20 
their handicraft, and, when old enough, take to the industry 
themselves. : 
That West Africa affords a good stock for the develop- 
ment of a useful fish population may be inferred from the 
doings of their fellow-countrymen in the United States, 
where some 5,000 Negroes conduct chiefly the shad-fisheries, 
and “are employed during the shad and herring season in 
setting and hauling the seines.” In the shore fisheries of 
Key West, Florida, Negroes “are considered among the 
most skilful of the sponge and market fishermen.” Some 
Negroes are also to be found among the crews of the 
whaling vessels of Provincetown and New Bedford, United 
States, the latter alone representing over 200. 
I must not forget the Kroo-boys—fine good-natured 
fellows, instinctively watermen, almost amphibious. Their 
native home is in the country of Sinou in the central part 
of the Republic of Liberia.* They are to be found all along 
the.coast ; in fact, I don’t know what the coast would do 
without them. They are invaluable, and represent the 
most generally useful—whether ashore or afloat—and im- 
portant tribe on the West Coast of Africa. Without them 
it would be difficult to work, on this malarial coast, our 
men-of-war, mail steamers, foreign vessels, all loading and 
unloading being done by them. I applied to them the 
term amphibious; well they are known, in fact it is a 
frequent practice, to swim off, pushing their casks of oil 
before them, from their own coast to trading vessels lying 
at anchor some one or two miles off. They are equally 
useful on shore. 
Fisheries as to their economic value depend on quality, 
supply, and demand. Where a want equals the catch of 
* Liberia with a coast line of some 600 miles, and extending inland 
some 100 miles, with a native population estimated at 1,068,000. 
