100 
WESTERN AFRICA. 
can not be given it, than to call it the em- 
The Soosoos, who occupy the country 
North of Sierra Leone, are the great slave 
traders, and slave owners ; they often stint 
their slaves in food, and work them very 
hard on their ground-nut plantations. The 
country South-east of Sierra Leone for many 
miles on the coast, is to them what Virginia 
is to the sugar-growing States of this con- 
federacy, viz. 5 the slave-growing region. It 
was thought by judges, that in the year 1855 
no less than seventy slave canoes, with 
cargoes, passed through the lagoon which 
divides Sherbro Island from the main land, 
en route for the Soosoo country. A number 
of canoes were also taken, but as they travel 
mostly by night, and have a great many 
places in which to secrete themselves by 
day all along the coast, many avoid detec- 
tion. 
From twenty to forty are packed into one 
canoe, put into the closest possible space as 
a matter of course. In this condition they 
often get sick, but they are not cared for, 
any more than a sick hog would be of the 
