a 

 collection of men better formed and adapted by 

 nature and circumstances for African colonists 



