CHAPTER XXIV.

VOYAGE TO AFRICA. LIBERIA.

Kroomen. Canoes.

Calms and Storms. - Fishing. - Dolphin. - Albicore. Porpoises. Shark. - Tropical Skies. A Slave Ship. The Slave Trade. - British Cruisers. Pedro Blanco. - Canot.. Influence of Colonies on the Slave Trade. Dress of the Natives; their Names. - Dances. Reach Monrovia. - Governor and Secretary of the Colony. - Manners of the Colonists. Houses. Meeting of Friends. Extent of Liberia. Rivers. Soil and Climate.. Seasons. Agriculture. Fruits of the Earth. Animals. - Oysters on Trees. - Sea of Milk.-Phosphorescence of the Sea. Flying Fish. - Forest Trees. - Palm Oil and Wine. — Vegetable Butter. - Nutta.

OUR voyage from Malaga to Liberia was one of but little incident, though at times there were scenes of much interest to one who had never before sailed in tropical latitudes. For the first fifteen or twenty days, we were driven along at a rapid rate by the trade winds, until after passing the Cape de Verde Islands, when they entirely left us. As much time was spent in passing over the comparatively short distance between these islands and the coast of Africa, as in all the rest of our voyage.

A learned Scotch divine, who at an early period came to the United States, to preside over one of our colleges, and who had great fear of the water, used, in the public devotions which he conducted on shipboard, to pray with great earnestness, "O Lord, deliver us from a storm." At length, however, a storm came, and was succeeded by one of those frightful calms, in which the sea, retaining the motion given. it by the wind, rolls on its long, lofty, glassy billows, and ships, without a breath of air to fill their sails and bear them up against the motion of the waves, are rocked helplessly about, so as, at times, to loosen their masts, and carry them overboard. From that time forward, the good divine, forgetting the storm, used to pray, no less earnestly than before, "O Lord, deliver us from a calm;" and such, I am sure, must be the sincere prayer of any one who has sailed much in the tropical latitudes. True, we had none of those long, dead, lifeless calms, in which, for days together, neither sea nor sky show a single sign of life or motion; but if, in the morn

ing, there came a squall or tornado, with a heavy shower of rain, the wind soon died away, and the ship rolling lifelessly about, the sails were chafed and worn, as, in swinging backwards and forwards, they were thrown against the masts and the rigging. The sun, too, poured forth his scorching rays, the pitch, with which the seams of the ship were filled, melted and oozed out, the water we drank was warm and vapid, and our condition was like that of a living death in a baker's oven, or the slow torture of a three days' Indian burn.

As the squalls come mostly from off shore, if the commander of a ship is a weak and timid man, and, instead of making prudent sail and bracing boldly up to the wind, thus for the time dashing rapidly onward in his course, runs off before the gale, and loses instead of gains, the delay thus caused is torturing indeed. To employ such an one to command on a coast, where perhaps a malignant fever is raging on board, with hundreds exposed to its violence, every hour's delay bringing with it disease and death, knowingly to employ such an one, is to aid and abet in the crime of wholesale murder.

At times, however, a gentle and refreshing breeze would spring up, bearing us onward in our course, thus filling our hearts with joy and gladness. Our principal amusement was fishing, and, in connexion with this, watching the movements of the various inmates of the deep, who swarmed around us. Lines, with hooks and baits of all sizes, were hung in great numbers about the bows of the ship, and when a poor fish was caught, he soon found himself floundering upon deck, and the next meal that came, he might be seen in some of the mess-pans, giving to poor Jack a slight relief from his uniform fare of salt-grub, hard-tack, beans, and rice. Now the thick, fat bonito, with his striped mackerel sides, would find himself raised from his native element, and then the long, graceful dolphin, stretched upon deck, would exhibit to our wondering eyes the quickly changing and richly varied hues, which marked his dying struggle. And yet we hardly pitied him, for often, like a greedy wolf, he chased along the sea whole shoals of little flying-fish, leaping from the water after them, as they soared aloft and threw themselves forward to the distance of a hundred feet or more. Nor would he relax in the pursuit until the poor little animals were so fatigued by their flight as to be scarce able to raise themselves from the water, when their cruel enemy, rushing into their

midst, would catch them as they fell, between his wide-extended jaws, and thus consign them to a living grave. Truly, thought I, this wholesale murderer, this Napoleon of the deep, richly merits a fate like that to which he has consigned so many innocent victims, and the maw of a sailor is as good a sepulchre as he deserves.

Of all the fish which I saw, however, the albicore struck me as the most beautiful in its form, and graceful in its movements. They are three or four feet in length, and have the quickness of the trout, with all the light and tapering beauty of the pike. There was, too, something shrewd and knowing in their air, as from a distance they watched our movements and then darted quickly away, as if they had noticed something suspicious about us. A baited hook, too, was no lure to them, and they seemed to regard it in much the same light as a lawyer would a penniless client, or a sick physician a dose of his own pills.

Sometimes a shoal of porpoises would go rolling and tumbling along past us, rising above the water, and puffing and wheezing like a herd of swine. We could never tell where they were bound, and yet, like a flock of wild geese, they always steered right onward, as if they had some object in view. They may have been going to partake of a feast, provided by some friendly tribe of their own species, or perhaps some foreign war was waging, in which, as principals or allies, they were about to engage, or, perchance, having exhausted the resources of their native domain, or being driven forth from it by force, they were seeking in other seas a resting-place and means of support, where, reclining in pearly caves, they might feast on the bounties provided for them, and, listening to the murmuring of the waves, or the siren music of some mermaid song, they might find around them the beauty and the gladness of an Eden of the deep.

Last, but not least, that pirate of the ocean, John Shark, claims a passing notice. He came more commonly with Madam Shark by his side, and what more striking example, could there be of the soothing, humanizing influence of the conjugal relation, than thus to behold these greedy cannibals, these sworn enemies alike of fish and human kind, moving about so cosily together, delighted with each other's society, and fully prepared to share alike in the joys and the sorrows of life. It seemed indeed a pity to break up so loving a family, but still, such is the hatred which a sailor has for

these man-eaters, that he spares no pains to capture and destroy them. He has no sympathy for the dying pangs of his victim, or the lonely widowhood of the surviving partner, forced as it may be to seek from afar some new companion, or left perhaps in lonely sorrow to drag out the remnant of a sad and cheerless existence.

Sometimes an old whaler, armed with a harpoon, is snugly perched beneath the bowsprit, anxiously watching his prey, and a lucky thrust calls forth a cheering shout from the eager crowd, who have rushed forward to enjoy the sport. But sharks are commonly caught with a large hook, baited with four or five pounds of pork. To this is attached several feet of chain, as a rope would be severed by the teeth of a shark as quickly as by the stroke of a hatchet. At the end of the chain is a strong rope, which is thrown over the stern of the ship, and when the shark moves carelessly around the bait, putting his shovel nose to it, and at length, turning up upon his side or back, eagerly swallows it, it is a moment of lively and excited interest to those who are watching the sport. If the line be drawn too quickly, the hook may not become so deeply fixed as to secure the shark. When fairly caught, he is permitted to play around in the water for a time, until, from fatigue, he may be easily managed. When drawn up alongside, a sailor slips down the side of the ship, and, putting a noose around him, he is soon drawn up in triumph upon the deck. Then the sailors fall to beating him over the head with an axe, or any other heavy article which comes in their way, cautiously shunning his mouth and tail, for a grip of the one, or a stroke of the other, would quickly make a joint in a man's leg in some place where it might not be pleasant for him to have one. When thus despatched, some forty or fifty men seize the rope, and draw him forward at a merry rate. He is there opened, and there is much curiosity to see what he has within him. The flesh is often eaten, though there are many sailors who would no more touch it than they would arsenic. I tasted it but once, and though it was not so bad as it might have been, still, “ old mahogany," as sailors call hard salt beef, seemed preferable to it. The teeth, with the skin to which they are attached, are taken off, and, being stretched into the form of a circle, are dried. The men then slip this over their head and shoulders, to see how nicely the mouth of a shark would fit to them, should they chance to fall in with one.

The sky of the tropical regions is different from that either of Italy or our own country. One does not see there the mild, placid, satin softness, and extended uniformity of hue, which marks the evening sky of Southern Europe, nor is there often that splendid gorgeousness of coloring, which, in the higher regions of New England, gives such a radiant glory to the heavens, when the setting sun breaks forth from amid the scattering clouds of an evening shower. In the torrid zone, however, the vast amount of vapor which is raised by the heat, and the sudden transition from day to night, give to the dense masses of clouds, a change of form and hue so rapid as to seem like the effect of magic, while at the same time, such bold and striking contrasts of coloring are presented, that, were one to see it on canvass, he would say that Nature A cloud of the richest could never have produced the like. and most gorgeous crimson, will rise side by side with one as black as midnight darkness, and these, as they pass rapidly away, will be succeeded by others of hues widely different from the first, but not less striking and widely contrasted, and so on, in a quickly varying but ever brilliant succession. Often, when sailing along with nothing but the heavens above, and the sea around us, have I stood and gazed at this splendid panorama, as the rolling clouds, in quick succession, assumed a thousand varied forms of giant men, and animals, of monsters of the deep, of towns and villages, of mountains, hills, and widespread fertile vales, and, as these scenes my mind,- Why passed before me, the question has arisen in should the heavens be decked with such magnificence and beauty, where no eye of man may behold them; and why should the wide-rolling ocean be overhung with myriads of such splendid horizons, beneath which not a solitary bark is bearing those who might gaze upon, and admire them?— Why is all this, if other eyes than ours may not behold them with delight; unless it be, that he who made us, for the mere pleasure of doing so, has scattered abroad with a bountiful broadcast and a reckless profusion, this richly varied magnificence and beauty?

The first decided indication we met with of our approach to Africa, that dark and benighted continent, so long the theatre of rapine and bloodshed, of revolting oppression and As I was lying crime, was the appearance of a slave-ship. in my cot one morning, a colored servant-boy came running to me, saying that there was a ship near us with the deck all

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