of the Bassas; and their dialect is peculiarly adapted to the articulation of English, and they speak it with a clearness that would deceive many an ear, not having that roll and grumble about it which belongs to the Bassa dialect; they pride themselves in making efforts to speak the English, and are attentive at religious worship. The children acquire the knowledge of letters very fast.

CHAPTER LXV.

LETTER FROM G. W. HALL, ESQ.

BRIG" HANNAH," OFF CAPE SIERRA LEONE.

December 16, 1857.

1. I HAD anticipated the pleasure of writing to you from Cape Mount, but early yesterday morning our ship met this brig bound for Sierra Leone and a market. Her consignee came on board and desired me to accompany him. Accordingly, in less than two hours, I bade adieu to my agreeable companions and comfortable quarters, for the sake of business, and once more seeing the settlement of Sierra Leone. I hope this course will not prevent, but merely delay for a few weeks, my visit to Liberia. Although the wind did not blow like fury, as a friend of ours hoped it would, the M. C. Stevens had a very fair passage, she being only thirty-one days out when I left her, and then within one hundred miles of Cape Mount, her first point of destination.

2. There, most of her emigrants are, for the first time, to press the soil of their freedom; there to feel, if ever, that heart-throbbing which the first full freedom of manhood so uniformly inspires. Most of them, you are aware, were born slaves, and are now made free by will of their kind owners. Many bring with them funds sufficient to build

their simple frame dwellings, fence in their lots, and to secure them from suffering during their first year's experience in Africa; others have nothing with which to commence a new life in a new world but stout hearts and sturdy frames; and very few of them, or their children, are educated men; but many, and by far the greater number of Liberian youth, possess a 66 common school" education, and make honest and industrious citizens. We may well hope that this, the third company of the M. C. Stevens, will not fall far short of the best which has preceded it.

3. Most of the men are farmers; that class numbering forty-eight, all young or middle-aged, and healthy; blacksmiths, 3; tobacco-workers, 5; carpenters, 2; painters, 1; waiters, 2; steam engineer, I (a free man from Charlotte County, Va.); one brickmaker and rock-mason, who is a liberated slave from Kentucky, and one solitary barber. Many friends of colonization in America think that this simple material is too rude for Africa, and they would choose in its stead the more polished freeman of Northern cities, quite forgetting that in a new country the sturdy laborer is equally as indispensable as the man of education and refinement. It is certainly a matter for regret, that free colored men of the North do not more often turn their attention to Liberia, and resolve to aid with their might to build up and firmly establish this new Republic, the only present home of the colored man. Instead of doing this, they say to colonizationists, Make us a home in that strange land, which shall, before we enter it, vie with your own boasted home.

4. Make in Africa internal improvements, make roads, build bridges, that, when we reach it, there shall remain nothing more for us to do but to enjoy your generous bounty. They can not, will not, emigrate to such a country, with clodhopping slaves, clad in linsey-woolsey, and just redeemed from massa's plantation. Liberia does not this day contain two hundred citizens who are Northern

born. Nearly all that she has been, is, and perhaps all that she ever will be, is owing to white philanthropy, and to the energy and intelligence of colored men born south of Mason and Dixon's line, men whose fathers were slaves, or who were in some instances themselves born slaves.

5. The Rev. Elijah Johnson, whose name shines brightly, if not brightest, in Liberian history, was born a slave in Maryland, and emigrated from New Jersey in 1820. David Moore, long the treasurer of the colony, and afterward of the Republic, one of the most honest and valuable citizens Liberia ever had, was once a Mississippi slave, by trade a tanner, and a man of very limited education.

6. The father of President Benson, who is undeniably an educated gentleman, was a plain farm-hand from Frederick County, Md., but he was a man of natural abilities, and a fit counselor for the white agent of his day. Liberia needs men of intelligence, wealth, and energy; but she needs the laborer too, that which constitutes the bone and sinew of every country. In our own land even, but a small proportion belong exclusively to the educated and refined classes, and we have the best of precedents that in the settlement of a new country, but a small proportion should belong to it. Some writers say not more than one in every ten.

7. The population from which a few friends of colonization would select emigrants for Liberia is unhappily composed of barbers, waiters, boot-blacks, and the petty shopkeepers of our cities, some of whom have acquired a business education well adapted to their present position, and when possessed of capital, would be very desirable acquisitions for the Liberian towns; but they can not endure the hard labors and rough usage of country life, where new lands are to be cleared and a virgin soil cultivated; they must continue to be, to a certain extent, the trading class of any country.

8. Moreover, as there are so few avenues open to them

for professional advancement, our country contains a very limited number of educated colored men; and the late Governor Russwurm, of Cape Palmas was, and Rev. Alexander Crummell now is, the best representative of that few in Liberia; they were college-bred, and in every sense of the word literary men. But Liberia can not now support many such in the positions that they would naturally desire to occupy. Mr. Crummell having resigned his posi tion in the Episcopal Mission for private reasons, has retired upon his farm; but an amateur farmer without capital everywhere fails to glean more than a scanty subsistence, and Liberia is no exception to this rule.

Mr. Crummell, however, is not likely to continue his farming operations. The Episcopalians at Monrovia, here tofore dependent upon the American Mission Board, now propose to raise the means for erecting a church edifice, and to secure Mr. Crummell as its pastor. Should this plan be carried out, it will show that men of talent and education (if such proof be needed) are appreciated in Liberia, and that men bred to professional pursuits will be supported there in due time.

9. The ship M. C. Stevens brought out this voyage a young man from Baltimore, who is a regular graduate of Dartmouth College, and is fully qualified, color excepted, to practice at the Baltimore bar. His success is almost certain, as there is not another lawyer in Liberia who was bred to the profession; a second one might be equally successful, and thus this business would gradually pass out of the hands of quacks, who now hold it without depending upon their practice for support. But a score of lawyers would inundate the country as surely as would the same number more than supply the requisitions of some of our Western towns. The conclusion of the matter is, that with an attachment to freedom, and with a determination to do with their fullest energy whatever good thing they may find to do, it will require but little trimming to make all classes fit most admirably together; each will subserve the

other's interest, and all will be united in efforts to elevate their race. Then will foreign philanthropy or foreign speculation aid them as our country has ever been aided, in building roads, and making every kind of internal improvement that the mind can conceive or the heart desire. Then will Liberia become an envied nation, and a longsuffering people be redeemed.

CHAPTER LXVI.

LETTER FROM MONROVIA.

THE following is from a letter dated Monrovia, February 2d, 1858:

1. With the exception of a slight financial embarrassment, the affairs of government are moving on prosperously. Our President, S. A. Benson, possesses in an eminent degree the ability and qualifications to administer public affairs; and by his urbanity and courtesy has rendered himself emphatically the people's President. He encourages, by every advisable means, the development of the country's resources; and by precept and examplebeing himself a practical farmer-he excites the people to generous rivalry in agricultural pursuits, so that this branch of industry has received an impetus greater than has ever been experienced previously.

The St. Paul's River exhibits the appearance of unusual activity; several large farms of sugar-cane are being cut, keeping one small steam, and three ox, mills in constant operation. About one half the cane cut from the farm of the late Mr. Richardson has been ground, yielding 2,000 pounds of sugar and about the same number of gallons of

syrup.

2. A cotton farm has just been started on the Junk