CHAPTEB I. 
OF THE COUNTRY AND PEOPLE. 
On the West Coast of Africa, and imme- 
diately South-east of the Colony of Sierra 
Leone, are the country and people of which 
I shall write ; and I wish it distinctly un- 
derstood, that what I shall say of the people 
will relate to those tribes visited by me in 
my sojournings in that country, — viz : the 
Mendi, Sherbro and Timiny tribes. 
In Africa, as in other heathen countries 
similarly governed, tribes living adjacent to 
each other are materially unlike in their 
customs and habits, as also in respect to 
moral character, some having sunk much 
lower in vice than others; and this accounts, 
in part, for the seemingly conflicting state- 
ments of Missionaries who have visited that 
country. 
Below the Sierra Leone mountains, and 
immediately on the coast, the country is 
low and marshy, and much of it is inunda- 
ted with water when the streams are highest 
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